The most significant SF novel ever?

I suppose the other thing with War of The Worlds is the huge impact its had outside of science fiction in all of its different retellings: radio, movies, music and it's a main contender well over a century after its written.

... and thanks for another reminder that I need to find this book Neuromancer :)
 
Nominating any one novel as the single most significant is a tough call. I'd have to think long and hard before even drawing up a short list. Hmm... :confused:

As far as Dune is concerned, I disagree with many of the previous comments. Dune was extremely significant. Why? Because it produced a world, an ecosystem and a society that were incredibly well realised and vividly portrayed; far beyond anything SF had seen before.

If Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity upped the stakes for SF writers in terms of accurate science (which it did), then Dune did the same with regard to the realism of the setting and world-building. Before Dune, planets were just a backdrop against which adventures were set. With Dune, Herbert gave that backdrop a texture and made it integral to the story. No SF novel had done anything like that before.

Perhaps this is something that's easily missed today, when such things are common place in SF, but they're only common place because of Dune. Okay, I agree that it probably isn't the most significant SF novel of all time, but it remains a very important, even a vital one.

Oh, and for the record, I think Frank Herbert's Dune went way beyond the genre of space opera. It's taken Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson to turn it into that.
 
Picking the most significant is a tough call. I cannot help but keep in mind the time factor in all this. When Capek first wrote about robots in the 1920s and introduced the word to the world, it was extremely significant. But that significance has faded with time; nobody gets very excited because there's a robot in the latest sci-fi.

Many significant novels are like this. Does Verne's submarine strike you with wonder and amazement at such a concept? Of course not, they've been around for decades, but it stunned people when he wrote it.

So my choice is (to me) relevant to the times i live in. And so i choose Gibson's Neuromancer. Twenty-three years after it was written and we're still seeing some of his vision happening. The book introduced words that are now part of the English language and started and entire sub-genre of science fiction. To me, that is very significant.
 
Surely Vance had been building textured integral settings for many years before Dune?

I'm not saying that Dune wasn't an important sf novel, but I think its significance has been over-inflated because of its popularity. It's worth remembering that Dune was initially rejected by 16 publishers, and it was only in 1972 that it earned enough for Herbert to turn full-time writer. It's might also be said that Lynch's film did much to boost sales of the book. And Herbert Jr & Anderson have claimed that one of the reasons they started writing their "Dune" prequels was to rekindle interest in Dune. Although I don't believe it's ever been out of print - at least not in the UK.
 
iansales said:
Surely Vance had been building textured integral settings for many years before Dune?
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I'm a huge fan of Vance and I agree that he has created some wonderful, colourful and intricate societies and worlds, but if you look at them closely and take out the larger-than-life characters in the foreground, in truth he did little more than sketch them. You couldn't all-but feel the grains of sand as you can when reading about Herbert's Arrakis.

Perhaps I'm just showing my age here, but I first read Dune in the early 1970s (1972?), when I was already an avid SF reader, devouring Asimov, Clarke, Aldiss, Van Vogt, Heinlein, Vance, etc by the bucket-load. Then I came across Dune, and I had never read anything like it. It was like stumbling across Lord of the Rings or Catch 22 for the first time -- a complete revelation in readiing terms.

Impossible to imagine that now, because since Dune, writing SF with such a vivid sense of place has become accepted, even the norm, but at the time, it was something very special.
 
I didn't come to Dune until about 1978. By that point, I'd already read a great deal of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and EE Doc Smith. I think I discovered Vance after Dune.

I'll grant that Herbert's world-building was of a level previously unseen in sf. But not in fantasy. Lord of the Rings did something similar, but it wasn't until the rise of D&D that a similar level of care and detail was seen in high fantasies by other authors. It could be argued that it was this which fed back into sf, and Dune had very little influence. It's a theory, anyway :)
 
It was a question and an observation. I would imagine it would have had a major impact at the time of its release. And today we still discuss it, and it still keeps regularly appearing in our "What are we reading in (name of month goes here)." There have been three attempts to film it, and it's not the sort of book that translates well onto film. Why?
 
Three attempts? Are you referring to Dune? Jodorowsky tried, Ridley Scott tried, and David Lynch succeeded. There's also the SciFi Channel miniseries, and its sequel.
 
iansales said:
I didn't come to Dune until about 1978. By that point, I'd already read a great deal of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and EE Doc Smith. I think I discovered Vance after Dune.

I'll grant that Herbert's world-building was of a level previously unseen in sf. But not in fantasy. Lord of the Rings did something similar, but it wasn't until the rise of D&D that a similar level of care and detail was seen in high fantasies by other authors. It could be argued that it was this which fed back into sf, and Dune had very little influence. It's a theory, anyway :)
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Yes, it's certainly a theory, but not one I'd accept at any level (much as I hate to disagree with you, Ian). Everyone around that time read Dune, and every SF book which the publishers wanted to be considered important was compared to Dune on the back blurb, either by the publishers themselves or by one well-known SF author or another.

You seem to be suggesting that aspiring authors around then would have read Dune, been completely unaffected by what was, at the time, a unique book which was being enthused about by writers, fans and publishers alike, then gone away a few years later, played a role playing game or two and as a result had their writing changed to a more Dune-like style when the book itself failed to do so. :confused:

Sorry but with the best will in the world, that doen't sound likely to me.
 
Ah, but what came about in the late sixties with world-building comparable to Dune? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything - hardly unsurprising: it's mostly empty :)

I like Dune a great deal - it's a favourite sf novel, and I say as much here. But... But... I've heard about the buzz that heralded the publication of Gwyneth Jones' Divine Endurance... and good as the book is, I don't think it had anything like the impact expected from its word-of-mouth.

Oh wait. I've just thought of a contender for most significant sf novel... Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn. Previously, the only Star Wars non-novelisation work of fiction was Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye in 1978. Heir to the Empire was a best-seller and demonstrated to Lucas how lucrative Star Wars tie-in novels could be... Thus creating the vast literary empire we have today, and which has forever made the genre the playground of children in the public's eye...
 
iansales said:
Ah, but what came about in the late sixties with world-building comparable to Dune? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything - hardly unsurprising: it's mostly empty :)
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You could say much the same thing about the years immediately following the release of Lord of the Rings, or are you suggesting that this wasn't a significant work?

As for the late 60's, I'll have to think... LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness springs to mind (and yes, it was immediately compared to Dune on the back blurb upon its release). Slimline and far more intense in its focus, but certainly a vividly realised world.

To be honest, I don't think the fact that a book's influence might take a few years to manifest itself in other works to any major degree is a particularly valid reason for suggesting that said influence doesn't exist.

Think we might just have to agree to disagree on this -- my recollection is that Dune had a huge impact on SF in the years following its release and on the writing of SF subsequently, yours clearly differs.
 
Cool, I've started a clash of the Ians. At the time of Dune's publication I was not old enough to be aware of its impact, or even aware of it. My observation is also based on the discussion around this book in the chronicles. It seems that everyone who reads SF has read Dune.

btw I didn't really count Ridley Scott's attempt.
 
I'd have to vote for Ovid's Metamorphoses with beginning the trend towards modern science fiction... but if you're speaking of significance within what we identify as modern, I can't think of any book that deserves the credit more than Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
 
Gav said:
Seeing as you are talking about Dune don't you mean David Lynch??
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I think Ridley Scott had the first option on the project, but it was getting bogged down so he went off and made Alien instead. And thank god for that. Finally the project landed in David Lynch's lap.

Supa, why do you think Journey to the Center of the Earth was the most significant? Whilst I can see the resonance of H.G. Wells work through the centuries, I am not so sure about Verne's work having as great an impact on SF, or on modern SF.
 
gully_foyle said:
Cool, I've started a clash of the Ians. At the time of Dune's publication I was not old enough to be aware of its impact, or even aware of it. My observation is also based on the discussion around this book in the chronicles. It seems that everyone who reads SF has read Dune.

btw I didn't really count Ridley Scott's attempt.
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I read alot SF and i havent read Dune yet ;)


People talk about it being popular but it isnt like people say its a must read for SF newbies.

So i have read most of the classics but no Dune. Science Fantasy is not my fav part of SF maybe thats why i have stayed away from Dune without knowing it.

I was actually to the library to borrow it a couple of days ago but some loser havent returned it on time.
 
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