I found this online, and thought Moorcock fans might be interested.
1. Greybeard Brian W Aldiss
PD James used a similar plot which she corrupted with bad prose and poor thinking. An early eco-freak, Aldiss gives us a world fundamentally destroyed by consumerism. This is the original Grumpy-Old-People-in-a-childless-world parable. Humane, clever, lyrical, it's far and away the best.
2. The Drowned World JG Ballard
An early 60s vision of global warming! It's the more humanist writers who predict the future best. This novel first told me Ballard was more than just a superior writer of Bradburyesque SF stories. Ballard, like Aldiss and like me, was raised in an essentially post-modernist world and found in SF a way of describing specific experience. Another Earth elegaically returned to the womb. Alone at last.
3. The Knights of the Limits Barrington Bayley
Bayley, with myself and Ballard, was one of the original plotters who met a couple of times a week to talk about New Worlds magazine, our forum for what became 'post-modernism'. A fine intellectual writer, Bayley is here sharper and more substantial than Borges.
4. 334 Thomas M Disch
Camp Concentration is the other Disch I would recommend but 334 has richer characters and more humanity. 2021. All the characters live at No. 334 E 11th, NY. Mostly young, very engaging, the vivid characters are dealing with problems all our children will face. Wonderful stuff.
5. The Female Man Joanna Russ
This is one of the first and best of the hardcore feminist SF writers who found in science fiction a fine means of dealing with their concerns. Smarter and grittier than Ursula LeGuin, angrier than Octavia Butler, it is a spirited look at the female condition.
6. Tiger! Tiger! Alfred Bester
This also has a touch of space opera, but baroque rather than techno. This corporation-run Earth was done in 1955. Nestle, Heinz and IBM families rule. Byzantine future politics. Characters you fall in love with. I read this on a rainy day in Paris at the old Mistral, 1957, and it made me think SF might be worth a go. The opening's a Dickens quote, much of the plot is Jacobean Dumas. Revenge, redemption, social analysis in the context of McCarthyism. All the best American SF is from lefties encountering the madness of the 50s.
7. The Man in the High Castle Philip K Dick
In considering the madness of 50s and 60s US when presidents were prepared to risk destroying the world in order to get re-elected, Dick wondered what would be different if the Germans and Japanese had conquered America.
8. The Space Merchants Frederich Pohl
Judith Merrill reveals in her recent memoir how most New York SF writers of the 40s and 50s were divided between Trots and Stalinists. The best American SF remains rooted in these angry originals. Consumerism carried to the planets, a la Star Wars. There is, friends, an American left tradition...
9. Roderick at Random John Sladek
Sladek was the subtlest and cleverest of all SF humorists. Like Bayley he wrote profoundly about the problems which an artifical intelligence might encounter for itself. He, too, was way ahead of his time in understanding the nature of the corporate beast. He died recently and most of his work is being reissued a little belatedly.
10. The Exploits of Engelbrecht Maurice Richardson
While not actually SF, this was such an enthusiasm of mine, Ballard's and several others that it deserves inclusion. Richardson certainly knew his science, his literature and his surrealism. If you do not know the Surrealist Sporting Club, The Day We Played Mars and the Night of the Great Witch Shoot (illustrated by Searle, Hoffnung and Boswell in a superior edition) you do not know English literature.
Michael Moorcock said:
1. Greybeard Brian W Aldiss
PD James used a similar plot which she corrupted with bad prose and poor thinking. An early eco-freak, Aldiss gives us a world fundamentally destroyed by consumerism. This is the original Grumpy-Old-People-in-a-childless-world parable. Humane, clever, lyrical, it's far and away the best.
2. The Drowned World JG Ballard
An early 60s vision of global warming! It's the more humanist writers who predict the future best. This novel first told me Ballard was more than just a superior writer of Bradburyesque SF stories. Ballard, like Aldiss and like me, was raised in an essentially post-modernist world and found in SF a way of describing specific experience. Another Earth elegaically returned to the womb. Alone at last.
3. The Knights of the Limits Barrington Bayley
Bayley, with myself and Ballard, was one of the original plotters who met a couple of times a week to talk about New Worlds magazine, our forum for what became 'post-modernism'. A fine intellectual writer, Bayley is here sharper and more substantial than Borges.
4. 334 Thomas M Disch
Camp Concentration is the other Disch I would recommend but 334 has richer characters and more humanity. 2021. All the characters live at No. 334 E 11th, NY. Mostly young, very engaging, the vivid characters are dealing with problems all our children will face. Wonderful stuff.
5. The Female Man Joanna Russ
This is one of the first and best of the hardcore feminist SF writers who found in science fiction a fine means of dealing with their concerns. Smarter and grittier than Ursula LeGuin, angrier than Octavia Butler, it is a spirited look at the female condition.
6. Tiger! Tiger! Alfred Bester
This also has a touch of space opera, but baroque rather than techno. This corporation-run Earth was done in 1955. Nestle, Heinz and IBM families rule. Byzantine future politics. Characters you fall in love with. I read this on a rainy day in Paris at the old Mistral, 1957, and it made me think SF might be worth a go. The opening's a Dickens quote, much of the plot is Jacobean Dumas. Revenge, redemption, social analysis in the context of McCarthyism. All the best American SF is from lefties encountering the madness of the 50s.
7. The Man in the High Castle Philip K Dick
In considering the madness of 50s and 60s US when presidents were prepared to risk destroying the world in order to get re-elected, Dick wondered what would be different if the Germans and Japanese had conquered America.
8. The Space Merchants Frederich Pohl
Judith Merrill reveals in her recent memoir how most New York SF writers of the 40s and 50s were divided between Trots and Stalinists. The best American SF remains rooted in these angry originals. Consumerism carried to the planets, a la Star Wars. There is, friends, an American left tradition...
9. Roderick at Random John Sladek
Sladek was the subtlest and cleverest of all SF humorists. Like Bayley he wrote profoundly about the problems which an artifical intelligence might encounter for itself. He, too, was way ahead of his time in understanding the nature of the corporate beast. He died recently and most of his work is being reissued a little belatedly.
10. The Exploits of Engelbrecht Maurice Richardson
While not actually SF, this was such an enthusiasm of mine, Ballard's and several others that it deserves inclusion. Richardson certainly knew his science, his literature and his surrealism. If you do not know the Surrealist Sporting Club, The Day We Played Mars and the Night of the Great Witch Shoot (illustrated by Searle, Hoffnung and Boswell in a superior edition) you do not know English literature.
He only mentions where (and when) he read one of the books.
