My (and Your) Own Personal Up to 50 or so Science Fiction Keeper Books

[Extollager]

Suppose you can only keep a relative few books.

(This gets a little complicated because lots of you folks read books on e-readers now. I'm going to ignore that issue. You can decide whether you include e-books.)

This is a place for you to list not what you consider to be the "essential" works of science fiction, but rather to list, if you can bring yourself to do it, up to fifty -- or so -- science fiction (not fantasy) books that you'd feel compelled to keep if you had to undertake a radical downsizing of your possessions. (Maybe we'll have a thread later for fantasy.)

I'm not going to get fussy about borderline cases (e.g. The Green Kingdom). If you think it's arguably legitimate to call it science fiction, go ahead and list it.

Omnibus volumes such as Asimov's Foundation trilogy in one book count as one. Heinlein's Past Through Tomorrow counts as one. Anthologies that may include novels, such as Damon Knight's Science Fiction Argosy, which includes some novels, counts as one.

Here's my first 25 or so.

C. S. Lewis's space trilogy -- 3
C. S. Lewis's The Dark Tower and Other Stories
Rachel Maddux's The Green Kingdom
David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus
H.G. Wells -- Seven Science Fiction Novels
a book of Wells's sf short stories
William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland
Walter M. Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz; Conditionally Human; The View from the Stars -- 3
Wilson Tucker's The Year of the Quiet Sun
James White's All Judgment Fled
Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man
Several of Groff Conklin's hardcover anthologies -- let's say about 5
SF Hall of Fame vol. 1 (short stories)
Lovecraft omnibus (Barnes and Noble) with At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time, etc.
Simak's City and Way Station

 

[vanye]

Keep only a few books of my hoard? Perish the thought!

 

[Vince W]

Let me see.

Dune - Frank Herbert
Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
The Gods Themselves - Issac Asimov
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Count Zero - William Gibson
Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
Starship Troopers - Robert A Heinlein
Starman Jones - Robert A Heinlein
Space Cadet - Robert A Heinlein
Excession - Iain M. Banks
Nova - Samuel Delany
Triton - Samuel Delany
The Stainless Steel Rat - Harry Harrison
Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, et. al. - Douglas Adams
Ringworld - Larry Niven
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
Hardwired - Walter Jon Williams
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Jose Philip Farmer
The Dueling Machine - Ben Bova
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
John Carter of Mars series - E. R. Burroughs
The Lost World - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Of course this only represents a fraction of the science fiction novels. It doesn't even begin to touch fantasy, mystery, literature, humour...

 

[Extollager]

Keep only a few books of my hoard? Perish the thought!

I know.... but such a thing could happen!

 

[Tom Hering]

My 50 volumes. I would like to have included all 27 hardcovers in my Simak collection, but they would have taken up more than half the list. So I stuck to his greatest works and those minor works that have a nostalgic appeal for me.

The First Men In the Moon (1901) - H.G. Wells
A Princess of Mars (1917) At the Earth's Core (1922) - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Space Trilogy (series, 3 titles, 1938-1945) - C.S. Lewis
Slan (1946) - A.E. Van Vogt
The Humanoids (1949) The Moon Children (1972) - Jack Williamson
Needle (1950) Mission of Gravity (1954) - Hal Clement
The Dying Earth (1950) - Jack Vance
The Green Hills of Earth (collection, 1951) - Robert A. Heinlein
City (1952) They Walked Like Men (1962) Way Station (1963) The Werewolf Principle (1967) Skirmish (collection, 1977) A Heritage of Stars (1978) The Visitors (1980) - Clifford D. Simak
The Body Snatchers (1955) Time and Again (1970) - Jack Finney
A Case of Conscience (1958) - James Blish
The Big Time (1958) The Wanderer (1964) A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1968) The Best of Fritz Leiber (collection, 1974) - Fritz Leiber
The High Crusade (1960) - Poul Anderson
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Wall Around the World (collection, 1962) - Theodore R. Cogswell
A Wrinkle In Time (1962) - Madeleine L'Engle
Sector General (series, 12 titles in 5 volumes, 1962-1999) - James White
The Witches of Karres (1966) The Best of James H. Schmitz (collection, 1991) - James H. Schmitz
Nightwings (1969) - Robert Silverberg
Ringworld (1970) - Larry Niven
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volumes 1, 2A, and 2B (1970, 1973) - Ben Bova, Robert Silverberg, editors
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) The Fabulous Riverboat (1971) - Philip José Farmer
The Godwhale (1974) - T.J. Bass
The Martian Chronicles (revised text, 1997) - Ray Bradbury
Two-Handed Engine (collection, 2001) - Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore
The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn (2 volumes, 2001) - William Tenn

I would probably delete one of the above titles and substitute The Best of Robert F. Young if such a collection is ever published. I really liked his fix-up novels The Last Yggdrasill (1982) and Eridahn (1983). I've yet to read Starfinder (1980, a fix-up of his "Space Whale" stories).

 

[tinkerdan]

Considering I took my entire library from the east coast to the west and then three years later brought it back; I think it becomes evident that this would be a monstrously difficult task at best. Maybe I could separate it all out into 50 per box(es) and decide which box gets sent first.

 

[Extollager]

Tom Hering, could you say a little about The Wall Around the World and The Godwhale? Most of your items are familiar choices (and some appeared in my list of 25 or so, and more will appear in my remaining 25, I expect) -- but those are almost blanks for me.

 

[dask]

The Wall Around The World is a great collection of polished short stories. Remember liking every one a lot.

 

[Danny McG]

Online as well as in here the same title pops up in this kind of list.
Canticle for Leibowitz. The first half or so was original and thought provoking but it went downhill rapidly after that IMO. It was a struggle to finish and not enjoyable

 

[Extollager]

The Wall Around The World is a great collection of polished short stories. Remember liking every one a lot.

Nice covers, anyway.

 

[dask]

Great covers! I have the one on the right in the book room, might have the one on the left in the attic somewhere.

 

[Randy M.]

The Best of Fritz Leiber
Cordwainer Smith: The Rediscovery of Man; Norstrilla
C. M. Kornbluth: His Share of Glory
Fred Brown: From These Ashes & Martians and Madness
Roger Zelazny: The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
Edgar Pangborn: Davy; Good Neighbors & Other Strangers; Still I Persist in Wondering
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination & The Demolished Man
Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles
Walter M. Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz; The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Frank Herbert: Dune
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Wind’s Twelve Quarters; The Left Hand of Darkness
Henry Kuttner/C. L. Moore: Two-Handed Engine
The Best of John W. Campbell
Eric Frank Russell: Major Ingredients
Gregory Benford: Against Infinity
Joanna Russ: (Extra)Ordinary People
H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds; The Island of Dr. Moreau; Thirty Strange Stories
The S. F. Hall of Fame (3 vols)
Jeff & Ann Vandermeer, eds: The Big Book of Science Fiction
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (3 vols, Tor editions, including The Urth of the New Sun)
Caitlin Kiernan: Threshold; A is for Alien
James Tiptree, Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Octavia Butler: Bloodchild and Other Stories
William Tenn: Immodest Proposals
Clifford Simak: City
Dan Simmons: Hyperion; Fall of Hyperion
Harlan Ellison: Shatterday; Strange Wine; Deathbird Stories
The Best of John Sladek
Kage Baker: In the Garden of Iden; Sky Coyote; Mendoza in Hollywood


I think in some ways I'll find it easy to list 50 (and hard not to list more) for fantasy. I admit I've only read parts of some of these and a few I haven't read at all\, but then that's why I'd want to keep 'em.


Randy M.

 

[Tom Hering]

Tom Hering, could you say a little about The Wall Around the World and The Godwhale? Most of your items are familiar choices (and some appeared in my list of 25 or so, and more will appear in my remaining 25, I expect) -- but those are almost blanks for me.

The collections The Wall Around the World (1962) and The Third Eye (1968) are the only books ever published by Cogswell (other than Spock, Messiah! co-authored with Charles A. Spano, Jr.). Cogswell is best known for his story The Spectre General (1952) which is included in Wall, as well as volume 2B of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I really like the lighthearted nature of his tales. I'm surprised NESFA has never published a volume of his complete SF stories, since they did publish a volume commemorating his prozine PITFCS: PITFCS: Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies

The Godwhale (1974) and Half Past Human (1971) are the only SF books published by T.J. Bass (Thomas J. Bassler, M.D.). Both were Nebula Award finalists for best novel (1972 and 1975). Bass is considered a major influence on later SF trends like biopunk and cyberpunk, though he's more fun to read. The Godwhale blew me away when I first read it in 1974.

 

[Danny McG]

The Godwhale 'blurb

Rorqual Maru was a cyborg - part organic whale, part mechanised ship - and part god. She was a harvester - a vast plankton rake, now without a crop, abandoned by earth society when the seas died. So she selected an island for her grave, hoping to keep her carcass visible for salvage. Although her long ear heard nothing, she believed that man still lived in his hive. If he should ever return to the sea, she wanted to serve. She longed for the thrill of a human's bare feet touching the skin of her deck. She missed the hearty hails, the sweat and the laughter. She needed mankind. But all humans were long gone ... or were they?