Offbeat Science Fiction Books

[Extollager]

J. R. R. Tolkien's unfinished novel The Notion Club Papers (to be found in the book Sauron Defeated).

Ronald W. Clark's Queen Victoria's Bomb.

 

[hitmouse]

More Than Human by Surgeon is offbeat, surely? It got under my skin, anyway.

That'll be Theodore Surgeon then?

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

Ha! Yes, and not the techno producer, although he's also pretty offbeat.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad

One for The Iron Dream …

The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) by Charles G. Finney

One for The Circus of Dr. Lao …

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

One for Snow Crash …

William Gibson - Neuromancer […] And all of PKD, sprinkled throughout this period.

One for Neuromancer and heaps for all of PKD. But I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned Robert Shea's & Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, yet. Those books are about as off-beat as they come, and Wikipedia reckons they're sci-fi.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

But I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned Robert Shea's & Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, yet

And one for the The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I read these books in the mid-80s, and it was a wild ride.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

Read 'em in the 'seventies. Still love the cover artwork.

 

[hitmouse]

So, is Neuromancer really an offbeat novel? It was certainly trendsetting, but not exactly sui generis, especially given what followed. Some of the ones already listed are completely idiosyncratic. Can we remind ourselves what we mean by offbeat in the context of this thread?
NB: big Gibson fan.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

I answered assuming we were talking about novels that were offbeat to our own personal experience, rather than to the history of science fiction. When I'd been reading Foundation or Ringworld in the early 80s, Neuromancer did seem offbeat. But perhaps I misunderstood the intentions of the thread.

 

[Vince W]

I would have called Neuromancer groundbreaking rather than offbeat.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

That seems fair, though I guess it could be both?(Offbeat=unconventional.) But I don't wish to derail or argue, so I'll just say I likely should have read the OP a little more closely.

 

[dask]

Is it possible an offbeat novel could be groundbreaking, and vice versa?

 

[Vince W]

I've always considered offbeat to imply that it's also somewhat whimsical. Neuromancer is hardly whimsical.

 

[Randy M.]

An East Wind Coming by Arthur Byron Cover -- too long ago that I read it, but the book concerns people without names, known for what they do -- the Consulting Detective, etc.

I second Valente's mention of Vonnegut's Slapstick. It's the only book I've read by him that had me laughing out loud.


Randy M.