Top 100 Science Fiction Books

A brave new world or a yet darker future

Science fiction uses the future as a fertile soil in which to lay new ideas and revisit old concepts. The way in which the utopian model has evolved over the last century is in my opinion one of the most startling in events that has been pushed forward by science fiction thus far. What we see as new and refreshing is in many ways a reflection of our values as a postindustrial global community. What we believe to be utopian is little more than the idealized ponderings of a culture that has reached its epoch and needs new and drastic measures in order to reinvigorate its population. “Everything most change and nothing last forever” this quote encapsulates the quintessential problem with progress, the things that we see as familiar today are the very same things that we remember to be familiar tomorrow. One of the primary reasons I enjoy science fiction is its perpetual dance with the past and future. Science fiction borrows ideas and concepts from the general world history and then recycles them and projects them into the the near or distant future. For example historical events such as the rise of the Hitler will be revisited and remixed by the science fiction genre into a whole new distinctively different idealized reality.

Utopia Revisited

Examples of the grand utopia and its dysfunctional counterpart.

Click here

A matter of fact or A matter of things.

Throughout my last several posts I have illustrated and out lined what makes science fiction science fiction. To further that point I’d like to highlight some of the new things that I have learn while exploring sci-fi short stories. The earlest science fiction literature that have have come across where either written or published around the industrial revolution. In my opinion this fertile time period marked the birth of what we have come to know as sci-fi. What I found in the earlier science fiction works that I explored in the form of short stories was quite interesting, I saw both a fear and a loathing of the coming industrial age which in one way surprised me, I had expected the earlier science fiction to be less like our modern exspressions of the genre. In fact I was a little bit disappointed I expected to be able to trace some form of sci-fi progression or better yet an evolution of concepts and content. I won’t go as far as to say that science fiction has become a stagnant pool of unwashed un-refreshed ideas but I will say that it can stand some running water every once and while. Science fiction has become in more ways than one the embodiment of the apprehensions pertaining to the future of the general near do well population, don’t get me wrong it’s still good but I would like to see more utopia and less demented old scientists every once in a while.

The life and times of a science fiction writer (open for discussion all comments welcome )

Science fiction is one of, if not the most creative genre available for mass literary consumption. Science fiction is a mixture of both reality and imagination. A good work of science fiction is built around readily identifiable preexisting concepts which are exaggerated and often taken to their extremes in order to achieve landscapes, characters, and scenarios that are not possible in our day to day working living reality. In many ways science fiction is a “distortion” of reality, science fiction exist in a world that parallels our own yet diverges in very particular ways which define it as a genre. Which leads me to wonder what makes sci-fi writers write sci-fi and why is it such an appealing genre that captures the hearts and minds of almost every generation?

And Then There Were None...

Only the artificial moon lit the desert. The android's legs moved slower. Its eyes blinked out, and the last human carried on without the mechanical companion. The desert stretched for days, but eventually beat the last human in existence. The survivor laid down with the history of the human race.

Countdown to the Greatest

Mania.com counts down the top 15 SciFi authors around. Find it here if you wish to start reading a good SciFi book soon.

The History of SciFi

Just what is SciFi? How long has it been around? All these questions and more are revealed here in the History of SciFi.

SciFi Weapons Gone Real

A list of 10 SciFi weapons that have made their way into the real world, most of which are being used today by our military. Read about it here.

Top 25

holographic darkness a sci-fi short story

The moon lite sky was amazingly bright and slightly offset by the gritty street, as I walked between the avenues of crane and peek, a narrow and winding road filled with dark cybertronic conjuration and their ill-fated holographic thought forms that billowed and lurked beyond the edge of darkness.

Sci-Fi rules of engagement

Science fiction like any other genre of literature is based upon its own set of rules and perimeters which dictate the types of content that is allowed to be used within its stores. I have been reading science fiction for quite some time and the same themes and troops are always prevalent, in my opinion sci-fi unlike like other fiction genres is dependent on reality and meta-reality equally. This fragile balance between the real and almost could be real is to me what makes science fiction so appealing. My initial run-ins with science fiction happen during my early years of genera exploration, which at the time were primarily composed of long informative nonfiction type texts and there corresponding sub categorizes . I ultimately found that science fiction was a worthwhile stretch and interesting read. My earliest science fiction titles dealt with postmodern post-apocalyptic scenarios in which the protagonist is born into a world much like our own yet altered by some drastic event that brings about radical often fundamentalist change to the face of the planet. This brings me to the book that I am currently reading Neuromancer by William Gibson the story is set in a similar anti-altruistic society in which virtual reality cybernetic and cooperate espionage melt together to form a gritty and highly enjoyable sci-fi thriller with all the trappings of a full length action movie and then some. Neuromancer is by all measures a classic, it was written in 1984 and still has all the zest and vitality of the popular newer texts in its genre.

Ringworld: How do they work?

People have been asking me "what is a ringworld?", the answer is the ringworld is a manmade ring meant to act as a solution to overpopulation on earth.To give you a better idea of how that would work, click the title and you will see exactly what it is.

When you blog, you begin with #abc.

One of the challenges we face in establishing and maintaining a conversation like this - across class sections, genres, subgenres, and other special interests - is organization.  Fortunately, there is a fantastic tool at our disposal for just this purpose.  Blogger (and others) calls them labels, and you'll find a list of the ones currently in use on the main page.  For example, you will see that there are several labels already in place that correspond to the three class sections of Senior English, as well as some of the genres that you are reading.


Note:  Each of your posts must be labeled with your section number as well as your genre (and any other relevant labels that come up along the way).


If you cannot find your genre in the labels list, please check again before writing your own.


Once these labels are in place, readers can click on them to automatically restrict their viewing to only posts with those labels.  For example, if the Period 1 Horror group wants to see what the other Horror groups are reading and writing about, they can click on the "Horror" label and see just those posts.  It's an elegant system for managing quite a lot of information on the fly, but it only works if everyone participates.


We'll review all of this (and more!) in class, so relax and keep reading!