It seems a lot of people here are unaware that "New Wave Science Fiction" is not another name for this specific time period but rather a subgenre of SciFi which started and got popular during that period. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_science_fiction
Of course very good other SciFi was written during that period as well.
Related, someone on Reddit re-read all the Hugo/Nebula/Locus/WFA winning books and reviewed them. I found their rating system, and how well the books aged, very worthwhile:
Hyperion was awesome. Canterbury Tales-style narrative focused on a group of pilgrims on a crazy planet steeped in legend set against a galaxy-spanning empire that is being threatened by a faceless looming external threat. As if that wasn't enough, the pilgrims are threatened from within by mystery, murder and betrayal as much as they are hounded by the immortal blade-covered daemon they know they are eventually destined to face.
Each pilgrims tale is unique and told in a different vibe - from pious and regretful to vulgar and indifferent.
The problem with Hyperion is that it was so successful, the author couldn't resist the temptation to write sequels, and those are of much lesser quality.
Opinion of course, but I couldn’t agree less. Taken as a whole, I think the whole work is beautiful, and I re read all of them occasionally. The way it all spreads out and then ties together is wonderful.
Amusingly, within just a few hours of our exchange, Hyperion popped up in another comment thread[0], where my view on the sequels was reiterated by several other people.
I've tried to read it about 5 times over the last 20 years or so. Never made it past the first third or so of the book. Something about the way it is written is just so unappealing to me that I'd rather give up than finish. One of these days I might just read the synopsis.
I've seen that sentiment expressed elsewhere, it seems some people just aren't compatible with it.
Likewise I can't get through Pat Cadigan's 'Synners' which I think is a Nebula award winner - the world seems like it _should_ be interesting enough but it just doesn't grip me at all... I must have tried about ten times now and I just end up either leaving it for something else or leafing aimlessly through the pages trying to jump ahead to a more 'engaging' part and not finding anything
I found the ideas in Neuromancer to be, at the time, revolutionary. Going back to it, I thought that it read like a kids book. Naive and cludgy - like a Drizzt D&D book.
Neal Stephenson is I think a better writer, while also moving the genre and sci-fi concepts forward. I highly recommend "The Diamond Age" for people that couldn't make it through Neuromancer.
The writing in Neuromancer is a lot less polished than in the second two books, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and I understand your point.
I like Stephenson but I don't know that you can directly compare, while they're both 'Cyberpunk' authors to an extent Stephenson's work is wildly different, there's a lot more 'education' in Stephenson whereas Gibson is pure exposition. Stephenson can also be a bit (very) preachy. I've read the Gibson books many many times and but the Stephenson ones... well, the second time I went through 'Snow Crash' I was already skipping massively, and The Diamond Age... once you've read it, you've read it.
This is going to sound incredibly judgemental but to me, Gibson writes the future, Stephenson the past.
If all you've read is Neuromancer I'd agree. What other Gibson works have you read?
Good list, but Orson Scott Card is a bit over-represnted. I recently re-read scheismatrix (plus) after 35 years. My spouse found a copy of Burning Chrome in the local tiny library, so I'm likely to review a few more cyberpunk works. I have fond memories of the 64-83 era, but it took me a while to warm to Sterling and Gibson. It almost seems like every new sci-fi story has a bit of cyberpunk embedded in it. All the cyberpunk authors were (I believe) influenced by Ballard and PKD.
As for other "effects", in theory the HDD led on the front panel could be interfaced with some actuator to produce vibration and sound when data is accessed.
Personally, I can't wait for the PineNote to exit the development phase and become an usable product; other e-paper readers are too closed and/or depending on cloud services I have no intention to surrender my personal data to.
What's wrong with a Kobo reader? Kobo is friendly to modding, so you can install e.g. the open-source interface KOReader and never use the company's own interface. Even if you use Kobo's software, initial setup can be done without registration, and you can just leave the reader in airplane mode for the entire lifetime of the device, so it would never connect to any cloud.
I have enough experience with Pine64 to not regard their products as anything other than toys that never meet their potential.
I second a very positive vote for Kobo. There are great resources for setting them up with no registration, and they work very well. Easy to get inside and make any changes you want.
Also second the downvote for Pine products. They look good off the bat, but there is no ongoing support and low compatibility.
15. Rocannon’s World has a stupid tagline in the title. Ignore it.
This book is short and is supposed to be the first part of a novella called "worlds of exile and illusion" which consists of a trilogy of stories.
Read the novella of 3 stories in order. Do not just read rocanonns world individually.
When read Separately the stories are your standard sci Fi fare but when wholistically read the trilogy becomes one of the most epic stories I have ever read. All three stories seem only slightly connected but as a trilogy all three stories combine to form a completely different epic tale that spans the entire universe.
I didn't really like Ursula's left hand of darkness. It was ok, but worlds of exile and illusion blew me away. But for some reason most people don't know about this gem and I think it's because the books were initially released separately.
The whole thing needs to be read in order as one book, the length of each story actually makes it better fit for a single book too, link:
I read the entire hainish cycle back to back in chronological order once, and it was a superb experience. the books aren't technically a series but they do build up a coherent universe and timeline between them.
It's really hard to overstate the impact of PKD's later works and JG Ballard. Having read about 50% of this list, I think all of our modern dystopia, paranoia, and existential SciFi sprouted from their insane seeds. And the depth of LeGuin's exploration of social, sexual, and economic identity in alien worlds sticks out like a sore thumb compared to her peers.
Damn, tho, the book cover for The Three Stigmata... is fascinating. I always pictured him as just a cyborg octogenarian but now I can't unsee this. I miss that artwork.
Aaaaand, it would be nice of the page author would put these in a CSV at the bottom so that I can make a checklist!
I don't know enough to know if your ascription of those "ills" to those authors is accurate, but I certainly find it refreshing to see someone asserting that no, it's not "just fiction" and the art we create and consume changes us, and changes society, not always in a good way.
"Libertarians are like house cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand."
The converse of this actually exists. There's a fan award called the Prometheus Award given by the "Libertarian Futurists" which is often jokingly called the "Scottish Socialist Award", given how many times they've awarded it to works that are perhaps equally anti-extant-state but with virtually all other politics at odds. (And in some cases, IMO, strong misreadings of the awarded work.)
Ironically, the hardcover version of "Concrete Island" that I had was ... solid grey! :| It was probably a book-club edition because it was a very small-format hardcover.
It's nice to see both Engine Summer and In Watermelon Sugar on this list. If you like mellow postapocalpyse, check out Hitoshi Ashinano's manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
Hmm. Just thinking about west meeting east... Hiroshima Mon Amour is, in many ways, a cyberpunk work in the way the concept of memory as a first-class character with its own life is in clear display.
Good list, though of course I have only read maybe half, if even. A bit too heavy on Dick and Ballard for my taste, but I'm very happy to see James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) and Octavia Butler on there, which are too often forgotten
I really love this era of sci-fi, a kind of short window between the immature boy fantasies before and the dull hard SF the came after. The weirdness, the hallucinatory, the craziness! And most importantly, so many great writers.
Doesn't Hard SF both predate and postdate New Wave? It's a thread that weaves through the whole of science-fiction. (heck - didn't Jules Verne once diss H.G. Wells for not being "hard sci-fi enough"?)
To be fair to the crowd that came after, the average consumption of creativity-enhancing substances was a lot less in the 80's and forward than in the [60's, early 80's] period.
If you're seeking weirdness and hallucinatory craziness, I think Peter Watts, Tamsyn Muir, and Charles Stross (among many others) can absolutely deliver.
Another fun offshoot combining New Wave and Cyberpunk is Transrealism. Rudy Rucker has a way with illustrating immense mathematical ideas while keeping the zany hippie dreams alive.
Phillip K Dick wrote some absolute classics. And some utter dross. In this period
I do think there is a rough arc of transition, but I disagree that there are definable ages
It is good sport of arbitrary classification but has no useful meaning in selecting books
Ax a counter example there is TV, where technology defined clear boundaries cable then streaming
Nothing, not even kindle, has hat such an effect in literature. It is gradual change from the 1940s through the twenty first century. 1940 very different from 2023, but no boundaries
Man. Someone really likes PKD. And sure, his stories are great reality-benders. Maybe we could use a little bit more of that these days. And I love Ballard. I think PKD is slightly over-represented on this list and Ursula K Leguin slightly under-represented. But I'm happy to see some of the other authors made the cut.
I think if I were to do a list like this I would pick 10 or 12 authors from the era and mention which works express the literary zeitgeist.
It is wild that PKD and UKLG both went to Berkeley HS at the same time (though UKLG has said that neither she nor any of her friends had any memory of him).
But it does include The Fifth Head of Cerberus. I think only work up to Book of the New Sun would fall into the specified time period, so most of his work would qualify even if it were new wave.
And it’s still going! It was refreshing to have a new book set in that world. I’m a big fan, and think a few more of his books should have been on this list.
I owe it all to an English teacher in college who photocopied Equinoctial for us (this was about 1998). I loved it, and quickly proceeded to devour his novels.
Yes, this is not a list of "Best SciFi books from 1964 to 1983", it is specifically meant to cover the subgenre of New Wave. This is also why for instance "Flowers for Algernon" or "The forever war" is not there, since they are not considered New Wave but are for sure classics that would be on a generic "Best SciFi" list.
It's the kind of list an English professor might make, not necessarily a sci-fi fan. In particular, Dick's genius was recognized only after his death.
Even though sci-fi sometimes rises above other genre literature, it's not taken that seriously by literary types. Baudrillard talks a lot about Dick and Ballard and that's it. Stanislaw Lem (whose Cyberiad ought to be on that list instead of The Futurological Congress) himself said that Phillip K. Dick was on a whole other level than other sci-fi writers.
Notably the list subverts the category of "novel" by adding a lot of things (comic books, concept albums) that aren't really novels.
I think Fred Pohl is missing (say Gateway) and also Joe Halderman (Worlds!). I'd rather see any Frank Herbert book but Dune (say Whipping Star or The Santaroga Barrier.) For that matter I'd like to see something from Heinlein before he had the stroke like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Glory Road. I'd also want to see Niven's Neutron Star (a set of short stories that read like a novel) but despite some "new wave" sensibilities Niven comes across as reactionary today because the Tor Books revival (Forge of God and Enders Game) of sci-fi in the 1980s liked Heinlein and Niven and Doc Smith better than LeGunn, Dick, Ballard, Herbert, etc.
On the other hand, put a sci-fi fan in charge of making this list and it's no doubt they'll add a stick of books from some author who is a "no account" in literary circles like Piers Anthony -- still I would try to slip him in at his most psychedelic.
> Dick's genius was recognized only after his death
Yes and no. It should certainly be noted that he was very popular during his life, not a nearly unknown author. Book clubs selected multiple of his novels, as one of many examples of that.
His stuff became a huge fad when they made many movies based on his works, but that's not the same thing as him previously being an unsung genius.
PKD’s books didn’t generally sell all that well during his life. In those days the sfbc picked up everything. And most of his books were OP when he died. I can remember having to scrounge around for them.
Hmm. In light of that, maybe it would have been more accurate if I said he was famous rather than popular, and for all I know it was only the Science Fiction Book Club that gave him that degree of fame?
His stuff is weird, and therefore a niche/acquired taste.
> Dick's genius was recognized only after his death.
Which we should give credit for: I only found PKD due to Jonathan Lethem's advocacy. PKD fans are likely to enjoy Lethem's sci-fi, especially Gun, With Occasional Music.
The crew of writers responsible for elevating PKD from pulp to cult deserve some attention, especially from PKD fans (aka "Dick-heads", which is just the most perfect name for a fandom).
> I'd like to see something from Heinlein before he had the stroke like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Plus one for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That's probably the best of Heinlein's work.
I enjoyed Dune and Androids but the rest are mostly meh. A lot of DNF books for me (including Slaughterhouse-Five, which I know has its fans but I really disliked)
I'm curious to hear more about why you feel this was the winter of sci-fi! Can you share some more besides personal preference? (I'm not a huge Vonnegut fan or even big reader in general and Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle were pretty far from DNF for me.)
I feel similarly. However, I absolutely love Vonnegut, but don't see his work as scifi. Sure it has all the elements, but the themes are mostly different. To me the best scifi is about a technology that could exist and plays through all the consequences. Slaughterhouse Five isn't that, it's about WWII. (From my definition one might guess correctly that I see space opera as a derogatory term)
I heard that his writing could have been a way to process what he went through during the war. That could explain the darkness.
There is a modern fantasy writer that writes quite dark stories. I read that this is because of a very sick family member, and some of his best books have been written in a hospital room. While I applaude both for turning something bad into something good, these sort of books are just not my cup of tea. And I think a lot of people are like me. We read books to get away from the problems of real life, not dive into other people's troubled minds.
"And I think a lot of people are like me. We read books to get away from the problems of real life, not dive into other people's troubled minds."
That certainly makes sense and is of course also a subjective preference. To me great insights lie in the darkness, but it isn't for everyone and not at any time.
I appreciate any list of sci-fi books, and it's interesting to see, but for me, this list sucks. It's very fantasy / literature heavy as opposed to hard sci-fi. Seems like a list of "sci-fi" books from someone who doesnt really like sci-fi. For me it's like a bottom 75 list.
You have not read much SF, have you? Sturgeon's Law [1] was created for a reason. If you think this is as bad as SF gets, I turn your attention to Robert A. Heinlein's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset".
If you don't like any of these, you don't like science fiction. As Fred Pohl said, "the task of the science fiction writer is not to imagine the automobile but the traffic jam".
Perhaps you prefer "cowboys in space", like Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, or Firefly.
I love sc-fi. It's by far my favourite type of novel to read. In fact I usually read either non fiction (popular science, reportage) or sci-fi. I have read probably a couple hundred sci-fi books, including many on that list. I have read a lot in order to find the really good stuff which is quite rare imo. My favorite sci-fi authors are Arthur C. Clarke and Greg Egan. I also like Kim Stanley Robinson, Charles Stross, Robert L Forward, Andy Weir, Stephen Baxter.
The stuff you mentioned are movies / tv firstly and secondly I wouldnt even personally classify them as sci-fi, they are more pure fantasy.
Just for example, Greg Egan's written some of the most far-out sci-fi Ive ever read, eg. Dichronauts describing life in a universe with different geometry to our own + symbiotic intelligent lifeforms that can each percieve space on different axes.
https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html
De gustibus, and all that. I really liked "Halting State" (especially) and "Rule 34", but most of the others you mention I would not put in any top 100 list. Egan has very outré ideas but isn't much of a writer.
The Martian was OK, good on the science mostly, but ultimately it's just a biography with not much to say about the impact of technology on the human condition.
Forward isn't much of a writer and his ideas are too much weed. Baxter and Robinson I haven't read. I think I started something by Robinson but gave up. And I can happily read Graydon Saunders. (Yes, fantasy, but well written).
It says "New Wave SciFi" in the title, so it only covers "New Wave Scifi". It's perfectly fine to not like the genre, of course, but that's not a fault of this list.
Alan Moore - dystopian graphic novel V for Vendetta (serialized 1982–1989)
Alejandro Jodorowsky Jean Giraud (Moebius) - graphic novel The Incal (1980–1988)
Anna Kavan - Ice (1967).
Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Sang (1969)
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Пикник на обочине (1972; Piknik na obochine; translated as A Roadside Picnic)
Barry N. Malzberg - Beyond Apollo (1972)
Brian Aldiss - Barefoot in the Head (1969)
Brian Aldiss - Greybeard (1964).
Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid (1967)
Christopher Priest - Inverted World (1974)
Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia (1975, in complete form).
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Frank Herbert - Dune (1965)
Frank Miller - graphic novel Rōnin (1983–1984)
Gary Panter - comic Jimbo (serialized 1977–present)
Gary Panter - comic strip Dal Tokyo (1983–2007)
Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
Harlan Ellison’s (ed.) Dangerous Visions (1967)
Jack Kirby - Fourth World comics (1971–1974).
Jack Kirby - pre-Fourth World sci-fi comics (1964–1970)
James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World (1978)
Jane Gaskell - A Sweet, Sweet Summer (1969)
J.G. Ballard - Crash (1973)
J.G. Ballard - High-Rise (1975)
J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition (written 1967, published 1970)
J.G. Ballard - The Burning World (1964)
J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World (1966)
Joanna Russ - We Who Are About To… (serialized 1976; in book form, 1977)
John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar (1968).
John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up (1972)
John Crowley - Engine Summer (1979)
John Crowley - The Deep (1975).
John Sladek - Roderick at Random (1983)
John Sladek’s - The Müller-Fokker Effect (1970)
John Varley - The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)
John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Carlos Ezquerra - Judge Dredd adventures Block Mania (serialized 10/31/1981 to 12/26/81) and The Apocalypse War (1/2/82 to 6/26/82).
Josephine Saxton - The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969)
Katsuhiro Otomo - manga series Akira (1982–1990)
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)
Michael Moorcock - The English Assassin (1972)
M. John Harrison - The Pastel City (1971)
Moebius-s Le Garage Hermétique (The Airtight Garage, 1976–1979)
Octavia E. Butler-s Kindred (1979)
Octavia E. Butler - Wild Seed (1980)
Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death (1970)
Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974).
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip (1964)
Philip K. Dick - Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man (1966)
Philip K. Dick - Ubik (1969).
Philip K. Dick - VALIS (1981)
Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar (1968).
Robert Heinlein - Friday (1982).
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside (1972)
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light (1967)
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (1980)
Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17 (1966).
Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (1975)
Samuel R. Delany - Nova (1968)
Samuel R. Delany - The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Samuel R. Delany - Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)
Stanislaw Lem - Ze wspomnien Ijona Tichego Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress, 1971)
Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration (1968)
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
Ursula K. Le Guin - Rocannon's World (1966)
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed (1974).
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor (1969)
Vonda N. McIntyre - Dreamsnake (1978)
Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins (1971)
William Burroughs - Nova Express (1964)
Thank you.
If anyone want to compress the list a little, I can highly reommend Dick's short stories. They have all the seeds of his novels but can of course be read much faster.
It's a neat little bookshelf, I have plenty of them and have read quite a bit more than the ones that I have but there are also some new ones.
I bought a book last year called "The Big Book of Science Fiction" by Jeff and Ann VanDerMeer, it's long (1200 pages) and there is plenty of stuff in there that you've probably read but also quite a few that I haven't ever seen before, in anthologies or elsewhere. Really neat collection.
It is a very advanced book from literary standpoint. The new wave is now an "old" wave with all the weird stuff, but Niven would read as fresh today as back in the 70s.
Of course very good other SciFi was written during that period as well.