| Re: Classic SF Primer
I'm going to commit heresy here. You've been given a *lot* of books as suggested reading and, quite frankly, I'm not entirely sure why you need to read any of them.
If you're 11 or under, then Doc Smith can be fun. But they really are quite badly written when compared with today's science fiction, and the attitudes and sensibilities implicit in the prose are close to offensive.
As for the rest... There are a handful I'd agree are classics, and some I'd recommend reading if you like that type of SF. Dhalgren, for example, is a novel I love, but post-modern literary SF is not everyone's cup of tea. Van Vogt... well, his prose was pretty poor; and Slan dates from the 1940s, and very much reads like a 60-year-old novel. Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury, I've never understood the appeal... |