« Maximum wage laws | Main | Micropayments »
Underrated science fiction
Yes it is "Underrated Week" and our next genre is science fiction.
But - sorry guys -- I don't think there is much underrated science fiction. You might think the genre as a whole is underrated, but within the genre there are so many sad desperate souls (I know, I am one of them) who will clutch at straws and elevate the mediocre into the worthwhile and the worthwhile into the superlative.
Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s. Since that time its most glorious achievements have been on the screen, not on the printed page. There are some excellent individual books, such as Eon or Hyperion, but the genre is mostly retreads. Nor do I think much of attempts to cross science fiction with "serious fiction," whether it is coming from Philip K. Dick or Doris Lessing. Yes the idea is cool but the execution is usually quite flawed.
Still we all must have our picks, so here are mine:
1. Sphere, from Michael Crichton. Forget the last few books. He is the best science fiction writer in contemporary times, though his publisher works very hard to make sure that label does not stick.
2. Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. Read Stapleton if you fervently believe that British Hegelianism is the missing element in most science fiction. Yet this is probably my favorite science fiction novel of all time, who else can credibly skip over 20,000 years in a single breath? "Civilizations rose and fell, yet now we must move on," or something like that. Honorable mentions go to Stapledon's Odd John and especially Sirius.
3. Jonathan Lethem, Gun with Occasional Music. This is marketed as contemporary literature, which keeps away the science fiction fans.
It is hard to call Joe Haldeman underrated but still there are fans who don't know he is one of the best science fiction writers, period.
I guess there is some underrated science fiction after all.
Crying Uncle: OK people, I retract the claim "Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s." Card and Butler are the most convincing counterexamples.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 1, 2007 at 09:04 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Chrichton? I don't think so.
It's hard to call them underrated since their getting so much cred the last few years, but the stuff coming out the the British hard-SF scene (Stross, MacLoed, Egan, Morgan) really is something new under the sun.
Haldeman is often very solid, but the last (Camoflague, Forever Peace) have seemed a lot more slight.
Posted by: Dave at Jul 1, 2007 9:40:28 AM
During the 80s I might have had some sympathy with the "treading water" view. Cyberpunk was new, but it quickly stagnated (few if any have surpassed the original Johnny Mnemnonic, and what has or has come close is written by Sterling). However with David Brin and an increasing tempo of new writers in the revival of Hard SF, I think the doldrums have been over for at least 10 to 15 years.
I agree with the general point that little good science fiction is underrated, though. I'd recommend writers, but really you just have to look at a few discussions of recent SF and the Hugos and Nebulas to find them.
Posted by: Sandy at Jul 1, 2007 9:51:43 AM
Charles Strauss is writing some great books. While he's not under-rated within the SF industry, he's certainly overlooked in the wider industry.
Posted by: David Rotor at Jul 1, 2007 10:08:20 AM
Thanks for the interesting tip about Jonathan Lethem.
I have never been impressed by Michael Crichton, he usually writes like a hack, not much depth under the surface. But perhaps there are gems among the trash. Also, Eon and Hyperion left me cold after promising so much in the beginning.
Have you read Paul Di Filippo, at least he is different from most "sf" (speculative fiction) writers. Ditto for Mark Leyner, he is good in small doses.
Posted by: Juha Haataja at Jul 1, 2007 10:20:27 AM
The few chrichton books seem like he's been shitting them out - but man, Jurrasic Park was a revelation for me.
Posted by: zach wilson at Jul 1, 2007 10:36:54 AM
dunno if it 'counts' but i think mccarthy's _the road_ is underrated as SF. also in the SF/con.lit (sub?)genre, i'd put matthew derby's short-story collection _super flat times_; it's as good as anything bradbury or saunders has put out!
ted chiang as well in the hard SF space. btw, egan is australian (and the best thing to come out of SF since stephenson :)
Posted by: post pc at Jul 1, 2007 10:52:19 AM
I'm a big Octavia Butler fan. She never seemed to receive enough attention.
Posted by: thehova at Jul 1, 2007 10:54:46 AM
Uhhhhhh... Chrichton?
Uhhhhhh.... have you read State of Fear? It was a book based on an agenda that had was incredibly ham-fisted and clear why the book was written: to advance his political agenda. However, the worst part about it is that I can stand fiction and art with a political bent as long as the plot is good: State of Fear was clumsily written by a hack. The characters were not believable and it still has, in my mind, the worst written scene in a novel ever. Our heroes were driving down in Jeeps and a sensor in the walkie talkies they were carrying drew lightning down to them. Come on, I wrote shit like that when I was 8.
Posted by: kl at Jul 1, 2007 11:17:48 AM
I ave to agree with "kl" and Zach Wilson on Crichton's work. It's trite in a very sad and funny way. So as an antidote, can I guide you to some short stories published and left open for us (I don't think you need to log-in to download them.)
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/index.html
Nature and Nature Physics ran a series of these over 2006 and they are wonderful literary glimpses into the future. I'd love to see economists try this.
Posted by: Eric at Jul 1, 2007 12:12:16 PM
Sorry, I posted too soon. You need a library account or subscription to Nature to download the Futures stories. They've moved to Physics now and at least one story "Giving up meat" is available free-- and not what you may think from the title...
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v3/n2/full/nphys505.html
Posted by: Eric at Jul 1, 2007 12:16:36 PM
"Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s."
Hmmm...
- Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar/Vorkosigan series
- Harry Turtledove, any of his alternate history series (at least, in the first two volumes or so)
- Jerry Pournelle, Falkenberg's Legion/Co-Dominium series
- Eric Flint, 30 Years' War series (1632 et seq.)
- Mike Resnick, "Divine Comedy" and other "Africa-in-space" works
Most of these are from the 1980s or later. And that's off the top of my head: I'm sure if I inspect my shelves, I'll find more.
SF went through a slow patch in the 1970s, it is true: but then, so did the country as a whole. It's fitting that the vastly-overrated "New Wave" joins leisure suits, disco, and big hair on the ashheap of "bad ideas whose time seems to have come in the 1970s".
Posted by: David Hecht at Jul 1, 2007 12:36:15 PM
It's just hard as hell to even consider Crichton in the same category of most of the other folks mentioned here. I guess by that yardstick R.L. Stine is the greatest drama writer in 20 years.
Posted by: perianwyr at Jul 1, 2007 12:44:36 PM
I confess to not having read too much of it in recent years, which means I am probably sort of
in Tyler's camp on this, although Cyberpunk was good and Pournelle and some others are good.
I would bring the quesion back to the classics, though. So, presumably people like Clarke, Asimov,
Heinlein, and Bradbury are not underrated. But what about A.E. Van Vogt?
Regarding State of Fear, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michals claims to be the model for
the hero of the book, sort of. As for the worst scene in the book, well, maybe Martin Sheen is
annoying, but to have his clone in the book eaten by cannibals while conscious and him thinking
until the last minute they were his fans? A bit much.
Some of the bibliography was informative, however, although clearly rather biased.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jul 1, 2007 1:20:05 PM
I'm with thehova; you live in a world with Octavia Butler and you call Crichton the best?
(I'm not sure whether Butler is underrated or not; critics speak highly of her and she won a bunch of awards, yet somehow she seems obscure and I'd never heard of her until shortly before the obits. I've since bought four books of hers and read three, though; it's addictive.) Butler also succeeds spectacularly on the "not a retread" count; she's an example of what people mean when they say diversity is good -- the fact that she was black, female, and writing sci-fi drove her to consider all sorts of things others weren't, and her imagination was weird and wonderful.
I liked the first Lethem I read, but the more I read the harder it was to get through. (I think we have three of his.)
Connie Willis totally eats Crichton's lunch, too. And the husband speaks highly of Vernor Vinge though he's still on my to-read shelf.
Posted by: Andromeda at Jul 1, 2007 1:27:48 PM
One word: Dhalgren by Sam Delaney.
Combines stream of consciousness, gorgeous writing - "... to wound the autumnal city" has got to be one of the most enigmatic yet beautiful openings of a book ever - and hyper-Joycean modernism. Do you need more?
I took two years to read it and found it to be some of the most well spent reading time of my life.
It's old by now, but still massively under rated and blows away anything else on this list.For myself, I'd rank it up with any novel in any genre. It's that good.
Posted by: Fabio_Rojas at Jul 1, 2007 1:32:16 PM
If we are talking about classics of the genre, what about Ursula Le Guin?
As for Doris Lessing, although not all her SF books are good, and her social and political comment can be unsubtle to the point of shrillness, I think "Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire", "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" and, perhaps, "Marriages between Zones 3,4 and 5" are brilliant, if flawed books.
There are also a lot of good SF short stories, and I think part of the reason SF is underrated, is that the short story form is underrated( vs. the novel).
Posted by: Graeme Pietersz at Jul 1, 2007 1:37:30 PM
I mostly abandoned reading science fiction in the 80's, but had been an avid reader up to that time. I recently had the opportunity to read the new Dune novels written by Frank Herbert's son, Brian, and Kevin Anderson. I thoroughly enjoyed them as they filled in the unwritten history of the original six novels. And I would recommend them to anyone who liked the original novels.
As preparation for reading the lastest novel, which would now pick up the story where Frank Herbert left it when he died in 1986, I went back and reread the last three novels Frank Herbert wrote in the series because I could not really recall the details having read them 20 years earlier, and only once at that time. I was struck by how good they really were. If you have never read the Dune novels, you should, but if you haven't, start with the son's and his cowriter's Dune novels starting with The Butlerian Jihad. It will make for an entertaining summer of reading since there are 13 books altogether with another due out next month.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 1, 2007 2:01:11 PM
Dude, have you read *any* of the SF that's been coming out of Britain in the past ten years? I'd really love to hear your comments on the econ in Ken MacLeod's "Fall Revolution" tetralogy; I'd love even more to hear you claim with a straight face that Crichton is anywhere near as good as him. Same goes for Iain Banks' Culture books. Charles Stross and Alistair Reynolds are not as amazing but still way better than Crichton.
Then there's Gene Wolfe's _Book of the New Sun_, Connie Willis's _Doomsday Book_, Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ and _Diamond Age_, Egan's _Permutation City_, Kim Stanley Robinson's early stuff (try _The Gold Coast_ or _Red Mars_-- later on he gets on his stupid socialist high horse, sigh), et multae cetera.
Posted by: Nicholas Weininger at Jul 1, 2007 2:01:42 PM
I thoroughly enjoyed them as they filled in the unwritten history of the original six novels. And I would recommend them to anyone who liked the original novels.
What's funny is that I came to the diametric opposite of your conclusion. I read the first two of the prequels, decided they were pretty terrible, and then went back to the originals. What I discovered was a series that got worse and worse the more I read of it, and the only conclusion I could make was that in high school I just had a higher tolerance for tedious writing. All of Herbert's original stuff was on a different level than the prequels, though.
Posted by: perianwyr at Jul 1, 2007 2:09:27 PM
perianwyr,
Hey, taste is a personal matter. I do agree with your last sentence, however.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 1, 2007 2:50:25 PM
I'd like to put in a plug for CJ Cherryh's Foriegner series. Interspecies interaction that feels realistic, humanoid aliens who aren't too alien but just enough that humans consistently misunderstand them, as well as complex diplomatic intrigue and characters you really start to care about.
Posted by: srp at Jul 1, 2007 3:00:37 PM
Michael Crichton???
I can't begin to describe how much of my respect you've lost with this single statement. And yes, I've actually read quite a few of his books while stuck in airports, etc. They all seem to read like bad screenplays with cardboard characters and one interesting idea that gets completely wasted as it all ends in a prolonged chase scene. Horrible.
Posted by: Chukuang at Jul 1, 2007 3:21:04 PM
Should have mentioned a novel to go with my mention of A.E. Van Vogt. That would be
The World of Null-A and its sequels.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jul 1, 2007 3:25:57 PM
Vinge, Stephenson, Stross!
Sphere is awful. It's a crime against man and beast alike. Did you hit your head recently?
Posted by: Gre at Jul 1, 2007 4:16:34 PM
I have to very whole-heartedly agree with the commenter that cited Gene Wolfe and his beautiful, haunting series the Book of the New Sun. I recommend it to any SciFi fan seeking something a cut above the rest.
Posted by: Michael B at Jul 1, 2007 4:55:44 PM
