After this little introduction, here are some science fiction books that I love and that I recommend! I put aside “the horde of the untruth”, which I already told you about here, which is a genre to itself… but I advise you again in passing, Best Book in the world.
If you want to start science fiction slowly, here are some more or less well-known works that read well. All these books are very, very well written. I give you each time a very brief summary.
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Beautiful. In the distant future, the role of firefighters is no longer to put out fires but to, burn books. In society, knowledge is proscribed in favor of easy pleasure and consumption. Pretty chilling, one of my favorite books to date. A comic book has been adapted; it is just as exciting and very faithful to the book.
- 1984, by George Orwell. Great book on a totalitarian state. Written in 1949, its author had a rather pessimistic vision of the future, it is from this book that we come the expression “Big Brother is watching you”. It is a must for the SF.
- The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury: the first glimpse of extraterrestrial life, it is full of small stories very well written and told. Read. A real dream trip, which arouses the imagination!
- The best of all worlds, by Aldous Huxley. Or how to thrill by discovering a population only interested in its pleasures.
- Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes: yeah, this is SF! A nice, smart idiot. If you haven’t read it, really read it, it’s beautiful. Poignant. I’ll reread it.
- La Nuit des temps, by Barjavel: the discovery of a spaceship buried under the ice for millennia, with a man and a woman sleeping inside. Beautiful story. And the end… superb! Has to also read, Barjavel, “Ravage” and ” The biggest secret “. Of the musts of the SF!
- The Scarlet maid, by Margareth Atwood: I speak to you here!
- Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson. We approach here the hard SF! A spaceship of space exploration sees its speed increase continuously following an incident, tending towards the speed of light. As the rest of the Galaxy and the universe age around them, the crew looks to their future.
- Silo, by Hugues Howey: a more recent work, often seen on the subway or holiday. “Silo” is a closed House that takes place underground, with a vertical society, living in a silo buried several hundred floors following a nuclear incident on the surface. Very nice to read ( there are 3, but you can only read the 1st, it is a whole story ! ). Not necessary, but I like closed doors.
- Destination of darkness, by Frank M. Robison. History happening almost exclusively in a spaceship, to see if you hang on to this particular theme!
- Once you enter the SF, if you want to continue, there are unmissable sagas that are nice. This will keep you a few weeks or months depending on your reading pace.
- I advise you globally all the books of Peter F Hamilton, an expert in everything that is space-opera. You can start, for example , with the two volumes of “La Grande Route du Nord”, then with the epics of “L’aube de la Nuit” (more than 6000 pages, easy) or “L’étoile De Pandore” ( I’m trying to write an article about this author, he’s really great), followed by “la trilogie du vide” and then by “Les naufragés du Commonwealth” . His universes are super rich and complex, with a host of realistic characters, futuristic technologies that remain understandable, plausible worlds, it’s a joy to read! In the non-space saga, he also wrote the series of “Greg Mandell” which is very good.
- The foundation cycle. Written by the father of the laws of robotics Isaac Asimov, I have a very good memory of it, even if there are some lengths to go. Twenty-two thousand years in the future, 25 million inhabited planets and a trillion human beings… you should not be bored!