Science Fiction
Related: About this forumWho is the Grand Master of Science Fiction Writers
Having read all of his sci-fi books, I think it is Asimov. However, might it be Arthur C Clarke?
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DBoon
(25,248 posts)Time travel, alien invasions, dystopian societies - he invented all of this.
Bluestocking
(873 posts)I need to read more of his books.
thucythucy
(9,170 posts)The first time I read it I was in junior high, and the first paragraph can still send chills down my spine:
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
Maninacan
(374 posts)We all know the big names but this guy really wrote a story that foresaw machines making decisions.
The Blue Flower
(6,647 posts)His ideas fueled books, movies, and tv shows for years. He was the source of so much we expect and enjoy.
FBaggins
(28,774 posts)For just sci fi specifically… I’d say Heinlein
The Blue Flower
(6,647 posts)It was at a library, many years ago. I was disappointed at how sophomoric, literally, they were. At a teenage boy's level. On the other hand, I read a nonfiction book of his, explaining how climate systems work around the globe, that was excellent. Clear and succint.
FalloutShelter
(14,724 posts)Also rec… Cities in Flight, by James Blish.
electric_blue68
(27,824 posts)I don't hear him mentioned much but I particularly love his early - middle stuff. Might have to check out the later books again.
In very late '50s, early '60s I was watching The Giant Behemoth, Forbidden Planet. Then prwtty sure before I read "A Wrinkle in Time" I saw paperback of "Time Is The Simplest Thing", by him on my dad's side of my folks bureau. I asked if I could read it.
I didn't understand it all but I was fascinated!
My favorites are: Way Station, All Flesh Is Grass, and Ring Around The Sun.
Just looked at a list w descriptions. Might have to leisurely look for some these later ones 70s & '80s. I know I radio a few but didn't "get" them, then.
Jeebo
(2,564 posts)Hollywood screenwriters, are y'all listening?
— Ron
bucolic_frolic
(56,258 posts)Bluestocking
(873 posts)Behind Asimov and Clarke
Lochloosa
(16,839 posts)Charles Sheffield (25 June 1935 – 2 November 2002),[1] was an English-born mathematician, physicist, and science-fiction writer who served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.[2]
His novel The Web Between the Worlds, featuring the construction of a space elevator, was published almost simultaneously with Arthur C. Clarke's novel on the subject, The Fountains of Paradise - a coincidence that amused them both.[3] Excerpts from both Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds and Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise have appeared recently in a space-elevator anthology, Towering Yarns.[4]
Sheffield served as Chief Scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation, a company that processed remote-sensing satellite data.[5] The association gave rise to many technical papers and two popular non-fiction books, Earthwatch (1981) and Man on Earth (1983), both collections of false-colour and enhanced images of Earth from space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield
Bluestocking
(873 posts)Lochloosa
(16,839 posts)
The Madcap
(2,136 posts)The "Dune" series.
Bluestocking
(873 posts)But then the rest were not as good. I tried one of his son’s Dune books and was not impressed. The thing about Herbert was he was a one hit wonder. There was Dune and that was it.
Aviation Pro
(15,874 posts)Arthur C. Clarke.
Timewas
(2,799 posts)Robert Heinlein
byronius
(8,034 posts)When he died, all my friends went into deep mourning.
I have read every book he wrote way back to Podkayne of Mars and Have space suit will travel.. Although I do place Asimov a very close second
FBaggins
(28,774 posts)It's an interesting hybrid of a story concept and beginning that is clearly Heinlein - but finished by Spider Robinson.
NewLarry
(175 posts)(Science Fiction Writers of America), there are 43 of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:SFWA_Grand_Masters
red dog 1
(33,681 posts)and I'm not suggesting that he should be considered the "Grand Master of Science Fiction."
That title would include recipients of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA, such as Robert A. Heinlein, who was the first person designated a Grand Master in 1975, and who is frequently referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction."
Other Grand Master Award winners are Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, and Ray Bradbury, to name just a few.
Pluvious
(5,475 posts)
EverHopeful
(723 posts)Perhaps not the top but, for me, he was no. 1 for quite a while.
Pluvious
(5,475 posts)
hunter
(40,932 posts)Might as well start with one who lit the fire:
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
I've read most of Asimov, certainly all his major works, fiction and non-fiction, but he's always seemed a bit cold to me. Clarke? I'm distressed by him.
Ursula K. Le Guin I love like family.
Bumped into Heinlein once, literally, during his final descent into icky weirdness.
Harlan Ellison was always icky, but brilliant. My wife and I had separately disturbing encounters with him before we met and married. Years later my wife and I were walking in Santa Monica and we saw him coming our way. When he saw us he crossed the street. I thought it was me, My wife thought it was her. Only when my wife commented on it did we discover we had another something in common. Sigh. Ellison's last days were sad.
Philip K. Dick is one of my favorites. Maybe because we are both nuts.
Octavia E. Butler ... of course.
Most of the science fiction I read these days is written by women. It's a great tragedy that science fiction was such a boy's club, in the worst way, for most of the twentieth century.
Easterncedar
(6,635 posts)Inkey
(569 posts)Gene Roddenberry --- Star Trek really brought in the general public by TV.
303squadron
(873 posts)Heinlein for the win.
No book, science fiction or mainstream literature, changed my way of looking at the world than Stranger in a Strange Land.
Laurelin
(985 posts)Though she tilts toward fantasy so maybe that's outside your question.
mtairyguy
(51 posts)For the science and the fiction!
Bluestocking
(873 posts)It was really boring. That was the only one of his books I read.
mtairyguy
(51 posts)Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars.
I wish I could even pretend to have followed all of the math, physics, biology and chemistry! I’m just a guy (from Mt. airy, Philly). Like posts by some very smart folks here who deeply explain chemistry, I read those parts of Robinson’s books to see how much I understood. The story itself I found gripping!
The concepts Robinson explored in the 90’s (asteroid mining, development and repositioning, very tough carbon materials, space elevators, re forming a planet’s atmosphere, eco economics, etc..) were, uh, earth-shaking to me!
Jeebo
(2,564 posts)I have heard writers comment about what writing takes out of them. I met Larry Niven at a big science fiction convention in the late 1980s, for example, and he said "I sweat blood" when writing. My father was a poet and he often observed that writing is "one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration". They all say things like that about writing, that it's hard work.
Except Asimov. He said that writing was "easy" (his word) for him.
I have read all of Asimov's Foundation novels. In the early 1980s he started writing them again, and every time he came out with a new one, I had to re-read the earlier ones to refresh my memory before reading the new one. As a consequence, I have read the original trilogy at least a dozen times, and I never get tired of them. They're space opera, but they're GREAT space opera, FUN space opera. (Recently there was a Foundation TV series, but they took so many liberties with it that they RUINED it. It was almost unrecognizable compared with the original, which is great literature, in my humble opinion.)
I vote for Asimov.
— Ron
Bluestocking
(873 posts)But I always find the book better than the movie/tv series
The only exception is The Godfather. Book was great but the movie was spectacular.