The On-Deck Circle: Science Fiction

I’m a book junkie. I even read books about books. One such book, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, gives short, paragraph-length summaries of over 3,000 science fiction novels and collections, complete with star ratings. I pored through it over the course of a month, and recorded the titles and authors of 240-plus books that I want to read.

I read SF for two reasons: pleasure, and improvement. I’ve been reading the genre since I was a little boy, and now I enjoy writing in the field. My first book’s aimed at a younger audience, kind of like the ten or twelve Heinlein young adult novels, while the second is an attempt to explore some philosophical-religious ideas in an SF atmosphere. So I read either stuff that I’ve heard is superior (four stars in the Ultimate Guide) or anything that really fires up my interest from those short, paragraph-length summaries.

I’m currently reading the 1,000-plus page Cryptonomicon, so I won’t get to any of these probably until after my second child’s born in September. But I’m always on the hunt, chipping away at the 240-plus book list, so the On-Deck Circle always grows. Without further ado, here it is, in no particular order:


Short story collections:

The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R. A. Lafferty
A Hole in Space by Larry Niven
The 57th Franz Kafka by Rudy Rucker
Selected Stories of Adolfo Bioy Casares (not necessarily SF)


Novels:

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
Anthem by Ayn Rand (for the influence on Neil Peart of Rush)
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock (more fantasy than SF)
The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Eon by Greg Bear
When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie
Destination Void by Frank Herbert
The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Envoy to New Worlds by Keith Laumer
October the First is Too Late by Fred Hoyle
The Godwhale by T. J. Bass
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (classic horror)

Assuming under normal conditions I can read an average-size novel in ten hours, there’s currently 220 hours of reading ahead – seven months at an hour-a-day pace. I also like to read something fairly substantial by Poe or Lovecraft every year around October 31st. So along with my sadistic half-completed Hegel project and a newborn infant, I have my task cut out for me. Prob’ly take me a year, year-and-a-half to plow through that list. Now: No more browsing in used book stores!!!