"The Yellow Wallpaper" is one of the scariest things I've ever read.
'Out Of Gas'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Yeah, I read some of Asimov's short stories; that was enough. The ideas are fun and I certainly understand his importance. But that's not enough to interest me in a novel, much less a series.
The Cold Equations always makes me think of Sheckley's The Cruel Equations. (Although it's actually about the Laws of Robotics.) Anyway, Sheckley's great and very funny.
I think because we know it happened to real women(including Gilman herself) I don't like Asimov either, but I'm not really an SF person.
(Hell, I might as well say, "All Bradbury short stories."
YES. Especially "Homecoming". t obvious bias is obvious
Simak's Goblin Reservation is good. Damn, why are half of my books in the garage behind the decrepit Mustang II!
More...
- Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower
- Vernor Vinge, True Names (The Deepness books are really good, but True Names is the most influential)
- Connie Willis, Doomsday Book (I love all of Connie Willis, but many people don't.)
- Jack Vance, The Dying Earth
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
- Frank Herbert, Dune, Dune Messiah
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (and most of the rest, but Neuromancer really marked a sea change in the genre)
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (and the rest, but True Names, Neuromancer and Snow Crash were the cyberpunk books that shaped cyberspace)
I love Clifford Simak, who seems to have fallen along the wayside. Except for some clunky early and late books, I love them all, particularly Goblin Reservation and Way Station.
I love recommendation posts, it gives me lists of things to track down--and old stuff is often available online!
I read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in -- high school, I think. I remember being fascinated by the mechanics of how to create a society on the moon. The story itself was good but not spectacular. Very much a "literature of ideas" story, and the idea alone was just enough to sustain one novel. A different writer (I vote for Resnick) could probably have turned the idea into a series, but not Heinlein.
So far every item on the list brings back happy memories. I do think Heinlein's ideal society has been given its fair shake in Somalia.