A question for speculative/history science fiction fans

[mellytu74]

I was looking at some speculative/history fiction books today.

Some of them looked interesting but, since I don't know much about the genre, I figured I would ask some experts about recommendations.

I knew I'd find such experts here.

If you are a fan of the genre, is there a particular author or series where I should start?

[mrkelley23]

I know I don't know you know you (as Henry Cho would say) but I FEEL like I know you, at least a little bit.

Start with A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. Yes, it's a children's book, but I don't think that fact alone would put you off, and it's a beautiful example of how this genre can tell a karking good story without resorting to gadgets or deus ex machinas.

If you want to read older stuff, I'd stick to the acknowledged masters, at least to start. Asimov, Heinlein, LeGuin, the first Dune book, etc.

I just read where Ridley Scott is going to film Joe Haldeman's The Forever war, and that's a pretty good book.

Personal favorites who are still alive are Spider Robinson (especially the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series); Orson Scott Card (and some of his non-speculative fiction is pretty good, too); and Piers Anthony. I THINK Anthony's still alive, anyway. These days, they can still pump out books long after they're dead.

And don't forget Douglas Adams.

[mellytu74]

I know I don't know you know you (as Henry Cho would say) but I FEEL like I know you, at least a little bit.

Start with A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. Yes, it's a children's book, but I don't think that fact alone would put you off, and it's a beautiful example of how this genre can tell a karking good story without resorting to gadgets or deus ex machinas.

If you want to read older stuff, I'd stick to the acknowledged masters, at least to start. Asimov, Heinlein, LeGuin, the first Dune book, etc.

I just read where Ridley Scott is going to film Joe Haldeman's The Forever war, and that's a pretty good book.

Personal favorites who are still alive are Spider Robinson (especially the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series); Orson Scott Card (and some of his non-speculative fiction is pretty good, too); and Piers Anthony. I THINK Anthony's still alive, anyway. These days, they can still pump out books long after they're dead.

And don't forget Douglas Adams.

Mr K --

I LOVED A Wrinkle in Time when I was a kid!

Re-reading it may be a fine place to start. I hadn't even though of it.

[TheCalvinator24]

I maybe wrong, but I don't think melly was looking for general science fiction.

For Alternative/Speculative History, you might want to start with Harry Turtledove.

Read Guns of the South.

Then, read How Few Remain followed by the Great War series, the American Empire series, and the Settling Accounts series.

If you want it more science fiction influenced, go with the Worldwar series, which is followed by the Colonization series, culminating in Homeward Bound

I also liked The Two Georges and Ruled Brittania

The Stars and Stripes series from Harry Harrison is also supposed to be good, but I've never read it.

[clem21]

How about "The Patriot" by Stephen Molstad. I read it when the movie came out and I really enjoyed it...

[mellytu74]

I maybe wrong, but I don't think melly was looking for general science fiction.

For Alternative/Speculative History, you might want to start with Harry Turtledove.

Read Guns of the South.

Then, read How Few Remain followed by the Great War series, the American Empire series, and the Settling Accounts series.

If you want it more science fiction influenced, go with the Worldwar series, which is followed by the Colonization series, culminating in Homeward Bound

I also liked The Two Georges and Ruled Brittania

The Stars and Stripes series from Harry Harrison is also supposed to be good, but I've never read it.

The section I was looking at today had Harry Turtledove books.

One looked especially intriguing. The premise was that the South had won the Civil War.

I didn't want to buy it, though. I wanted to look it up and find out if it was the first of a series. I wouldn't want to start in the middle.

[mrkelley23]

Sorry, I misread/misunderstood the thread head.

I can still recommend some of the same authors.

Heinlein's Future History set the standard for all speculative history stories.

Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker are interesting twist on standard fantasy fare, using an speculative history infused with Mormon mythology (Card is a devout member of LDS). He also wrote Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which I found a very interesting read.

Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, while not strictly what you're asking for, contains some interesting and recognizable historical characters, including Richard Francis Burton.

And Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is probably the inspiration for all of Turtledove's work, since it starts with the supposition that Hitler and the Nazis won WWII.

[frogman042]

One of my faviorate books is 'War With the Newts' by Karel Capek (I didn't include the diacriticle marks on his name) - best known as the author of the play 'R.U.R.' from were we get the term Robots.

I think it falls into the category of speculative fiction because it concerns the discovery of a small colony of highly intellegent newts in a secluded atoll and what happens when they are freed from their niche as they are exploted for they unique abilites - and the consequences that arise. For a novel writen over 70 years ago it is still very relivent, well written at times laugh out-loud funny as well as deadly serious. There is a section in which at one point the question is asked if the newts have a soul and it includes some responses to that question from the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Mae West (among others) that sound spot on as to what their responses would have really been.

Highly recommended.

---Jay

[Bob78164]

I was looking at some speculative/history fiction books today.

Some of them looked interesting but, since I don't know much about the genre, I figured I would ask some experts about recommendations.

I knew I'd find such experts here.

If you are a fan of the genre, is there a particular author or series where I should start?

I cannot recommend Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny strongly enough. Note the reader reviews on Amazon. The last time I checked, there were a few hundred. I think maybe ten awarded the book fewer than five stars.

Zelazny is better known for the "Amber" series. The series has many fans and I enjoyed it, but it doesn't get the universal approbation Zelazny earned for Lord of Light (which, by the way, is completely standalone).

I've been reading the genre since I was eight and have a rather good knowledge of it, from the fifties more or less through the present. What sorts of non-genre books do you enjoy? --Bob

[TheCalvinator24]

WRT Philip K. Dick, I will say that I generally love the movies made form his works. I have been less than impressed with the source material.

melly, if the Turtledove you saw was Guns of the South, it's a stand-alone book. If it was How Few Remain, that is the beginning of a rather lengthy set of series. If it was any other title, then I believe it would be from the sets that follow How Few Remain.

[Ritterskoop]

The Riverworld series is marvelous, though it is not so much speculative history as it is set in the future, but it includes a lot of historical figures you know. The first book in that one is To Your Scattered Bodies Go.

I liked Guns of the South and a few of his other titles, with Mark Twain and Custer as central characters.

[ghostjmf]

Spider Robinson is both tedious & horrible (about the 1st thing his protagonists do in any book is have sex with whomever they've just met, including time travelers; strangely enough, the "just mets" always seem to have all the "right" parts), & I also can't recall him having written any speculative history.

Kim Stanley Robinson, on the other hand, writes great speculative history; there's a trilogy set in the LA area with 3 books representing 3 radically different "what-ifs" about the same region in very different scenarios about what-has-happened-to-the-world. Its about 10 or 15 years old by now, but still rings true.

One stand-alone (i.e. not-a-series) absolutely great speculative history fantasy is "The Dragon Waiting", by Jack Ford, which basically speculates that Christianity stayed a "local cult" & never became a world religion, but then pretty much follows aspects of real world history without the Christian influence.

(Jack Ford is now also on my shit-list for having written a book, which looks like it was written as part of the "when electronics fail & the fairies come out' series others have contributed to, but not published as part of it, extolling & "explaining" S&M, but it ain't in this book, so I'm still recommending it.)

[ghostjmf]

And Oh Yeah; Zelazny is one of my favorite SF authors, based on "The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth" & the "Call Me Conrad" 2-book series & many, many others, but "Lord Of Light", basically a retelling of some stuff in the Bhagiv-Gita (which I should look up the spelling of), was about the most tedious thing I ever wended my way through. No, sorry, the "Lord Of The Rings" was the most tedious thing I ever wended my way through (sorry, Earendel, but I hated it).

And the "Amber" series, cute at 1st, but soon tedious, was even disclaimed by the author as "written to put his kids through school".

[earendel]

Two other authors you might consider if you're looking at alternative history/speculative sci-fi would be Eric Flint and S.M. Stirling.

Both of these authors take basically the same premise - take a 20th (or 21st) century town and throw it back into the past and see what happens. Stirling wrote a trilogy (Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years and On the Oceans of Eternity) that deal with Nantucket being thrown back into the Bronze Age). He's since written a series of books that deals with what happened to Earth afterward, focusing on events in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. This series has five books in it, with several more projected.

Flint takes a town - Grantville, WV - and throws it back to the year 1632 and shifts its location to central Germany. The first book in the series is called 1632. It's been followed up by several sequels as well as an explosion of fan fiction that has been collected into anthologies known as Grantville Gazettes.

[gsabc]

Spider Robinson is both tedious & horrible (about the 1st thing his protagonists do in any book is have sex with whomever they've just met, including time travelers; strangely enough, the "just mets" always seem to have all the "right" parts), & I also can't recall him having written any speculative history.

I can't disagree strongly enough. Robinson's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" stories are fun, pun-filled and replete with characters you end up caring about; he slowly built more complete background stories for most of them as the series progressed. The Stardance series is great "first contact" material. The series starting with Mindkiller is good speculative stuff about a near-future society, doing the classic SF job of taking current trends and extrapolating them to logical developments. The first book of each of those last two series are good stand-alones. And if you like the classics, there's his recent completion of a Heinlein novel, taking a newly discovered but incomplete Heinlein novel and finishing it, at the request and with the blessing of Heinlein's estate. It's easy to see where Heinlein left off and Robinson took over, but the overall flavor is a distinct melding of the two styles.

I wholeheartedly agree with the Turtledove recommendation. I wouldn't call it "speculative fiction" as much as "alternate history". Turtledove is a historian himself, and it shows with his paralleling of actual vs. alternate events and the logic of his stories progressing from a "what if". As with other long series, though, it might be easier to find the earliest books in the library rather than the bookstore, especially if you have a library consortium (as my town does) where you can look up and borrow books from other regional libraries. Google the Turtledove bibliography to find the first books for all his series.

[MarleysGh0st]

I wholeheartedly agree with the Turtledove recommendation. I wouldn't call it "speculative fiction" as much as "alternate history". Turtledove is a historian himself, and it shows with his paralleling of actual vs. alternate events and the logic of his stories progressing from a "what if". As with other long series, though, it might be easier to find the earliest books in the library rather than the bookstore, especially if you have a library consortium (as my town does) where you can look up and borrow books from other regional libraries. Google the Turtledove bibliography to find the first books for all his series.

I call it "alternate history", too. Turtledove is the master of the craft. If you don't want to start with that eleven-volume Southern Victory series, you might start with one of his earliest novels, Agent of Byzantium, set in an ATL (Alternate Time Line) where Muhammad became a Christian saint.

I also heartily second (third? fourth?) the recommendations for S. M. Stirling and Eric Flint. Right now, I'm a particular fan of the latter's 1632 series.

[Rafferbee]

I quite enjoyed Alternative Presidents, which is an anthology of short stories edited by Mike Resnick. The front cover shows Dewey holding a paper with the headline "Truman defeats Dewey". Amazon says its currently unavailable, but you might find it at the library or second-hand bookstore.

[mellytu74]

YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!

I knew I could count on you to guide me!

[gsabc]

I quite enjoyed Alternative Presidents, which is an anthology of short stories edited by Mike Resnick. The front cover shows Dewey holding a paper with the headline "Truman defeats Dewey". Amazon says its currently unavailable, but you might find it at the library or second-hand bookstore.

Resnick has a couple of "Alternate ____" anthologies out, including "Alternate Kennedys".

Melly, PM me on the "Presidents" one. I think I still have a copy and I'd be happy to send it to you.

[andrewjackson]

Another vote for Turtledove, Stirling, and Flint.

[frogman042]

After having a discussion yesterday on some novels with a friend, I remember another one that would fit this category that I really like a lot - 'Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy' by Robert Anton Wilson that has a whole slew of alternate history's (basically IIRC the same structure told numerous times with the twist being that in each 'universe' there was some change that had a huge impact on the story) - one in particular that I remember had the situation where James Joyce decides not to leave Divinity school, becomes a priest and then eventually becomes the pope - and the effect that has on the world.

---Jay

Adding...
BTW, if you have not read anyting by R.A.W. before, this might be a pretty steep introduction - if you want to wade in the shallow end, I would strongly recommend 'Masks of the Illuminati', much more accessable and has Einstein and Joyce acting a bit like Holmes and Watson helping a poor soul who has gotten way to involved with Alister Crowley sort out the situation. Again one of my all time favoriate books.