Right Wing Nation

Megan McArdle is requesting recommendations for good introductions to Sci-Fi, for female readers. I agree with one of her commenters:

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game. The most beloved SF novel of the last 30 years. If you don’t like it, well you probably just won’t like SF, period.
Robert Heinlein, Future History series and Starship Troopers. Classic, core SF
Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Series. Again, classic SF
Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, The Deep Range.

But it’s summer, the time of year for something you can really get your teeth into, and anyway, I’m really not very good at recommending books for beginners, as it were — although I highly recommend the above to anyone. So for those who want a really good read, and not just a good narrative, here are my Sci-Fi suggestions.

Dune, Frank Herbert. (Note: Herbert is a one-hit wonder. I don’t recommend anything else he wrote. His first two sequels were, as far as Sci-Fi goes, entertaining, but came nowhere close to the first novel. Reading his other books does give you additional appreciation for Dune, if only because you wonder how he managed to write such a novel.)

Dune is not a book you can whizz through. In fact, I’d suggest that you read it, then immediately start over and read it again. You are plunged into an alien, yet familiar, feudal world far in the future, where everything is political, and the politics are extremely complex. The first time through, you may not understand all of the motivations. That’s fine. A novel this complex can’t be absorbed in a cursory reading (although it’s also a large novel).

Dune melds the scientific with the deeply spiritual, in a novel of massive scope for any literary genre. It’s unfortunate that Herbert only had one great novel in him. His writing style is not dense. It’s the content that gives Dune its complexity — and once you’ve read it, you will understand why any attempt to film it is doomed before it begins.

Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe.

Wolfe is the most literary Sci-Fi author, more so than many who write literature. This is a long novel, which used to be released as four books; it is now released as two: Shadow and Claw, and Sword and Citadel. Like Herbert, Wolfe plunges you into a complex world with no explanation of what’s going on, or what anything is. Unlike Herbert, Wolfe will send you running for the dictionary.

Wolfe writes extraordinarily beautiful prose, and New Sun is a book whose prose you will savor. Herbert’s world is feudal. Wolfe’s world is dark and medieval, even in ways barbaric, yet full of wonder.

As you read, it will slowly dawn on you what Wofe described some hundred pages ago, and you’ll say, “Oh, that’swhat that is! I get it!” When you begin, all is mysterious. When you finish, all is clear, and you will wonder why it seemed mysterious in the first place.

Beautifully written, beautifully executed, and beautifully crafted, Book of the New Sun belongs on every bookshelf. You couldn’t read it quickly even if you wanted to, and you won’t want to. It’s a book to be enjoyed as it very slowly gives up its secrets.

But if a rollicking good time is what you’re after, try Cities in Flight by James Blish, or The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle.