Tuesday Teaser:
On April 8, 1826, the two met on a field near the Potomac. Clay’s bullet ripped through Randolph’s white flannel coat without wounding him. Randolph’s hit a tree behind Clay. In a second round, Clay again missed Randolph, who raised his gun and fired into the air. The men talked and reconciled. Randolph joked, “You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay.” Clay replied, “I am glad the debt is no greater.” (WAKING GIANT: America in the Age of Jackson)
Top Ten Tuesday
Today’s TTT is a genre freebie, and since I feel like I’ve spotlit historical fiction recently, I’m going to take a look at science fiction. I’ve read SF since I was a kid, although I didn’t get really into it until my late twenties when I found Isaac Asimov. These are not in any particular order.
(1) DAEMON, Daniel Suarez. A distributed AI begins reprogramming the world using video games to attract and employ human agents. One of my very favorite thrillers.
(2) War of the Worlds & The Time Machine, H.G. Wells. I am including these two together because they were my first SF titles and cast a long shadow over my literary life and imagination.
(3) Upgrade, Blake Crouch. An SF thriller about augmented humanity. Crouch and Suarez are alike in everything they’ve published has been 10/10.
(4) The Circle and The Every, Dave Eggers. Including them together because they’re conjoined stories about we consumers in the hands of an all-consuming uber-corporation that’s like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and money apps all rolled into one.
(5) Foundation, Isaac Asimov. The beginning of my adult SF reading, Foundation is both a collection of short stories and the beginning of a much larger series that grew into an even larger meta-series when Asimov retroactively declared that Empire and Robots were also part of the timeline. My favorite volumes are the original collection of stories, followed by Asimov’s later “prequels”, Prelude and Forward. The premise of Foundation is that a mathematician named Hari Seldon develops a science called psychohistory, which can predict the broad future of humanity. Exiled for foretelling the fall of the Galactic Empire, he and his followers launch a thousand-year plan to reduce the chaos of the coming collapse and lay the groundwork for a more stable future order. The first book is a collection of short stories that tell how the leaders of the Foundation navigated several “Seldon Crises” — turning points in history — while the prequels are more traditional novels.
(6) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. The American Revolution…in Space.
(7) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury. It always annoys me when people assume this is a book about censorship; that’s as accurate as saying 1984 is about surveillance. They’re both true to a minor point, but there are deeper stories at work. Just as 1984 is more about control — not only of society, but of the human mind, the very soul, Fahrenheit 451 is more about apathy or disengagement: this society is one where people are withdrawing more and more into sensation and nonthink. It has one of the most depressing scenes in literature, that of Montag’s wife completely removing herself from the human experience by sitting in a room where she’s surrounded — inundated by — her “Stories”. This kind of acedia is deeply disturbing. Dr. Brad Birzer is currently working on a book about Bradbury, and has just concluded a series of reviews about a Bradbury biographical trilogy. The possible title for Birzer’s own is Prophet of the Space Age.
(8) Contact, Carl Sagan. An astronomer’s realistic attack on what first contact might look like.
(9) 1984 by George Orwell and (10) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I mention these together because they’re both dystopias of an inhuman future — ones in which power and pleasure work to similar ends — the domination of humanity by a machine-system.
Reading Freely 
Having a Top *TEN* SF List would be SO SO tough for me. I *might* manage a Top 25, or a Top 50. It’d probably be safer to try for a Top 100…. [muses]
I won’t say it’s definitive, more of titles that impressed me enough they came to moms when trying to make the list it might have been fairer to omit the “classics”, but less accurate
I think the difficulty would be with the word ‘Top’. That alone might be worth the effort of putting something together… [muses some more]
These were all such good books!
Thanks for stopping by earlier.
Great list! I’ve read quite a few of them, but could be tempted to pick up Foundation and Contact. Not sure I’ll get to Upgrade, since I didn’t love Dark Matter by the same author.
Dark Matter was…probably the hardest to read of his, I’d say.
I’ve heard great things about Foundation.
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Great SF list! I usually only read Star Trek, but I do like the SF genre (mostly in movies).
I read 3-4 of Suarez’s books and really enjoyed Daemon too. Each successive book I read though, I don’t know exactly why, it wasn’t as enjoyable.
How did you like the entire Foundation series? I stick to the original trilogy now myself.
I liked the original trilogy and the prequel. I’ve never gone back to read Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth, but my reviews indicate I liked them well enough. I’ve never tried the Foundation books written by other authors, though.
Fabulous list! I have only read 5, and just added yur 1st title to my TBR
It has a sequel called FREEDOM(tm) if you enjoy the first one. 🙂
I read the Moon is a Harsh Mistress for my scifi class in college. My favorite read from that class was Pohl’s Gateway 🙂
That one sounds…interesting.
‘Gateway’ is *very* good.
Right? I’ve been on a lowkey search for the rest of the series – but also a little worried it won’t live up to Gateway 🙂
I read the original trilogy a LONG time ago – 40 years maybe – so can’t say with 100% confidence that the rest are as good as the original… But I don’t recall any of them being *bad*. If you have the time & the inclination I’d give them a go.
Gateway (1977)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980)
Heechee Rendezvous (1984)
Good list! Somehow I never read Foundation, even though I read quite a bit of Asimov as a teenager. IIRC, the library didn’t have the first book, and somehow Mum could never find her copy either, haha. Someday!
I imagine the Apple series prompted a reprint!
I used to read nothing but scifi. I’ve read 5 of the 12 titles you have listed. (A great list!) I’d love to read War of the World and The Time Machine, and I’m not sure why I haven’t yet. I’d like to try The Circle, too. I’ve added these to my list of books to read in the near future.