Today’s tease is from Robert Heinlein’s Double Star!

“Before my revered father died, he made me promise him three things: first, never to mix whisky with anything but water; second, always to ignore anonymous letters; and lastly, never to talk with a stranger who refuses to give his name. Good day, sirs.”

Continuing with Sci-Fi Month, last night I watched Edge of Tomorrow. I had no idea what the movie was about when I checked it out, but it looked like SF and it had the late great Bill Paxton, so I was game. I didn’t even know the premise, so I was astonished by what happens to Tom Cruise’s character and wholly absorbed by the film. I also began watching Source Code, but fell asleep. One of my library coworkers is desperate for me to finish watching it tonight so he can talk about it without spoiling anything.

Today’s Sci Fi Month prompt is SF works we think will become classics in the future. That’s a hard question to answer, mostly because I’m fussy about the word classic: it must mean something more than ‘a book people will still like in a century’. I think books can be retroactively liked without necessarily being “classic”. For me, classic is that they have something fundamental and enduring to say about life and the human condition, something that contributes to the “Great Conversation”, as it were. Most of the modern SF I read is more near-future SF where the emphasis is on tech and society, not necessarily humanity, so as much as I love Blake Crouch’s books I don’t know that they would apply. However, DAEMON keeps coming to mind so I will mention it for the nth time. And while it may seem silly, I also want to mention The Circle and The Every by Dave Eggers, because they capture so well how social media and the gamification of everything are seriously warping human psyches and human civilization.

Looking back at some of the week’s prior SF prompts:

• Long Running Series. Gotta mention Foundation, because not only is it long in itself, but Asimov retroactively put it, the Robots series, and the Galactic Empire series all into the same universe, and all part of one broader story united by R. Daneel Olivaw.
• Red Alert, An SF Book Where It All Goes Wrong: Honestly, something goes badly wrong in most books, just to have plot happenings. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is a recent funny example; Lucifer’s Hammer is another, though that’s more of a “disaster from space!” book than technological SF.
• Current Read: Double Star, Robert Heinlein