From: snake@CHEMVAX.PRINCETON.EDU
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 23:09:43 EDT
 
Doug:
 
        My friend rpl@chemvax.princeton.edu showed me your home page when
he wanted to upload some of my Wolfenstein levels, and I very much enjoyed your
science fiction and fantasy book reviews.  It looks like a highly reliable
source for modern science fiction and fantasy.  It does seem, however, that
you've missed a lot of great pre-1980 novels, and to some extent you've judged
a lot of authors by their more recent works which are clearly inferior to
their earlier, reputation-making efforts.  I thought that maybe you were just
relying on other web sites to provide such reviews, but when I checked "The
Good Reading Guide" that you recommend, I was shocked by the omission of so
many really famous authors, and the earlier, perhaps better works of others.
The same is true, but to a lesser extent, for "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy
List".  Perhaps I'm not well enough read in the most recent SF, but I have read
65 of the current Top 100, and about 1200-1500 SF books overall.
 
        The omissions are probably just a reflection of the extreme youth of the
people who write for the web, but it's still amazing to someone who's only
41 (but a child at heart).  Anyway, I'm often asked to recommend science
fiction or fantasy novels to people who've read little or none, and for the
last ten years I've been giving versions of the following list for science
fiction.  (There's also a fantasy list, but let's forget it today.)  Of
course, now I can just send them to the Top 100 list!
 
 
                A SAMPLER OF SCIENCE FICTION
 
        Titles Recommended by Robert Pascal and Brent Koplitz
 
Author                          Title           Last revised:  5/27/95
Isaac Asimov            ***     Nine Tomorrows (short  stories)
David Brin              ***     Startide Rising
Orson Scott Card        **      Ender's Game
Jack L. Chalker         **      Midnight at the Well of Souls
Arthur C. Clarke        **      Childhood's End
Samuel R. Delaney       * W     Babel-17
Philip Jose Farmer      *       To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Robert Forward          ***     Dragon's Egg
William Gibson          **      Neuromancer
Joe Haldeman            **      The Forever War
Harry Harrison          **      The Stainless Steel Rat
Robert Heinlein         *       Starship Troopers
Frank Herbert           ***     Dune
Fred Hoyle              *       The Black Cloud
Keith Laumer            * W     A Plague of Demons
Larry Niven             ***     Neutron Star (short stories)
Larry Niven             ***     The Mote in God's Eye
   & Jerry Pournelle
Frederick Pohl          **      Gateway
Spider Robinson         *       Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (short stories)
Christopher Rowley      **      Starhammer
Fred Saberhagen         **      Berserker (short stories)
Charles Sheffield       **      The Web Between the Worlds
Robert Silverberg       *       Dying Inside
E. E. "Doc" Smith       *       The Skylark of Space and Skylark Three
Norman Spinrad          * W     The Iron Dream
Olaf Stapledon          *       Sirius
John Steakley           **      Armor
Theodore Sturgeon       *       More Than Human
John Varley             **      Titan
Roger Zelazny           *       Jack of Shadows
 
Pending:   *** Snow Crash
 
        This list was first compiled in 1983 and it has been revised every
couple of years.  No author may have more than one book on the list (except
Larry Niven who gets 1.5 entries by special dispensation), and the total
number of books may not exceed 30.  With the exception of the Doc Smith entry,
all books were written after 1950; Brent and I feel that everyone should have
read the classics of Verne, Wells, etc.  To be fair, our coverage of the '80's
and beyond has not been the best (due to professional obligations), although
there are a few recent entries.  The rating system is obvious, but the
symbol "W" denotes a book which is wierd even by science fiction standards.
 
        Just for comparison, neither you nor The Good Reading Guide have any
books by Hoyle, Robinson, Sheffield, Stapledon, or Sturgeon, and, as far as
I'm concerned, you and they have completely missed the best work of Clarke,
Delaney, Haldeman, Rowley, Silverberg, and Spinrad!  I know that most are not
out of print!  At the risk of boring you, here are a few comments and
suggestions:
 
        Isaac Asimov wrote wonderful short stories, much better than his
novels. _Nine_Tomorrows_ and _Nightfall_and_Other_Stories_ are classic
collections of his stories from the '50's and '60's; a lot of modern
stories will seem far less original after you've read them!
 
        Jack Chalker churns out all sorts of cookie-cutter series these days,
but you really ought the read the first book of his first series,
_Midnight_at_the_Well_of_Souls_, which was just as much a genre-generator as
_Neuromancer_ was later.  (I thought _Neuromancer_ was great, but I have not
been able to get past page 30 of any other William Gibson novel.)
 
        Arthur C. Clarke has been writing so long that the Rama books seem
like the good old days, but he was already repeating himself by that time.
Go back, WAY back to _Childhood's_End_ (T100 #73) for true classic Clarke in
one of the greatest first contact novels.
 
        The same is true for Delaney; even though I don't really care for most
of his work.  But _Babel-17_ (#87) was one of his first, when he still could
write SHORT books, and it deals with a topic (if I recall correctly; it's been a
long time) -- the relationship of language to patterns of thought and sense
of identity -- that is rarely touched by science fiction, although
_Snow_Crash_ is a recent example that takes a stab at it.
 
        You quite correctly note the link between _Starship_Troopers_ and
_Armor_, and _Armor_ is undoubtedly the best of its type, BUT it derived a LOT
from Joe Haldeman's book _The_Forever_War_ (T100 #34 -- surprisingly high).
Haldeman rose to prominence on that book and soon faded; all his subsequent
books had the same theme; sort of an earlier Gibson.  By the way, it appears
that you didn't get as far as _The_Stainless_Steel_Rat_Saves_the_Universe_, in
which the villains are a wonderful parody of Heinlein's ideal society in
_Starship_Troopers_!
 
        Keith Laumer's _A_Plague_of_Demons_ is complete trash but wonderful
fun; it's sort of the ultimate paranoid science fiction novel, even more so
than Colin Wilson's _The_Mind_Parasites_ or _The_Space_Vampires_ (the last
of which was made into a pretty good movie -- but I can't remember the name.)
 
        READ THE EARLY NIVEN (all the Known Space stuff).  It's much better
than the things you've reviewed (except for _The_Mote_in_God's_Eye_, which
has, however, a very disappointing sequel).  You might even learn to
appreciate the Kzinti.
 
        Read some Pohl, Robinson, Rowley; they're all good fun.  _Starhammer_ is
my favorite science fiction novel, even though it's by no means the best.  It's
an adolescent power fantasy which nevertheless sweeps you along so smoothly
that you never notice the ponderous improbabilities.  It's the way Star Wars
should have been, and in my mind it's akin to "Casablanca" for movie buffs --
it's trite but somehow everything is right.  In the same universe, Rowley's
_The_Vang:_The_Military_Form_ is probably the best, and certainly the most
amusing, of all the literary children of Heinlein's _The_Puppet_Masters_ (#53
-- incredibly high! It's not THAT good; it must be fallout from the movie.)
 
        How can you guys have missed Charles Sheffield?!?  His first half dozen
novels are very good, but there's been a recent decline.  Try
_The_Web_Between_the_Worlds_ (exactly contemporary with Clarke's
_The_Fountains_of_Paradise_, both of which are about the construction of a
skyhook) or _Sight_of_Proteus_ and _Proteus_Unbound_ (but I haven't yet read
the more recent Proteus novels).
 
        _Dying_Inside_ is much better than Silverberg's much later fantasy
novels.  It's about a telepath who is slowly losing his power; it's very
moving.  He wrote a lot of excellent science fiction when he was younger.
 
        Since this has been going in alphabetical order, more or less, I should
note here that I can't believe that someone of such obvious good taste would
like Simmons' _Hyperion_ et al.!  Episodic, derivative, interminable, and
weakly-ended are only some of the adjectives I'd apply; but I concede that
I hold a minority view on this.
 
        From the '20's and '30's, the first two books of the Doc Smith's
Skylark series are just amazing:  an inorganic bench chemist becomes lord of
the galaxy in a total of about 300 pages.  And it's wonderfully non-PC.  At
one point the hero has the bad guys on the ropes; he's warned them to surrender,
but they've refused.  He's about to obliterate their home planet with the
push of a button (a la the Death Star), when he has second thoughts about
genocide, even for a thoroughly evil race.  No matter, the number 2 hero says
he has no such inhibitions, and zaps them into oblivion!  (This scene is more
or less repeated in Rowley's _Starhammer_, but its non-PC purity is tainted
by the fact that the hero is in more immediate danger and has little choice.)
 
        Spinrad's _The_Iron_Dream_ is presented (in an alternate history frame)
as Adolf Hitler's last and greatest science fiction novel.  Need I say more to
any Wolfenstein afficionado?
 
        It's probably best that I don't.
 
                                        Bob Pascal
                                        a.k.a. Snake
                                        a.k.a. Heinrich von Zen