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Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels?

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-ender's-game-does-not-count dept.

jjp9999 writes "I've been looking for some good reading material, and have been delving into the realms of some great, but nearly forgotten authors — finding the likes of Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter) and E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros). I wanted to ask the community here: do you know of any other great fantasy or science fiction books that time has forgotten?"

9 of 1,244 comments (clear)

  1. gene wolfe -urth of the new sun by hguorbray · · Score: 4, Insightful

    c j cherryh -Downbelow Series, Chanur's Pride, etc

    I liked the lensman series back in the day, but in retrospect they seem a little fascist

    I'm just sayin'

    1. Re:gene wolfe -urth of the new sun by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Technically speaking, but wouldn't eugenics be part of evolution? I mean if a species had self-selection, wouldn't it fall under natural selection?

      Well, if we had a clue what made for a better human, it might be useful.

      Alas, we didn't know squat then, and don't know a whole lot more now....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  2. _That Hideous Strength_, CS Lewis by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That Hideous Strength. It's obscure - obscure for a reason; it combines dystopian sci-fi with Christian allegory and British academic politics, so there's not a large natural audience. But it's culturally significant as one of George Orwell's inspirations for 1984, and Orwell himself thought reasonably well of it ("by the standards of books today", at least). It's also an interesting little moment before the atomic bomb but still within the realm of dystopian WWII-inspired science fiction.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  3. Barry Hughart by mr.dreadful · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He only published a few books, but "Bridge of Birds" (and its follow ups) is a wonderful mixture of Chinese folklore, Indiana Jones, and Sherlock Holmes.

  4. Just about anything by Larry Niven. by drfreak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most notably A Land out of Time and the epic Ringworld.

  5. Anything by Jack Vance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I got into reading Vance's books when I was in high school. A few years ago a friend asked a similar question and i gave him one of Vance's short story anthologies. In 28 pages Vance had a more complete and engrossing story than some authors have in 200 pages.

    His stories range from straight out fantasy to classic science fiction, from short stories to multiple book sagas. Plenty of stuff to keep you going for the summer and probably the winter too.

  6. Smart Sci-Fi kindle search on Amazon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sorted from cheapest, restricting results to books rated 4 stars or higher

  7. Re:Many Many options by sconeu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Lankhmar series (Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser) by Fritz Leiber

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  8. Re:Farmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Hijacking the top reply here to ask, why even bother asking something like this? You've gotta know what the result is: A million people will list some random books they liked, with very little justification this way or that why anybody other than them should care.

    You're going to get a gigantic list of titles with no way at all to determine whether or not any of it is worth looking at at all. It's worse than useless.

    Meanwhile, lots of nerds will jump on the chance to dump whatever jumps into their mind after five seconds on the list. This is a write-only thread.