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The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life
That's a really bad list. Dan Simmons, Frank Herbert, David Wingrove and Gene Wolfe aren't even on it. Consider Phlebas and Pattern Recognition are two of the more mediocre books by their respective authors.
The Book of The New Sun, of which this is the first, can be read on as many levels as you choose: as bizarre, outre genre fantasy; as Christian allegory/parable/fable; as bizarre, outre science fiction; as Literature (in the sense that Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" and "The Heart of Darkness" with their confessional aura and poignant glimpses into the human condition are Literature) . But, mainly, this series is just a fine, fine read, simply the best there is in SF and, I'd argue, the mainstream of Lit. Besides the beautiful first-person narration, full of intimations of immortality and forebodings of doom, told in that baroque, dolorous style Wolfe practically invented, and the well-drawn, resonant characters, and the great, action-oriented plot that impels you along with Severian in his backing into the Throne, you can frankly go as deep into this series as you want to. The multi-layered meanings and levels of allusion run that deep!
Shadow and Claw: The First Half of the Book of the New Sun: Amazon.co.uk: Gene Wolfe
A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel: Amazon.co.uk: Tom Phillips
I wish I had found Tom Phillips' book sooner.Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is a British writer on food, architecture, and culture, as well as an author and broadcaster . He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society [ 1 ] and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association . [ 2 ] [ edit ] Education
Jonathan Meades
La Bête humaine
La Bête Humaine is an 1890 novel by Émile Zola . The story has been adapted for the cinema on several occasions. It is based upon the railway between Paris and Le Havre in the 19th century and is a tense, psychological thriller .
Ideas: A History: Amazon.co.uk: Peter Watson
First of all, I should say that I haven't read this book from cover to cover, but have dipped in and read it in several places.
Theodore Zeldin
Theodore Zeldin CBE (born 22 August 1933, British Mandate of Palestine ), President of the Oxford Muse Foundation, is an English philosopher , sociologist , historian , writer and public speaker. Zeldin was born into a Jewish family in Palestine and went to school in Egypt and at Aylesbury Grammar School . He entered Birkbeck College, London when he was 15, graduating in 1951.
The Master and Margarita ( Russian : «Ма́стер и Маргари́та» ) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov , written between 1928 and 1940 but not published until 1967, which is woven around a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union . Many critics [ 1 ] consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, and the foremost of Soviet satires, directed against a suffocatingly bureaucratic social order. [ edit ] History
The Master and Margarita
Riddley Walker is a science fiction novel by Russell Hoban , first published in 1980 .
Riddley Walker
Lanark , subtitled A Life in Four Books , is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray .