100 Sci-Fi books

[Otispunkmeyer]

http://hilobrow.com/radium-age-100/

Yeah Science Fiction not science but that list there has 100 Sci-Fi novels from the so called Radium Age, sorta 1900 to 1940, before nuclear bombs arrived and changed peoples vision of the future.

I have to say, reading some of the discriptions, there were some amazing sounding ideas going around. I will definitely be trying to pick some up to read.

[Beati Dogu]

Fascinating list there. Includes science fiction from people I don't normally associate with the genre - Jack London, George Bernard Shaw..


I've read all the Edgar Rice Burroughs’s "Mars" and "Venus" series, but never his more famous Tarzan stories.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Worryingly when you read the descriptions of some of the books you begin to wonder whether some people mistook them for instruction manuals on how to run the world.

[Beati Dogu]

Yes. G.K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn (1914) sounds a little like what's going on now.

[stew-S160]

Having read 1984, and know it was written a long time ago, the ideas in it almost match modern society with startling accuracy.

[XM5ER]

Beati Dogu said:

Yes. G.K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn (1914) sounds a little like what's going on now.

G.K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn (1914). When a British politician, Lord Ivywood, sets out to Islamize Great Britain — so that he can enjoy the benefits of polygamy — he cleverly enlists the assistance of the nation’s “smart set,” who are all too eager to embrace trendy, “Eastern” fads like Islam. Among other changes, Ivywood pushes through laws requiring that alcohol only be sold by an inn displaying a sign… and banning inn signs. Patrick Dalroy, a hard-drinking Irishman, and Humphrey Pump, dispossessed landlord of one of the shuttered English inns, take to roaming the countryside with a cart (later, a motorcar) full of rum. Meanwhile, we discover that Ivywood is a pseudo-Nietzschean figure bent on destroying Christianity and Western culture… and that he is smuggling a Turkish army into England! Fun fact: According to some critics, Chesterton makes this book’s reader complicit in an architecture of unquestioned privilege and received prejudice.

Er.. Wow!

[Simpo Two]

I like the '1864–1903 Scientific Romance era' - I have a book of HG Wells short stories, most are good and some are staggering in their vision and twists.

[cymtriks]

The Machine Stops

Automated services provide everything you want in your own little cubicle. Technology has gone past the point where it is no longer necessary to leave your interactive video terminal. It is now actually a bit vulgar to even consider going out of your cubicle. When someone does, he is considered shocking. He notices things are going wrong but no one believes him, the machine that knows all and provides for all cannot possibly be going wrong...

[Simpo Two]

cymtriks said:

'Automated services provide everything you want in your own little cubicle. Technology has gone past the point where it is no longer necessary to leave your interactive video terminal. It is now actually a bit vulgar to even consider going out of your cubicle. When someone does, he is considered shocking. He notices things are going wrong but no one believes him, the machine that knows all and provides for all cannot possibly be going wrong...

Cubicle = EU.

[Halb]

I fancy giving GK CHesterton a try.

[tapkaJohnD]

If you're interested in SF from Chesterton's era, try Rudyard Kipling!

Complete list at http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/kipling_rudya... and many are more fantasy than 'hard' SF, so try "With the Night Mail" (http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/night.htm) or "As easy as ABC (a tale of 2150")" (http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/abc.htm) which include some extraordinary technological ideas.

John