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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: What should be your FIRST sf book ???
Message-ID: <3219@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 23:45:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.3219
Posted: Fri Sep  6 23:45:05 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 04:20:31 EDT
References: <3502@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <16320@watmath.UUCP> <984@teklds.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Uncle Chuqui's Lemming Farm
Lines: 39
Summary: 

The big problem I have with this discussion is that it is impossible to
give ONE book that can even start to come close to defining SF. By trying
to, you end up showing only a small and biased subset of the genre, and
there is no guarantee at all that the person will like that part of the
genre. If that happens, you turn them off to all the other works that they
might otherwise have enjoyed because SF 'isn't for them'. I prefer to hand
out a group of books, ask them to try them all and stop those that don't 
interest them. Once you get an idea what they like, it becomes much easier
to turn them on to other similar books and slowly expand their horizons
later...

I agree that "Flowers for Algernon" ought to be on that list, I quibble
with "Mote in God's Eye" (I prefer "Dragon's Egg" and "Ringworld" for
hard but accessible SF), but those two books don't even start to show
the possibilities of the genre. What about "Martian Chronicles"? What
about "Tea with the Black Dragon"? The "Once and Future King"? You
can't go wrong tossing a copy of "Adventures in Time and Space" at
them, or "Shadow of the Torturer", or "Canticle for Liebowitz", or
"Something Wicked This Way Comes", or "Time Enough for Love", or
"Persistence of Vision", or "Footfall", or "The Time Machine", or
"Callahan's Crosstime Saloon", or "The Deathbird Stories" or "Myth
Adventures" for that matter. Every one of those really defines a
different feel and flavor within the genre, and you can hate a good
subset of that list and love the other subset just as strongly (I
happen to love all of them, which is why they popped in off the top of
my head. I could double the list with a little research). The point is,
if you choose any one of those books as the introduction to SF and they
hate it, they lose out on a wide variety of stuff they may well have
liked. Give them a bunch of books and help them find the parts of this
thing we call SF (and I am including fantasy in here at the moment,
just because I feel like it) and avoid the parts they don't like.

Hmm... maybe its time for another 'what are your favorite books' survey, or
better yet, 'what are your favorite books in each subgenre' survey...
-- 
Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui

An uninformed opinion is no opinion at all. If you dont know what you're
talking about, please try to do it quietly.