Life Changing SciFi Books

Tom

Tom

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IO9 has a post with the provocative linkbait title "The 20 science fiction novels that will change your life." Will they really? How many books have you read that have had such a profound impact on you that they changed your life? Here's their list in brief:
  1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  2. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  3. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
  4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
  5. The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin
  6. Kindred by Octavia Butler
  7. Wizard by John Varley
  8. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
  9. He, She, and It by Marge Piercy
  10. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
  11. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
  12. The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata
  13. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
  14. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
  15. The Mount by Carol Emschwiller
  16. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
  17. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
  18. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
  19. Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod
  20. Glasshouse by Charles Stross
 
Van Vogt's : Null-A series. Gave me hope that there might just be a community of above average intelligent humans who worked as a species reacting to needs and pressures without seizing up.

Cherryh's : Kif series of novels. The ability of an author to attempt to phonetically and symbolically insert alien language into texts as far as realistically possible.

Feintuch : The path to publishing and then his early death attract a reader to his works and development between his main series of fiction, watching the writing development, style changes and then it is gone too early.
 
You know, I wish I could remember the title, but I remember when I was a little kid, my mom bought me a kid's book at a garage sale. It was a title from the '60s or '70s, about a kid who was growing up in a colony on Mars, and accidentally discovered alien life, living in caves underground. It was just a book for children, but I remember it was the book that got me exploring science fiction in novels (and basically expanding my view of sci-fi past my beloved "Star Wars").
 
I'm not sure if i can consider these books life-changing but they definitely mean a lot to me:

The Dispossessed - Ursula Le guin
1984 - George Orwell
A Canticle For Leibowitz - Walter Miller
A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
 
A couple I forgot (more to come)...

The Forever War

Lords of the Starship (an oldie but a goodie)

Gust Front, (and the rest of the series)

Bloom

and another of which I can't recall the name, about a race called the Feng? Monkey like people who have a symbiotic relationship with the guardians of a forest world? and their combined defense against a usurping corporate empire? Who get taught a lesson.
 
The Probability Broach - L Neil Smith - Yea baby!

Brave New World, 1984, yep those too... and of course Logan's Run... Hehe... is that a book? oh well it kicks butt. - King Daddy
 
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