My Top 10 Favorite SF Books of All Time

I recently watched a Media Death Cult video on the viewers' favorite books and I have to admit that haven’t read more than one or two of them. Still it got me to thinking about my favorite books of all time. So I racked my memory to come up with a list of my ten favorite SF books. This proved to be rather hard since I've forgotten 97% of them. On the flip side, it means that if I do remember them, and remember really enjoying them -- they're a candidate for the list.

Before I begin, I should note that “all time” is the trick words here. What I’ve done is try to recall what were my favorite books during my nearly sixty years of reading SF, in one era or another. They are not necessarily my favorite SF books today. Indeed, most of them would not even being the running today, since my tastes have evolved over my lifetime. Still, at one time, they were my favorite books and I still recall them fondly because of that.

All but two of the books come from my early years of reading SF in the 1960’s and early 1970’s when I was reading  50 to 100 books a year. This means that most of the books are classic SF. I'm not going to list them in any order, and I’ll save my recent favorite books for last. 

1. Starman Jones, Robert A Heinlein. This is my favorite of Heinlein book. Farm boy with a photographic memory inherits an astro-navigator's books and saves the day when the ship he is serving on gets lost. Or something like that. I think it is my favorite Heinlein because I liked his juveniles the best and this one has just a hint of romance in it that was quickly shut down. Heinlein didn’t do romance in his juveniles. The fact that I can still remember the basic plot of the story is telling since, I can’t say that for most of his juveniles. I reread it in my early 20’s and was surprised at how much of what I remembered wasn’t actually in the book. A testimonial to how much a young reader’s imagination adds to a story. Back in our day, at least, we spend our days making up stories while playing, and this skill lingered on into adolescence. From my records of the period, I can say that I rated it “E” for excellent together with Space Cadet, a book that I have no recollection of.

Credit:  http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?258176, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48787509

2. The Star Conquers, Ben Bova. This book is a military SF, story with space battles, and an appealing young hero. Reading the Wikipedia description doesn’t bring back the story for me. I loaned this book to a friend 30 years ago to read to his son, and every time I see him he offers to return it, but since I know I'll not read it again, I tell him to keep it. Still it was a favorite of both of ours. I seem to recall that the sequel, Star Watchman wasn’t as good. I guess he wrote two more in the series years later. Who knew? I rated it a “E” back then.

3. Galactic Patrol, E E Smith. The best book, by far, of the Lensmen series. A space opera on a vast scale. I haven’t reread it, and would likely find it too grand and nonsensical for my tastes these days. I made a galactic wargame board game out of it, at the time. Still, its another “E” book in ‘65.

4.Ossian’s Ride, Fred Hoyle. An adventure set in Ireland. A recent graduate is recruited by British secret service as an amateur agent and sent to Ireland to discover the secret of a wildly successful company with amazing technology. It has a lot of hiking around Ireland, and, in a way, foreshadows my appreciation of the books like John Buchan’s 39 Steps which had his hero tramping around Scotland. I recently reread this book for the third time at least, and, indeed, I still enjoyed it. I first read it in 1966, but I wasn’t rating books that year, it seems.

5. Highways in Hiding, George O Smith. To begin with, the version I have has a wonderfully evocative cover by Roy G Krenkel, The story is a mystery story that centers around two opposing secret organization dealing with a deadly disease brought back from space. Road signs are modified by one group to lead people in the know to contact agents. This is another book of travel, thought this time it was road trips around the pre-interstate US. At the time there seemed something romantic about getting into a car and taking to the open roads which appealed to me back in the day. These days, an hour in a car is about all I can take. No contemporary rating for this book either.

6. Sands of Mars, Arthur C Clarke. I count this as the first adult SF novel I read. How could you not like a book about Mars – a Mars still unexplored by remote spacecraft when I read it. A Mars that anything could go? The hero was a middle aged SF writer visiting Mars that he wrote SF books about early in his career, which seems a strange hero for a young teen. Indeed I find in my records of the time that in 1965 I rated it only a “B” so I guess its memory must’ve aged well. The thing is that I remember it when 97% of the books from that period I have no recollection of at all, That must mean something. Plus, I know I reread it. On the other hand, another Clarke book, Dolphin Island I rated an “E” though I believe it was a juvenile. In any event, I have no recollection of the story.

7. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of my perennial favorites. But even with so much to love about it, there's still so much I wish was better – bigger, fuller, with deeper characters. I’ve reread this book probably four or five times. I read it to the kids at bedtime. In 1971 I rated it ***½, which is a little above average. But like Sands of Mars, it seems to has aged well, and I now consider it the best of ERB's books. Contrast that with his Venus series that I rated “E” back in ‘65, but never have had any interest in rereading. The first three books of Barsoom are one of my favorites for all their flaws.

8. The Witches of Karres, James H Schmitz. I’ve read this book several times -- indeed, after pulling it out of the bookshelf for this post, I'm rereading and enjoying it once again. I’m a sucker for stories set on spaceship, and worm weather was such a cool idea. So cool, in fact, that I sort of borrowed it for an episode in my Bright Black Sea. I must have acquired the book prior to 1968 as it is on my inventory for that year, but I have no record of when I read it or my original rating.

The last two entries on this list are recent books (relatively speaking) and are still very much in favor.

9.Johannes Cabal The Detective, Jonathan L Howard. This is one of my current favorite books. In fact, I just reread it. It is the second book in a series of five featuring the necromance Johannes Cabal, and is my favorite of the series, perhaps because it is a take on an old fashioned detective story and set in a mythical Balkan country, like A Prisoner of Zenda. Howard is one of those British authors with a clever, witty style that I really enjoy reading in my old age. Each book in the series is a little different, with a nod to Lovecraft, plus werewolves, vampires, and the devil himself. Normally these types of stories would not be my cup of tea, but his writing draws me in.

10, Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde. This is my all time favorite speculative fiction book. In part because of Fforde's writing – cleaver, witty, endlessly imaginative, all of which plays a large part in my enjoyment of the story. It can be read as satire or absurd fiction, which again wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but not only is the writing wonderful, but he still manages to make the narrator and other characters seem like real people in a very unusual world where there is a strict cast system based on the color that they can see. I’ve read this book maybe four times – and will pick it up and read it again. I guess it’s my “comfort read.” Unfortunately its sales did not justify continuing on with the planned trilogy so that, Painting by Numbers, and The Gordini Protocols were never written, leaving so many mysteries left mysteries. The only bright side is that it did not give Fforde the chance to screw it up. I’ve read almost all of his adult novels and while the last two novels written after Shades of Grey were witty and endlessly imaginative, I couldn’t help wishing I was reading the last two books of the series. Life can be cruel.

So those are my nine favorite books. However, as a bonus, while looking up my old ratings for these books in my papers from the era, I found my top 22 book list from the mid-1960's. Heinlein dominated it.

1 Starman Jones – Heinlein

2 Star Conquers – Bova

3 Tunnel in the Sky & The Stars are Ours! – Heinlein & Norton

4 Sixth Column – Heinlein

5 Galactic Patrol – EE Smith

6 Space Cadet & Farmer in the Sky – Heinlein

7 Dolphin Island & Islands in the Sky – Clarke

8 Time Traders – Norton

9 Crossroad of Time & Citizen of the Galaxy – Norton & Heinlein

10 Outside the Universe & Raiders from the Rings – Hamilton and Nourse

11 Sargasso of Space & Plague Ship – Norton

12 Space Viking – Piper

13 The Star Kings – Hamilton

14 Revolt on Alpha C – Silverberg

15 Robot Rocket – Rockwell

16 Venus Series – Burroughs

Reading Beyond SF

 

In a number of my previous posts I recounted some of the reasons how I have managed not to read so many of the classic speculative fiction novels. There is, however, one more reason, and that is that my reading of SF fell by the wayside; I graduated from college and set out to make a living in the real world.

I simply no longer had the time or easy access to bookstores both new & used. Early on I had several jobs and moved about for a time, acquiring a wife and then children. We ended up in a small town with the major mall bookstores an hour away. In those olden days before the internet, I would only come across new SF books on the shelves of our local small town library or on those of a larger, small city library ten miles away. And by that time many of the authors were new and unfamiliar, plus, I still had to watch my pennies so I didn't buy books on a whim -- new mass market paperbacks were no longer fifty cents. Looking at my SF shelves, I don’t think I bought even one new SF book in the 1980’s.

However, I did not stop reading. Rather my interests expanded into other genres.

For some years I was into old mysteries, including Dorothy L Sayers’s Peter Wimsey novels, Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan, John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee, and a host of other old mysteries.

And then I discovered the adventure stories from the Victorian period up to the first half of the last century. They ranged from Anthony Hope’s The Prison of Zenda, to H Rider Haggard’s African tales, to John Buchan’s Richard Hannay stories, and all his rest as well. I tracked down to read many of Compton Mackenzie’s humorous Scottish stories including Monarch of the Glen, Whiskey Galore, and the like.

I’ve already talked about the sea stories of Guy Gilpatric, W Clark Russell, and C J Cutcliffe Hyne that I loved.

And them, there were all the odd little byways that interested me. For example, I enjoyed all of Miss Read’s (Mrs Dora Saint) stories I could find about life in the village of Fairacre and other small English towns. I also read a number of Scottish author D E Stevenson’s “light romantic novels” as well. I’d pick up any Nevil Shute book I’d run across. I have four of Jean Shepherd’s (In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash) books. I own and have read a number of Booth Tarkington novels. And I’ve already mentioned my large collection of Joseph Lincoln novels. In short, I found that life was too short to spend reading just SF.

While I did buy some  new books, more and more of the books I picked up were second hand books. While on vacation I would seek out second hand bookstores to explore. However, the highlight of my book buying year was  the great, but late, Bethesda Fair. Bethesda was a local charity that each September would stage a giant rummage sale that filled up all the buildings of  the fairgrounds with a treasure trove of junk for a week. I'd be at the doors of the book building on the first day waiting for the sales to begin. I bought many’a book at the Bethesda Fair. Most were not SF.

Still, I always considered myself a science fiction fan. Almost everything I ever attempted to write was science fiction. 

However, when looking back over all the books that I’ve read and enjoyed over the years, there is no mystery as to why my books are written in a very old fashioned style of story telling. I learned to write by reading. And my reading informed my writing.

My Library -- The Tom Swifts

I think it is fair to say that the Tom Swift Jr books served as a gateway to speculative fiction for many boys from the mid 1950’s into the “space age” of the 1960’s. I didn’t hang around with girls in my Tom Swift days, so I can’t say that they didn’t also read them for certain. But I can say that my sister didn’t borrow mine. They certainly were my introduction to speculative fiction, beginning sometime when I was doing time in 5^th grade, which is when I first got into reading. I think.

I have no recollection of how I discovered “Victor Appleton ll’s” Tom Swift Jr series. Perhaps there were some Tom Swift Jr books in the classroom library, but I don’t recall that being the case. I do recall with certainty that after I became a fan, I bought most of my Tom Swift Jr books from the book department of the Gimbels department store at the South Gate mall. I can remember eagerly heading to the book department whenever we were shopping to see if a new title was available. I also remember buying one second hand at some sort of street market, a “Maxwell Street Sale” type of event. (Probably Tom Swift and His Flying Lab pictured above since it was not a new copy) I’m quite sure that I bought Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung of 1961 (#18 $1) when it was first released – as it’s wrap around the spine cover was unique to the series, which, somehow, struck in my memory. The last book I bought was Tom Swift and His 3-ZD Telejector with a copyright date of 1964 which would make me 14 years old. By that time I was likely starting to read full on speculative fiction – Heinlein, Clarke, Norton et.al.

But as you can see from the photo, I did not confine myself to reading just the then current Tom Swift Jr books by Victor Appleton ll. In 1963 there was a brief craze called “Tom Swifties.” You can read about it in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swifty The short version is that a book, Tom Swifties by Paul Pease and Bill McDonough, made puns out of the way the writers of the original Tom Swift books used discriptive dialog tags. The Wikipedia article has an example of the way the original books were written and then samples of dialog tags turned into puns, for example: “I love hot dogs,” said Tom with relish.” or “Stay away from that turtle!” Tom snapped. or “We just struck oil!” Tom gushed. You get the idea. I recall seeing a newspaper article about this fad, which opened my eyes to the fact that there was an older, Tom Swift series by Victor Appleton before there was the Tom Swift Jr by Victor Appleton ll series that I was familiar with. This sparked my interest, so much that my Dad drove me into downtown Milwaukee to visit the premiere used book store, The Renaissance Book Store, on Wisconsin Ave. There he negotiated a deal to buy one of each of the titles they had in stock – I seem to think, 13 of them all told, for a $1 apiece. I know that one of the books in that bundle was Tom Swift and his Motorcycle. I wrote the date I got it, 1/12/63 on the inside flap, and it still has the book store’s asking price of $2.50, so Dad got a good deal.

Strangely enough, the original Tom Swift books have had a greater impact on me, my tastes in stories, and my writing, than the Tom Swift Jr books ever did. Whereas the Tom Swift Jr book could be imagined to be taking place in the world I knew, the old books, set in upstate New York in 1910's, were a strange, fantasy world to me. While I was familiar with life in the past, as portrayed in TV westerns and old movies, anyway, these stories brought the past much closer to home. I guess the best way to put it is that they were a glimpse of the everyday life of a teenager/young man of the period – with quaint air of “old times.” And perhaps because I’d spent two weeks every summer on the dairy farm of my grandparents, which was far different than my life in the city and suburbs, I think I had just a taste of that way of life just before it faded away in the 1960’s,so the life the books described had a familiar air to it that enhanced its impact on my imagination.

I would go on to read many other books set in different eras – Sherlock Holmes’ Victorian London, Nayland Smith’s Edwardian East End, Philip Marlowe’s 1930’s LA, to name just few of the lost worlds of the past that had the power of a fantasy world in my imagination. However, Tom Swift’s world was the first.

The series started off with Tom making improvements on motorcycle he got cheap from a Mr Wakefield Damon (who blessed everything), and dealing with the obnoxious rich rival/bully, Andy Foger, plus thieves stealing his inventor dad’s plans. Travel distances were still measured in a horse and buggy speed. Like in the Jr books, Tom had a good friend, and a girl he was sweet on (and actually married, in the books, I seem to recall.) Plus some interesting reoccurring characters, like Eradicate Sampson with his mule Boomerang with all the racial stereotypes of the day, but still portrayed sympathetically. As I said, it was a whole new, a different, and a simpler never-never world. A world time had changed to fantasy.

So what do I owe Tom Swift today? Well, let’s see. I like small stories, stories about people in dangerous adventures, but not stories that involve the fate of the world or universe, just like the Tom Swift stories. I like more old-fashioned settings for my stories, even when set in the far distant future. I like the comradely of good friends, and the element of romance. The old Tom Swift books took me out of my everyday life to another semi-familiar, but different world, which is what I try to achieve with my stories. In short, they either appealed to the taste in stories I was born with, or shaped it. I can’t say which. And, well, Tom is shown wearing a snappy hat on the cover. I’ve been a hat guy all my life.

And come to think of it, I owe those old Tom Swift books one more thing – my love of old books. They were my first second hand books, and I found it intriguing to find hints of the previous owners in the books, inscriptions, signatures, etc. I have a lot of old books – books that were actually old before I bought them. I love them.

In the photo above, you can see, on the lower shelf, some more of my early reading. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Hardy Boys, but I did read them. Like Tom Swift, I like the older, original versions better than the updated ones, when I could find them. Though dated, the older versions, seemed to be a little more realistic, and rougher and tougher than the sanitized 1960’s versions.

I was a big fan of the Tom Crobett Space Cadet series as well. I guess it was an early TV series, but I never saw that. I knew Tom Corbett only from the Carey Rockwell (with Willy Ley, Technical Advisor) books. I really liked the illustrations of those books. They had a lot of them, featuring rocketships like rocketships were meant to be! Plus plenty of illustrations of our heroes, the interiors of rocketships, and the planets – also as they were meant to be. They were great. I also have the Dig Allen, Space Explorer Adventures, by Joseph Greene, that I was less fond of. These were published by Golden Press who put out series books, that were sort of wanta-be rivals to those published by Grosset & Dunlap. They never quite measured up. Anyway, these books may also have formed my taste in speculative fiction – rocket ships, planets, and adventure. I never evolved beyond a good rousing adventure/romance. Mind-blowing what ifs and weirdness were never my cup of tea.

A few last thoughts. When I was reading the old Tom Swift books, the world they described at that time was only fifty years or so distant. Now they're more than a hundred years distant. The books I read fifty years ago, now don't seem all that old...

I see on Amazon, that someone has now tried to update the original Tom Swift Jr books. I don't know how well that would work, but I doubt that Tom Jr. keeps his "flat top" hair cut.