The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

As it's the end of the year i'm wondering what the best books people have read this year.

I was looking at what I read this year (94 books) and I only gave one book 5 stars and that's not even sci-fi! I'm not sure if I am being stricter or nothing impressed me enough.

Looking at my sci fi books it seems Stanislaw Lem and Robert Heinleinstood out as authors I gave 4* to more than one book and I enjoyed finally reading Hyperion. Clearly I need some new recomendations of what to read in 2015...

Looking back at this year's reading, about 75 books were 4 star reads, another 2 dozen were 5 star. That means almost half the books I read this year were 4 or 5 star. Another 75 were 3 star, which means they were quite good & entertaining, just not in the fantastic range. That's a super reading average!!!

They ranged all over the genres from a reread of Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny, a very strange blend of SF & fantasy by an author with dozens of books, to a great YA romance Eleanor McGraw, a Pony Named Mouse and a Boy Called Fire by a singleton new author Katharina Marcus.

I found & read more nonfiction books this year than in previous years. Some were fantastic like Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade, & Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail by Theodore Roosevelt. I'll keep this in mind as I'm reading next year.

As far as SF went, Flux & several other books/collections by Orson Scott Card were 4 star reads. They had fantasy stories mixed in. The readings of the books & Card's afterwords really added to them. He's a really smart guy with a lot worth listening to even though I don't understand how he adheres to his religion.

Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury & My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel were both 4 star reads.

On Borrowed Time was by David Rosenfelt who typically writes light mysteries, but dipped his toe into the SF world with memory manipulation - near future SF. I happened to read an article about 'The Forgetting Pill' not long before, so it was very plausible.

My SF milestone this year was managing to get through 3 of the Hitchhiker books. I've tried reading them since they first came out, but the humor just isn't funny to me so they fell flat. I found an audio book version read by Adams himself & actually liked it enough, though. I only gave them 2 & 3 stars, though.

Jim wrote: "Looking back at this year's reading, about 75 books were 4 star reads, another 2 dozen were 5 star. That means almost half the books I read this year were 4 or 5 star. Another 75 were 3 star, whi..."

I've always wondered if one of the reason the Hitchhikers books don't work for everyone is that their humour is very British. I used to love the BBC TV series of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which was very funny.

My five-star books of 2014 are:
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A River Runs Through It by Craig Sheffer

So, 5 five-star books out of 150. Two were science fiction.

I think you're right, Jo. I've never cared for Monty Python, either.

My 5 stars usually only go to non-fiction, usually history brought to life by a great writer. That aside, I really enjoyed The Windup Girl. On the non-fiction side I just read and enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - a true story about the men who survived a shipwreck brought on by a sperm whale. This inspired both Mieville and Poe. If you have not read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket it is kind of a scifi precursor, which I also recently read.

This was also the first year I've read Lem and will look for more. I was late in finding a copy of The Prestige, but I like it a lot and will look for more Priest.

I did also like 1Q84 for the way it interleaved a scifi-ish surrealism narrative with a Japanese love story. Keeping with that vein of crossover genres, I just started On Such a Full Sea, and if anyone is interested in this future-dystopia by a literary writer, I'll keep you posted.

Salem wrote: " I just started On Such a Full Sea, and if anyone is interested in this future-dystopia by a literary writer, I'll keep you posted."

It's kind of hard to find good literary science fiction, so please do keep us posted.

This was an full year for me. I've never had a fuller one where fiction was concerned.

My list of five star reads is as follows:

The Privilege of the Sword, War and Remembrance, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, The Poisonwood Bible, The Book Thief, Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories, The Edible Woman, A Room of One's Own, Swordspoint, Slaughterhouse-Five, American Gods (Twentieth Anniversary Edition), Princeps' Fury, The Color Purple, Water for Elephants, Intersex, The Help, First Lord's Fury, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Gone Girl, Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron, Words of Radiance, The Fault in Our Stars, The Emperor's Soul, Skin Game, The Goldfinch, Sycamore Row, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, and Nothing O'Clock

I have another 104 four star reads in my list and 55 reads that I gave three stars. I only had 8 or 9 two star reads and none that I disliked enough to rate a single star.

As you can see, I read quite a lot of popular fiction. This is a new thing for me. I've never been one to follow the herd. I found it remarkable that I enjoyed as many of the books as much as I did. The other trend for me has been feminist works, something that probably won't appeal to anyone here. I've enjoyed them not because they were angry, but because they were remarkably rational. I believe that everyone who isn't a complete jerk should read A Room of One's Own at least once. It provides not only stunning prose, but eye-opening context.

The bulk of the sci-fi I read this year fell into the four star category.

Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Kindred, 1984, The Day of the Triffids, Childhood's End, A Scanner Darkly, The Telling, The Door Into Summer, Altered Carbon, Calculating God, The Man in the High Castle, The Dispossessed, The Junkie Quatrain, The Ghost Brigades, The Android's Dream, Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, Wool, The Girl with All the Gifts, METAtropolis: Green Space...

Of the bunch I'd say that the ones that really stand out besides the obvious (gosh, I haven't seen that one since high school) classics are:

Kindred: a time travel piece where the heroine (an African American woman) is thrust back into the South at the height of slavery. As I understand it, this was Octavia Butler's first novel. Taking that into consideration, I'd call it exceptional.
Calculating God: aliens come to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto because the galaxy is about to go 'boom.' This one is just plain fun, while not being trivial.
The Junkie Quatrain: yet another zombie book that manages to be unusually good because it takes an experimental approach to storytelling. It's a quick read and worth the time in my opinion. (And yes, I liked it more than The Girl with All the Gifts. It surprised me too.)
Shadow Show: an anthology of tribute stories written in memory of Ray Bradbury. I read a number of anthologies this year and this stands out among the best. The other one I read that was unusually good was a fantasy anthology called Unfettered. Both are well worth looking at.

I've managed to read 55 books out of my target of 50 this year, but I've only given two of those 5 star ratings, neither of which are science fiction. One was Phantastes by George MacDonald and the other way Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I've dished out a fair few 4/5's though. If anyone's interested the books I've read this year are through the link below:

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challe...

I noticed you read The Illearth War, Joel. Had you read Lord Foul's Bane previously? It's been a very long time since I read those trilogies, but I wouldn't think they made much sense out of order.

Salem wrote: "This was also the first year I've read Lem and will look for more."

I'd definitely recommend more Lem I read The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy and The Invincible this year. Both were good but extremely different, one surreal and the other hard sci-fi.

I am going to try and read 1Q84 this year I bought it ages ago and haven't read it yet which considering Haruki Murakami is one of my favourite authors is not good!

Thanks to everyone for their recommendations there are some really good books here. I really hope I have enough time to read some of them in 2015. My resolution this year is to try and read some of my backlog rather than keep buying more and more books. I think this maybe difficult!

2014 on Goodreads isn't a real book, just a place for all of us to review our reading for 2014. Here's mine
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...