Greatest SF novel of all time? And why?

POSTED BY: FREESOUP
UPDATED: Monday, August 10, 2026 16:37
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FREESOUP

Tuesday, October 7, 2003 1:03 PM

What, in your view, is the greatest (most well-written, most affecting, most life changing, most influental, any criteria desired) SF novel of all time, and why?

I'll start off with my choice: the five parts of a combined work by Gene Wolfe, published origianally as four novels and another novel coda, called in general "The Book of the New Sun", namely:

The Shadow of the Torturer

The Claw of the Concilliator

The Sword of the Lictor

The Citadel of the Autarch

and the coda The Urth of the New Sun, which together comprise the work.

Why? Gene Wolfe is recognized by other SF writers as simply the best and most ambitious prose stylist who also has a lot of stuff going on at every level of this multilevel work.

For example, the story is told by an unreliable narrator after he becomes the ruler of one of the smaller nations on Urth, as our world is known in the last few centuries before the Old Sun, now too dim to hide the stars in the daytime, gutters and goes out.

The story is told using unfamiliar but suggestive vocabulary, yet every word is English, and every name is that of a human who has already lived and died before our own time: Dorcas, Dr. Talos, Jolenta, Baldanders, Agia, Valeria, Jonas. The words suggest but do not fully describe this world. For example, the beasts that pull the phaeton taxis in Nessus have sharp teeth and claws, eat meat, and can run very, very quickly. They are not horses, or if so are their much modified descendents, and are called destriers, a word used in the time of cavalry charges before our era to describe fast horses. The aristocracy, who may come from partly extraterrestrial settlements of lower gravity, are very tall and pale and are called "Exultants". The alien visitors to Urth are called "cacogens", and at least some of them appear to be travelling, and aging, backwards in time, and they seem accordingly to know a great deal about different and even contradictory or mutually exclusive futures.

It reads like a fantasy novel, because Severian, our narrator, is an uneducated man in the Ancient Future, at a time when the Urth is so old that it takes him years to realize the tower he and other children were raised in is actually one of a host of old spaceships left to rust slowly on the landing field that makes up the Citadel in the sprawling and decrepit city of Nessus. He has been raised since a very young age by the Guild of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, commonly known as the Guild of Torturers. Severian is not a nice man, and he lies. He also claims to have a perfect memory.

Yet the obvious story conceals many things. For example, travel through space faster than light in the ships that ply between Urths of other suns also allows for travel through time. The future will diverge depending on whether a Champion of Earth can win in a far Court across the seas of space the prize of the return to youth and power of the Urth's Sun. If Severian were to become this Champion, would it be because some in the future want him to succeed, or to fail?

Severian as a young man commits a crime against the Guild, allowing a "client" that he loves to die too soon, and by her own hand. He is exiled to become the Lictor of Thrax, or Prison Warden and Executor in a distant city. Thus begins a strange and unexpected journey that results, as he puts it in the first chapter, in him "backing into the throne". One of the major questions in the novel, then, is not whether he becomes Autarch, but how he gets there, why, and what will happen when he does. For it is clear that the events of the story are like a many-times revised draft. Many actors capable of affecting changes over time and space attempt to influence, aid or destroy Severian, and cause is often preceeded by effect.

Severian's world is strange, and becomes stranger as we appreciate it more. The moon is green, because forests have been planted there after massive terraforming and scientific advances unimaginable in our own day. When Severian sees a painting from our Era of a man in white armor and g

HJERMSTED

Tuesday, October 7, 2003 4:18 PM

Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, baby!

My favorite novel since I first read it in 1988. I re-read it every so often to absorb something new. The unabridged version is just as good if not better than the orginal.

Why? you ask. My answer: read it, dammit! That is if you haven't already.

Honourable mention: OS Card's Treason (easily his best stand alone novel), Ender series and Alvin Maker series; David Brin's Postman (damn Costner to Hade's if he's cost this fine novel even a single reader); Zelazny's Amber series; and, of course, Heinlein's Friday and Job: A Comedy of Justice.

Honourable mention (not sci fi but fantastical): All works by Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan.

mattro

ARCHER

Tuesday, October 7, 2003 11:19 PM

Good topic, hard call.

In terms of creating a future society, complete with detailed and deep cultures that are somewhat familiar from their millennia-old roots yet strikingly alien...

Frank Herbert's Dune.

Standard selection for this sort of discussion, but well-earned. Unlike a lot of science fiction, Dune has aged very well, because at this point in time it still represents a plausible future.

(Well, as plausible as space-warping and psychic powers are, anyway.)

Brian Herbert's recent "Dreamer of Dune" gives a fairly good picture of the creation of the novel and its successors.

We don't know who put this cup of life into our hands. But when we go our bones will bake upon the burning sands. 'Cause we walk but once among the living, so no regrets and no forgiving- it's hard to dance when you're down upon your knees. And these are dark days indeed.

SUCCATASH

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 1:07 AM

Hey Free Soup, thanks for the recommendation. I just bought all of the books including Urth of the New Sun, I got a good deal on them used today.

I just finished reading Stranger in a Strange Land and also Starship Troopers and I have to say I was disappointed. So many Browncoats love it so I tried it.

I guess the reason I read scifi and fantasy is to simply escape and be entertained by a creative story. I don't want to be preached at or lectured to, and I don't really want a life changing experience. Seems to me that Heinlein lays it on a bit too thick.

For example, I loved the first half of "Stranger" -- the Man from Mars, the goverment cover up, the main characters. But I got bored during the second half when it was all about Religion and Free Love and just too much sex and theorizing going on.

George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is my current favorite series, although he's not really Sci Fi.

Starship Troopers was a good read. As I've heard others say, it's nothing like the movie. Holy shit, NOTHING like the movie.

VETERAN

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 2:29 AM

How about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
It's one of the first true science fiction stories. In a way it's still pertinent today, what with cloning and stem cell research in the news and all.

BOBOTHEBRAVE

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 3:56 AM

I'm gonna have to second freesoup and vote for Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (I haven't read Urth of the New Sun, the coda volume; but from what I've heard the first four were the ones originally conceived of as a single long novel, with Urth being a separate continuation). I don't think that there's a single SF novel (and very few "literary" ones) that can match it for the sophistication of its telling, the richness of its world, and the depth of its feeling. As the layers of the story are peeled away and the world's secrets revealed, there's just an indescribable sense of exhilaration.

I'll also mention The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is the perfect example of how you can use SF as thoughtful social discourse.

LOTV

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 5:31 AM

Certainly a tough choice here.

I'm going to have to go with "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy by Douglas Adams...(whew.. almost said Scott Adams there.)

I know its a series and not a novel, but I really can't think of the series any other way than as one huge great novel. I read the whole series in 5 days; I just couldn't put it down. Its funny and well written, and has just the right tweak of everything to make it irresistable.

In second, I would have to say Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, and if anyone complains that its a collection of short stories and not a novel, then I'll say Farenheit 451, by the same (though I feel the ending falls a little weak).

LOTV: Ima-who-whata-whoichy-whoda-whazza--huh?

Garapagosu Last Update: 6/24/03

MANIACNUMBERONE

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 6:04 AM

The Bronze Ring. By Andrew Lange. Not Sci-fi so much as fantasy.
It's in a book of fairy tales, and it's quite long for one... over 100 pgs.
It was great and twisted and I lost the book and I have never seen it since. I can only find chapter one on the internet.

NORUDDINWAY

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 6:20 AM

Roger Zelazny's Amber novels..nothin' beats em.

You know you only need to scare him...

Pain is Scary.

DRAKON

Wednesday, October 8, 2003 8:38 AM

I am going to vote for my favorites which is "Starship Troopers". Maybe its from coming from a military family and all that, but that book really spoke to me.

I would recommend all the Heinlein "juveniles" Have Spacesuit, will Travel, Doorway into Summer, Magic Inc. Citizen of the Galaxy, Rocketship Galileo, The Rolling Stones, etc.

I would like to tell folks who loved "Stranger" that some folks have gotten together, and without Admiral Bob's permission, started the "Church of All Worlds". That makes him, (as far as I know,) the second SF author to have spawned a legally recognized religion. Unlike L. Ron, however, he only wrote the book.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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