Here's my list of fiction only ( I was going to list classics such as J.S Mill and Aquinas, but it's long already.) Listed in not much order, here are books that are not just important – some not important at all – but which I enjoyed reading and which most people haven't read:
The Book of the New Sun (4 books, 2 v.) + The Urth of the new Sun - Gene Wolfe
Perhaps the greatest work of literature actually worth reading. It's worth re-reading and even reading the crowd-sourced critical exegesis. “Wolfe is our Melville” - Ursula LeGuin
*
Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, Soldier of Sidon - Gene Wolfe
Fresh antiquity. I also recommend Plutarch and Herodotus to go with it, once your appetite is whetted.
*
Tales of the Dying Earth, Lyonesse (3v.) - Jack Vance
Wolfe's favorite author; rare strains of high fantasy not at all like Tolkien, yet excellent
*
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (numerous stories) – Fritz Leiber
Clark Ashton Smith
Three Hearts and Three Lions - Poul Anderson
More great fantasy that isn't warmed-over Tolkien
*
Vernor Vinge, esp. A Fire on the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, Tatja Grimm's World, story: Bookworm, Run!
Vernor Vinge invented the concept of the technological singularity and was the first to seriously attempt to write about super-intelligence. There are no greater novels of ideas. The writing, plots, settings, and characters are also exceptionally original and good,.
*
Schismatrix Plus – Bruce Sterling
Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Mind-expanding
*
Sten (10 v.) - Alan Cole and Chris Bunch
Fun special-forces / space opera series with some serious ideas in the background / also a good recipe or few
*
Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester never had anything rejected by any editor. Astonishing and fun
*
Emergence - Donald Palmer
A bio-engineered plague wiped out everyone but a 12-year old girl (she thought). A prodigy with a 6th degree black-belt, part of a secret project, hidden in a deep underground base, she finds notes telling her he's the next stage in human evolution. Traveling across America, she finds she's not alone.
*
Illuminatus!, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy – Robert Anton Wilson (and Robert Shea for the former)
Illuminatus! originated from the conspiracy nut mail that then-Playboy magazine editors RAW and Shea received. The premise is that ~all conspiracy theories are true (ish), even, no, especially the really crazy ones. Then the authors used Wm. S. Burroughs' cut-up technique and carefully shuffled everything. Bad puns abound, often obscure. I spent years tracking down every reference in Illuminatus! and RAW's other books, I'm not going to do it justice here. The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy is similar, but eerily prophetic in some ways. These books are part of Operation Mindfuck – you have been warned.
*
Jhereg (~17v.) - Steven Brust
A 3rd generation Communist Hungarian is just the guy to write about the underworld of the the Elven Imperium (Dragearan Empire). Fun
*
Babel-17, Nova – Samuel Delany (Neveryona series and short stories are good, other Samuel Delany NOT recommended, esp. Hogg, Dhalgren)
*
Collected short stories of Theodore Sturgeon (you may know him better as Vonnegut's character, Kilgore Trout)
*
Norstrilia, The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith / Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Godson of China's first president, Sun Yat-Sen, author of the first textbook on psychological warfare, inventor of the SF ideas of cyborgs, animal-human hybrids and several other big ideas
*
Little Fuzzy, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, Lone Star Planet, – H. Beam Piper
One of the great men of SF, eminently readable and intelligent. Many of his works are now public domain.
*
The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner
Ubiquitous computers and networks in an American pop culture gone mad. Written in 1975, it came perhaps the closest to predicting the future of any SF. The Shockwave Rider introduced the “worm”, a computer virus spreading over a network.
*
Isle of the Dead, Doorways in the Sand, Lord of Light, The Chronicles of Amber (10v.) Roger Zelazny
Zelazny has wonderful style – Isle of the Dead and Doorways in the Sand are among his lesser-known but best works. The Chronicles of Amber begs to be filmed as a long-running series, it'll be bigger than Game of Thrones. With generative AI it may become affordable to produce.
*
The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea - L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Old, old “hard fantasy” – travel to fictional worlds by math. Fun!
*
Lest Darkness Fall – L. Sprague de Camp
Written in the 1930s – a professor falls back in time to just before the fall of the Rome, tries to stop the dark ages from happening by introducing modern technologies.
*
The Adventures of Conrad Stargard (7v.) – Leo Frankowski
A Polish engineer accidentally goes back in time to a few years before the 1240 Mongol invasion, is stuck there/then, does the Connecticut Yankee bit much better than Twain. Decently written, but the engineering is really the point here, and lots of wish-fulfillment fantasy, particularly in the final-volume prequel about how the time machine came into being and exploring the consequences. “Conrad's Time Machine” is much better thought-out than most time-travel stories.
*
Aristoi – Walter Jon Williams
This 1993 novel does better nanotechnology than The Diamond Age, better virtual reality than Snow Crash, and adds psychological horror beyond the worst of MK-ULTRA and conspiracy literature.
*
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
Classic SF, cute aliens turn scary
*
Accelerando - Charles Stross (I liked his other early novel, Singularity Sky, but his later works have much less effort put into them, though the Laundry Files series is fun)
Pray this isn't the future. One of the smartest authors you'll ever read spent years writing this story going right through the singularity and out the other side. It helps to know going in that the cute robo-cat “Aineko” is more than it seems. Aineko = “AI neko”, “neko” is Japanese for “cat”. Speaking of which, Bruce Sterling's story “Maneki Neko” is important to understanding how modern distributed, acephalous cabals (may) work.
*
Discworld - Terry Pratchett (first 17 volumes before 1995 are best, ones after about v. 33 in 2004 are for completists)
*
Robert A. Heinlein (1930s- 1950s, or up to Stranger in a Strange Land, which is important but not quite recommended – NOT Farnham's Freehold or I Will Fear no Evil; late Heinlein is like a different author: maybe worth reading, not so much re-reading, not suitable for children.)
*
Frank Herbert (I like all his stuff, particularly the less-known books, but would only re-read Dune, Heretics of Dune and maybe the Jorj X. McKie / BuSab books. The Dune Encyclopedia by Willis E. McNelly et. al. is essential for Dune scholarship. )
*
The “colour” fairy books (Blue, Red, etc. 12v.) – Andrew Lang
Traditional fairy tales, uncensored, compiled by the 19th century's greatest folklorist. If you haven't read these, you've never read a REAL story. The Dover editions also have some lovely Art Nouveau illustrations. Not all of these would be considered appropriate for children today by some (wrong) people.
So many books, but alas, we have finite time!
Can we be friends
My 'too read' list is way too long now! 😩
Excellent post. Thank you
Here's my list of fiction only ( I was going to list classics such as J.S Mill and Aquinas, but it's long already.) Listed in not much order, here are books that are not just important – some not important at all – but which I enjoyed reading and which most people haven't read:
The Book of the New Sun (4 books, 2 v.) + The Urth of the new Sun - Gene Wolfe
Perhaps the greatest work of literature actually worth reading. It's worth re-reading and even reading the crowd-sourced critical exegesis. “Wolfe is our Melville” - Ursula LeGuin
*
Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, Soldier of Sidon - Gene Wolfe
Fresh antiquity. I also recommend Plutarch and Herodotus to go with it, once your appetite is whetted.
*
Tales of the Dying Earth, Lyonesse (3v.) - Jack Vance
Wolfe's favorite author; rare strains of high fantasy not at all like Tolkien, yet excellent
*
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (numerous stories) – Fritz Leiber
Clark Ashton Smith
Three Hearts and Three Lions - Poul Anderson
More great fantasy that isn't warmed-over Tolkien
*
Vernor Vinge, esp. A Fire on the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, Tatja Grimm's World, story: Bookworm, Run!
Vernor Vinge invented the concept of the technological singularity and was the first to seriously attempt to write about super-intelligence. There are no greater novels of ideas. The writing, plots, settings, and characters are also exceptionally original and good,.
*
Schismatrix Plus – Bruce Sterling
Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Mind-expanding
*
Sten (10 v.) - Alan Cole and Chris Bunch
Fun special-forces / space opera series with some serious ideas in the background / also a good recipe or few
*
Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester never had anything rejected by any editor. Astonishing and fun
*
Emergence - Donald Palmer
A bio-engineered plague wiped out everyone but a 12-year old girl (she thought). A prodigy with a 6th degree black-belt, part of a secret project, hidden in a deep underground base, she finds notes telling her he's the next stage in human evolution. Traveling across America, she finds she's not alone.
*
Illuminatus!, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy – Robert Anton Wilson (and Robert Shea for the former)
Illuminatus! originated from the conspiracy nut mail that then-Playboy magazine editors RAW and Shea received. The premise is that ~all conspiracy theories are true (ish), even, no, especially the really crazy ones. Then the authors used Wm. S. Burroughs' cut-up technique and carefully shuffled everything. Bad puns abound, often obscure. I spent years tracking down every reference in Illuminatus! and RAW's other books, I'm not going to do it justice here. The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy is similar, but eerily prophetic in some ways. These books are part of Operation Mindfuck – you have been warned.
*
Jhereg (~17v.) - Steven Brust
A 3rd generation Communist Hungarian is just the guy to write about the underworld of the the Elven Imperium (Dragearan Empire). Fun
*
Babel-17, Nova – Samuel Delany (Neveryona series and short stories are good, other Samuel Delany NOT recommended, esp. Hogg, Dhalgren)
*
Collected short stories of Theodore Sturgeon (you may know him better as Vonnegut's character, Kilgore Trout)
*
Norstrilia, The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith / Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Godson of China's first president, Sun Yat-Sen, author of the first textbook on psychological warfare, inventor of the SF ideas of cyborgs, animal-human hybrids and several other big ideas
*
Little Fuzzy, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, Lone Star Planet, – H. Beam Piper
One of the great men of SF, eminently readable and intelligent. Many of his works are now public domain.
*
The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner
Ubiquitous computers and networks in an American pop culture gone mad. Written in 1975, it came perhaps the closest to predicting the future of any SF. The Shockwave Rider introduced the “worm”, a computer virus spreading over a network.
*
Isle of the Dead, Doorways in the Sand, Lord of Light, The Chronicles of Amber (10v.) Roger Zelazny
Zelazny has wonderful style – Isle of the Dead and Doorways in the Sand are among his lesser-known but best works. The Chronicles of Amber begs to be filmed as a long-running series, it'll be bigger than Game of Thrones. With generative AI it may become affordable to produce.
*
The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea - L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Old, old “hard fantasy” – travel to fictional worlds by math. Fun!
*
Lest Darkness Fall – L. Sprague de Camp
Written in the 1930s – a professor falls back in time to just before the fall of the Rome, tries to stop the dark ages from happening by introducing modern technologies.
*
The Adventures of Conrad Stargard (7v.) – Leo Frankowski
A Polish engineer accidentally goes back in time to a few years before the 1240 Mongol invasion, is stuck there/then, does the Connecticut Yankee bit much better than Twain. Decently written, but the engineering is really the point here, and lots of wish-fulfillment fantasy, particularly in the final-volume prequel about how the time machine came into being and exploring the consequences. “Conrad's Time Machine” is much better thought-out than most time-travel stories.
*
Aristoi – Walter Jon Williams
This 1993 novel does better nanotechnology than The Diamond Age, better virtual reality than Snow Crash, and adds psychological horror beyond the worst of MK-ULTRA and conspiracy literature.
*
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
Classic SF, cute aliens turn scary
*
Accelerando - Charles Stross (I liked his other early novel, Singularity Sky, but his later works have much less effort put into them, though the Laundry Files series is fun)
Pray this isn't the future. One of the smartest authors you'll ever read spent years writing this story going right through the singularity and out the other side. It helps to know going in that the cute robo-cat “Aineko” is more than it seems. Aineko = “AI neko”, “neko” is Japanese for “cat”. Speaking of which, Bruce Sterling's story “Maneki Neko” is important to understanding how modern distributed, acephalous cabals (may) work.
*
Discworld - Terry Pratchett (first 17 volumes before 1995 are best, ones after about v. 33 in 2004 are for completists)
*
Robert A. Heinlein (1930s- 1950s, or up to Stranger in a Strange Land, which is important but not quite recommended – NOT Farnham's Freehold or I Will Fear no Evil; late Heinlein is like a different author: maybe worth reading, not so much re-reading, not suitable for children.)
*
Frank Herbert (I like all his stuff, particularly the less-known books, but would only re-read Dune, Heretics of Dune and maybe the Jorj X. McKie / BuSab books. The Dune Encyclopedia by Willis E. McNelly et. al. is essential for Dune scholarship. )
*
The “colour” fairy books (Blue, Red, etc. 12v.) – Andrew Lang
Traditional fairy tales, uncensored, compiled by the 19th century's greatest folklorist. If you haven't read these, you've never read a REAL story. The Dover editions also have some lovely Art Nouveau illustrations. Not all of these would be considered appropriate for children today by some (wrong) people.
***
Happy New Year!
Thank you for this!
Root access to Jim’s brain
I love this description!
Epic
I would include Influence by Cialdini.
Anything by Judea Pearl especially The Book of Why and the idea of a Causal Inference Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why
Thank you for this list Jim... some great suggestions...
Great list!