AKICOLJ: A book for tom

[coalescent]

The esteemed Mr Anderson passes on this request for book recommendations:

... an SF book for a reading group - needs to be something that non-SF readers would appreciate, not too hard to read, something to get them started with SF. Any ideas? Also needs to be in cheap-ish paperback I suppose.

The need for it to be readily available in paperback probably implies something fairly recent; it needs to be science fiction, not fantasy; and obviously, it needs to be good. Tom is already suggesting The Separation, The Prestige, and ("through gritted teeth") Cloud Atlas. What else should be on this list? (Tom notes that he will find and kill, horribly, anyone who suggests Air.)

(On a separate note, for anyone who might be interested my books-read-in-2006 roundup is here.)

EDIT: Tom has listed the suggestions so far here.

Comments

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Something they like first and foremost - doesn't matter how good it is if they never finish it. (Yes ideally both, but if you had to choose, I wouldn't go for good.)

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I think i'd rather they didn't read anything than read something crap, since that's likely to make them think all SF is crap.

Also, is 'The Time Traveller's Wife' really SF? I haven't read it, but got the impression from discussions hereabouts that it was basically a straight story using an SFnal trick as a storytelling device. Cue argument over what SF is ...

-- tom

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think it's SF in that it's a love story you couldn't tell without the SF device. And it at least gestures towards changing the world -- the time travelling has a genetic basis (!), so they end up with time-travelling mice on the cover of Nature, etc. But the style is very much premium middlebrow, goes for the easy emotional notes, and it's about 200 pages too long. Would have made a brilliant novella, possibly, but only an average novel.