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

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

i thought 'Air' was a skiffy book trying its best to look like Grown-Up Literature

Do you mean that Air was trying to assume an aura of respectability generally associated with general fiction? Because there are enough WTF moments in the book (the entire hospital segment, the stomach pregnancy) in which it wears its skiffy credentials proudly. Unlike, say, Never Let Me Go, I don't see Air as using SFnal elements as a means to a cause.

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

'Air' is definitely SF, and doesn't pretend not to be - even apart from the psychokinesis bits (ie the hospital fence and the mouth baby), the whole Air thing is pure SF. None of it is terribly great SF, in ideas terms, but it's passable.

What i meant is that Ryman tries really hard to supply all the goodies one has in mainsteam capital-L Literature, ie deep and believable characters, beautiful prose, evocative descriptions, meaningful social interaction, etc. And i think he fails - the characters are two-dimensional, the village and its people are an insulting caricature of third-world life, and the prose is overdone. I wrote something a bit more detailed at one point, but i'm not sure where - i'll see if i can dig it out.

Heh. There is probably a crack about low-cost writing and 'Ryman Air' in their somewhere.

-- tom

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

all the goodies one has in mainsteam capital-L Literature, ie deep and believable characters, beautiful prose, evocative descriptions, meaningful social interaction

"Miss Eliot, that is not good company. That is the best."

Or, to put it another way, I don't think this is an accurate description of what capital-L literature contains or, for that matter, what your average SF novel doesn't. It's just a description of a really good book. I've read plenty of general fiction that fell short of this standard and precious few novels in any genre that met it.

We obviously disagree over whether Air belongs to former or latter group, but I truly doubt Ryman was trying to emulate general fiction when he attempted - successfully or unsuccessfully - to integrate believable character, beautiful prose, etc. into his novel. I think he was just trying to write a good book.