SF reading wish-list

You know the story. No matter how many books you devour in a year, it seems like you wind up with a to-read list that's twice as long. For every book you read, two or three more rise up to take its place. This literary Lernaean Hydra has been plaguing me lately. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's because I've gotten back into reading for pleasure now that I'm in Korea and working the afternoon shift.  Or it could be that I've decided to take a more proactive approach to my craft. Perhaps I just spend too much time on TV Tropes.

Whatever the reason, I'm going to share with you some of the titles on my reading list. Some of 'em are classics, as usual; and some of them are little-known series which deserve more love. If you're interested in seeing what's out there in the world of SF, both old and new, give the following litany your perusal.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Once again demonstrating his genius for creating credible and deeply speculative SF (with historical context), Asimov created the Foundation series, which went on to critical acclaim. The main character, Hari Seldon, is the creator of an esoteric school of mathematics called psychohistory, which draws upon the law of mass action to effectively predict the future on a large scale. Using his research, Seldon foresees the imminent collapse of the Galactic Empire, Seldon creates the "Foundation"—a hidden enclave at the end of the galaxy where all humanity's accumulated knowledge is stored. The series documents Seldon's struggle to establish the Foundation and the attempts by the remnants of humanity to reestablish the Empire according to "the Seldon Plan."

I picked up a few books in the series for a few thousand won from an outgoing English teacher. I figured I'd give it a read...even though Asimov's I, Robot is still sitting unread in a box back in my closet in California!

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Matt Cruse is a 15-year-old cabin boy working on the airship Aurora. One day the Aurora encounters a drifting zeppelin with a mysterious old man mumbling about "beautiful creatures," who dies shortly thereafter. A year later, the Aurora is brought down on a tropical island by air pirates, where Matt and the wealthy Kate de Vries discover the truth of the old man's maundering.

This is another series I heard about by clicking around on TV Tropes. I know absolutely nothing about these books, except that Adam Young likes them. I've always been a fan of aviation in general. But something about those tales of weird aircraft and zeppelins and air pirates (particularly in the context of steam punk and alternate history) sets my imagination on fire. The Airborn series has an added twist: strange creatures and scientific discovery. What could be more awesome?

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve


It's a grim dystopian future. The Earth's crust has been ravaged by a horrific war. Human cities are no longer sedentary, but are mounted upon gigantic treads which roll about the cracked, blasted surface of Planet Earth. More horrific yet, these "Traction Cities" devour each other with huge mechanical jaws to gain precious resources. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and the outlook is pretty bleak. Throw in Earth's ancient technology, a few long-lost superweapons and a load of characters and you have a pretty decent story, if a rather dark one.

I know next to nothing about this series, but can't wait to get into it. Cities rolling about on giant caterpillar treads is something that's fascinated me ever since I saw the film John Carter (based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series). The Mortal Engines series has garnered quite a lot of (positive) critical attention, so at the very least it won't be a boring read, right? 

Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker

This series edges farther toward fantasy than I'm usually comfortable with. The concept is convoluted, so bear with me. In the first book, we've got your typical space freighter, the Stehekin, captained by one Nathan Brazil. There's a bunch of other people on board, too. They get a distress signal from a planet called Dalgonia, where there's an archaeological team doing some research on the long-dead Markovian race which once lived there. The Markovians were known for building planet-sized computers with which they attempted to fathom the secrets of the universe. Upon arriving, they discovered one of the archaeologists, Elkinos Skander, has murdered the others and disappeared. Tracking him to one of Dalgonia's poles, the crew of the Stehekin are sucked into the Well World, which is divided into "hexes," each hex being subject to different rules, laws, and inhabited by a different race. But here's the catch: entry into one of the hexes means that the person entering is transformed into the race native to that hex. One by one the crew members change into exotic alien forms; in these new bodies they must solve the mystery of the Well World, find out how to stop Skander and turn themselves back into humans. And Nathan Brazil discovers something extraordinary about himself, too.

Weird, right? So weird I feel like I have to read it. I just want to see how the team gets transformed, and what they all morph into. Call it morbid fascination. Chalker himself was quite taken with bodily transformations as well; the rest of the Well World series and quite a few of his other works deal with it. 

In the Balance (Worldwar, Book One) by Harry Turtledove

In a nutshell...

Smack dab in the middle of World War II, Earth is invaded by the Race, a horde of spacefaring reptilian warriors bent on galactic domination. Both the Allies and the Axis unite in the face of mutual destruction and rise up against the invaders.

I used to hate historical fiction. Then I cautiously read the first book of the Destroyermen series (see below), and I thought, "Hey, this isn't that bad." (Heck, I might even go see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this weekend.) I'm something of a World War II buff, so combine that with an alien invasion (in which the human race not only holds its own, but actually fights back successfully in unexpected ways), and you've got a recipe for a fangasm.

Crusade (Destroyermen, Book Two) by Taylor Anderson

Into the Storm, the first book in the Destroyermen series, details the origin of Anderson's world and characters. The U.S.S. Walker, an aging World War I-era rustbucket of a destroyer under the command of Captain Matthew Reddy, is on the run from the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi. Pressed into service in the desperate first days of World War II, Walker and a half-dozen other worn-out vessels were tasked with defending the Navy's main base in the Philippines. Overrun by a massive assault, Walker and its sister ship Mahan are now fleeing the pursuing Japanese fleet.

That's when a mysterious storm appears out of nowhere, sucks up Mahan and Walker, and dumps them out...well, somewhere else.

The geographical features are the same. The coastlines look just as they should, and all the islands and reefs are in place. But Captain Reddy and his crew are startled to see dinosaurs roaming about on shore, and monstrous fish and other creatures swimming in the ocean. Traces of human civilization are nowhere to be found. Reddy's amazement deepens when the Walker runs straight into a battle between two completely inhuman races: the Lemurians, lemur-like humanoids who live on giant floating cities, and the Grik, savage reptiles with insatiable bloodlust. It seems humans never evolved in this world. Reddy's intervention in the otherworldly battle makes the Walker allies of the Lemurians and enemies of the Grik...and things only escalate from there.

In Crusade, the second book of the series, Reddy and his crew learn that Walker and Mahan were not the only ships to fall through the storm and into the new world: the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi made it through as well, and now it's in the clawed hands of the vengeful Grik...

Come on, do I need to explain this one? A parallel Earth? Inhuman races vying for supremacy? A savage world full of strange monsters and ancient beasts? Bamboo technology mixing it up with World War II capital ships? Freakin' humanoid dinosaurs versus freakin' humanoid lemurs? BARs and Springfield rifles? This is just too cool. Taylor Anderson is no William Faulkner, but he writes well enough to illustrate his world and populate it with vivid imagery. I got all the books in the series (so far) at What the Book? in Itaewon last month, and I'm going to start working on them as soon as I finish my Jules Verne kick (The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days).

In addition to these sci-fi titles, I've got The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley waiting in the wings.

Oh! The joy of reading!

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