Apr 4, 2026, 11:36 PMI'm going to be in Europe soon, and I'm looking for good SF/F books that might not have reached Australia. What do you have?
#books #bookstodon
- Apr 4, 2026, 11:36 PM
Replies
- Apr 4, 2026, 11:37 PM
@cstross might know some, and has a much larger audience.
Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shopApr 5, 2026, 6:27 AM@Verain I burned out on reading SF/F years ago. Try casting a wider net? And ask reviewers, not authors (we're too busy rolling our own).
- Apr 5, 2026, 7:12 AM
@cstross I don't follow any reviewers on here! Are there any?
Apr 5, 2026, 8:43 AM@Verain : I write [just as a reader] about S.F. classics. I can't help much with 21st Century books. Apologies. Have you exhausted the 20th Century? Four favorites from those decades:
1. "Anything You Can Do" by Randall T. Garrett aka Darrel T. Langart [public domain]:
https://oldcoder.org/2012/etext/Novels/Anything/
Dated but readable. Like some S.F. novels of 60 years ago or more, it wasn't intended as YA but might be considered YA today. The Nipe, featured in the attached illustration, sees himself as reasonable enough but he does chow down on humans. He reads the newspapers and looks forward to meeting the detective who's been hired to track him down. However, for most of the book, there is some question about who, and what, the detective actually is.
2. "Standard Candles" by Jack McDevitt:
https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Candles-Short-Fiction-McDevitt/dp/0964832046
Story collection. "Standard Candles" is, I think, lesser known. So, you probably haven't seen it. A few of the stories are exceptional. I liked the title story and "Ellie", myself. The opening sentence of "Ellie", and hook, is as follows: “If the lights at Bolton's Tower go out, the devil gets loose."
3. "The Rediscovery of Man" by Paul Linebarger aka Cordwainer Smith:
https://www.amazon.com/Rediscovery-Man-Complete-Science-Cordwainer/dp/0915368560
Paul Linebarger had an unusual life. He trained the CIA in psychological warfare and, on the writing side, assembled a future history on the scale of Heinlein's but more colorful and bizarre. A few of his stories are dated, but not many.
4. "Gladiator" by Philip Wylie [public domain]:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42914
"Gladiator" has never been proved to be the inspiration for "Superman" but it seems almost certain.
The timeframe is right for Siegel and/or Shuster to have read the book. It was, too, a period when the pair are said to have read large amounts of science fiction.
Additionally, the hero of "Gladiator", Hugo Danner, had superpowers that were carried over to Clark Kent exactly. So, this is most likely the proto-Superman.
The primary difference between the two characters was that Danner felt that what he was was a curse and Kent reveled in it.
- Apr 5, 2026, 9:04 AM
@oldcoder Thanks, I'll give it a look.
