Top ten obscure science fiction books

GWC Community GWC Book Club
#21

Default Prophet, the point of the list is that the original list excluded a lot of people, and that the world of scifi generally consists (and again, there are exceptions) of white men writing for other white men. I personally am of the opinion that all (genre, and generally) fiction can be better when we consider writers who aren’t generally part of the ‘club’ so to speak. So this list includeds a lot of women and people of color (to generalize, because I don’t know for example where Ulises Silva is from, etc) because they were excluded from the original list. In my opinion, we aren’t yet at a point where “straight white men” really should have a place on lists like this, because as one might note, they dominate all of the other lists of books out there, and indeed the list that spawned this compilation.

I think it’s interesting to see how this list has touched off a nerve with some people here on the Forum - it wasn’t my intention at all. I’m the sort of person who is always looking for good new books to read, and I thought that others might be of the same persuasion.

#22

So what if they do dominate other such lists? A list touting diversity should have diversity and that does in fact include straight white men.

#23

If you’re interested, we can start a reading group about feminist literary criticism and the reclaiming of the canon of women writers, and debates about the canon itself and the way the canon is constructed… I love that stuff.

But, we can also civilly disagree. I think that highlighting marginalized voices is important in and of itself. Straight white men are in no way marginalized, no matter how much the media tries to portray otherwise. (my caveat - class can be an interesting factor as well… how many lower/working class straight white men are writing great books? And if they are, how many of us have heard of them?)

#24

I can think of a few that started out just scraping by, please don’t make me list them right now, I am already blowing off my school work as is…but of course, if you are lucky enough to have a successful book, you likely aren’t “lower class” anymore after that money starts rolling in.

#25

Frankly the gender of a writer doesn’t make a flying difference to me. I read books based solely on whether the story sounds interesting, I couldn’t tell you the names of most of the authors I’ve read over the years unless I’ve made an effort to acquire other books in their series(es).

All I’m getting as that a list that strives to showcase diversity shouldn’t exclude a group.

#26

I went through both lists. Based solely on the description I’d read the following:
Skinner
House of Stairs
Iceworld
Ballroom of the Skies
Midworld
Agent of Chaos
Wasp
Bone Dance
Solstice

A lot of the books on the second list…aren’t even scifi. Sup with that

#27

aaaaaaaaaaaah the eternal discussion of what is and what isn’t sci-fi…

I personally have a fairly wide view of what that includes. But I’m also all for breaking down genre boundaries :slight_smile:

I know I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but I can’t remember where (with more than 1000 posts, well really after about 300, I lost track), but I think that gender can influence what we read - anecdotally, I (unconsciously) was into really only sci-fi and fantasy written by women when I was younger. I gravitated towards books with characters with whom I could identify, and those tended to be women fighting against a society that disadvantaged them, be it because of their gender, or in addition to that, because of their race, their sexuality, their class, etc.

As I’ve grown up into a grown-up, and incidentally read a lot more in a lot of different genres, I’ve come to appreciate the sci-fi that features characters with whom I don’t identify (though to be fair, that’s not what I was reading sci-fi for at age 12), but in terms of identification with a character or an issue, well, that tends to happen for me with women protagonists more than with men. And books with good women protagonists tend to be overwhelmingly written by women of all stripes, no matter the genre.