Stuff for Noobs: Let the Games Begin.

 

The best science fiction is about more than just cool new worlds, wild new technologies, and aliens (though it’s very much about those things too). It’s about politics, economies, the very human condition itself. Just, you know, in a super-exciting way. Science fiction isn’t for a specific kind of person. It’s not “just for nerds.” Science fiction is awesome, and it’s for everyone.

David Pierce, WIRED 12.05.15

I recently read a WIRED article that listed 23* introductory gifts for sci-fi noobs - as the author of the article admits, not a list of the best, but a list of the best places to start.  The item on the list were:

1. Star Wars: The Original Trilogy
2. Star Trek:  The Next Generation
3. Blade Runner
4. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (audiobook format)
5. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
6. Dune, by Frank Herbert
7. The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
8. The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowlings
9. The Magicians Trilogy, by Lev Grossman
10. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
11. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
12. The X-Files
13. Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles
14. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
15. Dark City
16. Beasts of the Southern Wild
17. Firefly
18. The Wool Trilogy, by Hugh Howey
19. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
20. The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker
21. Alien and Aliens
22. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
23. Total Recall

Reading it over, I found this to be an awfully idiosyncratic list. Neal Stephenson, great author, yes, but does he deserve TWO spots in the introductory package?  And even his fans admit that his work isn't always the most accessible writing on the planet. The Harry Potter books?  Sorry, I'm a purist - that's fantasy, not science fiction.  And, as much as I consider the Foundation trilogy to be a classic of the genre, I don't think I'd recommend it as an entree to science fiction at large.  Similarly, The Left Hand of Darkness is a brilliant novel, but I wouldn't start someone with it unless I had an awful lot of faith in their interest.  And - Total Recall?  Seriously?

Overall, this list looks like more of a reflection of the author's interests than anything else - which in no way renders it invalid, I think that's how most people would approach this - but it's not what I would think of as a scholarly approach to the topic.
 
So, although I don't generally approve of lists as a mechanism to generate content**, I've done up a 25-item Science Fiction Starter Pack, which I've tried to base on the accessibility of the material for the neophyte, and a broad representation from the genre. In the interests of keeping it to a more readable length, I'm going to split it between two posts following this one.

- Sid

* Lord knows why 23, maybe they wanted a prime number.

** Which must make me a member of an awfully select club, at least on the Internet.