On My Bookshelves #30: Science Fiction Books Waiting To Be Read...

It's another laid-back Sunday, just before the week's work madness begins, and I'm taking stock again...  For the longest time now, I've been facing a dilemma that I'm sure is common to many, if not most, bookworms and obsessed bibliophiles like me: how to balance reading books I already own, with books I want to buy, and do end up buying.  I don't know why I'm so compulsive about buying new books, when I have so many sitting around on my bulging shelves, that have been there for years, unread! 

My non-bookworm husband has been asking me, a long time now, to stop buying books until I finish reading all the ones I already have.  However, the lure of the new is just too much of a temptation...  My compulsive book buying has gotten even worse ever since I became a book blogger.  When I visit other blogs, I can't help but notice the soon-to-be-published, as well newly released, tantalizing books featured by the bloggers, and my addiction simply kicks into high gear! 

I don't think I'll ever be able to manage this problem...

Now that I've finished reading Paul T. Harry's excellent novel,  The 5 Moons of Tiiana, my appetite for science fiction has definitely been whetted.  So I went to my shelves and grabbed some SF books that I really should have read by now, to share them with you all.

To get more information about these books, just click on the pictures, and you'll be taken directly to their Goodreads pages.

Isaac Asimov Masterpieces

 

 

Asimov is, of course, one of the revered masters of the SF genre, as well as one of its most prolific writers.  His novels are a combination of hard science and space opera, with incredibly imaginative scenarios.  I was first introduced to him through his Lucky Starr series, when I was a teenager.  I devoured the books from that series that I was able to get at the library.  They were written under the pseudonym of Paul French, and are specifically for the young adult market.  I should go back and re-read them, in order to re-live the memories...

Asimov excelled at writing epics such as the Foundation series.  He was also a pioneer in theoretical robotics, having invented the Three Laws of Robotics, which I remember from another classic of his, I Robot. 

I think I should plan on dusting off the above and getting to them soon.  After all, I love being swept away into outer space, with future scenarios and weird aliens!

Arthur C. Clarke Masterpieces

 

I have never forgotten my first experience reading Clarke.  It was a rather chilling, yet fascinating, one.  The book I read is titled Childhood's End.  This novel presents a possible scenario for the end of the human race, and it's not one I would ever want to become reality...  As I read, I had to keep reminding myself that what I was reading would, thankfully, never come to pass.  The events described were so realistic, though, that I had to literally pull myself out of the novel every so often, just to breathe... 

Clarke is a renowned master of that branch of science fiction known as "hard SF".  I have also read his 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as seen the film adaptation.  Stanley Kubrick, the director of the movie, was a true visionary; his rendition of the novel is an amazing one, especially considering the fact that it came out in 1968.  He succeeded in capturing Clarke's remarkably realistic vision of the future.  Sadly, the year 2001 has come and gone, and we have not even come close to sending an unmanned probe to Jupiter...

The Year's Best SF Collections

 

 

Author and editor Gardner Dozois is best known for his yearly collections of the very best science fiction stories.  Throughout the years, he has not only included veteran writers like Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, and Kate Wilhelm, but also newer ones, like Gwyneth Jones, Jay Lake, James Patrick Kelly, and Elizabeth Bear.

The science fiction field is a vast one, encompassing several sub-genres, so it's a rather daunting one to read.  I have several more SF books that I have to root around and find, so I can post them in this meme.  Meanwhile, I know I will have to get to the above sometime within the next year or so...if I can stop buying new SF novels...