What is the single best science fiction novel of all time?

[HaroldTheHobbit]

No, it is actually great. I remember one of my undergraduate English Profs selected it out for a Junior Seminar deep dive (though he was mostly an early Novel guy), and it stands up to careful scrutiny. The characters and plot are less stock and tropey than you might assume at first. The prose is top of the line, and every element comes together in a perfect whole. It is simply a work of artistic beauty.

It may well be that Dune lives up to objective and traditional literature analysis standards of being a good book.

Genre literature however doesn't necessarily need to live up to those criteria to be seen as a good book within the framework of the genre. Sci fi in general is about raising the question of "what if" - if one change a specific parameter, how does that impact society and humanity. Sci fi is also first and foremost idea literature. Even with mediocre prose and flat characters it can be good within the genre framework if it treats an idea in an interesting way - Asimov's Foundation is a prime example.

So, if a sci fi book needs to live up traditional literature quality criteria, we have a very small pick of books to choose from. I mean that it's necessary to be aware of and have a deeper knowledge of the genre framework, and judge a book from within the genre frames and internal quality definitions, otherwise one can disregard the vast majority of sci fi as crap.

As for Dune, I really like it from an idea perspective. However, like for example Moorcocks work, it is plagued by a very dull prose typical of the 60ies and 70ies, with a kind of affected modernistic ambition that I personally think makes for a chewy reading, and pulls down otherwise interesting books.

 

[WayneLigon]

The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Classic sci-fi era meets modern sci-fi, military adventurism, first-contact, space mystery - this has it all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

characters that were recognizably us

If by "us" you mean boring ordinary people, then that is not something I identify with.

By contrast, no one in Dune is recognizably us.

No, because it's not about "us".

They are all the same kind of caricatures that have populated adventure fiction for centuries.

They are archetypes - which are deconstructed by the book. You can't write a book to deconstruct archetypes without making the characters archetypes. Most notably "The Chosen One", which gets a good kicking.

 

[Divine2021]

Your arrogance here is astounding and incredibly off putting. You do not need to act this way, even though it is an anonymous forum. Let people like what they like.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Your arrogance here is astounding and incredibly off putting. You do not need to act this way, even though it is an anonymous forum. Let people like what they like.

No one is telling people what to like: Dune isn't my top choice, and @HaroldTheHobbit makes valid criticism about chewy affected prose. I was merely trying to explain it's appeal to someone who seems to have completely missed the point.

And I'm not telling them what not to like: Clarke is a good writer who's work I enjoy. But his characters are largely defined by their profession - this is a scientist, this is an engineer. That's a deliberate choice by the author - he is not writing about people, they aren't important. And one might say that makes them more naturalistic. Many people are defined simply by their role, at least until you get to know them well. You could argue that the quirks many authors give their characters are unrealistic.

 

[Parmandur]

What a weird thing to say. Of course Clarke was interested in big ideas,but he brought them to readers through actual human characters that were recognizably us, allowing us to better experience the wonder of his work from inside it.

By contrast, no one in Dune is recognizably us. They are all the same kind of caricatures that have populated adventure fiction for centuries.

Clarke had, like, no ear for character? He was an idea-dude, the details were often pretty flat.

 

[Parmandur]

My point is that in science fantasy, the science words aren't the meat. They are just incidental pieces of setting. They are the napkins on the table.

What is the meat of Dune? The heart of that text is the orphaned Chosen One's battle for redemption and ultimately to become the new emperor of a feudal heirarchy. The key elements are battles, which ultimately boil down to sword fights (more or less) or attacking while riding giant sand worms, witches and prophesies, and rallying a nomadic people to fight the corrupt Empire.

That is straight fantasy. You can do away with all the quasi-science words and just call stuff like the prophesies magic, and nothing changes. That is, in fact, almost exactly what George R.R. Martin did.

Edit: I'm overstating. The Dune film is pretty much straight hero's journey fantasy. The Dune novel does spend a lot more time setting up its galactic civilization and exploring the implications of interstellar trade etc., so could equally be characterized as soft sci-fi with a fantasy plot.

That's an idiosyncratic view of the genre.

 

[Parmandur]

It may well be that Dune lives up to objective and traditional literature analysis standards of being a good book.

Genre literature however doesn't necessarily need to live up to those criteria to be seen as a good book within the framework of the genre. Sci fi in general is about raising the question of "what if" - if one change a specific parameter, how does that impact society and humanity. Sci fi is also first and foremost idea literature. Even with mediocre prose and flat characters it can be good within the genre framework if it treats an idea in an interesting way - Asimov's Foundation is a prime example.

So, if a sci fi book needs to live up traditional literature quality criteria, we have a very small pick of books to choose from. I mean that it's necessary to be aware of and have a deeper knowledge of the genre framework, and judge a book from within the genre frames and internal quality definitions, otherwise one can disregard the vast majority of sci fi as crap.

As for Dune, I really like it from an idea perspective. However, like for example Moorcocks work, it is plagued by a very dull prose typical of the 60ies and 70ies, with a kind of affected modernistic ambition that I personally think makes for a chewy reading, and pulls down otherwise interesting books.

General literary quality is always primary: "genre" is just a book-selling scam that is occasionally of some use to organize discussion, except when it obscures things with artificial goofy rules that someone made up.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

General literary quality is always primary: "genre" is just a book-selling scam that is occasionally of some use to organize discussion, except when it obscures things with artificial goofy rules that someone made up.

That genres are arbitrary and defined from many different perspectives - not the least marketing, profit and consumerism - is true.

I still mean that using general analytic methods for defining good litterature shoots beside the target when judging wether a genre book is good from a genre perspective. That is especially true - imho - for sci fi, which in it's very core is about ideas etc, such as I described in my earlier post, rather than intimate and believable psychological deep dives, glimmering prose etc etc.

That doesn't mean that a sci fi can't be good literature in a conventional sense, or that sci fi can't be innovative and on the frontline of literary progress. But that's not the only way to define good genre literature.

Take my pick as best sci fi book for example, Neuromancer. In a convensional sense it is a postmodern rehash of older noir books, themselves defining literary thrash, combined with underlying technophobia and a bordering on racism fear of Asia replacing US technoimperialistic dominance. But from within the genre frames, it's a subgenre-defining masterpiece taking sci fi into the postmodern literary era with innovative prose, asking questions about a lot of bleeding edge technological phenomena such as AI and a connected world and how that will affect humanity. And all that combined with interesting characters and an exciting story - from an in-genre perspective.

So in a thread about best sci fi book, perhaps applying out of genre frame perspectives is perhaps not the most fruitful, even if those perspectives are meaningful too.

Edit: In my lit undergrad days, a professor pointed to HP Lovecrafts technique of using gaps to induce fear in the reader to illustrate phenomenological analysis methods. So it's not only Dune that get used in the academy

 

[Parmandur]

So in a thread about best sci fi book, perhaps applying out of genre frame perspectives is perhaps not the most fruitful, even if those perspectives are meaningful too.

Nah, good literature is good literature, whatever bucket we put it in. Necromancer is great because it is great literature (not Dune great, but little is), not because of jumping through some specific genre hoops.