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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
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Guilty Pleasures: Literary Potato Chips For The Gourmet Reader
“This rot-gut wasn’t never within a million parsecs of Tellus, but it ain’t bad—not bad at all.”
– Gray Lensman,
E. E. “Doc” Smith
Haute Cuisine v. Potato Chips
I expect this section’s title says it all. Gourmets are choosy about what they consume, and that is so for both gastronomic and literary gourmets. But it remains so that every once in a while even the most fervently discriminating gastronomic gourmet gets into a mood when only a great big bag of greasy potato chips will satisfy; and so also it is for literary gourmets. So: here are some bags o’ chips for you.
These being what they are, there are no pages for their authors (excepting those few who have pages for other, more literate works listed elsewhere on this site); but each title below is a link to an AbeBooks search for copies of that work or collection of works.
This is not, nor is it intended to be, a comprehensive list of books of this general sort: there are simply too many. Moreover, this is an area where the tastes of discriminating readers are likely to vary far more than they will for the sorts of books this site focusses on. I suspect that many of the authors (and their works) that I class as one-star in the main lists might seem to some other readers to be mere “guilty pleasures”, while some of what I list here will seem sheer trash with no redeeming features. It is, I suspect, all a matter of how one’s sense of humor works, and Heaven knows that’s variable enough.
(A few of the things listed below are not really literary potato chips: those few are decent reads that do not fully qualify—usually by reason of wooden prose—for the main lists here. Most notable are the works of Olaf Stapledon, whose work I recommend almost solely for the wild expansiveness of his imagination. But Zolloco, The Woman and the Raven, and the old classic Land of Snergs are worthwhile entertainment.)
(This list has much overlap with, but does differ from, that of the “campy stuff” on the “Specialty Lists” page here.)
Burroughs, Edgar Rice:
(This is by no means all of Burroughs’ fantastic work, but it comprises his best-known series. A good discussion of his work can be found in Dani Zweig’s “belated review” of Burroughs.)
Tarzan
– nominally adventure novels, but most have a fantasy overlay (as if the base idea isn’t fantastic enough).
A Handful of Men
– the second sub-series of the “Pandemia” cycle.
The King’s Blades
– encompasses two sub-series (plus a third, YA sub-series).
Venice
– aka the “Alchemist” series: Nero Wolfe-style detection in a 13th-century Venice where magic works and Maestro Nostradamus (no, not that one, his cousin) and his apprentice do the detecting.
Lord Darcy
– more “Nero Wolfe where magic works”, this time set in a contemporary England where the king really reigns and the Polish Empire is the enemy.
Green, Simon R.:
(Green, who does dark and often gory fantasy, has done some work that is in the main lists here.
Nightside
– faux noir PI with a heavy dash of dark fantasy, all played for low-key humor.
Howard, Robert E.:
(Howard is called the originator of the swords-and-sorcery tale, though blood-and-thunder—or as some wit put it, “thud-and-blunder”—might better fit.)
Conan
– first and foremost of the thud-and-blunder barbarian heroes, set in the “Hyborian Age”.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
– picqaresque sword-and-sorcery stuff; a few are really good, the rest are the sort of thing you will like if you like that sort of thing.
Mundy, Talbot:
(Mundy wrote several other series—Jimgrim and Tibet among them—but this is his best.)
Tros of Samothrace
– a tetrology of historical adventures with fantasy overtones, set in the Britain of Julius Caesar’s time.
Jules de Grandin
– “the occult Sherlock Holmes”, though Poirot seems a much likelier model; set in a small town in New Jersey that was apparently the occult center of the universe (to judge by all the things that happened there).
“Robeson, Kenneth”:
(The author’s name is in quotation marks because it was a “house name” for several authors who wrote Savage tales—Lester Dent did most of them.)
Doc Savage
– a near-superman and his gang of, um, characterful associates fight crime and conspiracies in the 1930s from their HQ atop the Empire State Building. (Doc’s full name was Clark Savage, Jr.; The Shadow’s real identity was Kent Allard; take it from there.)
Smith, E. E. (“Doc”):
(Smith wrote several series, but only his Lensman work rises above excrutiating.)
Lensman
– the original and still premier “space opera” (in the good, old sense); eminently readable, chiefly because Smith didn’t take himself (or his works) too seriously. Very period.
Stapledon, Olaf:
(Pleasures, but not “guilty”: Stapledon was a mediocre wordsmith, but had an amazingly expansive imagination, and was probably the source of, among others, the Lensman series. These are just his better-known works. Read them.)
First and Last Men
– subtitled, accurately, “A Story of the Near and Far Future”.
Star Maker
– a vast, sweeping tale, the prime referent for the phrase “sense of wonder”.
Odd John
– the original of the mutant superman who can find no happiness.
Sirius
– an extraordinarily affecting tale, sometimes comic and sometimes sober, of a dog with human-level intelligence.
Tubb, E. C.:
(Tubb was a prolific if mostly undistinguished science-fiction author, but the series below caught up a lot of enthusiastic readers.)
Dumarest of Terra
– an Earthman—in a human-populated galaxy so vast and old that Earth is a vague, disbelieved rumor—searching for his now-lost home.
Van Vogt, A. E.:
(Van Vogt was a truly weird writer of bizarre, often almost incomprehensible science-fiction tales; he was prolific, and the series below is just a sampler.)
The Woman and the Raven
– another “not-guilty” pleasure; doesn’t finish as well as it starts, but promising.
Wyke-Smith, Edward A.:
(Wyke-Smith wrote several books, but only the one below is remembered today—and in print—though some of his others might be fun, too.)
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