Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I’d Give To Readers Who Have Never Read Sci-Fi

1.  The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Goodreads blurb: In the community of Waknut it is believed mutants are the products of the Devil and must be stamped out. When David befriends a girl with a slight abnormality, he begins to understand the nature of fear and oppression. When he develops his own deviation, he must learn to conceal his secret.

 – Philippa

2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Goodreads Blurb: Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…

Huxley’s ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.

– Philippa

3. 1984 by George Orwell

Goodreads blurb: While 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is more timely that ever. 1984 presents a “negative utopia”, that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world — so powerful that it’s completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions — a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

I think the above blurb says it all. This is a classic sic-fi that has become chillingly real. – Natasha

4. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Goodreads blurb: Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller – these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

This is an anti-war novel, but has so many sic-fi elements packed into its 177 pages. Aliens and time travel make this a good, if not slightly absurd, first foray into the world of sic-fi.   – Natasha

5. Wool by Hugh Howey

Goodreads blurb: In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.

This is my go-to book for a gentle introduction to sci-fi. It is so action-packed and addictive that you won’t even question the world Howey ‘submerges’ you in – Natasha

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Goodreads blurb: Written when landing on the moon was still a dream, made into one of the most influential films of our century, brilliant, compulsive, prophetic, 2001: A Space Odyssey tackles the enduring theme of man’s place in the universe.

Even though the film is a masterpiece, the novel makes certain parts a lot less baffling! – Angelya

8. Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Goodreads blurb: Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe…and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Robinette Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Rob Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is…in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

– Philippa

9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Goodreads blurb: Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

Something a little more amusing and absurd. Sci-fi doesn’t have to take itself too seriously. – Natasha