Comments on: Looking for new SF books hiding in the general fiction section

Question: Looking for new SF books hiding in the general fiction section

Dag Maggot — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:03:03 -0800

I like science fiction books that are placed in the general fiction section - but for me they are hard to find on Amazon or in libraries. Examples of these kinds of books are The Sparrow, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Oryx and Crake, Cloud Atlas and The Dog Stars ... but I need more new stuff - any suggestions?

By: emd3737

emd3737 — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:09:58 -0800

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy's The Road come to mind.

By: fight or flight

fight or flight — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:12:32 -0800

The Terror by Dan Simmons.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:33:18 -0800

Nabokov, Ada.

Time's Arrow.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:36:46 -0800

Children of Men.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:48:30 -0800

Most of Kurt Vonnegut.

By: backwards guitar

backwards guitar — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:58:51 -0800

The Age of Miracles

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:00:01 -0800

Great Apes, by Will Self.
The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien.
Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress.

By: Slap*Happy

Slap*Happy — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:13:43 -0800

Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union. It even won a Hugo.

Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon.

By: Dag Maggot

Dag Maggot — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:20:07 -0800

Thanks for the suggestions and inspiration.

By: Ziggy500

Ziggy500 — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:26:51 -0800

Lives of the Monster Dogs.

By: Mayor West

Mayor West — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:33:39 -0800

Hello! You are apparently me. Thus I will list books in this genre that I have enjoyed.

Gaiman, Neverwhere and Good Omens.
Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle and Player Piano
Stephenson, Snow Crash

What do you think of Philip K Dick? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man In The High Castle are probably three of his better-known titles, but I can't think of anything he's written that I didn't enjoy.

By: BibiRose

BibiRose — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:54:34 -0800

I think Philip K. Dick for sure. Some of the people being mentioned here, though, are in the SF section at Barnes & Noble. There really isn't a shitload of logic to how people end up in the general fiction or god forbid "literature" section. (B&N doesn't have a "literature" section but Borders used to.) I think in bookstores, a lot of the distinction is based on an analysis of customer habits. The idea is that people who browse the "fiction" section will not go into the genre sections. They put the stuff wherever they think people are most likely to buy it. There are straight-up mystery novels in the "fiction" section. No space operas, but a lot of (other) speculative fiction.

In libraries, on the other hand, I think there may be more of an effort to shelve by actual genre and less for marketing purposes.

By: rebekah

rebekah — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:56:27 -0800

Seconding Neil Gaiman, and adding his American Gods and Anansi Boys.

By: TrishaLynn

TrishaLynn — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:58:18 -0800

How in the world did Oryx and Crake get put into the regular fiction section? That reads as pure spec-fic/sci-fi to me, as does the companion novel The Year of the Flood.

By: soelo

soelo — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:07:00 -0800

Though I am slightly less than halfway through Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, I will suggest it. It may turn out to be more fantasy than sci-fi, but so far it is a pretty even mix of the two along with a healthy dose of up-to-the-minute tech culture.

By: daveje

daveje — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:08:40 -0800

Bruce Sterling once wrote an article about Slipstream as a genre, slipstream being fiction that was somewhere between genre boundaries, and couldn't be well classified as one thing or another.

You can read the original essay, with a copy of Bruce's original list of books, here.

The first (wikipedia) link points to other useful resources.

Specifically? Anything by John Crowley, especially the magisterial Little, Big.

By: hoyland

hoyland — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:21:11 -0800

Philip K Dick is always shelved as sci-fi in my experience.

Anyway, I came to say Children of Men. And 1984, I guess. Depends how you feel about dystopias as sci-fi, as there are likely more in this vein.

By: mean cheez

mean cheez — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:37:15 -0800

Try Jonathan Lethem. Gun With Occasional Music is pretty awesome.

By: Bektashi

Bektashi — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:38:47 -0800

Mikhail Bulgakov's novellas Heart of a Dog and The Fatal Eggs.

By: Tomorrowful

Tomorrowful — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:39:11 -0800

How in the world did Oryx and Crake get put into the regular fiction section? That reads as pure spec-fic/sci-fi to me, as does the companion novel The Year of the Flood.

Because it's really not about the actual contents of the book, but basically whether it's seen as "literature" enough by whoever's in charge to escape the sci-fi ghetto.

Getting back to the question, I'd take a look at any of the authors writing "magical realism," which is either a form of Serious Literature with a dose of supernatural elements, or non-Tolkienesque fantasy written by Spanish-speakers, depending on who you ask. Borges, Marquez, etc.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:42:41 -0800

You mention "Cloud Atlas," so make sure you check out "Ghostwritten" by the same author.

By: Terminal Verbosity

Terminal Verbosity — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:46:13 -0800

How in the world did Oryx and Crake get put into the regular fiction section?

Because it had Margaret Atwood's name on the spine. In that vein, you might enjoy The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin (the latter has a story within the story with fantasy elements).

Also, The Time Traveler's Wife and The Plot Against America, if you're in for some nostalgia-laden alternate history.

And if I can recommend a sci-fi and fantasy author who never grace the Literature section but absolutely should, Ursula K. Le Guin.

By: miyabo

miyabo — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:51:13 -0800

Jonathan Lethem, As she climbed across the table

By: snorkmaiden

snorkmaiden — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:53:52 -0800

Haruki Murakami. Everything by Haruki Murakami.

By: five toed sloth

five toed sloth — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:14:09 -0800

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino is plausibly SF, given that the narrator is an abstract space being. Likewise t zero. Generally I'd expect Calvino to appeal to anyone who enjoyed the other books in this thread.

By: EmilyFlew

EmilyFlew — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:21:12 -0800

I would call China Miéville's The City & the City science fiction-y, and very much in the vein of the Yiddish Policeman's Union.

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:22:55 -0800

Yeah, the question is about finding speculative fiction that is typically shelved with non-genre fiction, not to make lists of boundary-pushing sci-fi.

Nobel winner Doris Lessing has written some outright science fiction (the Canopus in Argos series) that's rather difficult going. But a number of her stand-alone books also have fantastical elements and are easier to read: The Fifth Child, Briefing for a Descent Into Hell.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:29:43 -0800

Infinite Jest! It takes place in the near-future as seen by 1996.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:34:15 -0800

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Yu, Charles

By: gorbichov

gorbichov — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:38:49 -0800

Along the same lines as Children of Men, I think of Jose Saramago's Blindness as dystopian/s-f ish . . .

By: PhoBWanKenobi

PhoBWanKenobi — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:55:27 -0800

I've seen Octavia Butler shelved in African-American Fiction rather than science fiction. Lilith's Brood (Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago) and the Parable books (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) are absolutely fantastic sci-fi.

Also Michael Cunningham. Specimen Days has a heavily SFnal section (similar to Cloud Atlas) and Flesh and Blood ends in the far future.

By: cog_nate

cog_nate — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:08:23 -0800

Inter Ice Age 4 by Kobo Abe, Hall of Singing Caryatids by Viktor Pelevin, The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, most of Mark Leyner's fiction.

By: Ziggy500

Ziggy500 — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:29:11 -0800

Super Sad True Love Story.

By: cog_nate

cog_nate — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:58:12 -0800

OK, also: Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez, and Things in the Night by Mati Unt.

By: mippy

mippy — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:10:26 -0800

Does White Noise by Don De Lillo count? I got it from our uni library where it was shelved under 'fiction, post-1950, American', but it definitely sits in the Fiction section of your average public library.

I'm sure there's a Douglas Coupland that has a heavy sci-fi leaning rather than simply being post-modern, but I can't think which one I mean off the top of my head.

(BiBiRose - London libraries often also split their stock off into 'Black authors', 'Asian authors' (which here is S.Asian, in English rather than Urdu etc.) and 'Gay/Lesbian', which can make it hard to find things as well and leads to missing out on good stuff. I can see the reason they do this, though.)

By: cog_nate

cog_nate — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:14:03 -0800

Two more: Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy (Bro -- Ice -- 23,000) and Day of the Oprichnik.

By: Sunburnt

Sunburnt — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:24:10 -0800

I don't know if this book is ever actually shelved outside the SF stacks, but it's definitely among of the more literary examples of SF: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr. I found it started really slow, but stick with it, it pays off in spades.

I also second Jonathan Lethem.

By: donovan

donovan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:58:16 -0800

Have you read Haruki Murakami? I'd suggest starting with Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I'd also recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

By: novalis_dt

novalis_dt — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:55:35 -0800

A lot of Victor Pelevin's stuff qualifies -- Omon Ra, for instance.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:13:56 -0800

Kalki by Gore Vidal.

By: still_wears_a_hat

still_wears_a_hat — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:41:28 -0800

Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time is another one (and much better than the rest of her stuff). Also, as Nomyte mentioned, several of the books by Doris Lessing.

By: rainbowbrite

rainbowbrite — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:07:36 -0800

Passage by Connie Willis occurred to me, and I would second Age of Miracles.

By: Dag Maggot

Dag Maggot — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:39:08 -0800

Thanks all for the suggestions - this should keep me going for a few months. When I first read cloud Atlas several years ago - I was on holiday without reading material and desperate for something to read. I found a dog-eared copy by the pool and resigned myself to reading a weighty tome of general fiction. And then suddenly, about a quarter of the way through the book it was - surprise! Science Fiction.

That experience made me realize that I like science fiction books written as literature by just awesome writers - not necessarily science experts or technical people.

By: Monochrome

Monochrome — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:36:09 -0800

> Connie Willis

What, no Bellwether?

By: taltalim

taltalim — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:46:12 -0800

Seconding Borges, and seconding The Invention of Morel (which Borges called a perfect novel).

By: sauril

sauril — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:09:44 -0800

Much of Salman Rushdie's oeuvre could be categorized like this as well. I'm also going to second (or third) Murakami, especially Hard Boiled... and A Wild Sheep Chase.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:29:10 -0800

I just finished Dog Stars last night. I can't say I loved it, but it was a HELL of a lot better than The Road, I tell ya.

I also love these sorts of books too (Borges, Rushdie, et al), and can't believe no one has mentioned the most hyped recent example 1Q84 (though I guess Murakami has been mentioned thrice). I'll fourth, and also claim Hard-Boiled and Sheep Chase as my favorite two.

And as for Lethem (most awesome) along with Gun and Table, Amnesia Moon, Fortress of Solitude, and Chronic City all apply here.

Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is another great call. The Unconsoled might even apply.

Another recent fave was Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody, but a lot of people don't like him for some reason. I loved it. Meta as hell.