5 Overlooked Sci-Fi Novels
Since David Gerrold and others have been recommending overlook sci-fi novels, I thought I’d mention five I think have been unfairly overlooked. I posted the list earlier on Facebook but thought I’d elaborate on my choices and recommendations here.
1: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Burroughs’ mashup of Frankenstein and The Island Of Doctor Moreau. The ending is rather weak and the Big Reveal makes no sense whatsoever but holy shamolley, is getting there ever fun! And that’s primarily due to the most undersung of all Burroughs’ heroines, Virginia Maxon, a professor’s daughter, a 1910s college girl, and arguably the most pro-active female character Burroughs ever created. Jane Porter? A flighty dishrag. Dejah Thoris? A simpering trad wife. Yeah, Virginia Maxon spends a good deal of the novel tied up but that’s because she’s constantly working herself free and trying to murder her captors (the poor bastards simply can’t kill her; by that point in the story she’s the only card they’ve got left that prevents the heroes from hunting them down and killing them).
2: A Fighting Man of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Burroughs wrote several series, but they tend to follow the same pattern: Dynamite initial volumes, then by books three or four Burroughs loses interest and keeps the series going only because sales figures are so good.* Typically this results in the latter books being rather repetitive and by-the-numbers. For his Barsoom series, however, Burroiughs penned this delicious self-parody, his take on O. Henry’s classic biter-gets-bit short story, “The Ransom Of Red Chief” in which the hero battles his way across Mars to rescue a bratty princess only to find the villain who kidnapped her can’t wait for somebody to take her off his hands.
3: The Cosmic Computer a.k.a. Junkyard Planet by H. Beam Piper
Piper’s death by suicide in 1964 (apparently induced by financial distress) cut short a burgeoning career that showed promise of Piper becoming one of the major figures in 1960s science fiction. Junkyard Planet (based on his short story “Graveyard Of Dreams” and later itself slightly expanded to The Cosmic Computer) was the first story of his that I read, an interesting tale of a futuristic cargo cult that in the wake of an intergalactic conflict, searches for a legendary super computer that can solve all of humanity’s problems. It’s a solid story that cemented my interest in sci-fi.
4: Hauser’s Memory by Curt Siodmak
While his earlier novel Donovan’s Brain is his best known work, Siodmak eschewed his original brain-in-a-box concept to rework the basic idea as a brain-within-a-brain. Hauser, a brilliant scientist on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, is dying and the CIA hopes to spirit his knowledge out by injecting a young scientist with Hauser’s memories. “Spirit” is the operative word here because Hauser’s memories and personality soon overpower the volunteer and send him on a mission of vengeance against Nazis who sent him to a concentration camp in WWII.
5: Nova by Samuel R. Delany
Arguably Delany’s most accessible novel. Long lauded as one of the premiere literary stylists in the field, Delany keeps the stylistic flourishes but delivers a good, old fashion rip-roaring space adventure. He creates a marvelously detail far future society which a crew of colorful and compelling characters on an interstellar treasure hunt evocative of Moby Dick.
* The notable exception being his Caspak trilogy – The Land Time Forgot, The People Time Forgot, and Out Of Time’s Abyss – where he finished on a strong note and never felt the need to revisit the material.
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