Excuse the mediocrity, I'm too lazy to improve my first draft.
10. Contact, by Carl Sagan
I loved the movie based on it, so I had very high expectations for this book. My only contact with Sagan's work was a very funny and intelligent criticism of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision.
I was very disappointed when I discovered that Contact is a huge mess. I often wondered while reading it: Sagan actually liked writing it, or he did it just for the 2 million dollars received in advance?
The story is that Ellie Arroway, the director of Project Argus (aka SETI) discovers a message from outer space. The source of the message is Vega, a young star 25 light years away from Earth, which is surrounded by a huge ring of debris. The aliens send us the plans for a machine, but without specifing what it does.
Much of the book is spent debating the real purpose of the machine and the changes brought by the proof of alien existence over humanity. There are various fanatics, mostly religious, and a lot of conflicts.
It's a boring, predictable and way too pretentious work. The writing is insipid, yet strangely enthusiastic - exactly what you'd expect from a scientist trying to be an artist. The characters are boring, lifeless archetypes –a far cry from Crichton's lively, realistic archetypes I've mentioned above. Often, Sagan's characters seem to be puppets, doing things just because they're supposed to do them. Nothing comes off as natural, it's all forced.
WTF is this ****? -Jodie Foster while reading Contact.
Very, very annoying is that the book exhibits clumsy feminist ideas. I'm sure the author intended to create strong feminine characters and to present a more delicate view of the story, but it's a huge failure. Ellie is a completely unlikable character, a dumb, socially awkward heroine. The President of the USA is a woman. I guess this was a noble thing to do (in Sagan's mind, at least), but she's a complete idiot. Every time she appeared I was asking myself how, how come such an ignorant is President? Her image is basically the image of Bush Jr that you find on comedy sites, so the end result is insulting for women. The Indian scientist is the noble, sad and exotic woman - a stereotype presented in such a serious and pretentious manner that it almost ruins all her scenes.
Another large part of the book is spent on religious debates. The dialogue is absolutely horrible. Again, it's forced and it's long. Nobody speaks like that. Ayn Rand's characters are monuments of humanity compared to Sagan's lifeless rocks. The intriguing ideas presented in these dialogues are lost in the surrounding mess.
The movie repairs all the book's failures. It has good pace, strong narrative, good dialogue, good characters. Only the climax is weak, but it's light years ahead of the disaster featured in the book.
So don't read Contact. I've got a much better alternative: Stanislaw Lem's The Astronauts.
This is a book with a very similar concept, written around 1950. It's actually Lem's first book – later he became famous around the entire world for Solaris and The Cyberiad.
The Astronauts opens with the fall of the Tunguska meteorite and subsequent research expeditions, also mentioning the hypothesis about a spaceship's crash. The book then jumps at the beggining of the 21st century, in a world where Communism has won; this is a concession the author had to make in order to see the book published. In the Tunguska area the remains of a spaceship are unearthed, including an alien data record. The records are basically the ship's black box, describing its journey from Venus, and ending with a strange message: "After two rotations the Earth will be radiated. When the radiation intensity drops to half, the Great Movement will commence."
It is decided that the awesomely named Kosmokrator spaceship will be launched to Venus with an international crew of scientists to investigate the alien civilization. Most of the book is dedicated to their journey and the adventures on Venus.
Of course, the depiction of Venus and interplanetary journey is based on the science of the 1940s, but it still feels very modern. As Wikipedia says, decades later Lem wrote that „Everything is so smooth and balanced; among the heroes we have a positive Russian character and a sweet Chinese; naiveté is present on all pages of this book. The hope that in the year 2000 the world would be wonderful is indeed very childish...."
I find this smoothnes and balance to be the main attraction of the book. It's a clean, beautiful and often awe-inspiring view of the future, which reminds me a lot of Mass Effect, the latest Star Trek and especially of Sunshine. It's a very good book, recommended to any science fiction fan.
11. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
I avoided contemporary fantasy. All the Disk Worlds and bridges to Terabithia seem to be cheap rip-offs, especially when you see hundreds of authors publishing their Amazing Fantasy Sagas in 7 volumes. I wasn't familiar with Gaiman's work.
And then I saw Coraline and Beowulf in the same day – Gaiman wrote Beowulf's script. I absolutely loved these movies, not only because of the incredible visuals, but mainly because of their stories. You can criticise Beowulf as much as you like – it's the best adaptation of the poem, it truly makes it come to life.
I then learned that the movie Stardust (which I haven't seen yet) is based on one of his books, so I bought it. This is hands-down the best fantasy book I've read since LOTR.
It's not the usual Tolkien or D&D rip-off - it's a fairy tale written in the rich and beautiful Victorian sty1e. It begins in the village of Wall, named so after an ancient stone wall east of it. There's a single opening in this wall, always guarded, which leads to the magical land of Faerie. Faerie is a world that consists of every land that was removed from the map when explorers proved it wasn't there.
Tristran Thorn is a young man that adores Victoria, an arrogant, spoiled and very beautiful girl. One evening, they watch a star falling somewhere beyond the stone wall, and Tristran promises he'll bring her the star in exchange for her hand. He crosses the wall into Faerie, and to his surprise the star is revealed to be a living, breathing girl, called Yvaine. Together, and against Yvaine's will, they begin a journey back to Wall. Numerous dangers await them, because there are others that wish to find the star. The eldest of three Lilim sisters, ancient witch-queens, seeks to consume Yvaine's heart to regain centuries of youth and beauty. Three noble brothers, which constantly plot against each other, need to find her to become the rulers of the kingdom of Stormhold...
And I saw a falling star the night after I read Stardust. Awwww...
It's a magical tale, both beautiful and sad, and also quite mature. There is humour to be found (mainly sarcastic), a lot of violence and sexual themes, hard language and even an F-bomb. It's not mature because of violence and sex – it's mature because of the themes it presents, mainly regarding identity, morality and love. It's surprisingly deep, but it's very subtle, without any „in your face" moments that ruin the immersion like in Contact.
It's easy to write about something you don't like, but very hard to insist upon something you do like. So I won't insist anymore – just read this book, and pay attention while you do it.
12. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
What an amazing book!
It's very hard to describe the plot. It's huge, split in five volumes. The premise is that one day, the Earth is destroyed to make way for a hypergalactic bypass. Arthur Dent is rescued at the last moment by his friend Ford Prefect, which is actually an alien from Betelgeuse working on the Hitchhiker's Guide. They arrive on board of the spaceship Heart of Gold; here they find Prefect's cousin, Zaphod – the President of the Galaxy, that used his status to steal the ship, Trillian – a brilliant human astrophysicist with whom Arthur tried to speak at a party, and Marvin the Paranoid Android. Together they explore the universe in one of the weirdest and most epic odysseys ever imagined.
I haven't seen the movie, but I'm familiar with the characters. I knew that it's supposed to be a comedy space opera. It surpassed my expectations in every way possible.
While reading the book, I imagined most characters as portrayed in the movie. Sam Rockwell fits his character perfectly. Marvin, although looks a bit different, is perfect. Arthur is just like I imagined when I first read the basic premise. Mos Def IS Ford Prefect. But while I find Zooey Deschanel to be very cute (and I think Katy Perry is an improved version of her), she doesn't really look like Trillian's description from the book. So in my head, I replaced her with another girl I know.
A very difficult decision.
The book is funny. It's actually incredibly hilarious. But I didn't expect it to evolve like it does. From the end of the second volume onwards, it gradually turns into a more serious, deep and often depressing work – while also maintaining humour.
The volumes were written a few years apart from each other. The author mentioned that they reflect various circumstances of his life. But despite some minor contradictions, the narrative flows so beautifully and smooth that it left me with the impression that it was actually intended to evolve like this. My favourite part of the story is the one that Adams likes the least – the fourth and fifth volume. I found Arthur's love story and the part involving Random to be absolutely heartbreaking and treated with infinite delicacy.
It would've been great if he continued with the pure comedy sty1e of the first two volumes. It's even better that he didn't.
While I was reading it, I wasn't aware that he died. Although the end of the fifth book doesn't really leave room for another sequel, I hoped so much that he'd continue to write stories about these characters and their adventures! It was a very depressing moment when I learned he planned to write a sixth volume, but died before starting it. I know a fellow writer is working on it now, and reading about it made me sure it will be great, but to me only what Douglas Adams wrote is the real deal. Everything else will be just an alternate universe. It's a perfect opera, that has a perfect ending.
It doesn't matter what you like to read. The Guide is an essential book. You have to read it.