“Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!” (immortal line of Homer Simpson from “Citizen Kang”, Treehouse of Horror VII, Season 8 episode 1 – featuring those recurring aliens of Halloween episodes, Kodos and Kang). Of course, Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution that only natural born citizens can be President would disqualify the- “NEEERD!”
TOP 10 SF BOOKS (HONORABLE MENTION: CULT & PULP)
I’ve ranked my Top 10 SF Books, but science fiction is too prolific – and phantasmagorical – a genre to be confined to a mere top ten books or even my usual twenty special mentions.
So I have two lists of special mentions – one classic and the other cult and pulp.
This is obviously the latter – for those SF books or works that don’t quite that iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination of my classic honorable mentions but I like them anyway!
That or they’re an enduring influence on me despite (or perhaps because of) their “cult & pulp” status.
Unlike my top ten or twenty special mentions, I have no numerical limit or rankings on entries for honorable mention and list them in chronological order by date of publication – mostly that is, as occasionally I bump up entries from their chronological order based on their influence or impact on me.
Cover of the Pan SF paperback edition (The Peace War) – the edition I had (fair use)
(1) VERNOR VINGE –
THE PEACE WAR / MAROONED IN REAL TIME (1984 / 1986)
A book and sequel around the premise of time stasis fields.
Not that their inventors know them to be time stasis fields at first – instead they believe they have created a force field generator, christened the Bobbler because the force fields are “bobbles” or “a perfectly spherical, reflective, impenetrable, and persistent shield around or through anything”.
The inventors of the Bobbler use it as a weapon in a literal war to end all wars, the titular Peace War, by effectively bobbling all the world’s military – locking away weapons, bases, and on occasion entire governments or cities – before setting themselves up, ironically, as the new world government, the Peace Authority.
“In an effort to retain their monopoly on the Bobbler, the Peace Authority makes technological progress illegal and returns the planet to a level similar to that of the 19th century.”
The first book features the (technological) resistance against the Peace Authority, as part of which there’s the discovery that the bobbles are time stasis fields – and further, that they have a set time limit before they “pop” and release their occupants.
The sequel combines time travel and a murder mystery, albeit both in a different sense or different senses than usual. The time travel is one-way, jumping ahead in the future by sitting it out in the time stasis of a bobble while time passes normally outside the bobble. There is a literal murder mystery – essentially involving the sabotage of a bobble so its occupant was marooned in real time as per the title – but more metaphorically for humanity itself, which has vanished for unknown reasons in the twenty-third century, except for those in bobbles at the time (heh).
Cover of the 2001 Baen edition – the edition I own (fair use)
(2) ERIC FLINT –
1632 (2000)
The book initially as a stand-alone book, but which evolved into a series, expanding beyond Flint as author to become a collaborative or shared series by different creators (and continuing on as such after Flint unfortunately passed away in 2022).
The book and series, dubbed the 1632-verse or Ring of Fire series, has as its premise that the fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia, is sent back into the past, effectively by some sort of cosmic accident of space-time slip, from the year 2000 to the titular year in the worst possible place, slap bang in Germany during the Thirty Years War.
Well, Grantville and its energetic union leader, Mike Stearns, aren’t going to take that lying down – or more precisely, they’re not going to lie down and take it from the Thirty Years War – but instead plan to change history for the better, starting the American Revolution in Europe and 143 years ahead of schedule.
Audiobook edition image on Amazon for the first book, In The Balance (fair use)
(3) HARRY TURTLEDOVE –
WORLDWAR (1994-2004)
Harry Turtledove’s prolific speciality is alternate history SF – of which this series is my favorite. I mean, he’s done WW2 in a few of his books or series, but what’s not to love about the premise in this one – lizard-like aliens invade in 1942, right in the middle of the Second World War?
Needless to say, it’s a shock for the human combatants, forcing a drastic realignment of the war to fight the aliens instead – and it’s also a shock for the Lizards, who had expected humans to be closer to the technological development revealed by probes a thousand years earlier. Normally humans have no chance against the superior technology of aliens – but here the Lizards have an incredibly static society and slow rate of technological development, such that their technology is only slightly more advanced than that of humanity but for interstellar travel. Humans also have a more than a few tricks up their sleeve, including…ginger. (No, seriously – ginger).