My Favorite Retro Reads of 2019! W/ Podcast episodes

I got a request for this list. Here it is. I am not happy with how little diversity it has. Mostly American white dudes. Anyways I suggest Lisa Yaskek's Future is Female which is all old school but since was a new anthology got released in new releases.

10. Martian Time-Slip: My fellow Dickheads didn't like it as much as I did but I love Martian Time-slip which pairs nicely with James Reich's new novel The Song my Enemies Sing.

9. Caves of Steel by Issac Asimov: Space noir.Part of the charm is the simple premise, but for a novel written in 1954 it has fantastic sci-fi world-building. That is not a surprise for Asimov readers, his world-building has never been a problem. It is at the core of this story because the massive over-populated earth which has turned to crowded domed cities is constantly in conflict with the Spacers, the people spread over 50 worlds with an economy that depends on robot labor. What helps this stand apart from the other books in the Asimov catalog are the characters. That aspect is often a weaker part of Asimov stories. Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw are both excellent characters and their interplay is very rewarding to follow.

8. The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man Jung: oldest school as this was published first 1689. Centuries before Philip K Dick wrote pulp science fiction that poked at our relationship with the concept of reality or Neo pondered taking the Red pill a courtesan in Korean wrote this novel. The Nine Cloud Dream is a Korean Inception written hundreds of years before Christopher Nolan was a thing. Really cool book.

7.Way Station by Clifford Simak:Way Station is a thoughtful and charming piece of midwestern science fiction that doesn't tell a hero's journey in a traditional sense. Enoch Wallace is a man who is over 100 years old, a Vet of the Civil War who returned to Wisconsin and appears to have never aged past his 30's. That is interesting enough of a mystery that gets a great set-up involving military spies, who are a bit underused in the rest of the novel. But it does get political and galactic in scope.

Podcast recorded to be released. Although I was already on Hugos There podcast to talk Way Station and that is available.

6.Dune by Frank Herbert: The skill with which it was written is only outmatched by the impact it has had on the genre as a whole. World Building, adventure, mysticism, environmentalism and politics. The Themes are not over-explained but perfectly woven into the story. Dune does all these elements with skill that has few peers before except Lord of the Rings and maybe The Foundation books. A reader in this day and age might recognize many of the elements here, they may be tropes now, but remember Star Wars and most of the Space Opera you have read in your life came after Dune.

Podcast is recorded To be released.

5. Beyond Apollo by Barry N. Malzberg: BO is like a slightly harder sci-fi take on similar ideas that Lem explored in Solaris. He keeps it in the solar system and takes advantage of early 70's free love attitudes. I mean there is lots of adult language and tons of sex that feels very out of place and a bit awkward. Check out the podcast I did with James Reich on the book:

4.Journals of the Plague Years by Norman Spinrad: A Sci-fi novel was written during the worst days of the AIDS crisis.I can see why many publishers were afraid to touch this. The conclusions and ideas contained in this novel are by their nature confrontational and at times scary and gross. It is in the tradition of political science fiction like the Handmaid's Tale that takes extreme paths of speculation to make a point. It is a pessimistic novel that also sees the drug companies suppressing a cure, and a congressman with a plan to nuke the free-love Bay area. Super proud of the podcast we did about it.

3....And the Angel With Television Eyes by John Shirley: Once it gets weird is when you see why John Shirley is an underrated master. That is when the novel goes from good to great. Max discovers that there are beings that live in the subatomic particles who are struggling to free themselves called plasmagnomes. These creatures are cast-off shed particles of our souls created by our fantasies. The Plasma world is in trouble because the increased technology in the form of electromagnetic energy is disrupting everything.

2. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.: No matter how you slice it this novel is one of the towering achievements of Science Fiction in the 20th century. It is not hyperbole to say this is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. It is the second-best of the 60’s Hugo winners have read so far. The only one better so far was Stand on Zanzibar. Oh yeah... read that in 2018.

Podcast recorded and soon to be released.

1.The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick: Re-read this one for Dickheads, I consider this to be one of PKD's best novels, but I admit the first time much of it went over my head, not this time. I feel like I understood what was happening much clearer than 15 years ago. The story of a bad acid trip, religious paranoia, and Alien Invasion. Absolute weird masterpiece.