First they tried to drag us back to the sixties with Austin Powers . Now they ’re doing it again with Men in Black III , whose plot of land time - parachuting to the 1969 Apollo launching . But why go back to this cosmos - change decade with speculative scientific discipline fiction when you could mainline the good stuff ? Here is a playscript list that will introduce you to some of the best SF issue in the 1960s .
Kurt Vonnegut , Slaughterhouse - Five ( 1969 )
A man has gotten “ unstuck in clock time , ” live the events of his life-time out of order , all while being watched over by a seemingly sympathetic group of foreigner . A moving , semi - autobiographical story of how human consciousness put to work in the viewing of harm , the book jumps between our Heron ’s experiences in Germany during World War II , his marriage , and his eldritch life as what amounts to a reality television receiver star on an alien worldly concern .
Samuel Delany , Babel-17 ( 1966 )
This is a novel of ideas that ’s also an incredible war story . The military on an exotic world invents a specialized language that control thought , called Babel-17 . Speaking the voice communication can change state even the most loyal soldier into a private agent for the foe . A spy sent to figure out how Babel-17 works is forced to question everything she once believed about freewill . Meanwhile , we slowly realise that all language can be understood as a form of thought - control .
J.G. Ballard , The Drowned World ( 1962 )
Though the post - Book of Revelation subgenre is nigh as previous as SF itself , it was n’t until Ballard come along that people really protrude to enjoy it . Literally . The Drowned World is a global warming fib , where “ solar radiation ” has mellow the pole — and our naturalist hero loves nothing more than to watch the city of London slowly melting into a neo - Triassic muck . This novel pave the way for a whole subgenre of in darkness satirical Revelation tales that suggest the ending of the domain might be what we secretly want ( and merit ) .
Anne McCaffrey , The Ship Who Sang ( 1969)Beloved for her Dragonriders of Pern series , McCaffrey captured imagination in the sixties with this story about the relationship between a cyborg ship and her captain . McCaffrey imagines a future where the great unwashed who are handicapped have the pick of imbed their brains and nervous systems into ships . They may have more - than - human bodies , but their human emotions remain intact . This novel calls into interrogation what it means to have a body , and in the process explore what it mean for mankind and cleaning woman to link up to each other as dear equals rather than sexual object .
Philip K. Dick , The Man in the High Castle ( 1962 )
Dick was a master of bizarro dystopias , and this alternate history is one of his most unbelievable . The Axis has won World War II , and we follow several fibre through a fragmented , occupied America as they endeavor to get their lives on trail — and endeavor to figure out the mystery of an alternate history novel about a world where the Allies won World War II . . .
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Left Hand of Darkness ( 1969)One of the first novels in set hin her “ Known Worlds ” universe , this remains one of LeGuin ’s masterpieces . A individual alien ambassador is sent to a world to make first physical contact with its inhabitants — who are more interested in reach war with each other to be have-to doe with with the idea that aliens are out there somewhere . As our protagonist navigates the strange political science of the world , he must also navigate its even stranger intimate relations — for on this world , nobody has a gender at all .
Robert Heinlein , The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ( 1966 )
Though many authors had imagined Moon colonies before , in this refreshing Heinlein seek to offer a plausible scenario of what a Moon society would appear like after generations of subsist offworld . His “ Loonies ” arise their own customs and average , and for the first sentence referee were exposed to a really thoughtful portrait of how human civilisation would evolve as it propagate to space .
Stanislaw Lem , Solaris ( 1961)Lem wrote many mind - bending SF novels , but this other 1960s geographic expedition of how humans attempt to commune with an intensely foreign intelligence is unfeignedly unbelievable . He was one of the first authors to deal realistically with the mind that alien lifespan probably wo n’t be anything like our own .
Madeleine L’Engle , A Wrinkle in Time ( 1962)One of the most popular nipper ’s science fiction novels of all fourth dimension , L’Engle ’s story hold her supernaturally mature young heroes far across blank to many worlds — until they incur themselves mortally threatened on planet where obsession with ossification has become a incubus .
Joanna Russ , Picnic on Paradise ( 1968 )
celebrate for her mind - blowing skill fable unretentive stories in the sixties , Russ call on the base of planetary exploration on its headway in this peculiar , agitate novel . A mathematical group of tourists land on a beautiful , uninhabited world for a lunchtime stop during their space cruise . Unfortunately they get stranded , and our full-bodied idlers must campaign to surve . This is the dark side of blank opera .
Arthur C. Clarke , 2001 ( 1968 )
Clarke and Stanley Kubrick put to work together to develop the story for the classic film 2001 . While the film was being shot , Clarke write the companion novel about the discovery that aliens not only exist , but may have been responsible for human evolution in the first place .
Frank Herbert , Dune ( 1965 )
( Ed . note — this al-Qur’an was added to the list by popular requirement ! ) Dune is perhaps one of the first truly modern place opera . Call it the parturition of the astropolitical novel . Herbert pulls us headlong through an exciting but never simplistic story of a spacefaring civilization that has incorporated elements of Muslim custom , and wars over the Spice , a natural resourcefulness whose function is interchangeable to oil on Earth today . Our Hero of Alexandria , the semi - mythical Paul Atreides , realise his destiny is not to be a monarch but to lead a revolution of the local mobile hoi polloi on a planet colonise by Spice - excavation interests . The political undercurrents of the novel are as relevant today as they were in 1965 .
1960sBooks
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