What're the best fiction books w philsophical underpinnings?

Centroles wrote:

This is also why I LOVE SHORT STORIES with a philosophical message/theme.

I agree 100%, short stories and novellas "don't get no respect" as Rodney would say! I feel they may be the perfect platform for conveying ideas without bogging down.

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The perfect format to convey a single philosophy or idea.

Long novels on the other hand are the perfect platform for conveying a whole bunch of philosophies ideas and perspectives, Watchmen beign the perfect example of a book that does just that.

Any Rand and some of the older books that people here are recommending unfortunately devote the entire lenght to just one idea, theme or concept (in my opinion of course).

I grew up in the generation that gets dozens of different ideas and perspectives bombed at us at the same time from our youth, our generation can handle having a several different philiosophies and perspectives vying for our attention in the same book. I find it much more entertaining.

Some people like to see things in black and white, and dislike having two contradictory viewpoints and ideas presented at the same time (they tend to be DC fans who like the ideals that Superman and Batman achieve and represent). Others feels the opposite way (and happen to prefer Marvels flawed heros that are sometimes wrong approach).

Chumly wrote:

Centroles wrote:

This is also why I LOVE SHORT STORIES with a philosophical message/theme.

I agree 100%, short stories and novellas "don't get no respect" as Rodney would say! I feel they may be the perfect platform for conveying ideas without bogging down.

Quote:

The perfect format to convey a single philosophy or idea.

Long novels on the other hand are the perfect platform for conveying a whole bunch of philosophies ideas and perspectives, Watchmen beign the perfect example of a book that does just that.

Any Rand and some of the older books that people here are recommending unfortunately devote the entire lenght to just one idea, theme or concept (in my opinion of course).

I grew up in the generation that gets dozens of different ideas and perspectives bombed at us at the same time from our youth, our generation can handle having a several different philiosophies and perspectives vying for our attention in the same book. I find it much more entertaining.

Some people like to see things in black and white, and dislike having two contradictory viewpoints and ideas presented at the same time (they tend to be DC fans who like the ideals that Superman and Batman achieve and represent). Others feels the opposite way (and happen to prefer Marvels flawed heros that are sometimes wrong approach).

You appear to be a member of the Short Attention Span Generation. Watchman is a graphic novel, not to be maligned as such, but it certainly falls in line with a generation that, tragically, simply does not not like to read.

Or perhaps not - Marvel and DC comic book heros are identical in their flawed ambiguity and have been that way for quite some time (20 years)

Out of curiosity, what do you perceive to be the singular philosophical concept that Ayn Rand pumps into the hundreds of pages of her novels?

Unfortunately Rand's novels are almost cliches for philosophically underscored books, but, in any case, her novels are hardly the quintessential representatives of pre-80's literature.

If you want variety, read Voyage to Arcturus (published in 1920). If you want brevity, read Metamorphosis (published in 1915).

Before you lay claim to generational superiority, explore those that went before you.

The Republic (350 BC)
Macbeth (1603)
Metamorphosis (1915)
Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Brave New World (1939)
1984 (1949)
On The Road (1951)
Naked Lunch (1959)
Acts of Worship (1965)
The Magus (1968)
Shikasta (1979)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)
The Children of Men (1992)

Etc Etc Etc

All else aside, I will argue that both the short story and the novella have at times been unfairly "discriminated" against in favor of the full length novel by readers and critics alike.

When it comes to the short story's commercial success/failure as found in compilations, a short story's lifespan may rely to some large measure, on the critic-editor.

Ben Bova, John W. Campbell, Jr., Terry Carr, Damon Knight........

Also the short story and novella simply has not garnered the level of reader popularity they deserve, and to me that is indeed a true shame.

The short story and the novella are beautiful forms that demand a certain economy and focus not easily achieved.

"The Roads Must Roll" is a 1940 science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein about wide, rapidly moving passenger platforms (like moving sidewalks, but much faster- topping out at 100mph). These roads combine the features of highways, railways and highway towns, and all goes smoothly until there is union trouble. The men who maintain the roads get around beneath them via "tumblebugs": unicycles which are motorized and gyroscopically stabilized much like the real-life Segway.

Heinlein's themes are technological change and social cohesion. The (fictional) social movement he calls functionalism (which is unrelated to the real-life sociological theory of the same name) believes that one's status and level of material reward in a society must and should depend on the functions one performs for that society.


In "The Roads Must Roll", the technicians who maintain the San Diego to Reno roadway are duped into believing that their role in maintaining the nation's transport infrastructure is more important than that of any other workers and that they should therefore be rewarded more highly than any others. To demonstrate their importance and press their claims, they stop the central 100 mph strip, causing transportation chaos and many casualties.

Larry Gaines, Chief Engineer of the roadtown, is instrumental in restoring order and bringing the villains to justice, through a combination of clear thinking, swift para-military action at the head of his uniformed cadets, and appeals to patriotism.

The story is interesting in a broader political sense, and in the context of the rest of Heinlein's writing, because it provides the relatively rare example of a libertarian author arguing against worker's unions -- here justified because the worker's union in question is in a government-run public service industry on which the broader society as a whole is dependent. The story thus retains a great deal of modern relevance, especially with regard to strikes by civic transportation and sanitation workers and the like.

The story uses the technique of the false protagonist. At first the reader is introduced to the firebrand who stirs up the workers to their radical action, and at this stage the reader can quite easily identify with him and the grievances he addresses. When Larry Gaines first appears, it seems to be just a glimpse at what the Bad Guys are doing. However, the "glimpse" goes on and on while the strikers blacken themselves in reader's eyes by callously causing the death and wounding of innocent passengers - and Gaines correspondingly wins the reader's sympathy and identification. The demagogue who seemed the hero at first is only met again at the very end, when he is already clearly identified as the arch-villain who gets his just punishment.

Most of my favorites are not new. Opus 21, by Philip Wylie, is one of my tops. We spend a weekend with the semifictional Wylie, who is an ex alcoholic, still a smoker, and awaiting a biopsy on a growth found in his throat. He has to finish editing down a magazine article or story by Monday. He encounters a scientist nephew, who fell in love with a loose girl, lost her, and now contemplates suicide; an old friend madam at a whorehouse; a minister, whom Wylie unsettles rather easily; a boorish man in a restaurant, and several other characters, all of whom conveniently fit into his philisophical, Jungian, atheistic musings. For about twenty years, I latched onto the author as an unwitting father figure for myself. I look back with great fondness, and occasionally reread some of his stuff.

Widely regarded as one of the true classics of science fiction, Star Maker is a poetic and deeply philosophical work. The story details the mental journey of an unnamed narrator who is transported not only to other worlds but also other galaxies and parallel universes, until he eventually becomes part of the "cosmic mind." First published in 1937, Olaf Stapledon's descriptions of alien life are a political commentary on human life in the turbulent inter-war years. The book challenges preconceived notions of intelligence and awareness, and ultimately argues for a broadened perspective that would free us from culturally ingrained thought and our inevitable anthropomorphism. This is the first scholarly edition of a book that influenced such writers as C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke and which Jorge Luis Borges called "a prodigious novel."

There is no more monumental book in the field of science fiction.

A newly-made android is capable of learning anything. He wants to learn about love but its training is taken over by a criminal who teaches him the wrong things. Very thoughtful, intelligent story by Robert Bloch. August 11, 1955

kuvasz wrote:

There is no more monumental book in the field of science fiction.

That's quite the heartfelt accolade, sadly I don't think I've read any of his stuff.

Then I envy you because the feeling you will get during your first reading is akin to the sensation a child has upon his first encounter with chocolate.

I stumbled on to Olaf Stapledon because his work was alongside Ted Sturgeon's books on the SF section of shelves in my college library. Sturgeon is my favorite science fiction writer and his "Microcosmic God" is considered the best short story in the genre.

Have a go-see about SM and its prequil "Last and First Men" which itself measures the journey of mankind through 3 plus billion years of evolution.

For fans of Robert Bloch here is another radio-play from the Golden Age

Quote:

A newly-made android is capable of learning anything. He wants to learn about love but its training is taken over by a criminal who teaches him the wrong things. Very thoughtful, intelligent story by Robert Bloch. August 11, 1955

Click on the rocket! http://ottolejeune.com/index.php/downloads/comments/013_almost_human/

BTW ALL science fiction fan needs to know about this site. It has for free download all 126 episodes of X MINUS ONE, with radio stories written by the likes of Sturgeon, Heinlein, Bliss, Bradbury and others. I have them loaded to my ipod for listening during long drives.

http://ottolejeune.com/index.php/downloads