Happy Science Fiction Day!

January 2 is Science Fiction Day in honor of Isaac Asimov’s birthday. Confession: I’ve never read anything by Isaac Asimov. But I still couldn’t let this day pass without at least a brief mention of it on my blog. I wrote a short piece about it for NMG.com, and it was hard for me to keep the article from ballooning into a treatise about why EVERYONE should check out sci-fi. But actually, I understand if it’s not your thing. When I was younger, it wasn’t my thing, either; I liked fantasy, but I thought sci-fi was just a bunch of techno-talk. Then I discovered post-apocalyptic fiction, and another sci-fi fanatic was born.

If you’d like to celebrate the day with a Lacey-approved sci-fi novel, here’s a list of my favorites, in no particular order:

  1. The Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld (Pretties is my favorite, but read them all)
  2. The Time Quintent by Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time is my fave)
  3. The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card (Speaker for the Dead is my fave, but I haven’t read them all yet)
  4. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel
  5. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  6. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
  7. Jack the Bodiless by Julian May
  8. The Giver by Lois Lowry
  9. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
  10. The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper

You may be surprised not to see any of the “classics” on my list (1984, Farenheit 451, Brave New World, etc.). Although I’ve read many of them, none of them “did” much for me except make me feel well-read. I was always irritated that the authors could imagine vastly different societies, but couldn’t stretch their imagination past traditional gender roles.

I would have very much liked to spend today reading and watching sci-fi, but, alas, a life in which a significant portion of my time is not taken up by earning a living is speculative fiction indeed.