The controversial, brutal dystopian novel with a language of its own

A Clockwork Orange is one of the most notorious novels of the 1960s, a detour into social science fiction by “Protean man of letters” Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993). Later adapted for film by Stanley Kubrick, the book is set in a still-shocking vision of the near future. In what may or may not be London, law and order is breaking down and the generation gap has become a yawning gulf. Gangs of brutal teenagers roam the streets, indulging in drugs, theft, and ultraviolent mayhem. All the while, they use a mode of speech all of their own: nadsat.

Burgess described A Clockwork Orange as a jeu d’esprit, something of a playful exercise which was written in just three weeks. It came to dominate his reputation and overshadow his legacy as a comic novelist and a composer. He went as far as to say that he regretted writing it, because he felt it was too likely to be misinterpreted. Despite his misgivings, it is clear that Burgess put a great deal of himself into A Clockwork Orange. It incorporates his fascination with linguistics, his love of classical music, and his dislike of the behaviorism pioneered by the American psychologist B.F. Skinner.

The novel focuses on Alex, leader of a particularly vicious gang. Upon his capture, he is subjected to a cruel and radical process designed to cure his sociopathic nature. This invites the core questions of the book - is it possible, or desirable, to alter a person’s nature? If a person can no longer choose, are they still a real or whole person?

A feminist subversion of SF adventure on a snowbound world

Paradise is a snowbound vacation world which attracts wealthy tourists. When it is drawn into a “commercial war”, a group of visitors are trapped there with no way out. Due to restrictions on technology, a special kind of agent is needed to rescue them from the harsh environment. Alyx is that agent - a thief from ancient Tyre, accidentally pulled into the future by a malfunctioning time machine. 

Picnic on Paradise is the first novel by American SF author Joanna Russ. It represents a feminist subversion of a traditional adventure story, and a precursor to Russ’ best known novel The Female Man (1975).

A vivid alternate history set in an England dominated from Rome

Superstitious hauliers move commodities using steam-powered road trains. The fiercely independent Signallers send messages using mechanical semaphore towers. Brotherhoods of monks, sworn to silence, operate both printing presses and the Inquisition. There are no telephones, nuclear power stations, or television. Britain has a King, but the real power lies in Rome, with the Pope. It is 1968 and this is a very different world.

Pavane is one of the most celebrated British science fiction books of the 1960s. It is frequently cited as a particularly strong example of alternate history. But Keith Roberts’ best known book does not fit entirely smoothly into either of those categories. It isn't even really a novel, but rather a set of stories linked by a unique and vividly rendered setting, and by Roberts' beautiful prose. This is the kind of book that mainstream literary authors wish they could write - and the kind that SF fans ought to read.

The clones of a renegade scientist star in the author’s first novel

Several hundred years into the future, a formidable alien race intercedes on Earth. It reserves the planet for the sole use of its intelligent species - which is to say, the dolphins and whales. Humans are regarded as mere vermin, and exiled to the moon, Mars, and other worlds of the solar system. Luckily, Homo sapiens is given a lifeline, or rather a hotline - a stream of advanced scientific knowledge transmitted by another, apparently more benevolent alien species. This is the world of The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) by John Varley.

Born in Austin, Texas in 1947, Varley made his debut as an SF writer in 1974, and quite quickly established himself as a major presence in the field. He went on to major awards success, primarily for his shorter fiction. Most notably, his 1985 novella “Press Enter”, won a triple crown of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. The Ophiuchi Hotline is his debut novel, and an entry in his “Eight Worlds” series, which plays fast and loose with its own continuity but deals with humanity’s exile from Earth, and the profound changes experienced by the displaced species.

In this book - included in David Pringle’s landmark Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels - Varley explores a radically changed vision of human society. In this future, advanced biomedical techniques provided by aliens have made transplants trivial, body modification easy, and death optional. But in Varley’s hostile universe, it may be that humanity as a whole is running out of time.

I was recently struck by a post online saying, “if I spent all of my time reading and never did anything else I would still never run out of amazing books to read and I think that is a really wonderful thing about humanity.” In 2024, I have read more classic SF books than ever, at a faster rate than ever before. I know I am only scratching the surface, and that is the wonderful thing about this genre.

It has been a little tricky to choose ten best books this year, and I’ve stretched my definition by including two fantasy novels. These books were published between 1959 and 1986. Between them they contain faster than light travel, superpowered clothes, matter transmission, androids, and a ghostly Mayan priestess. They are challenging, rewarding, entertaining reads - the best subset from the 90 or so books I will finish in 2024. 

Over the course of the year I have written at length about all ten of my picks, so you can find out more about them either in text or podcast form. If you have read these, or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to know. Later, there's brief roundup of my biggest disappointment of the year, some honourable mentions, and my plans for 2025. But now, in no particular order, is the list...

A unique novel in the British catastrophe tradition.

Ice is a novel which represents an uncomfortable but fascinating intermixing of autobiography and imagination. Sometimes described as science fiction, viewed by others as genre-bending “slipstream”, it is in any case an indelible work - the last one published before its unique author died of heart failure in 1968. 

A short, surreal tale, Ice is likely influenced by Anna Kavan’s difficult upbringing, unsatisfactory relationships, and long-term addiction to heroin. It is also a vividly imagined catastrophe novel, with some resonances with the work of other British authors like John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard. Kavan imagines unstoppable walls of ice which push out from the polar regions, gradually bringing the whole world within their frozen embrace. As the disaster draws near, a series of cruel and aimless wars threaten to wipe out humankind before the cold can finish the job.

Deeply bleak, Ice is also oddly beautiful in its own way. Once little known, Kavan’s final novel has become something of a cult item and with good reason. This is a noteworthy entry in the tradition of the British catastrophe novel, but also something more darkly personal - the last statement in the lifetime of a deeply troubled author.

Three human-scale SF tales of flight that read like fantasy

Windhaven is a novel in three parts by American writers George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle. Originally published in 1981, it deals with that most definitive of human fantasies - flight. On the blustery planet Windhaven, a special elite can take to the skies using wings made from the remnants of an ancient starship. Peasant outsider Maris fights for the right to possess wings of her own, and succeeds. What goes up must come down, however, and Maris struggles also with the definitive human nightmare: falling.

A little-known, early novel for both co-authors, Windhaven is nominally science fiction but in practice it reads very much like fantasy. Due to its intense focus on human relationships and political conflict, it particularly anticipates Martin’s hugely successful later work. This fix-up novel thoroughly explores a society which is profoundly shaped by flight, and by the struggle over who is best-placed to wear wings.

An old soldier gets a radically new view of the universe.

Bob Shaw (1931 - 1996) knew how to pack ideas into his short, sleek science fiction entertainments. His third novel, The Palace of Eternity, is a good example. Shaw weaves a fast-moving tale that explores interstellar war, environmental destruction, and even the source of artistic inspiration. The narrative shifts and jukes excitingly, taking an almost outrageous cosmic turn that the SFE says “displeased some critics” but is an “effective handling of a traditional SF displacement of ideas from metaphysics…”

The Palace of Eternity was originally published as part of series 1 of the Ace Science Fiction Specials in 1969. This series was key to Shaw’s career, and he saw three consecutive novels published through it - this one was preceded by The Two Timers (1968) and followed by One Million Tomorrows (1970). It is vintage Shaw - propulsive, thought-provoking, and written to entertain.

A powerfully experimental look at inhumanity, viewed through many lives.

With his 1969 novel Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock used the science fictional device of time travel to explore the origins of Christianity and the nature of religious belief. His protagonist, the spiritually and sexually confused Karl Glogauer, travelled back in time and took on the role attributed by scripture to Jesus - with inevitable consequences.

Bold and brazen, Behold the Man reflected Moorcock's New Wave sensibilities and straddled his work in SF, literary, and experimental fiction. Three years later, he published a strange sort of sequel. Breakfast in the Ruins again focuses on Karl Glogauer - not one, but many versions of him. This eye-opening novel uses Glogauer as a refracting prism through which the cruelties of the 19th and 20th centuries are seen.

Billed as a "novel of inhumanity", Breakfast in the Ruins mixes fantasy, historical, and experimental approaches. Like the work of Moorcock's "inner space" ally J.G. Ballard, Glogauer's shattered lives force us to examine the worst that humankind can do and be. It is a harrowing odyssey into a century of screams, from the destruction of the Paris Commune to a nuked-out vision of the future, stopping to take in the atrocities of Shanghai, Kenya, and Vietnam.

An SF classic of noir paranoia, and an accessible introduction to PKD.

Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982) is that rare thing - a science fiction writer and a household name. His favoured themes are associated so strongly with his work that the term “Dickian” is used to invoke them: paranoia, identity, and simulation. Yet it is often argued that without the film adaptation released four months after his death, Dick could have fallen into obscurity. But this isn’t about that film - it is about the landmark novel that inspired it, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).

By 1968, Dick had already published more than 20 novels and numerous short stories. He had explored extensively some of SF’s most favoured concepts, and Do Androids Dream returns to some of these. It is a story about robots, off-world colonies, and dystopia - but it deploys these elements in a distinctive new way. This is a cleverly disconcerting novel without easy answers, which challenges our notions about authenticity, empathy, and nature. It also plays fruitfully with the conventions of noir in a way that anticipates cyberpunk. 

It may be true that Dick would have remained an obscure figure in the general consciousness if Do Androids Dream had not been adapted for the screen. Even then, this one novel would secure him a key place in the SF canon.