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| I thought I'd start off the thread for the Genre Non-Fiction challenge by mentioning some of my favorite Non-Fiction books:
If you're casting about for suggestions, take a look at the Non-Fiction Books Published by Year lists. You have to page through the different years, but there are lots of great books there. Another approach is to look through the Non-Fiction section of the Locus Awards for different years.
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Location: Austin, Tx | It's not in there yet (and yea gods I can't add to my reading list for the year), but I'd like to recommend The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K O'Neill. Yes, it's that O'Neill. This is the book that provides a realistic plan for humans to live in space using technology we had in the 70s (and which has gotten only more practical in the intervening time). |
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| pizzakarin - 2016-02-01 8:21 AM
It's not in there yet (and yea gods I can't add to my reading list for the year), but I'd like to recommend The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K O'Neill. Yes, it's that O'Neill. This is the book that provides a realistic plan for humans to live in space using technology we had in the 70s (and which has gotten only more practical in the intervening time).
I bought that book in hardcover when it was first published and have been an L5er ever since. Unfortunately we haven't made much progress in that direction since then. |
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Location: Denver, CO (USA) | This is a great challenge. I'd been reading non-fictional things all year before I stumbled on this. This there any way we can add The Merril Theory of Lit'ry Criticism by Ritch Calvin to WWE? It's a collection of all of Judith Merill's columns for Magazine of SF &F and her introductions to her yearly anthologies of the 50's and 60's. A great look into the past and what eventually became the present. |
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Location: The Netherlands | kwaidan66 - 2016-08-24 4:40 PM This is a great challenge. I'd been reading non-fictional things all year before I stumbled on this. This there any way we can add The Merril Theory of Lit'ry Criticism by Ritch Calvin to WWE? It's a collection of all of Judith Merill's columns for Magazine of SF &F and her introductions to her yearly anthologies of the 50's and 60's. A great look into the past and what eventually became the present. I have added it for you. If there are more requests please put them in this thread: Can't find the book you want? Make your book requests here! Part II I'm much more likely to see it then.
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| Finished. I included Shirley Jackson's We have Always Lived in the Castle since I think this should be a wider known, more mainstream novel. |
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| I'm running this challenge again this year - the fact that last year I wasn't the only person willing to spend their precious reading time in order to learn more about the field was heartening - hopefully there'll be a few more people joining me this year! I had excellent luck with my reading last year, highlighted by the outstanding The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series . Hopefully 2017 will be even better!
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Location: Dallas, Texas | Engelbrecht - 2017-01-01 4:48 AM I'm running this challenge again this year - the fact that last year I wasn't the only person willing to spend their precious reading time in order to learn more about the field was heartening - hopefully there'll be a few more people joining me this year! I had excellent luck with my reading last year, highlighted by the outstanding The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series . Hopefully 2017 will be even better! Engelbrecht, we should discuss creating a new genre nonfiction list for the site to complement your reading challenge and make it easier for folks to see what we have in the database. A new list will also generate a bunch of requests for new non-fic books to be added too. |
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| Administrator - 2017-01-01 9:53 AM Engelbrecht, we should discuss creating a new genre nonfiction list for the site to complement your reading challenge and make it easier for folks to see what we have in the database. A new list will also generate a bunch of requests for new non-fic books to be added too. That's a great idea!
We do have partial functionality towards this in that people can view books published by year, filtered by Non-Fiction (here 's 2016). I can't remember if adding a multi-year selection criterion for this feature is in the works, but that would be a helpful addition.
A full-fledged list would be even better though!
Figuring out what to include would be the hard/fun part...
I suppose that for starters, the Pringle/Moorcock/Broderick & Di Filippo list books would be a must. After that, other types of non-fiction could be represented as well: - Lists - The above, plus possibly add Jones & Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books as well as Andrews & Rennison's 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels & 100 Must-Read Fantasy Novels?
- History, Criticism & Critical Analysis - Aldiss' Trillion Year Spree is a classic standard. Lots & lots to choose from here - it might be hard to know where to stop
- Essay Collections - I'm not familiar with any that seem strikingly compelling, or "canon". I do like Orwell's essays, and Swanwick's Postmodern Archipelago deserves to be canon, but it's somewhat obscure.
- Review Collections - perhaps Budrys' Benchmarks series - dated, but important. I guess that Walton's What Makes This Book So Great fits in here. Clute's review collections SHOULD be represented, but to me, they're a bit too inaccessible to include. There are various others that might be included.
- Biographies/Autobiographies - Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon for sure. Again, lots of possibilities - Tolkien books alone will fill several bookshelves!
- Interviews - Possibly Platt's Dream Makers books.
- Correspondence - Another category where I'm not familiar with anything canonical.
- Art - Should we include this? If so, perhaps something like Hammond & Scull's J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator.
- Topics - Feminist, LGBTQ, Mythology, Children's Lit, etc. - Perhaps Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing & Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces for starters. Have a book on genre movies?
I've read around 60 non-fiction genre books, but there are hundreds & hundreds of others I've not read or am not familiar with, so I know I still have huge gaps to fill - hopefully others can chime in with some worthy additions.
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Location: UK | I've always kind of enjoyed How to Write SF books, myself. I have one by Bob Shaw, and one by Brian Stableford, and Adam Roberts' version is on my wishlist. And there's Stephen King's On Writing, which is half manual and half autobiography. |
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| Considering joining this challenge. Should be able to cover a few books this year just by research for the book I'm writing. Just bought a copy of Asteroid Mining 101 by John Lewis, just to be sure my tech is accurate. Also reading a book called Rocks from Space by O. Richard Norton (which turned out to be not what I'm looking for, but an excellent guide for meteroite collectors.)
I would love to read the Tiptree biography.
{5 minutes later] Okay, I think I will!
Edited by Sable Aradia 2017-01-09 1:18 PM
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| Sable Aradia,
Welcome to the challenge - I'm certain that you'll enjoy the Tiptree book!
Who would have thought that there was a book called Asteroid Mining 101?!?!
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| Engelbrecht - 2017-01-09 10:33 PM
Sable Aradia,
Welcome to the challenge - I'm certain that you'll enjoy the Tiptree book!
Who would have thought that there was a book called Asteroid Mining 101?!?!
Neat, eh? This is a place where science is catching up with science fiction. Two companies have registered in the US as asteroid mining companies, and a handful of countries have begun legislating what can be done with the commercialization of space, including the US, who passed the S.P.A.C.E. Act in, I think, 2015. (I only know this because I'm writing a book that relates.) |
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Genre Non-Fiction