[Valeyard]

Have you ever been so affected by a book that it brought tears to the eyes?

For me....

Bicentennial Man - Asimov. Really hit me hard at the end. I just felt so much for the main character. After all he had done for the human race, all he wanted in return was to be called "human".

The Ugly Little Boy - Asimov/Silverberg. Only read the novel version of this story, but it is really fantastic. Even more emotional impact because you know what is going to happen, and that there is no way for the characters to get out of the situation.

[Valada]

The Endymion books (last two, that is) from Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. Quite a tragic love story in that!

[Cadfael]

The only book that actually made me shed tears as an adult is not a fantasy or SF book... but it was written by a fantasy writer called William Horwood, and the book was called Skallagrig, it dealt with a subject very close to my heart... children with disabilities.

As a youngster, I cried my heart out when Rippacheep sailed into the sunset in CS Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[This message has been edited by dennizm (edited December 22, 2001).]

[Hobbit]

Not usually one to cry, http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif but yes, the Ugly Little Boy is there, and so too The Rise of Endymion (as I've mentioned somewhere else around her, I'm sure!) The Songs of Distant Earth certainly made me feel very sad, though I can't remember if it actually made me cry.

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis was also a very bleak but compelling read - it haunts me now.

Got a feeling Watership Down was there too when I was a lot younger. (Can I scrape this one in as Fantasy?)

Hobbit

[AuntiePam]

Hobbit - haunting is a very good way to describe that book. Those people really lived. Very affecting.

[Shehzad]

Apart from the two books Valeyard mentioned I also liked Asimov's Forward the Foundation... that had a touching ending too.

[matthewajg]

Believe it or not, Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE brought a misty tear to mine eye...

[Llama]

Let me plug for a moment John Crowley's LITTLE, BIG, a beautiful, gentle fantasy that is back in print from Fantasy Masterworks and that is a neglected contemporary American classic. Comparisons have been made between this book and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, and they're not all hype -- in a perfect world, LITTLE, BIG would have won the Pulitzer Prize a couple of times over, it's that good. But the reason I bring it up is because it has such an incredibly moving, transcendental ending. I don't cry easily, but when I reached the last twenty pages, the tears flowed non-stop.... A very affecting book.

[Vitriol]

Pathetic, really, but I was affected by The Ship Who Sang (however badly written it may be).

Other books that have at least made me at least blink back tears:

Virtually anything by Mercedes Lackey
The Ducton Wood Series by William Horwood
Salamandastron by Brain Jacques

Oh, and Narnia when I was really small, when Aslan dies.

[This message has been edited by Vitriol (edited December 26, 2001).]

[Lady Fox]

The Pern series when Master Robinton dies. I bawled my eyes out and still do every time any reference is made to him.

Ender's Game and Songmaster by Orson Scott Card are also pretty emotional books.