Storys that made you cry
 

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.

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

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).]

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

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

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

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

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.

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).]

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.

Yeah, Robinton's death was hard. I also cried when Lessa reappeared with the oldtimers in Dragonflight. It was a magical moment. I cried, and I was in one of my high school English classes, reading after I'd finished my homework. Heheh.

Susan

Thank God!!! Another Horwood fan!!... that makes two of us now! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

Vitriol... read Skallagrig (and weep)

I don't remember ever having cried to a science fiction story, but 'i have no mouth and i must scream' by Ellison was intense...and Bachman's 'long run'...and 'city come a walkin'' by Shirley...and...

Most recently, 'Son of the Shadow's' made me cry, and ASoIaF has had me in SERIOUS tears 3 times so far. Can't think of a Scifi tear-jerker, tho'.

There`s a fifties story by Tom Godwin called Cold Equations which is still the most moving SF story I`ve ever read. It`s about a space-jockey taking a life-saving serum to a plague-ridden colony, and the consequences when he finds a young stowaway. What ever you do, though, do not watch the ghastly Outer Limits version of this story. The idiots introduced a love-interest and some baddies and completely ruined a fine, fine story.
Link below for details:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue35/cold.html

[This message has been edited by aldiboronti (edited December 29, 2001).]

Yes, the Cold Equations is a classic, and I'm sure someone round here recommended it as one of their 'best stories of all time'.

Haven't read or seen the Outer Limits version (but it sounds dreadful! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif )

Hobbit

Linon's second 'death' in Sailing to Sarantium absolutely killed me. The whole scene involving the mystical bison in the forest and Linon's last words to Caius was an incredibly touching scene. Outside that, the only other time I can remember crying was when Sturm died in Dragons of Winter Night.

[This message has been edited by Qin (edited January 01, 2002).]

Flowers for Algernon...can't remember who wrote it. Where a sweet but dumb janitor gets a treatment to increase his intelligence. Amazing.

Daniel Keyes wrote it.

The end of the Coldfire trilogy.
Tons and tons, but they're almost all fantasy, so I'll keep it to myself.

http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/frown.gif

That poem in Forge of God about the baby crying out in the woods bringing down the wolves... it is so true!

(SETI was the baby)

[This message has been edited by Rocketsheep (edited January 14, 2002).]

You may not believe it but Ender's Game made me shead a tear (not many though). It's just so sad how Ender is froozen out of everything. How the commanders keep him from getting friends among the kids his age. When he gets really tight whit Alai they break them appart. It was the part when they say goodbye in their barracks and Alai kisses Ender on his cheek and wisper Salaam in his ear. That breakup made me shead a little tear, mostly for Ender who never really hadn't have a real friend before Alai and now they were broken appart.

Well, I remember almost crying when Lord Denethor II burned himself alive in the "LOTR Trilogy."
I also came close to crying when Towser the Jester and Sludig died in "The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy."
Plus, there were several parts in "Star Wars: The Han Solo Trilogy Book I: The Paradise Snare" that almost made me cry, especially when that Wookie that practically had raised Han Solo (I can't remember her name) was killed.

My problem is that I don't seem to cry. Not sure what my problem is. Alot of books, like sad movies, bring tears to my eyes, if I am in the right mood when I'm watching them, but they never seem to fall. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/wink.gif

Same here Ender, actually Ender's Game was the ONLY one who made me, but just a little.

I'm not sure whether it was Renegade of Kregen or Krozair of Kregen (by Alan Burt Akers), but the one where his wife dies.

That put a lump in my throat.

It was written so well.

Didn't Ende's Game make anybody else shead a tear?