Forgotten Classic Sci-Fi

Thought of another forgotten Classic(s). The "Stainless Steel Rat" books by Harry Harrison. And if your in to that, try his Deathworld Trilogy as well, they were quite good, but they will be hard to find as the first one came out in 1960
 
The Stainless Steel Rat books are hardly forgotten. The original trilogy were reprinted by Tor a couple of years ago, and they're all available as ebooks from the SF Gateway. Likewise, the Deathworld books were reprinted a few years ago and are available from the SF Gateway. Then there's the 2000AD comic adaptation, which is available in a trade paperback omnibus.

For truly forgotten authors, how about Francis Stevens, Leslie F Stone, Helen Weinbaum, Leslie Perri, Miriam Allen deFord, Sonya Dorman, Helen Clarkson or Betsy Curtis?
 
Thanks again for all the great suggestions, folks. There are some really good recommendations here :)
 
gljones said:
How about "Inherit the Stars" by James Hogan. Loved that book, the follow up sequels were pretty good to.
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I have been rummaging through top 200 and 100 sci-fi book lists and that is the only Hogan book that shows up.

The Two Faces Of Tomorrow and The Proteus Operation should be there too.

psik
 
I'd like to add Keith Laumer (Dinosaur beach, Bolo series...), Stanislaw Lem (Man from Mars, Memoirs found in a bath tub...) and Fred Pohl's Heechee series - altthough I don't think (hope) that Pohl qualifies as 'forgotten' (or Lem for that matter...)

Cheers,

Sfinx.
 
Olaf Stapledon, but especially First Men and Last Men.
Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle both wrote some excellent SF short stories. Its been over 40 years since I read them but if you find collections of their short stories, you will find the SF stories in there. Doyle of course also wrote The Lost World.
A name from a later age, but one I rarely see mentioned, is Brian Stableford. I enjoyed his Hooded Swan series immensely.
 
Ward Moore wrote a bunch of SF novels that I loved. The best two were Bring the Jubilee, an alternate history American Civil War novel, and Greener Than You Think, a dark satirical apocalypse novel about a plague of unstoppable grass. Great stuff both of them.
 
Seeing as there has been no mention of Cordwainer Smith in this thread, I'll just drop his name in here. Well worth the time to search out some of his work, in my opinion.
 
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Hello folks. Just thought I would bring this up as Harry Harrison has been mentioned a couple of times here. I don't know if many of you are familiar with SF Gateway, who are republishing loads of old sci-fi in ebook form. Seems especially useful for picking stuff up from older authors, especially when only a few of their titles are well-known today.

Anyway, Harry Harrison is their Author of the Month, so they have all of his individual titles priced at £2.99 rather than the normal £4.99. Apparently it's going to stay like this for the rest of February. Unfortunately, they say that at the moment it is a UK-only promotion, so apologies if I've got any non-UK based fans excited...
 
What is the best way to get an electronic version of the subset of these books that are public domain? I tend to just grab a pdf and open it on the kindle app, but its actually a huge pain in the neck to read a book that way.
 
I would second Cordwainer Smith, any story collection will do. Likewise R. A. Lafferty, a forgotten master of the short story form. Anything by Gene Wolfe.
 
I am reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I haven't read it since the 60s.

It is not really forgotten, but I wonder how many sci-fi readers have actually read it.

The Internet changes the book because there is so much in it that I would not have found back then. And back then consumerism did not look so ridiculous to me yet. No global warming and Peak Oil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

Now we have planned obsolescence in computer software.

psik
 
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owlcroft said:
And last but very far from least, that amazing oddity, Maurice Richardson's Exploits of Engelbrecht, urgently needs reprinting.
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Damn right it does! And I need to remember who I lent my copy to so I can read it again RIGHT NOW! Damn you, Mr Owlcroft.

My standard list of vastly underrated authors: Cordwainer Smith, John Sladek, Charles Finney, Robert Sheckley, and A E Van Vogt. (Not necessarily in that order.)
 
Walter Tevis - not so long ago a mega-star, now (at least in the UK) virtually unknown. I recently read his Mockingbird, which I really liked, and aim to get around to his more well-known works ASAP. Most of us will be familiar with the films - The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Hustler and The Color of Money - but not the books.
 
I've not seen any forgotten names yet. Most of the ones mentioned so far are back in print via the SF Gateway, or, if not, their books relatively easy to find in secondhand/used bookshops. Anyone got any names that have really been forgotten?
 
I think it's a generational thing, Ian_sales, I'm in my 50s and I'm still reading just about all the authors so far mentioned in this thread (looking at your books on Library thing I guess you're of a similar age, so far I've only listed 100 books and we have 30 in common*).

Forgotten authors for us would be people writing in the Radium Age of Scientific Romance:

http://hilobrow.com/hilobooks/




*EDIT: make that 32 I just added a couple of Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series...
 
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