What is a Good Sci Fi Book ?
I have gone through many sci-fi books and their author, and ever since man was able to write on a paper, he wanted to show vision of his or her surroundings far more advance than what it currently was at that time. Seventy years ago people were star stuck at the technology of a wired phone, operators and being able to talk to your friend miles apart. Seventy years later, not too much has changed, even in the age of iPad and iPhones. Writers and authors of 50-70 years ago predicted we would have flying cars and Friday nights would be spent on Mars or the Moon; this fantasy came truly only in the hit songs of Frank Sinatra ‘Fly me to the Moon’, and movies of Spielberg like E.T. and Close Encounters. The genre of Science Fiction never really got a true definition, because when I see certain books on the bookshelves these days, I can instantly say “that book doesn’t belong in sci-fi category”.
There are so many so called ‘Science Fiction novels’, but none prevail that defines the definition of Science Fiction. What is a science fiction novel? Science fiction novels is a story that should give a glimpse of the near or distance future for humanity, or the space age, which is realistic for us to relate to. I ran into novel with synopsis of alien vampires, and Planet XYZ Dracula’s attacking the civilians of another planet. Where are those books like 2001 space odyssey, 1984, and War of the Worlds? The foundation of sci-fi books have always been around aliens, our human existence and the future of man kind in the near future being effected by environment; natural or otherwise.
All the new sci-fi books have mostly been of fantasy genre, or a mirror image of a recent novel which became a hit. This is another problem with the dieing publishing world; they milk the same subject over and over again just because one became a hit. When ‘Twilight’ saga came out, soon after, hundreds of other novels came out based on vampire love story and triangle; whether they belonged on the bookshelves or not, the publishers made sure they milked out any and every author they had who wrote around the same subject. This is why in my opinion, going the independent and self publishing route is the wave of the future. No longer do you have to depend upon a third party to accept, like or dislike your work; the new technology has allowed the author to judge their own work.
The positive side to new publishing methods has also made the author well versed in the art of creative writing with zero grammatical and spellings errors. Most professionally published work has been edited, and re-edited by professional copywriters. An original manual script of a published author is far different than the released copy. Many people think that authors are the greatest doctors of written language, while in reality they, too, have the same, average English skills which are polished far beyond their capability to make it sound and read well. In the new multiverse era of books and publishing I came across a unique gem; ‘Kyirux: The Message of Pascal’.
Reading the synopsis gave me the thrill of the good old days of futuristic storyline with realistic approach. The story of Kyirux is based on a strange device that gets discovered from deep beneath the surface of our planets in the early years of 21st century, which turns out to be 500 million years old. This device tells the human about their origins, lays out the secrets of our universe, and, gives a warning of celestial proportions. Just reading the synopsis gave me chills, and as the short intro, the story was well beyond applause. This is a must read for all sci-fi books’ fans.