Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is a fantasy work I most identify with quality of writing rather than having clever ideas. It has a fascinating invented, but not arbitrary, vocabulary, as well as an unreliable narrator that rewards close attention. You can read an excerpt of the beginning here.
Dune is widely regarded as the greatest fantasy novel of all time. Although you should be warned that the quality does decline somewhat in the series of books following, and the story is incomplete if one ignores the crappy continuation by Herbert’s son.
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is considered a gold standard in humorous sci-fi writing.
1984 is of course a must read for its use of language, but most have already.
Ernest Hemmingway isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it would be hard to argue his use of language doesn’t belong somewhere near the top. Try some of his short stories to get a feel for whether the bigger commitment of his novels will be worth your time.
I would definitely read something by Tolstoy and something by Dostoevsky. The contributions of these authors to the modern narrative style is hard to overstate. Again I would recommend some short stories as many people find themselves unable to commit to novel length “classic” works for various reasons.
Something by Philip K Dick, I’d recommend either Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, or the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
And lastly I have to recommend the comic Watchmen. It deserves every bit of its acclaim.
Actually, one of the things that impressed me most about the Book of the New Sun is that none of the words in it are invented, although many are extremely obscure, some use unusual lexical constructions, and at least one is an editing error.
Regardless, it’s a fantastic series. I’d actually call its worldbuilding quite good as well, though I have a particular fondness for the dying Earth subgenre, and although its impact is magnified by the way ideas are introduced: setting-wise, it does perhaps the best job of implementing the old “show, don’t tell” adage for writers that I’ve ever seen.
Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is a fantasy work I most identify with quality of writing rather than having clever ideas. It has a fascinating invented, but not arbitrary, vocabulary, as well as an unreliable narrator that rewards close attention. You can read an excerpt of the beginning here.
Dune is widely regarded as the greatest fantasy novel of all time. Although you should be warned that the quality does decline somewhat in the series of books following, and the story is incomplete if one ignores the crappy continuation by Herbert’s son.
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is considered a gold standard in humorous sci-fi writing.
1984 is of course a must read for its use of language, but most have already.
Ernest Hemmingway isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it would be hard to argue his use of language doesn’t belong somewhere near the top. Try some of his short stories to get a feel for whether the bigger commitment of his novels will be worth your time.
I would definitely read something by Tolstoy and something by Dostoevsky. The contributions of these authors to the modern narrative style is hard to overstate. Again I would recommend some short stories as many people find themselves unable to commit to novel length “classic” works for various reasons.
Something by Philip K Dick, I’d recommend either Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, or the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
And lastly I have to recommend the comic Watchmen. It deserves every bit of its acclaim.
Actually, one of the things that impressed me most about the Book of the New Sun is that none of the words in it are invented, although many are extremely obscure, some use unusual lexical constructions, and at least one is an editing error.
Regardless, it’s a fantastic series. I’d actually call its worldbuilding quite good as well, though I have a particular fondness for the dying Earth subgenre, and although its impact is magnified by the way ideas are introduced: setting-wise, it does perhaps the best job of implementing the old “show, don’t tell” adage for writers that I’ve ever seen.