Adam Savage's Top 5 Science Fiction Books

June 8 I'm here at the cave I am Adam Savage you have been submitting your questions on Twitter hashtag ask Adam Savage I am here at your service to answer those questions and this one comes from wait which one is it ah yeah Cody limber a terrific name by the way Cody limber it's like it's like a good it's a good movie named Cody limber says I've read and loved nearly everything you've mentioned on the still entitled podcast but I need recommendations for sci-fi books what are your top 5 favorite sci-fi books this is a really really tough one simply because there are so many to choose from but with in the interest of first thought best thought I went with these number one Neuromancer and the Neuromancer trilogy which really you could consider one book since William Gibson rights in trilogies uh you can consider any one of his trilogy as a single book sure let's do it Neuromancer and the Neuromancer trilogy which is Neuromancer count zero and Mona Lisa overdrive that absolutely that book changed my life radical reimagining of what science fiction could be and also on that same list I would put on this list that I'm making right now on this list Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson it's a tough call because I actually prefer other books of Neil I think that seven Eve's is a better book I mean you know snow crashes early early book 70 is a much more recent but neurons are so important within the history of science fiction dune Frank Herbert's dune if you haven't read it oh just go read it it's amazing really really incredible book deep histories lovely characterizations familiar and strange politicking the invents a whole religion it's wonderful for as many questions as it answers about the future or the the world that Frank Herbert creates it creates quite twice as many questions and that's the mark of any good science-fiction you feel like you're encountering a fully realized world because there's so much you don't understand 1q84 haruki murakami i this is a weird choice because I'm not sure it's instantly classifiable as science-fiction yet it does include alternate realities so I'm putting it within it I mean you know it's not magical realism although it's drift stiff definitely into magical realism 1q84 which I recently read for the second time seriously one of my favorite books of all time let alone science fiction Jonathan Lethem who wrote things like motherless Brooklyn and fortress of solitude which is amazing God has start writing a his first book was I believe Gunn with occasional music which is a great science fiction novel but the one that I love of his is called girl in landscape and it's a young girl's coming-of-age story while living on a planet that her parents are part of the terraforming advance team so it's science fiction but it's coming of age in the same way that the that that adolescence is both the revealing of a lot of the mysteries of the world to a person as they're going through adolescence but it's also the revealing of so many more questions about the world the book grids on that in a really amazing way and if you read it there is a it's not a character because it's an it's like a creature in the book called a household deer and I'm really curious what you think the shape of a household deer is in fact as a separate thing entirely if you want to draw a picture of what you think a household deer looks like put it in the comments below or tweet it at me and I will go find my drawing of a house dear because my wife had a big argument not a big argument but we had a huge disagreement over what we thought household dear looked like and because you can't quite see them they're like the thing that kind of operate in the book like the floaty floaters in your eyes like you there like always off at the periphery of your perception it's a cool problem to solve okay so the girl in landscape by Jonathan Lethem Shikata Canopus and Argos archives by Doris Lessing holy hell what an important quint ology of books but it they are basically field reports on our on our universe from the benevolent culture that effectively rules the universe the Cano pians the first book is called Shikata the truth the quaint ology is about these all these different planets within this created world but the first one is a field report on earth socha Casta is their name for Earth Earth is a genetic experiment yeah and Jocasta is a field report on the genetic experiment of Earth starting 30,000 years ago and ending if I remember correctly a couple hundred years from now when the whole world holds the white man on trial for crimes against humanity it is an incredible incredible ride and it's completely absorbing including all these incredible constructions of the way the universe is put together where people are born and then their go to zone 4 where they wait in line to be reborn and at one point in one of the books a character falls victim to the disease of rhetoric and so to cure him of his disease of rhetoric they send him to go live a short painful life as a peasant during the French Revolution to show him how meaningless words can be in the face of death yeah this is the kind of little tangent that Doris Lessing puts in those books that blew my freakin mind left hand of darkness by Ursula K Le Guin I recently read it for the first time and I it was really an impressive and powerful experience it is it is about so it posits that humans have been spread throughout the universe in in and and evolved into different types of humans but all based on the same basic chassis as it were and the narrator of left hand of darkness is an earthling who is visiting another planet in which the the people on that planet and it's the only planet this has have no gender they are genderless and the way in which Lessing writes about a gendered persons encountering a genderless person is is really lyrical and intense and beautiful and scary and it's really worth reading right now in time actually and then the three-body problem trilogy which has a name and I can't remember I just asked Norman II read it out to me and I forgot it because it's a complicated name but the three-body problem the dark forest and what is death end I was like x end no deaths and those three books they're difficult reads I think I've met a lot of people who have enjoyed them I met a lot of people who read the first one or maybe got stopped at some point it's from a totally different cultural frame this is Chinese science fiction it's about China and Chinese people and so the frame is completely alien to us in the West and I think that's that's something I found really important and cool about reading it because it just the culture felt really strange but I felt like I was getting not an Americanized version of Chinese culture like like like The Last Emperor I could think that's I guess an Italian eyes version of Chinese sculptor but I was getting a Chinese version of Chinese culture and that again that frame felt unique okay I believe I've listed eight books which is totally reasonable number to have in your top five that was an awesome question I really enjoyed answering it I know I've left some off so please give me some of your other suggestions via Twitter hashtag ask Adam Savage's where you can submit other questions or in the comments below and I will keep getting to them thank you

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 928,447

Keywords: adam savage, science fiction, books, book club, tested, testedcom, tested adam savage, still untitled, adam savage tested, adam savage books, adam savage's tested, best sci fi books, sci fi books, science fiction books, best fiction books, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Dune, 1Q84, Girl in Landscape, The Left Hand of Darkness

Id: zIlTuZUL02I

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019