 | Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $0.01 OH MY GOD, THEY'RE BURNING ALL THE BOOKS...it's just like...<gasp>...THE NAZIS!!!
(pant, pant)
If this book had been written decades before the vastly superior 1984 and Brave New World, it might deserve the recognition that has been lavished upon it. Sadly, it came after those books, and is intensely derivative of both while managing to have far inferior writing.
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 | The Chronicles of Narnia (7-Book Box Set includes "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Prince Caspian," "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," "The Silver Chair," "The Magician's Nephew," " The Horse and His Boy" and "The Last Battle") by C.S. Lewis
Buy used from: $38.61 In the famed, beloved Chronicles of Narnia, we learn:
* Sex is evil and will prevent you from going to Heaven.
* Arabs are bad, white Christians are good.
* The Jesus Lion will always save you.
Why this remains the classic of children's fantasy literature while The Chronicles of Prydain and the Dark is Rising Sequence are out there is a mystery to me.
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 | Ender's Game Gift Edition (Ender Quartet) by Orson Scott Card
Buy new: $12.89 / Used from: $5.77 A decent book by an author who's done much better stuff (the Tales of Alvin Maker). Ender's Game is all about kids doing brutal, often quasi-sexual violence to each other, with quasi-incestuous relationships lurking in the background. Given Orson Scott Card's oft-stated ultra-conservative views, probably not surprising.
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 | The Wheel of Time (Boxed Set #1) by Robert Jordan
Buy new: $13.43 / Used from: $15.98 The classic cautionary tale of Epic Fantasy Series Bloat. Starts as a sort of warmed-over Raymond E. Feist (cliche but engaging), then wanders off into 1000-page book after 1000-page book of noodling irrelevance. Then the author died with the series unfinished. Joke's on you, fans!
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 | Red Mars (Mars Trilogy) by Kim Stanley Robinson
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 In the near future, Mars is colonized by a joint mission of cheerful strong-jawed (white) Americans and sober, utopian-socialist idealistic Russians. Sounds like something written in the 60s, right? Except this book was written in 1992. The technology is refreshingly realistic, but the anachronism of the characters and plot is just too much to overcome.
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 | His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Buy new: $17.05 / Used from: $9.50 Philip Pullman set out to write the anti-Narnia, and he succeeded. Instead of preachy conservatism we get even more preachy anti-Catholicism. The characterization-by-declaration ("She was a sweet, good, kind girl") is strikingly Narnia-esque. The bad guys are out to steal children's souls; it sometimes seems the author suffered this treatment himself. And the title sounds like a porn flick.
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 | Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Buy new: $13.38 / Used from: $16.55 Hailed as the greatest space opera of the decade, this series is actually an almost complete conceptual retread of Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" series of two decades earlier. But instead of the cold scientific tone of Benford, Reynolds features despicable characters doing nonsensical things in a pointlessly pseudo-gothic world. Too bad, too, because Reynolds writes good short fiction.
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 | Wizard's First Rule (The Sword of Truth) by Terry Goodkind
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $4.00 The only book I have ever physically burned, Wizard's First Rule is another one of those books by an ultra-conservative author who likes lots (and lots) of sexual violence but not much sex. But where Ender's Game is well-written, this book is a tired Robert Jordan retread sprinkled with warmed-over Ayn Rand philosophy. I'm told the later books get progressively worse. It's hard to imagine how.
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 | Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $3.47 I'm told the rest of Iain M. Banks' "Culture" novels are better than this early attempt, and I certainly hope so. 500 pages of unlikeable characters lurching from one action-packed but totally pointless adventure to the next just wore me out. Perhaps Banks was trying to write a subtle, cynical treatise on human futility. If so, the readers are the butt of the joke.
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 | Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $1.79 A beautifully written, wonderfully imaginative, fantastically original, utterly engrossing tale...until the last quarter of the book, when the author decides to take an axe to his story and shove it in the wood-chipper. I won't give any details, but all's lame that ends lame, and this book's ending is the lamest among all the starry heavens.
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