Here’s a quick one. If you check some of my past posts, you could probably tell that I’m a very intense sci-fi and fantasy book geek (more of sci-fi, actually). I’ve read through classics like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to newer works from Sheri Tepper and Mary Doria Russel. Recently, good examples of impressive sci-fi have been few and far between, either because the quality of the works have dwindled down to pulp-comic book level (we’re talking about stories that don’t even achieve the quality of those choose-your-own-adventure books that you can buy from cheap bookstores.

For anybody who’s worth his weight in gold when it comes to reading, the real treasures in sci-fi literature are the really old classics from two to three decades ago. That was pretty much the golden age, marked by Asimov’s Foundation saga, Clarke’s various trilogies, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and yes, even Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek (at least for the latter part of the seventies - eighties). But the thing is, the number of book geeks that know of decent classics aren’t that great, thanks to the advent of alternative modes of multimedia (I don’t just speak of television: to a certain extent, we have comic books to blame for the decline of good books). Which I think is a bleepin’ shame, since really, these new readers don’t know what it is they’re missing.

So in the same spirit of my earlier presentation of Barthelme’s list of good reads, let me present you readers with this link, which is the very point of this entry anyway. The end.

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