Best science fiction *genre* novel you've read? [View All]

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Best sci-fi *genre* novel you've read?

Highlighting genre to exclude literature that is arguably sf in subject, as opposed to main-line genre science fiction. (CHILDREN OF MEN, THE ROAD, FRANKENSTEIN, CAT'S CRADLE, NOVA EXPRESS, etc.)

(Irony alert: Both Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and William S. Burroughs's Nova Express were nominated for the Hugo Award in 1964, yet I use them as examples of non science fiction. Hmmm... But you probably know what I mean.)

I don't have a personal answer here. Phillip K. Dick's UBIK is a book I cannot shake, but is riding on the edge of the genre line.

I would have said GATEWAY at one time, but the last time I read it, it wasn't aging so well. (A little emotionally over-wrought.)

Despite the lamentable political views of Messrs. Niven and Pournelle I have to admit that THE MOTE IN GODS EYE is an unusually perfect synthesis of the classic sci-fi tradition.