UPROXX Summer Guide: Five Great SF Beach Reads

It’s summer, and all of us have an obligation, during the summer, to get up, gather together our families, find the nearest body of water, and go push ourselves towards skin cancer. But there’s no reason you can’t better yourself while doing it, and here are five books that’ll wile away the time on the beach in style.

5) Blonde Bombshell, by Tom Holt

You might not know Tom Holt, but he’s been writing insanely witty novels as only British SF&F writers can for decades. When an author can turn the death of the Norse Gods (Expecting Someone Taller) into something hilarious, or writes a book called Faust Among Equals, you know you’re in the presence of a truly awful punster.

This time around, a highly intelligent bomb sent by aliens who can’t stand our music (insert Justin whatsisname joke here) takes human form, and discovers Earth is an exceptionally weird place. Also, there’s a unicorn. That’s all we want to say: you’ll understand why when you get to the unicorn.

4) Dead In the Family, by Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is having a pretty big upswing of late, partially thanks to the success of HBO’s “True Blood”, and there’s a reason. For some reason, reading about immortal pretty people and their ridiculous political concerns never actually gets old, which is why we all playing “Vampire: The Gathering” with equal parts glee and shame. Harris knows her way around a book like this, and “Dead in the Family”, the latest in the Sookie Stackhouse series, is no exception.

And it’s a great place to jump in, too, as Stackhouse wisely realized that any series that gets up to the tenth book collects too many characters. So she offed a whole bunch in the previous novel, meaning it’s easier to pick up the book and get into the plot threads. And if you like it, you’ve got nine more to read on the beach.

3) Hard Luck Diggings, by Jack Vance

Fans of classic SF and short stories have a pricey, but worth-it tome coming out; a collection of 14 short stories from the early career of SF Grand Master Jack Vance.

Vance, for those who might not be familiar, has been writing SF for fifty years, twenty of those years, believe it or not, legally blind. He claimed to have retired, but an autobiography came out in 2009, and Subterranean Press has been good enough to dig out some of his early work, which was pretty hard to find before.

Even better, especially for aspiring authors, it’s paired with excerpts on writing the stories from his biography and material from a 1995 interview, so you can get a sense of why he wrote the story and what changes he made. So you can learn something and enjoy some classics.

2) Wireless, by Charles Stross

If you’re looking for short stories, but modern SF is more your speed, look no further than the work of Charles Stross.

Stross, whether he’s moving the Cold War to a galactic disc, or using spam filters to solve Fermi’s Paradox, is a witty, intelligent writer turning out some of the best modern science fiction today. And short stories are great for the beach, as you can pass out at the end of each one.

1) The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of The Apocalypse by Robert Rankin

OK, we admit it, this actually first came out in 2003. But Rankin, a humorist who’s been cranking out hilarious fantasy since the early ’80s, is finally getting some of his older books reissued, and the man has a way with a title; you can’t tell us you wouldn’t grab a book called Nostradamus Ate My Hamster based solely on the title.

This one is actually what’s by now a fairly standard plot: toys and nursery rhymes meet hard-edged noir. But Rankin’s sensibility makes the book, and seven years is a long time for a book like this to be out of print.

And if nothing else, you’ll certainly get into some interesting conversations.