Science fable is great when it ’s uncanny . Really off-the-wall science fiction takes you on a wild ride , bollocks retiring musical genre conventions and depositing you someplace mil from where you pop . But where can you find the really odd stuff ?
Like hallucinogenic spores in a ulterior cavern , the most thinker - bending science fable rule book can take some dig . We asked around , and here ’s what we came up with : the 10 weirdest science fiction ( and phantasy ) books that you ’ve believably never read .
10 . This Business of Bomfog , by Madelaine Duke ( 1967 )
Cover tagline : “ The Astonishing World of 1989 — A World of People Gone unbalanced , Mad , Mad . ” This is recursive bit of Philip K. Dick - esque metafiction , lay out in a Orwellian dystopia where the Brotherhood of Man , Fatherhood of God ( BOMFOG ) building complex adjudicate to prevent wars by giving significant Edgar Albert Guest access to perpetual - motion art and individual swimming consortium . Key line of dialogue : “ Sex is part of our reeducation programme . ”
9 . The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders by Isidore Haiblum ( 1971 )
A Tsaddik is a Hasidic religious leader or impudent person , and this book is legendarily steeped in Jewish lore , as the principal case visit various prison term and place in Jewish history . Writes Eleanor Skinner inher Amazon review , “ The tsaddik vagabond around through fourth dimension & space , while a wisecracking Retief / James Bond kind of material body from a galactic bureaucracy accidentally rescues a Polish princess . finally they all meet to press an intergalactic real estate conspiracy , culminating in a climactic battle between hordes of fiend & time - hopping Chassidim in a Polish castle . 60s psychedelia meets Yiddish humour . ”
8 . All of An flash by Richard Garfinkle ( 1999 )
A scientist discovers a place called the jiffy which , as Amazon’ssummaryputs it , is “ a paradoxical nonplace that is simultaneously all times and no time . ” before long everybody ’s combat to control the Instant , where changes ripple frontward and alter the future . Every small ripple erase intact cultures and pass over out whole timeline . TheSFSite reviewconveys just how eldritch this volume beat :
In plus to the normal dimensions of summit , width and deepness , duration forms a fourth property in the Instant , and it places limitation on the memories and abilities of its inhabitants . Kookatchi , for example , has a particularly scant duration , and therefore his retention recycles often , only let him to retain the most vital of entropy . Nir , the War Chief from the Now , has a duration of a decade which allows him to take part in farsighted term planning , although Garfinkle reveal that those inhabitants with longer a duration have a more hard clock time seeing the Instant for what it really is .
7 . spend for Human , by Jody Scott ( 1977 )
Benaroya is agiant space dolphinwho ’s only concerned in pleasure , until she decide to study humans . To do this , she disguises herself as Brenda Starr , the daughter newsman from the newspaper comic strip . As she tells one human , “ You might say I endeavor to touch in a meaningful , implicated way to autochthonous bipeds in general . ” afterwards , Benaroya disguise herself as Emma Peel ( from The Avengers ) and generator Virginia Woolf . Other members of her specie are disguised as Abraham Lincoln and George S. Patton , while their supporting drones expect like Richard Nixon . While disguised as Virginia Woolf , Benaroya gets herself captured by a race of psychopathic noncitizen who need to put down the Earth , and you get a weird picture where Virginia Woolf turn over whether it ’s a bad thing to fall in love with the leader of a mathematical group of genocidal alien sociopath .
6 . Time Snake and Superclown by Vincent King ( 1976 )
Wereviewed this one back in 2008 , and it ’s still hard to hail up with a summary of the plot of ground . Let ’s just say that the main fibre is living on Earth , observing a mintage of wraiths who are venture to be human . While inquire this insidious plot of land , the hero has high-risk sex with a female wraith , who metamorphose his face into a clown mask — permanently — and steals his pants . He does n’t acknowledge his pants are leave out for about 20 pages , and when it finally dawns on him that he ’s pantless , he observes , “ I must have been really forged not to have point out that . ” The girl also geld off his “ strobe , ” trapping him on our major planet because he ca n’t access his starship . She finally tell him he ’s specify to press the Time Snake , which is coming to corrode the world — but should he trust the missy who turned him into a merry andrew and stole his bloomers ? believably not , but he does anyway .
https://gizmodo.com/the-most-demented-novel-of-all-time-5082454
5 . Flesh & Gold by Phyllis Gottlieb ( 1999 )
From the Amazon.com synopsis :
Travelling jurist Skerow , of a race of moral haiku - writing telepathic sauropods , hit upon two mysteries while on duty on grimy mining planet Fthel V. The same day she discovers her aged evaluator and colleague of 25 long time was under probe for accepting bribes , said colleague is mangle in his bedroom ; and Skerow espies a genetically - spay , almost - human mermaid carry captive in the show tankful of a brothel windowpane .
Luckily , it sounds like Skerow gets quite a little of aid from her antecedent , whose brains are all in bottle , Futurama - style , plus she teams up with a human gladiator - for - hire describe Ned . Too sorry the food for thought on Fthel V is so unspeakable .
4 . Panda Ray by Michael Kandel ( 1996 )
Christopher await like a normal 10 - year - old male child , but he ’s actually a member of a superpowerful race of beast who master the world using their technology and psychic king . When Christopher starts vaunt about this at schoolhouse , including details about how ESP killed the dinosaurs , his mother gets mad and adjudicate that he should be “ scooped out ” — robbed of his psychic powers and turned into a shadow of his old ego . So the boy escapes with his grandfather in a clock time auto disguised as a bathroom , fleeing through multiple universes . They go in hunt of the grandfather ’s mentor , Panda Ray , who may be able to save the son , but only by turn him into a completely different person . Kandel is best known as the English translator of Stanislaw Lem , and by all account statement this is a very Lem - esque satirical coming - of - long time novel .
3 . The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer by Carol Hill ( 1996 )
From the prescribed synopsis : “ A bright , philosophical , and athletic physicist , Amanda Jaworski is in training to be the first somebody to journey to Mars . With her sorcerous cat , Schrodinger , Amanda goes on the ultimate space odyssey . She happen herself in a battle for her life and her planet with the greatest seductress of all , The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer , a being from forty million sluttish years away . ” Oh , and apparently the magic CT learn to order off a Chinese menu . And ostensibly Heisenberg ’s Uncertainty Principle is put to unexpected examination , in a plot line that combines physics and absurdity . Eventually , according to Amazon reader , Amanda ends up encounter red and risque robots , a creature named Ooze , a “ smelly overlord ” and omniscient computers .
2 . The Flight to Lucifer : A Gnostic Fantasy by Harold Bloom ( 1979 )
The only novel that the famed literary critic ever spell — and he has renounce it dead . Do n’t let Harold Bloom see you reading this book ! It ’s a quasi - sequel to the quad - faring novel A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay . And like Lindsay ’s Koran , this involves a flight to another world , in which Gnostic philosophy is explored — and this time , it ’s the planet Lucifer , where a guy diagnose Olam guide on the travelers to escape from Crystalman . As one Amazonreviewer explains :
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1U83ACDU3R6C0/?tag=gizmodo08c-20
set on a remote earth where time and outer space shift back and forth and where the conflict of first - century religion are still being played out . Harold Bloom ’s story begins with an Aeon , Olam , descding to earth to bring two valet , Valentinus , a rebirth of a Gnostic prophesier , and his young warrior bodyguard Perscors , back to Lucifer on a quest to help Valentinus recover the call that prompt his old sprightliness . For Perscors , the quest is a hunting for a transcendental principle , but to reach it , he has to do battle with foe both elysian and semi - providential , to finally reach his inner discovery of his own uniqueness .
1 . The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson ( 1967 )
As the book ’s blurb enounce : “ The Hippies had a New Kick : From Outer Space ! ” Here ’s how we sum up this rule book a few years ago : Anderson ’s semi - autobiographical novel has a principal character named after himself , and a supporting fiber named after his roommate at the clock time . Aliens are supplying a Modern variety of drug , known as “ Reality tab , ” which cause your LSD hallucination to become physically substantial . One character takes the Reality Pills and is able to make butterfly stroke appear spontaneously , all colors and size . Chester faces the vicious Blue Lobster aliens , who hook him up to a machine that force him to experience horrifying imagination that he would have bear to see otherwise . He writes : “ I was the rabbit in the moon . I was as corny as Kansas in electron orbit . I was n’t cogitate very well at all ! ”
Thanks to Eileen Gunn , Bruce Townley , Kate Bornstein , Regis M. Donovan , Ken Applebaum , Ray Radlein , Henry Mahncke , Tom Marcinko , Raskable Glaud , Justin Partridge , Joe Rojas - Burke , Steve Silberman , Christie Dudley , Robbie Taylor , John D. Berry , Michelle Denise Norton , Larry - Bob Roberts , Chris Granade , M. McClure , Ben Werdmuller , Allen Varney , Ron Hogan , Kate Sherrod ,
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