Starting today, Librotea joins the cultural proposal of Eldiario.es. An alliance that is committed to bringing the pleasure of reading to more and more readers, which we celebrate by talking about books with its director, Ignacio School, and one of his great passions, science fiction. With him we talked about the possibilities of a genre that opens up new worlds and possibilities and he recommends fascinating books to discover science fiction.
Fascinating books to discover science fiction, recommended by Ignacio Escolar
Ignacio Escolar says that the habit of reading comes from home. “My parents are both philologists and very fond of literature. From a very young age, I was fond of them too.” Now, he tries to pass it on to his children. “When my little son, who is now 15 years old, started to get interested in literature, I tried to find what triggers would help him to continue reading later. I found him in Harry Potter. It helped me stop reading comics and stories and start reading books. Fortunately, he continues reading today,” he says.
The possible futures of science fiction
The genre that helped him develop as a reader was science fiction. “I read all kinds of books. Of course, a lot of essays, because it is essential in my work to read books for my own training. But, as entertainment, when I want to clear my head and distract myself, I use what I used as a child, which is science fiction,” he recalls. “I started with the classics, with Arthur C. Clarkewith Isaac Asimovwith Robert Heinlein… The book that as a child I always said was my favorite, and that I still have today practically on the verge of demolition and unbound, is a little-known book by Arthur C. Clarke called Tales from the White Stag Tavern”.
He is passionate about science fiction, he explains, for several reasons. “First, because it has a part of science, in the sense that it is a fascinating way to peek into what may come next,” he explains. “In the end, the exercise of science fiction is to imagine what a future could be like, with those advances that we are discovering, in ten, a hundred or a thousand years. And that fascinates me since I was a child because I always liked science. I started working as a journalist doing scientific dissemination. From there I jumped into dissemination topics about the Internet and new technologies, and from there, by chance of my career, I ended up doing political journalism. But my origin was collecting clippings Very interesting and read science fiction books.”
On the other hand, also the dystopian part that the genre proposes. “Since the first science fiction novel, which for me is Frankenstein“Everything is already there, the basic tools,” he says. “The fear of science too, how science can lead us to dystopian futures, the fear of technology that advances too quickly. Something that, unfortunately, is often a part of the truth. How science, for example the science of the atom, takes us to a 20th century marked by the fear of a new Hiroshima or a great nuclear war.” But, above all, science fiction is also related to something that for a journalist, he explains, is essential: “curiosity. Having the desire to discover different, very different things. That’s what caught me in science fiction from a very young age.”
Fascinating books to discover science fiction, recommended by Ignacio Escolar
Tales from the White Stag Tavern
Arthur C. Clarke
Editorial Alliance
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It is a collection of science fiction stories with the common thread of a tavern where scientific journalists, physicists, people who work in espionage hang out… It is almost like the tavern in Star Wars in the London version of the 50s and 60s. From there, build a lot of stories with that little common thread. I loved them as a child and have reread them many times.
Snow Crash (Omnium)
Neal Stephenson
Gigamesh Editions
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From contemporary authors, especially Neal Stephenson. He is an American author who has three of my favorite novels. Snow Crash is one of them. Stephenson has something very special, which is that he is someone who has imagined the future that then arrives. Snowcrash is a novel from the 80s-90s in which he talks about the metaverse, but about the metaverse of today. In fact, Second Life and then the metaverse that people are working on now, all of this is in that novel. And he has a second novel, which is Cryptonomicon, where the bases of bitcoin come out. He is born there. A science fiction writer who has been able to imagine something as groundbreaking as bitcoin or the metaverse gives you the character’s stature. The novels, furthermore, are great, exceptional and of the three I recommend starting based on your age. If you are a teenager, start with Snow Crash although you will enjoy it just as much at 48 years old as I am today. And if you like history, start with Cryptonomicon, which is wonderful too.
The Three Body Problem (Three Body Trilogy 1)
Cixin Liu
Pocket B
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I also really like Liu Cixin, the Chinese author, now very fashionable with the television adaptation of his The Three-Body Problem trilogy. It is one of the best things that have been written in the last decade of science fiction.
The Aleph
Jorge Luis Borges
POCKET-SIZE
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Of course, Borges. You go from The White Deer Tavern when you are, in my case, 12 years old, to when you are already 20 years old, you arrive at The Aleph, and it is the same. They are stories that break your head because they allow you to imagine incredible worlds. In his case, there are those who argue if it is science fiction, if it is magical realism, if it is fantasy… but, of course, I would classify Borges as science fiction in some of his works. There are some things that play with scientific elements, even if it is to create incredible worlds.
Ender’s Game (Ender’s Saga 1)
Orson Scott Card
Pocket B
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Another fantastic book for a child to read that I, as a teenager, was really hooked on is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It also has a film adaptation, although the book is much better. My eldest son, who got hooked on Harry Potter, then continued with Orson Scott Card and then with a much more modern novel that is Ready Player One, and which is a bit of a natural continuation of the other two.
The stars, my destiny (Omnium)
Alfred Bester (1913-1987)
Gigamesh Editions
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One last science fiction author that I recommend and who is much less known although he has many Hugo and Nebula awards, which are the great American science fiction awards, is Alfred Bester. He has very few books translated into Spanish, most of them are translated in the 60s-70s in the Bruguera collections of pulp literature, although for me it is much more than that. He has two exceptional novels, El hombre demolido and above all The stars, my destiny, which has different titles in Spanish. It has this taste of the science fiction novel of the 50s, where everything seemed like spaceships, flying cars, but where it also tells you a lot, as also happens with Heinlein’s novels, about what the time is like in which everything is told. this, with the threat of the cold war, the nuclear threat and the consequences of what seemed like science fiction and that became science in reality and geopolitics.
