16 underrated sci-fi novels of the 21st century

[Magical Realist]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/...t-century/

"People tend to look to decades past for examples of great science fiction—the works Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. But the 21st century is living in its own golden age of sci-fi. Along with film and TV adaptations, novels like Cloud Atlas, The Road, The Martian, and Never Let Me Go are becoming more mainstream, and in some cases, even Oscar-worthy.

But what about the books that aren't blessed by Hollywood's cinematic touch? We rounded up 16 novels from this century with a mix of sci-fi, satire, dystopian fiction and cyberpunk—all offering compelling commentary of our increasingly sci-fi-like lives."

[C C]

[...] But the 21st century is living in its own golden age of sci-fi. [...]

Like listening to new music, I've pretty much stopped reading new speculative fiction. Just one potential explanation among many for the apathy: "Oh, here we are finally living in the science fabulist's introductory playground of the 21st century. Even the typical groups of people who once hated the stuff are breathing, wallowing in, and excreting its ideomorphs and technology now. Kissing the sky has become pedestrian today -- an ambient smothering." (Which is to say, the old "Facebook is so uncool now that the Family Ties crowd has taken it over" hipster excuse.)

Speaking of the 21st century, it's amazing to observe how Irwin Allen's pseudoscience television operas got so jacked about the distant year of 1968 harboring an 800-story underground complex housing a time tunnel; a flying saucer in 1996 that could travel interstellar distances (as well as sporting an arm-flailing robot with sarcastic AI); and a '70s submarine turning statistics on its ear via being singled-out to be plagued weekly by rogue sea-monsters, supernatural forces, and visiting alien menaces.

Bizarrely enough, despite the usual more violations of physics than an outraged by wanton sin prophet could shake his scourge-delivering staff at... (the biological offences in Allen's shows like "talking bipedal carrots" need not be mentioned) ... Land of the Giants and its constricted premise seems slightly less demanding than the other retro-shows. Of needing an ophthalmologist's wire speculum to keep the eyes open for an hour.

As part of its "easy to look at" male triumvirate, Don Marshall was apparently the only actor to break Irwin Allen's penchant for total Y-T casts (or the dictates of his studio executive masters, should they have been the actual barrier). I can't immediately recollect any "get out of the stone age" vestiges of I Spy, Mission Impossible, Ironside, Daktari, Mannix, Julia, Star Trek, Hogan's Heroes, The Mod Squad, etc among the regulars of his other three shows.

I take it that the Fitzhugh character was initially meant to be a "Doctor Smith" for Land of the Giants, but thank goodness he didn't remotely become that irritating and hogging of the storylines as that other perpetual "Guest Star" in Lost In Space.