Why am I passionate about this?
I grew up watching 80s Saturday morning cartoons, playing RPGs such as Final Fantasy. Those cartoons and games didn’t care about genre, they cared about telling a story, about making you care about the characters. Hence you could have wizards driving space cars, or knights battling giant robots and so on. They were proof of how wonderfully crazy our imagination can go when we threw labels away and just create stories. The books in this list allow themselves to do that and go bigger, go bolder, showing us the readers what’s possible if we let loose. I hope this list takes others on such wonderful rides, like they did with me.
Ricardo's book list on throwing genre into the blender
Why did Ricardo love this book?
This is a classic that even inspired art from the great Jack Kirby (New Gods, Fantastic 4). It’s written in such way that works both as a SF or a Fantasy novel, but I say that it’s one of the best examples of science fantasy.
Take a mythological/religious tale like the Rig Veda and the quest of Buddha for illumination and use it as the backbone for a story about a lost colony, deities of human origin, oppressive rulers vs. a rebel group and the original inhabitants of a faraway planet, and a generational struggle between immortal beings that affect the technological progression of a society.
It’s an action-packed philosophical mind trip. No wonder why this book won a Hugo and was nominated for a Nebula.
6 authors picked Lord of Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Imagine a distant world where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. Here they have made the stage on which they build a subtle pattern of alliance, love, and deadly enmity. Are they truly immortal? Who are these gods who rule the destiny of a teeming world?
Their names include Brahma, Kali, Krishna and also he who was called Buddha, the Lord of Light, but who now prefers to be known simply as Sam. The gradual unfolding of the story - how the colonization of another planet became a re-enactment of Eastern mythology - is one of…