16 Responses so far

1. 1. Paul Abbamondi on Mar 31st, 2006 at 10:28 am

   I always thought Stranger in a Strange Land was catchy. Other favorites include Perdido Street Station, Inkheart, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and City of Saints and Madmen.

   To me, this all stand out as unique and interesting titles.

2. 2. Harry Connolly on Mar 31st, 2006 at 10:47 am

   We Were Out Of Our Minds With Joy.

3. 3. Douglas on Mar 31st, 2006 at 11:41 am

   The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
   Cloud of Sparrows

4. 4. Karl on Mar 31st, 2006 at 12:18 pm

   All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By

5. 5. Michael Canfield on Mar 31st, 2006 at 5:00 pm

   Thunderball - From Russia, with Love - Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Love Me - Moonraker - Goldfinger, I like Ian Fleming’s titles a lot, though they are so well know they don’t sound like actual book titles any more …

6. 6. John Joseph Adams on Mar 31st, 2006 at 9:41 pm

   I always liked The Silence of the Lambs, because it’s an interesting phrase, and then when you read the book/watch the movie, it makes itself very relevant.

   I also really like The Stars My Destination (which happens to be my favorite novel). It’s another one where the phrase itself is intriguing, but then also has resonance with the story itself.

   I could go on and on, but I’ll just do one more: The Long Loud Silence. There’s something creepily compelling about the contradiction implied in that phrase.

7. 7. Terry Frost on Mar 31st, 2006 at 10:40 pm

   I always thought that Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book” had a certain insouciance…

8. 8. sGreer on Mar 31st, 2006 at 10:58 pm

   Some of the best SFF titles have already been mentioned, but on my shelf I have other titles that (in many cases) were the sole reason for picking up the book & reading it. Captains Courageous. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (which was tough going considering I tackled that one at 15 yrs old). Sheila Levine is Dead & Living in New York. Woman on the Edge of Time — a great riff both on the phrase “on the edge of a breakdown” and the time-travelling in the story. Some titles just jump out at you, but then, I used to have time to read anything that caught my eye via title or cover. Now I actually read the teaser to make sure it’s worth the effort, but some titles can still make me pause.

   (Btw, your suggestion about using document map in word is probably the best tip I’ve gotten in a long time. Putting H1 for chapters, and H2 for short scene descriptions, with doc-map on, means I can rearrange scenes without losing track of the big picture. Whew. It was too easy, without such a tracker, to accidentally paste in the wrong location, which is seriously grr-inducing.)

9. 9. Jay Tomio on Apr 1st, 2006 at 5:25 am

   A couple of Moorcock titles come to mind, The ‘Warhound and the World’s Pain’ and ‘Behold the Man’. I also like the title of Will Self’s collection, ‘The Quantity Theory of Insanity’, Swanwick’s ‘Cigar-Box Faust: And Other Miniatures ‘, ‘Cocaine Nights’ by J.G Ballard, Maureen Mchugh’s ‘Mothers and Other Monsters’, - a couple of titles that haven’t come out yet that have caught my eye were A.A. Attanasios’s ‘Killing with the Edge of the Moon’ and Alan Deniro’s ‘Skinny Dipping In The Lake Of The Dead’.

10. 10. baconfats on Apr 1st, 2006 at 9:11 am

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    The Mote in God’s Eye
    Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
    Man Plus

11. 11. Tony on Apr 1st, 2006 at 1:38 pm

    I liked Fountation’s Edge the moment I heard it, and the cover art by Michael Whelan was amazing too.

12. 12. David Louis Edelman on Apr 1st, 2006 at 10:12 pm

    I believe the all-time prizewinner is for Philip Gourevitch’s collection of (true) stories about Rwandan genocide: “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.”

13. 13. Capt. Xerox on Apr 1st, 2006 at 10:57 pm

    The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Not only is it a great book, but the evocative title represents the dream of every science fiction reader.

14. 14. Kelly Brown on Apr 2nd, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    The Empire of Ice Cream

    I have no mouth but I must scream

    Scanners live in Vain

15. 15. Simon Owens on Apr 4th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

    Already mentioned: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

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