While reading a retrospective of 1960's SF, I found this line by John Boston:

" Ben Bova, whom I am beginning to think of as the 60-cycle hum of Amazing,..."

Some authors cannot be summed up in a single line; many can; and that comes damn close to encapsulating Ben Bova in a nutshell.

"We who have died to make the Machine have reached out to you..."

John Bloodstone was a bad writer.
Despite this, one of his books is worth reading, if one has the mental fortitude to wade through the abuse of reading a Burroughs pastiche.
Its not  God-Man which is actually worse than its title; and  the semi-mythical Tarzan on Barsoom is probably only of interest to the rabid slash-fic fan.
The book worth the read is Thundar - Man of Two Worlds.

Its an interesting and vivid tale. Michael Storm traverses a Time Vortex hidden in the Andes; he suffers multiple head injuries and amnesia; he becomes a savage man-beast in a jungle full of man-apes; he is tormented by nightmares and visions, especially of a Spanish longsword that had passed through his hands; he is returned to sanity by a beautiful young woman, who cannot love him physically because she is convinced he is their missing god, Thundar; he is captured by Thundar's enemies; he triumphs...

And then he doesn't. His lady-love still thinks he is an untouchable god, and she vanishes with the holy relics of the nation; the sun shines and nighttime will not come, the world starts to bake, dry out and die, the strange super-computer that controls the Time Vortex keeps transmitting messages into his brain: the book rushes over major adventures, and finally refuses to explain how he re-traverses the Vortex, and is found as a raving and fur-clad savage stowaway on a merchant vessel in San Francisco's harbor.
By this point, Micheal Storm is convinced he might very well be the missing god, and that he could re-enter the Vortex to find his beautiful Cylayne...

Questions abound. Micheal Storm is a orphan child, adopted by a rich archaeologist at the age of 14, so he could not possibly be the immortal Thundar, who disappeared in his prime of adulthood. Thundar's sword is found in the clutches of a weathered skeleton on the current-day side of the Vortex, a skeleton wearing Spanish armor of the 15th century. Thundar's ring, which controls the Supercomputer, is found  in the pouch of a dead man on the far side of the Vortex. Chunks of exposition are simply not provided; the text reads like a realistic narrative in the sense that the narrator rarely has any idea why things are happening to him, or around him.

Why should there be ape-cavemen in the future? Why should the main enemy be first mentioned on page 136 of 192, brought on stage on page 158, and than escapes unharmed from the story on page 185?
Why does this villain command strange super-sciences?

The best of bad art raises endless questions: that is its value.

The writing itself is not the worse I have ever read. Burroughs or Howard have pumped out weaker dreck on occasion. But still, phrases like:

"By the the obvious young breasts of this latter creature in the chair, I knew it was female and could only conclude it was Imkuth, captured by means of some sort of scientific witchcraft that lay beyond my knowledge to define."

"If I had sensed a spell upon me before, now this vision of her--approaching me helplessly yet bravely, her hazel eyes locked on mine in full trusting and confidence--served to galvanize a psychic force which I can only describe as witchcraft. The warlock charisma fell upon my muscles and loins and heart. Where mundane rationalism would have submerged me in a sweatbath of anxiety and frustration, I was now unaccountably wizarded into a semblance of madman or godling after all."

Despite all this, the imagery is top-notch. This book screams to be a epic movie. The fights with the monsters, the nightmarish jungle life with its off-again-on-again passage of day and night, the Pellucidar meets Barsoom peoples...its as if John Bloodstone read Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner, fertilized it with A Princess of Mars, incubated it in the Land of Awful Night, and unencumbered by rational thought, wrote the book in one dynamic rush, possibly at the age of 14, and definitely in need of a good lay:
 "Unable to analyze my feelings for her, I held her to me in one flaming moment of blinded ecstasy."

 
The book provides its own epigraph for this article: "Where mundane rationalism would have..."

Complaint Department

I09 posted an article on the 'best Sf novel' to entice a non-SF reader to take up the genre.


And I'm going to complain about the whole damned list.
This being the Internet, I'm allowed to do this.*

First, personal disclosure: I've read SF since I was 8 years old. It was the second week of August, and I picked up a copy of Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts, probably because of the awesome cover that the Del Rey edition had.There was something about the brown shade of the flat spaceship that caught my attention, and it was written in simple enough terms that I did not have to struggle.
At that moment, my total SF experience had been watching  The Search for Spock at a local drive-in.
I probably thought spaceships were real. But it was a good start,and I followed that with  Little Fuzzy by H.Beam Piper, who set the hook deep. Since than, I've read literally thousands of SF novels, the majority of them crap. (Guns of Terra 10. Hyperion. CenterForce. Gunner Kade. Clone. Syzygy... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...)   It has made me the cretin I am today.**

Seriously, I09, you're going to suggest The Handmaid's Tale? Why not  The Jesus Incident, if you want to terrify a new reader with dystopia and nightmare? The Handmaid's Tale is a great book. But it is describing a hideous world. How are you going to hook someone with that?

The Left hand Of Darkness? Not one person in four is clever enough to understand that masterpiece. To everyone else its a boring political complicated with sleds and unusual personal problems. Not to mention it'll disturb anyone with latent homophobia or sexual anxieties.
Cloud Atlas?  Please tell me you didn't understand the question.
Pattern Recognition? Great novel. Not great SF.
American Gods? Well, it is Gaimen's best. But its not SF.
 Interesting to note that Childhood's End came up twice. Its a book that continues to generate strong reactions, especially in people who you would not think had a Satan hangup, but its not a beginner's book.

Why did it take the comment section to point out  Stranger in a Strange Land ? 
 Its story about morality police, sexual repression and the role of religion is still germane today.
...But Heinlein, like Kipling, has a muddy reputation with academics and intellectuals. Purposeful exclusion?

Why not Eye of Cat , or Webs of Everywhere, or The Martian Chronicles?

 Editors take note: most people read for pleasure. They are only going to read a genre if it provides this pleasure. When a person is starting out, it is best to start with enjoyable reads.
Do you think that trying to entice them with a bleak society of ritualized rape and murder (Handmaid's Tale), child soldiers being tricked into genocide(Ender's Game), aliens in the devil's form stealing humanity's children and future (Childhood's End), or the end of the world (Spin), is going to get them to pick up another SF novel?


If the only SF movie I had ever watched was Children of Men  would I be anxious to watch The Iron Giant?

SF is difficult to describe, hard to pin down, and tends to be idiosyncratically defined. But certain themes are expected by the naive reader: spaceships, the future, adventure... give them Whipping Star, give them This Immortal,  give them Dragonriders of Pern, give them The Pastel City or Star Rider;  but give them something which opens a window to the bright worlds of infinite possibilities, not the grim and constrained avenues of nightmare and decay.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a powerful trilogy***, but I'm not going to give it to a beginning fantasy reader. Nor are they going to get Game of Thrones. Start with  Tea with the Black Dragon,  and work your way up to the bleak avenues of the desperate and the dead.

Let them enjoy the sunshine before they face the Overlords, the Commanders of the Faithful, or for that matter, the Eich.

*If you check any forum, you'll see that opinionated whining is quite common.
** Nothing else to blame.
***Yes, I know there is two series, I'm talking about the first.