The 5: Watercooler Science Fiction for Baby Boomers

This Weeks 5:  Science Fiction Books that Every Baby Boomer Read

The Baby Boom generation helped turn science fiction into a mainstream source of entertainment and revenue. There are very few people who didn’t read these mainstays while smoking weed in the basement, or speeding at 3 AM in the 70’s. Here are five novels that everyone read and talked about at the cafeteria lunch table and have permeated our culture ever since. If you haven’t read them, you owe it to yourself to take the time.

• Dune – Frank Herbert. The culture of drugs and money plus giant creatures, the weird religious storyline and psychic undertones made this a psychedelic free-for-all. Numerous attempts were made to turn the stories into movies, but nothing was more impactful than reading the books.
• Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein. Everyone learned how to “grok”, and Heinlein’s world of free love, drugs and sex permeated every page of this novel. Shows how humans are open to turning anything they don’t understand into a religion.
• Foundation – Isaac Asimov. One of the first times we ever heard that mathematics could be used to predict the future. The central theme is creation and protection of the Encyclopedia Galactica and the rise of a mutant who would change it all. Written when an encyclopedia was a line of books on a shelf, it seems inconsequential in the age of the internet and Google.
• 1984 – George Orwell. The scary future convinced everyone to watch out for Big Brother and the consequences of handing over your freedom. Then Bowie’s Diamond Dogs came out and you just knew it was about the novel, even though no one said so. Years later, Bowie revealed that the album was written for a stage show based on the book and Orwell’s family nixed the project. Luckily for us, Bowie put the album out anyway.
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams. Don’t Panic! That face with the tongue sticking out was on everyone’s book covers. And you were cool if you knew the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything . (Hint – it’s “42”.)

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