Try "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury, but skip the terrible frame story. The actual short stories are beautiful literature and canonical sci-fi.

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NetMageSCW 4 hours ago | parent [-]

As someone who loves the Big Three (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) and have read a lot of SF, I pretty much despise Bradbury. There’s no science in his science fiction.

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BeetleB 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Not much in many of Heinlein's either. Or in Star Wars.

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krapp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Or even Star Trek to be honest. I don't know why Star Wars always gets passed off as "science fantasy" when it's a more grounded universe than Trek by far - space wizards notwithstanding (which Trek has plenty of.)

Even in a lot of hard SF, a lot of the science is wonky if it falls outside of the author's special interest or area of expertise. Relevant to Asimov, the only reason robots have "positronic" brains in his stories is that positrons were a new discovery at the time and it sounded cool and futuristic to him.

	▲	BeetleB 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As a Trekkie, fair point. I think Star Trek does fall into the "speculative fiction" category, but Star Wars doesn't. It's just "space opera".