I have some serious issues with this list. The best way to get non-sf fans to read sf is to make them think they aren't reading sf even though they are.
Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay has all the elements of a classic alternate history sf story, yet won the Pulitzer. I'm betting 95% of the people who read and enjoyed it would never think of it as sf.
A good chunk of Margaret "Space Squid" Atwood's oeuvre are actually sf novels.
1984 and Brave New World are excellent gateways. Hell, they're literature. Literary pundits are they clearly can't be sf. That's bunk since they contain all the classic tropes.
The non-sf, more literary repackings of Philip K. Dick's best novels are another great way to go.
I've spent a good chunk of my adult life introducing sf to non-sf fans. It's not so much the ideas in sf that turn people off but rather the often lurid packaging that proudly says "science fiction" and all the negative stereotypes that accompany those covers.
Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay has all the elements of a classic alternate history sf story, yet won the Pulitzer. I'm betting 95% of the people who read and enjoyed it would never think of it as sf.
A good chunk of Margaret "Space Squid" Atwood's oeuvre are actually sf novels.
1984 and Brave New World are excellent gateways. Hell, they're literature. Literary pundits are they clearly can't be sf. That's bunk since they contain all the classic tropes.
The non-sf, more literary repackings of Philip K. Dick's best novels are another great way to go.
I've spent a good chunk of my adult life introducing sf to non-sf fans. It's not so much the ideas in sf that turn people off but rather the often lurid packaging that proudly says "science fiction" and all the negative stereotypes that accompany those covers.