One idea, that I think could be expressed as one of those movements which encompass science, art and philosophy starts with the definition of history, which basically defines history as stuff people wrote about things that happened. Prehistory is the stuff that happened before with a hundred years of commentary, nuance, various waves of correctness and such. But, arbitrary demarkations are uncomfortable. We much prefer a nice definable river or mountain range to act as our border than a straight line on a map. As definition go, history's in an interesting one. Someone writes about a guy who was the king, that's history. Someone finds bones and a fancy hat in a lavish grave, that's prehistory.
Now, by that definition we're running into some interesting hockey stick phenomenon. Our accumulation of history, via the digital record is growing f-ing vast. Vast! Google decided (independently, which is creepy but moving on) to make me a little album with dates and places of a recent trip I took. It's choice of photographs was good and so was the labeling.
So, written history with some guy or girl compiling a list of kings and laws and even daily accounts of wars and politics and money are now superseded. Written history is giving way to recorded history. Is recorded the right word? Is history? Post-history?
Back to sci-fi. Sci-fi of the 20th century was about technology. Video phones and space blimps. Alien invasions and human colonization of new worlds. Fantasies of mixed specie societies reflecting our struggles to transcend ethnicity and culture. Today's science fiction is, I believe most enlightening in describing the human response to technology. What will the world be like when tinder puts you in a virtual room with a would be friend? How do we react to real wars (as apposed to a science fiction version of romantic fantasy) in the communication age. How will it feel to be a 90 year old who can run a half marathon. What will it be like for people who can access thousands of hours of conversations their grandparents had with their parents?
These are interesting questions.
Along these lines I highly recommend episode 3 of Black Mirror "The Entire History of You". It is essentially a British version of The Twilight Zone.
If anyone is interested, there's a 2 volume set from 1959, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher, copies of which are always dirt cheap on Amazon; it got a few duds, but it's one of the best collections I've ever read, and an amazing introduction (has The Stars My Destination [as Tiger! Tiger!], the Chrysalids, Waldo, the Weapon Shops of Isher, among loads of other stuff). This site is amazing as well, if you can hack the weird design: http://greatsfandf.com/
By the way, if one wants to read a quick standalone sci-fi novel, I just finished Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I can't recommend it strongly enough.
I would strongly recommend tackling Issac Asimov's 'Foundation' series as one of the all time classics.
Another pretty early one to take a look at is 'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was the first book banned by the USSR and was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984.
Anyway, Frankenstein was one of the cornerstone texts of that course, and you can clearly see many of the themes of later SF being developed by Shelley. We also read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in that course, plus some early Australian SF (like Picnic at Hanging Rock). It was all pretty interesting, but a long way from the space opera that is one of the cornerstones of modern SF. I just don't feel like you can experience SF unless you've read some of the bigger more sweeping stuff, like Hyperion or Pandora's Star.
I had not heard of We, but I will look into it.
Science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you're feeling highbrow) is probably one form where I still regularly buy "Year Best <whatever>" anthologies...it's a form that is benefited heavily from short stories, because scifi is about the ideas, not so much the characters. Good science fiction has both, of course, but must have good ideas--lots of stories happen that have decent character development but the ideas stink.
I also would strongly recommend the Pump Six anthology by Paolo Bacigalupi; it's biopunk, I suppose, but pretty solid and plays well with the ideas of being past Peak Energy.
I recently finished "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and I loved it. Makes me curious to read other sci fi from the Soviet world.
A long time ago, I read that Asimov's short story 'Nightfall' was considered the finest short SF of all time, but I respectfully disagree. Nine Minutes, by Genrikh Altov, is that story for me. Link: http://www.altshuller.ru/world/eng/science-fiction4.asp
Also - a truly awesome novel - 'Self Discovery', by Vladimir Savchenko (also in the Macmillan series). (Link: http://lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_ok-en...) It has one of the most compelling, and fascinating, descriptions of AI I've ever come across. As Theodore Sturgeon writes in the introduction, 'described with such realism that one is tempted to apply for a grant, build it, and check it out.'
I still have fond memories of Smith's galaxy-spanning Skylark series, the planet bashing swagger of the Lensman series, and Campbell's unapologetic "super science", but the prose has not aged well and I find them difficult to read now. I feel a little sad about that.
I can still recommend Smith's The Skylark of Space and Skylark Three, and Campbell's The Moon is Hell, but not much else.
If you like it you can check out the rest, if not then they're only short stories so not too much of an investment in time.
Here's a (probably pirate?) link: http://lib.ru/GIBSON/r_contin.txt
EDIT: see also the Hugo Awards, which could probably do a better job of publicizing the sorce of their name.
PPS: congrats cstross for best novella! I hadn't noticed that.
Before SF, there were "Edisonades", the classic being "Edison's Conquest of Mars". That's a milestone in science fiction. It's one of the first space travel stories, and it's reasonably plausible given scientific knowledge at the time.
Heinlein is not from the "beginnings" era. Heinlein is from the "golden age" of SF, when a space-oriented future looked not only technically possible but close. Watch "Destination Moon". Most of Heinlein's better works predate the discovery that Mars barely has an atmosphere and Venus is well above the boiling point of water. Planetary colonization within the solar system looked possible back then.
Finding stuff there is a mess though, but even just a search for "science fiction" is like falling into a dragon's hoard of genre pieces.
