CHEAP TRUTH TOP TEN (Nonfiction special)

This issue's expanded Top Ten extols works of visionary nonfiction, along with lighter pieces to stanch the flow of blood from nose and ears.

• THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL by J. D. Bernal. In the 1920's this visionary English scientist, his mind inflamed by what he conceived to be the imminent triumph of World Socialism, reinvented the nature of the human future. To read this book is to marvel over what science fiction might have been if Hugo Gernsback had not misled the genre. A work of staggering daring, utterly lacking in comfortable bullshit.
• DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE by Freeman Dyson. The great physicist-visionary of the Orion Project explores the implications of man's role in the cosmos and the simple warmth of human life. A sad, wise, hopeful book.
• THE THIRD WAVE by Alvin Toffler. Former Marxist Toffler had his paradigms set early; he aims to be the Marx of the twenty-first century, only this time it'll be done right. A brilliant conceptual framework for seeing emergent order in the confusion of our times, deliberately pop-oriented and slanted as a polemic for action. Echoes of his rhetoric are already apparent in many politicians' sudden romance with high-tech industry. Must-reading for anyone whose head is not in a bucket.
• THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA by Joel Garreau. Fascinating social analysis of the geographical subcultures of the continent. Floods the mind with insight. If you ever wondered why Californians are crazy, this is the book for you.
• THE NEW SOLAR SYSTEM, Beatty, O'Leary, and Chaikin, eds. Mind-expanding compendium of the discoveries garnered from unmanned planetary exploration. Consigns whole reams of musty space opera to the ash-heap.
• INFINITY AND THE MIND by Rudy Rucker. Mathematically rigorous treatment of the ultimate in mind-stretching concepts, drawn from the warped pen of the transrealist Seer of Lynchburg. Like being hit in the head by a bowling ball.
• NEW EARTHS by James Oberg. NASA technician Oberg tackles terraforming in this series of technical studies prefaced by SF vignettes. With his two other books, RED STAR IN ORBIT and MISSION TO MARS, Oberg has established himself as a cornucopia of cribbable data for SF writers. Worth its weight in reaction mass.
• A HOUSE IN SPACE by Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr. The definitive book on Skylab, the real lowdown on what it's like to live in freefall. A treasure-house of weird sidelights and bizarre detail. Refreshingly free of paramilitary NASA tripe.
• THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM by Michael Weldon. A monument of bizarrist cinematic trash. The reader's preconceptions crumble under a blizzard of the worthless and deranged. Seems to include every sleazoid SF flick ever inflicted on the world, along with countless teens-on-drugs flicks, beach movies, and ax-butcher epics. Unbelievably thorough and convulsively hilarious. Deserves a place of honor on the reference shelf of every cultural mutant.
• DREAM MAKERS VOLUME II by Charles Platt. More painful frankness from Platt, who has a genius for showing up others' eccentricities as if he himself were sane. Low-key, utterly convincing demonstrations of the manifold nature of psychic damage. In its portraits of the competition, this is perhaps one of the most cheering books that a would-be science fiction writer could possibly possess. For those already damaged beyond all hope, it provides irresistible frissons of warm camaraderie. Meticulous journalism with an eye for the absurd.