Sci-Fi Books

[Serutan]

Good point, but other books have been put together in a similar fashion, and the final product was always.. assembled better.

Then again the story sort of calls for disconnected stories... So I can't really fault Asimov for doing it the way he did it - but I guess in the end I just don't like the concept enough.

And I mean.. I do like the concept, but.. not the execution, I guess.. although I couldn't really point at another way of making that series happen without having to resort to similar pitfalls, other than having some sort of a robot character who survives throughout the story. But I don't know if that would have worked either.

I first read them when I was 18 ( and really liked it at the time), but over time the flaws have become more and more apparent:

Spoiler :

The fact that everything went so smoothly through the first 5 stories
that it really started to get predictable. The Mule was then added to create a real problem for the Plan, but after that, the story just got weaker and weaker and it
finally limped in towards the finish. I've read somewhere that Asimov realized he had painted himself into
a corner after #5 (The Dead Hand), and the Mule was something of a desperation move to get
himself out said corner.

I have occasionally re-read the first book, but the second and third just collect dust
for the reason cited in the spoiler.

So I pretty much agree with your POV.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I'd basically recommend all the books from Stanislaw Lem. He was a brilliant man and his novels are a delightful mix of intelligent science/philosophy and comical approach to the problems of his time.

But if your time is limited, here are the books I liked most:
-> "The Cyberiad" / "Fables for Robots": Fairy tales from robots for robots.
-> "A perfect vacuum": Fictional review on non-existing books. With the best preface I have ever read.
-> "Tales of Pirx the Pilot": A mix of short stories, centered around Pirx, an everyman space cadet that solves his problems with power of deduction instead of luck or special powers. The stories are overall less comical and absurd than the "Star Diaries" with Ijon Tichy, but in return you get a mix that is humorous and deep.

I'd also recommend the "Mars Triology" from Kim Stanley Robinson. It is not a fast paced book and has some really lengthy chapters, but it is a Magnum Opus about colonizing and terraforming the planet. If you have time (and some patience) you should certainly give it a try!

Lastely, Philip K. Dick has written a lot of fantastic novels. The thing I like about him is that his books are always deeply sympathetic with the characters within. It is hard to pick a best one here, because they are all quite unique in their own way, but... Well, for the glory of the list:
-> "The Man from the High Castle": An interesting idea of an alternative universe where the axis won WW2.
-> "A Maze of Death": I really liked the idea behind the story (but can't tell you because that would spoil everything!)
-> "Ubik": You can get a glimpse into Dick's madness with this book. A great story, even if it is... well... insane.
-> "Blade Runner" / "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?": The movie is a classic. The book is even better.

As for Asimov's Foundation:
I read it when I was in school (back when I was 15) and was fascinated by the concept of a mathematical approach to history, since the book had a quite long annex explaining the whole concept (not sure if that was the case for the english original as well). I even gave it to my math teacher because she once saw me brood over a 3D graph in there and became interested. To be frank I didn't really understand too much of the sociolgy parts back then, but I can still remember the scene with the atomic hole puncher to this day.

Same fate befell Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Triology" - the whole politics and sociology was so alien for me back then that I actually quit reading in the first quarter of the third book. I re-read the whole book last year (thankfully had forgotten almost everything already) and was actually amazed by its' quality - if you can live with slow books.

 

[Future PM]

The Mars Trilogy is quite good. I never liked Ubik.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Someone asked if Mars Trilogy was accurate -

More or less. It's not quite 'hard sci fi' but it's decently close and I don't remember anything about it coming off as wildly unrealistic. Though I haven't read them in years so I could be misremembering.


Also the discussion about the Foundation novels reminded me that I read most of them and then just stopped shortly after the Mule appeared. Now I know why.


Ender's Game was a good book but I never read the sequels. The movie was a surprisingly faithful adaption though I don't think it did that well.

The Martian is excellent as was World War Z. Also, both have phenomenal audiobook versions that are arguably better than the novels since the performances are just so stellar.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

One author not mentioned yet is C.J. Cherryh. She wrote a fantastic series of novels in the Alliance-Union/Merchanter series, which is good quality space adventure. There are asteroid miners, families crewing STL merchant ships that take trade goods and messages between space stations, and of course her masterwork which is Cyteen. Cyteen is what Dune should have been, in terms of explaining the complexities of cloning people not only physically, but psychologically. Cyteen and its sequel, Regenesis, are wonderfully complex stories that tackle interstellar politics, the economics of STL and FTL travel, terraforming, and the ethics of cloning, eugenics, "tape" learning that's enhanced with drug therapy, and psychogenesis (cloning not only the physical body but recreating as accurately as possible the original person's mind, skills, and personality). There's enough scope for a third Cyteen novel and I certainly hope she writes one. I really want the loose plot ends wrapped up with the characters, the storyline, and some indication of how this series can eventually tie in with her much-chronologically-later shared world series of Merovingen Nights.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Anyone read Wool by Hugh Howey? I haven't yet, but I picked it up for a couple of bucks on sale - is it worth a read?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

One author not mentioned yet is C.J. Cherryh. She wrote a fantastic series of novels in the Alliance-Union/Merchanter series, which is good quality space adventure. There are asteroid miners, families crewing STL merchant ships that take trade goods and messages between space stations, and of course her masterwork which is Cyteen. Cyteen is what Dune should have been, in terms of explaining the complexities of cloning people not only physically, but psychologically. Cyteen and its sequel, Regenesis, are wonderfully complex stories that tackle interstellar politics, the economics of STL and FTL travel, terraforming, and the ethics of cloning, eugenics, "tape" learning that's enhanced with drug therapy, and psychogenesis (cloning not only the physical body but recreating as accurately as possible the original person's mind, skills, and personality). There's enough scope for a third Cyteen novel and I certainly hope she writes one. I really want the loose plot ends wrapped up with the characters, the storyline, and some indication of how this series can eventually tie in with her much-chronologically-later shared world series of Merovingen Nights.

This sounds really interesting!

 

[warpus]

Oh man, did I ever hate Red Mars. So many people love that trilogy, I don't really get it. I tried reading it 3 times and the characters don't seem fleshed out at all - very 1-dimensional.

 

[Hakim]

I loved the terraforming parts in it.

 

[JohannaK]

I feel like a profane stepping in here, but I'm surprised to see so little mention of Philip K. Dick. Now I don't read much sci-fi in general, and I've only read The Man In The High Castle from him, but it was fantastic and if only I could find editions of his books that weren't flashy (I like sober covers, rather plain, not shiny or bloated or attempting an edgy sci-fi look) I'd be reading a lot more of him.

So the few things I can recommend:

-The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Really, really good. At least in translation it read pretty good.

-Foundation, also by Asimov

-I've only read the 2001 series from Clarke, but seems solid enough. Interesting stuff.

-Stanislaw Lem. Only read a couple tales from More Tales Of Pilot Pirx before I lost the book, unfortunately, but they were good.

-The Man In The High Castle is far more an AltHist than what most people would call sci-fi at a first look, but it is a great novel nevertheless.

Also if anyone happens to have somewhat old books they want to get rid of, I may be interested.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What kind of "somewhat old books" did you have in mind?

 

[JohannaK]

Basically, something from 20 or 30 years ago would be fine. My main concern is aesthetic, because I totally hate the flashy paperback covers that seem to predominate in the publishing industry nowadays. Just that.

 

[Cutlass]

Also if anyone happens to have somewhat old books they want to get rid of, I may be interested.

I could send you a couple 100 if you'll pay to have them shipped to Spain.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Basically, something from 20 or 30 years ago would be fine. My main concern is aesthetic, because I totally hate the flashy paperback covers that seem to predominate in the publishing industry nowadays. Just that.

Well, I've got lots of books from the '80s and '90s, but they cover a wide range of subjects and genres...

Are you collecting them for the cover art, or planning to read them?

 

[JohannaK]

Planning to read, of course, but as wide the range and scope of your available books may be my interest. So if you had a list... there is one author that I am specially interested in, which is J. M. Coetzee. Also Philip K. Dick (though perhaps you would rather not get rid of him) and James Clavell. But if you had a list, it'd be so much easier.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Planning to read, of course, but as wide the range and scope of your available books may be my interest. So if you had a list... there is one author that I am specially interested in, which is J. M. Coetzee. Also Philip K. Dick (though perhaps you would rather not get rid of him) and James Clavell. But if you had a list, it'd be so much easier.

I have several thousand books, only a small percentage of which are listed on my LibraryThing page. The publication years range from the '40s to the current year, and that's just the science fiction & fantasy. I do not yet have a master list of all of them, since that was a project that got away on me some time in the '80s when I started going to conventions and adding to the collection a lot faster than when I could only shop locally.

I know I've got one James Clavell (Shogun) but I'm keeping that. Not sure if I've got others.

Philip K. Dick... I've got a few, although I'd have to see which ones they are and if they're keepers.

Sorry, I never heard of J. M. Coetzee.


One series I've got lots of multiples of is Children of the Lion, by Peter Danielson. I don't remember how that happened. Volume 3 must have gotten together with another copy and they had booklets.

 

[JohannaK]

J. M. Coetzee is quite a good author. 2003 Nobel Prize Winner, his 1981 Waiting For The Barbarians is a masterpiece.

 

[IglooDame]

But I will recommend Peter David's Star Trek novels, no matter which series they're based on. I've read most of his Q books, and they range from hilarious to thought-provoking. There's the added bonus in that he's one of the ST authors I've actually met (others being Sonni Cooper, Greg Bear, Alan Dean Foster, V.E. Mitchell - actually I knew her husband first, since he's an art and book appraiser who specializes in science fiction/fantasy - and David Gerrold).

Ditto on Peter David (the recommendation, but no I haven't met him) - I will buy any ST book of his sight-unseen based purely on the uniform awesomeness of the ones I've already read.

 

[Plotinus]

I feel like a profane stepping in here, but I'm surprised to see so little mention of Philip K. Dick. Now I don't read much sci-fi in general, and I've only read The Man In The High Castle from him, but it was fantastic and if only I could find editions of his books that weren't flashy (I like sober covers, rather plain, not shiny or bloated or attempting an edgy sci-fi look) I'd be reading a lot more of him.

The thing with Dick, as far as I can tell, is that if you've read one book by him you don't really need to read the rest, because they're all exactly the same.

He was a great writer bursting with great ideas, but for some reason the only one of these ideas that seemed to interest him was "What if we took so many drugs we couldn't tell what was real any more?" which I don't think can really sustain an entire literary career.

 

[JohannaK]

I see. I want to check out by reading at least another book or two.