SF books

[gozpel]

I have read everything old, and might read them again, I have too many favs to point out one.

I haven't read for the last 10 years though, so give me a name and I will go for it, nothing is better that reading at night time.

Robert Silverberg, Ursula le Guin, Clarke, Heinlein. All I can find in my head right now, but there are so many more. And one crazy, I couldn't even read English properly, she was out of bounds. Tanish Lee was the craziest of them all, which exploded my mind long time ago.

There are so many more, make me refresh my memory!

 

[Kyriakos]

It is only technically scifi (cause it features hypothetical research on the mind), but "Flowers for Algernon" is at any rate a very well written short story.

 

[Ferocitus]

I have read everything old, and might read them again, I have too many favs to point out one.

I haven't read for the last 10 years though, so give me a name and I will go for it, nothing is better that reading at night time.

Robert Silverberg, Ursula le Guin, Clarke, Heinlein. All I can find in my head right now, but there are so many more. And one crazy, I couldn't even read English properly, she was out of bounds. Tanish Lee was the craziest of them all, which exploded my mind long time ago.

There are so many more, make me refresh my memory!

Stanislaw Lem - The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age.
(Some stories from it, as well as 3 by Borges are in "The Mind's I", a
philosophical look at AI and minds by Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstader).

 

[Ferocitus]

Just an addendum to that suggestion.
The Cyberiad was the inspiration for Sim City and, eventually, the first version of
Civilization.

 

[Ajidica]

John Varley isn't as well remembered as he should be. The Ophiuchi Hotline was a very interesting time travel/cloning story that managed to be somewhat coherent despite the ability for people to be cloned with all their memories intact multiple times and not know they are cloned.

Though his best work is the Gaea trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon). The books take place on an artificial world ruled by a sentient alien/AI in Saturn's orbit. Titan and Wizard are okay books, saved more by the author's imagination than strong writing, but Demon is just outstanding and one of my favorite books. Plus, Varley is the only sci-fi/fantasy author I have encountered that can write female characters well.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is also excellent. It takes place in a Roman Catholic monastery in the southwest United States several hundred years after a nuclear war, with the task of the monks to copy and preserve what scraps of knowledge they can from the pre-war world.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemison, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016. The sequel, The Obelisk Gate, won the Hugo in 2017, and the third book is up for the award this year. The only other authors to win back-to-back Hugos were Orson Scott Card and Lois McMaster Bujold, and I don't think anyone's ever won three in a row.

 

[Synobun]

Does anyone have experience with authors like Chuck Wendig, Claudia Gray, James Luceno, Timothy Zahn, Drew Karpyshyn, Jude Watson, Karen Traviss, and Michael Stackpole?

If so, can they recommend other sci-fi authors with similar writing styles? I've found that my own efforts at finding sci-fi books to read have failed miserably. I'm very picky. The authors I listed above are all writers that wrote for Star Wars and I liked the way they wrote their stories, so I'm thinking finding other authors with a similar style is a good way of finding other content I enjoy.

Most books I come across in high fantasy and sci-fi are overly verbose or pretend English is an abstract concept, and that's really something I lack interest in. Clear language with clear prose is my preferred, and that has seemed rare outside of fandom literature in my efforts thus far.

Outside of fandom literature, I enjoyed The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I also really like Robert J Crane but he's a fantasy writer.

 

[Ferocitus]

I have read everything old, and might read them again, I have too many favs to point out one.

I haven't read for the last 10 years though, so give me a name and I will go for it, nothing is better that reading at night time.

Robert Silverberg, Ursula le Guin, Clarke, Heinlein. All I can find in my head right now, but there are so many more. And one crazy, I couldn't even read English properly, she was out of bounds. Tanish Lee was the craziest of them all, which exploded my mind long time ago.

There are so many more, make me refresh my memory!

I gave my son a classical scifi education, starting with these early ones that
you would definitely know. Not all are A-class, but they were important for the
historical development of the genre and they are not likely to be mentioned by
those under 60.

Canticle for Leibowitz (mentioned before).

Vonnegut's Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Gameplayers of Titan and a few others
before he crawled up his own fundament and become a parody of himself.

Asimov's robot series, Caves of Steel. Naked Sun, etc.
Asimov's Foundation series (which they are still struggling to make into
a video series.)

Joe Haldeman - The Forever War. (Still trying to make a video series!)

Harry Harrison - The Stainless Steel Rat. (Not A-class, but entertaining.)

A.E. van Vogt - Pawns of Null A series. (Dated but of historical significance.)

Roger Zelazney - Princes in Amber series.

 

[Darsnan]

I haven't read for the last 10 years though, so give me a name and I will go for it, nothing is better that reading at night time.

How about Ian Douglas' Battlespace: even though its the 5th book in a 9 book series its still a good standalone read. Or David Weber's Safehold series - that's what I'm currently re-reading.

And not sure if you got into Scalzi or not before you took your sabbatical from reading, but "Old Man' War" and "Ghost Brigades" are great reads!

HTH,

D

 

[Timsup2nothin]

David Brin, Greg Benford.

 

[Kyriakos]

H.P. Lovecraft's "At the mountains of madness" and "The colour out of space" can be seen as sci-fi.

 

[Ferocitus]

H.P. Lovecraft's "At the mountains of madness" and "The colour out of space" can be seen as sci-fi.

So can Voltaire's 1752 novella Micromegas.

You'd think the titles of the parts would convince some it's scifi.
Part 1: "A Voyage to the Planet Sirius by a Native of Saturn".

But I'm mocked whenever I mention it as predating most scifi.
No one ever listens to poor Zathras, no, he's quite mad, they say.

 

[Kyriakos]

So can Voltaire's 1752 novella Micromegas.

You'd think the titles of the parts would convince some it's scifi.
Part 1: "A Voyage to the Planet Sirius by a Native of Saturn".

But I'm mocked whenever I mention it as predating most scifi.
No one ever listens to poor Zathras, no, he's quite mad, they say.

Lucianos of Samosata's "real story" features a space battle between the empire of the Sun and that of the Moon

 

[warpus]

Just an addendum to that suggestion.
The Cyberiad was the inspiration for Sim City and, eventually, the first version of
Civilization.

Really? Do you have a citation? For Lem I would recommend Solaris. That's my favourite novel of his. It's a lot different than the Hollywood movie version.

I would recommend anything by Iain M. Banks, especially is "Culture" novels. They aren't really meant to be read one after the other, so you can just buy a random one and go to town. The Algebraist was the first novel of his I read, and I really liked that one.. However, I found the middle to drag on for a bit too long. Even so, it was a good book.

If you want to read something by my favourite Canadian sci-fi author, Robert J. Sawyer.. I might compare to.. hmm.. Crichton maybe? He writes very engaging stories that you could easily picture being made into motion pictures. Calculating God was a great book by Sawyer, I would recommend that one.

Another great sci-fi author.. Margaret Atwood.. Not everyone's cup of tea, but Oryx & Crake was an amazing book that to this day is in my top 15. The author is a bit pretentious, but her written work is very good, especially the sci-fi.

You likely know of Isaac Asimov. One of my favourite books of all time is Nightfall. He wrote it with some guy whose name I can't remember. Great read!

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons was an interesting story. There's some really interesting things going on in here, but a bit too much of it was.. I don't really know how to describe it, but I didn't like all of his "big picture" ideas.. Way too may coincidences. He does a great job describing individual events though.

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter was an excellent sequel to The Time Machine.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson was a memorable read, although I couldn't tell you any details about the story anymore. There is a sequel to this book I've picked up but haven't read yet.

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is IMO the best book Orson Scott Card ever wrote. It could just be me though, I like alternate history stories involving native (north or south) Americans. I also quite liked the Earthcoming series by Card, but know that it's heavily inspired by the Book of Mormon. I had no idea, I read the story and loved it even before I knew what a Mormon was, but FYI

The Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke is worth mentioning. I loved the first couple books in the series. The last one gets stupid though, and for no reason explains everything in a stupid way that ruins everything. But still a fun read.

This is spinning out of control so I will end it here. I did not include obvious classics like Dune, etc.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Cluster series, Piers Anthony; 5 books.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Tad Williams Otherland series. 4 great big books about a VR world. Wonderful.

 

[onejayhawk]

If you like magic systems that make sense, Brandon Sanderson is a must read. Frank Herbert's Dune is a landmark but nothing else of his comes close. There is Larry Niven, CJ Cherryh, Ted Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, James Schmitz, Fredrick Pohl, Hal Clement. On the lighter side, there is the late, great Terry Pratchett and Robert Asprin. More recent names include Catherine Asaro, David Brin, Eric Flint, LM Bujold, Dan Simmons. For militaristic, David Drake and David Weber. This does not even scratch the surface.

J

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have read everything old, and might read them again, I have too many favs to point out one.

I haven't read for the last 10 years though, so give me a name and I will go for it, nothing is better that reading at night time.

Robert Silverberg, Ursula le Guin, Clarke, Heinlein. All I can find in my head right now, but there are so many more. And one crazy, I couldn't even read English properly, she was out of bounds. Tanish Lee was the craziest of them all, which exploded my mind long time ago.

There are so many more, make me refresh my memory!

I think you mean Tanith Lee. And yeah, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine were a bit wild. Somebody wrote some fanfic based on those novels. If you're interested, I'll dig up the link. It's not bad.

John Varley isn't as well remembered as he should be. The Ophiuchi Hotline was a very interesting time travel/cloning story that managed to be somewhat coherent despite the ability for people to be cloned with all their memories intact multiple times and not know they are cloned.

Though his best work is the Gaea trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon). The books take place on an artificial world ruled by a sentient alien/AI in Saturn's orbit. Titan and Wizard are okay books, saved more by the author's imagination than strong writing, but Demon is just outstanding and one of my favorite books. Plus, Varley is the only sci-fi/fantasy author I have encountered that can write female characters well.

I've met Varley. He was a jerk.

Does anyone have experience with authors like Chuck Wendig, Claudia Gray, James Luceno, Timothy Zahn, Drew Karpyshyn, Jude Watson, Karen Traviss, and Michael Stackpole?

If so, can they recommend other sci-fi authors with similar writing styles? I've found that my own efforts at finding sci-fi books to read have failed miserably. I'm very picky. The authors I listed above are all writers that wrote for Star Wars and I liked the way they wrote their stories, so I'm thinking finding other authors with a similar style is a good way of finding other content I enjoy.

Are you looking for space opera? I can't think of any better ones than either Ben Bova's Grand Tour novels (you might particularly enjoy the Asteroid Wars arc; it's a series of 4 novels and there's plenty of action while trying to keep the science part of the fiction as plausible as possible), or C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union novels (particular favorites are Downbelow Station and Rimrunners). Mind you, my top picks in that series are Cyteen and Regenesis, but I don't advise trying those unless you're prepared to delve into some hard science, politics, economics, and the ethics of cloning and a host of other issues such as what makes a person that person (in this respect I think Cherryh wrote rings around Frank Herbert and his gholas).

Most books I come across in high fantasy and sci-fi are overly verbose or pretend English is an abstract concept, and that's really something I lack interest in. Clear language with clear prose is my preferred, and that has seemed rare outside of fandom literature in my efforts thus far.

What do you look for in fantasy novels?

Outside of fandom literature, I enjoyed The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I also really like Robert J Crane but he's a fantasy writer.

The Chrysalids was required reading in my Grade 10 English class, and contributed to one of the worst nightmares I've ever had in my life.

Another great sci-fi author.. Margaret Atwood.. Not everyone's cup of tea, but Oryx & Crake was an amazing book that to this day is in my top 15. The author is a bit pretentious, but her written work is very good, especially the sci-fi.

The Handmaid's Tale is now a TV show in its 2nd season (nearly over; Episode 12 is now available on Hulu (and on Bravo in Canada on Sunday). It's been renewed for a 3rd season. Be aware that some scenes are best viewed with your eyes shut as they can be disturbing.

You likely know of Isaac Asimov. One of my favourite books of all time is Nightfall. He wrote it with some guy whose name I can't remember. Great read!

Robert Silverberg... who is still alive (over 80), though retired from writing. He still attends the occasional convention, and participates in his Yahoo! group (he doesn't like Facebook).

This is spinning out of control so I will end it here. I did not include obvious classics like Dune, etc.

Once upon a time we had a Dunefanatics social group... before the social groups got zapped.

 

[warpus]

I remember now what I forgot to mention. A Canticle for Leibowitz, one of my all time favourite sci-fi novels by Walter M. Miller Jr. I don't know what else he's written though, aside from the sequel, which I should really buy already and read.

 

[onejayhawk]

I remember now what I forgot to mention. A Canticle for Leibowitz, one of my all time favourite sci-fi novels by Walter M. Miller Jr. I don't know what else he's written though, aside from the sequel, which I should really buy already and read.

Miller was a short story writer and well respected as such. Canticle is his only long work of substance and it's basically three novellas strung together.

In the them of post-apocolyptic worlds, have you read On the Beach by Nevil Shute? Also worth mentioning are Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, I am Legend by Richard Matheson, and The Postman by David Brin. There are movies of all of these, but none are very satisfactory.

J