What are some of your favorite science-fiction novels?

[rmalik]

I'm going to be making a list of good ones to purchase for summer reading. I would like to see what are some people's favorite books here.

If you can put a short description or say why you liked it, that would save me the trouble of reading a plot synopsis on wiki.

Go, go, go!

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds
- My favourite author overall, writes epic hard-SF space opera. Pushing ice follows a comet mining crew in the asteroid belt who happen to be the only ship in a position to pursue the moon of Janus when it suddenly breaks out of Saturn orbit and heads for interstellar space (revealing that it was never a moon in the first place). An amazing castaway plot ensues.

Hyperion/Endymion series by Dan Simmons
- Softer SF but very good on creating artful worlds and characters. Set in a future world where mankind is spread across the stars thanks to farcasters (wormhole like portals). The Hegemony of Man faces invasion from the barbarian Ouster swarms and sends a group of pilgrimages on a date with destiny. I can't say anymore (or anything about Endymion) without spoilers but expect a healthy dose of space battles, high-technology and conspiracy.

Anything by Charles Stross
- The man's amazing

 

[SHISHKABOB]

The Hyperion Cantos was definitely one of my absolute favorite sci fi book series ever. There was more than one occasion where, well, to use an old phrase, my head 'asploded.

His other books Ilium and Olympos though... eh... strangely they were no where near as good. They were a little too far fetched and almost a little too corny.

 

[jim hardy]

"Widget, Wadget and Boff" by Theodore Sturgeon - don't know if it's a long short story or a short novel...

 

[rmalik]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'd just like to add that the Ender's Game series is really good imo (even though it concentrates more on characters than science).

I purchased Anathem a while back but haven't read a page yet, so I'm going to save that for later.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

How about the latest cost estimates for the Webb telescope.?

 

[jtbell]

Or the plans for the Superconducting Supercollider.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"Widget, Wadget and Boff" by Theodore Sturgeon - don't know if it's a long short story or a short novel...

I got a real chuckle out of Shottle Bop, a short story by Sturgeon.

My favorite SF Novel was probably Childhood's End.

 

[DaveC426913]

Ringworld - Niven.I tried to read Hyperion. Got a few chapters in, reading about a child getting younger with each passing day, moving backward in time - rolled my eyes and closed the book.

 

[Charmar]

Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Victorian era with nanotech, kind of cyberpunk in parts, very odd book, but very enjoyable at the same time.

Also, I'm about 1/3 though Anathem, it is awesome so far.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I tried to read Hyperion. Got a few chapters in, reading about a child getting younger with each passing day, moving backward in time - rolled my eyes and closed the book.

I picked up and put down Hyperion a few times for that reason however once I got passed that and got into it I really enjoyed it. With Rebecca (?) ageing "backwards" I liked that eventually because all the best scientists had no idea what was happening and all admitted that it was violating all their current theories of physics.

Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Victorian era with nanotech, kind of cyberpunk in parts, very odd book, but very enjoyable at the same time.

Diamond age is a bizarre book, I'd describe it as nano-cyber-steampunk. You've got neo-Victorian society, proletariats, nanofactories etc. Very odd.

 

[phyzguy]

A second vote for Niven's Ringworld.

I also liked Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.

 

[netgypsy]

What about some that are light, goofy, convoluted, entertaining, easy to read,funny and don't have creepy creatures, collecting booty, and fighting in 90% of the book. And no glaringly bad science please (A family member has requested some of these) they like Hitchhiler's Guide to the Galaxy and Anne McCaffrey dragon rider but funnier than her stuff.

Thanks

 

[Ivan Seeking]

A second vote for Niven's Ringworld.

I was going to cite this as my number 2.

Even now I have sci-fi novels on my shelf that I barely remember reading. But I clearly remember Childhood's End, and Ringworld.

2010 and 2061 were fun for the sake of continuity.

 

[jim hardy]

Books to make one laugh out loud?
Vonnegut's Venus on the Half Shell
Sturgeon's Ether Breather tales, three of them if i recall

 

[turbo]

My favorite novel was Ender's Game by Orson Scott card, and its sequels. Dune was pretty good, too.

 

[feathermoon]

My favorite of all time is Glen Cook's Passage At Arms. I guess his Starfisher's trilogy is related slightly but I haven't read it. Passage evokes the close quarters feel of submarine warfare for a spaceship crew, which is a damn good comparison I'd imagine. I recommend it fully.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi is a fun and quick read. Basically, cloning technology gets to the point that all soldiers are drafted at the age of 75 and slapped into a new body. Humanity is at odds with 100's of other species. Witty dialogue (including a cheesy/funny physics high school teacher).

If you read Dune, get the original series, just skip Frank's son's prequels altogether, they're disappointing. I thought it was alright.

Starship Troopers has many fans (by the same guy that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land) and isn't quite like the movie really (so don't judge by that).

Robot Dreams is a good place to start with Asimov.

Eternity Artifact is L. E. Modesitt Jr.'s best in my opinion.

 

[turbo]

If one is interested in SF humor, the Retief series a great place to start.

 

[GregJ]

Some of the decent ones to try if you run out:

Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan (very hard SF. Actually quite a bit of math in there).
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
The Commonwealth Saga and the Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton

 

[ArcherofScience]

Awsome thread ,

mine is: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (20,000 leagues under the sea) by: Jules Verne,

my favorite scifi author :D. Awsomioooooo. :)

going to read soon journey to the center of the earth, and the mysterious island.

 

[DaveC426913]

Awsome thread ,

mine is: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (20,000 leagues under the sea) by: Jules Verne,

my favorite scifi author :D. Awsomioooooo. :)

going to read soon journey to the center of the earth, and the mysterious island.

Agreed. Love Verne's stuff. I pick up 20,000 leagues every once in a while for a read.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I'm currently reading through Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series. A little softer than my usual fair but it's so far quite good. Essentially it posits a universe where uniformitarianism doesn't hold and different zones have different laws of physics.

On another note what do people prefer on the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness? I'd put myself between 3 and 5 with 4.5 being ideal.

 

[GregJ]

On another note what do people prefer on the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness? I'd put myself between 3 and 5 with 4.5 being ideal.

First time I have seen that scale, but I guess that I normally fall into 4 and 5 with the occasional 3.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

If one is interested in SF humor, the Retief series a great place to start.

For SF humor, I like "The Flying Sorcerers" by David Gerrold and Larry Niven, which is very silly and full of references to other SF people and things (some of which were quite fun to puzzle out, long before Wikipedia gave them all away).

 

[Ryan_m_b]

First time I have seen that scale, but I guess that I normally fall into 4 and 5 with the occasional 3.

It's a good'n no? Yeah the one big lie/small fib genre tends to be better written IMO because authors have to spend time exploring the ramifications of the world they create rather than slapping on technobabble plasters left right and centre to preserve the story they want to tell.

 

[GregJ]

Bringing back an old thread.

Another series that I recently went through was the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Pretty cool I think.

 

[DaveC426913]

Bringing back an old thread.

Another series that I recently went through was the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Pretty cool I think.

I enjoyed the first one. Second was OK. By the time I got halfway through the third, I was really struggling. Main character spent several chapters just flying around visiting his old haunts in some sort of interlude/homage.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Bringing back an old thread.

Another series that I recently went through was the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Pretty cool I think.

In my opinion KSR is an excellent worldbuilder but a bad writer*. I remember that at one point in the trilogy against the backdrop of some important political crisis one character is traveling from one key town to the next; the book then spends pages detailing how the various epochs of Martian history have created the nearby geology. It has nothing to do with the scene whatsoever aside from the fact the character is traveling across a vista. I've heard that KSR spent ~10 years researching for the Mars trilogy and it shows in ways that are excellent and ways that are boring. Sometimes it just seems like KSR got annoyed whilst writing that his research isn't as relevant to the plot and instead just pastes in thousands of words from his notes in a blatant example of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don't_tell]telling rather than showing[/url].

That said the story is very interesting and if you're into the idea of human space colonisation and speculative future socioeconomic models it's a good history to read through. It does suffer somewhat from a highly optimistic view of science (to the point that characters regularly see a problem, go to the lab and come back a short while later with a breakthrough solution in time for tea) but that can be overlooked easily.

*That doesn't stop me from enjoying his stories though and I'm looking forward to reading 2312 when time permits.

 

[Evo]

Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

Ray Bradbury - Illustrated man, Martian Chronicles

Isaac Asimov - Asimov's Mysteries, a collection of 14 of his best short stories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Mysteries

 

[GregJ]

Ryan: I did notice that KSR did seem to go off on a tangent sometimes and I must say that it changed the timing and pace. But I liked the general concept of the trilogy, so that kept me reading more than anything else.

The next book I am going to try is Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. I haven't read reviews as yet though.

Evo: I have never read anything by Ray Bradbury. So you just listed the second-next book on my list :D

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ryan: I did notice that KSR did seem to go off on a tangent sometimes and I must say that it changed the timing and pace. But I liked the general concept of the trilogy, so that kept me reading more than anything else.

Same here though less so the space colonisation aspect (weird as that statement sounds) and more so the exploration of new socioeconomic models.

The next book I am going to try is Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. I haven't read reviews as yet though.

Alistair Reynolds is an excellent writer of space opera, he's definitely one of my favourite authors (in fact his standalone novel Pushing Ice remains today my favourite book). I read his Revelation Space trilogy nearly ten years ago I think and it's aged really well. If you like a thorough examination of transhumanism and like your SF harder than most then Reynolds is definitely the man.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

I've always intended to read Snowcrash but never got round to it. I read diamond age that is set in the same universe, that was a book with a lot of promise whose plot took seven steps into bizzaro world about halfway through.

 

[KiwiKid]

I've always wanted to really start reading some good Sci-Fi novels, but never really knew where to begin. Any suggestions - good authors or books?

 

[BobG]

Favorite novels:

The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov (plus his Foundation series)

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (plus his short story, Fat Farm)

Best collection of short stories (since those were also mentioned):

Eco-Fiction., edited by John Stadler

Best individual short stories:

The Billiard Ball, Isaac Asimov

A Slight Case of Sunstroke, Arthur Clarke

(Although "The Sound of Thunder" and "The Birds" in Eco-Fiction were good enough to make movies of the same name.)

 

[Evo]

The Sound of thunder (the original story) was excellent. Don't let the movie discourage you, the story is nothing like it.

 

[Evo]

Evo: I have never read anything by Ray Bradbury. So you just listed the second-next book on my list :D

He was an excellent writer. As with any of the older classics, you have to remember when they were written our knowledge of some things were different, but the quality of the stories is what's important.

 

[genericusrnme]

Or the plans for the Superconducting Supercollider.

tehe

 

[Jobrag]

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Dune Trilogy

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

One I don't hear often is "This Perfect Day". It's a Orwellian style and super interesting. You also really care abut the characters.

 

[OmCheeto]

Snowcrash was recommended to me by both Evo & Char.Limit.
It was excellent.
I couldn't wait to get home every day from work to read it.

My other favorites were read over 30 years ago, so I only know that I liked them enough to devote their titles to memory:
Dune, Childhood's End, The Gods Themselves, and Foundation Trilogy.

 

[Aero51]

Blood Music- Greg Bare

 

[OmCheeto]

One I don't hear often is "This Perfect Day". It's a Orwellian style and super interesting. You also really care abut the characters.

Ah! I had to stop reading the wiki entry, as I decided I wanted to read the book.

Do they still write dystopian novels?
Gads those were great: Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, Lord of the Flies, etc...
I can't remember now if I read Fahrenheit 451, as the movie was incredible.

hmmm... if that isn't irony, then I don't know what is...

 

[DennisN]

Mmm...nostalgia . Reading this thread made me remember quite a few books I've enjoyed. But they are quite different from each other, so I've categorized them.

Great stories:
20,000 leagues under the sea (Jules Verne; the first novel I ever read)
The Mysterious Island (Jules Verne; not exactly SF, but connected to the above)
Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov)
The Currents of Space (Isaac Asimov)
I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov)

Great storytelling:
Dune (Frank Herbert (1965); wow)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley; excellent story)

Entertaining:
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein)
The Andromeda Strain (Michael Crichton)
Sphere (Michael Crichton; good book, not so good movie)

Interesting/weird:
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson; short but excellent)
Solaris (Stanislaw Lem; original and weird)
Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke; a masterpiece IMO)
The Werewolf Principle (Clifford D. Simak; original and weird)

Dystopias:
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley; classic)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury; classic)
1984 (George Orwell; classic)

Also, Philip K. Dick has written many good short stories. I like all of the books I listed, but the must-reads would IMO be Foundation Trilogy, The Currents of Space, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde and Brave New World.

 

[cobalt124]

...nostalgia...

Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov)
I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
Solaris (Stanislaw Lem; original and weird)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley; classic)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury; classic)
1984 (George Orwell; classic)
The Foundation Trilogy

Plus:

On my "to read" list:

The Andromeda Strain (Michael Crichton)
Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom: Destination: Void, The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect and The Ascension Factor.
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker

Recommend:
any John Wyndham
any H.G. Wells
Asimov: The Rest of the Robots
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Philip Jose Farmer: Riverworld Series, The Stone God Awakens
Olaf Stapledon: Sirius, Last and First Men
Joseph O'Neill: Land Under England
E. E. Smith: Lensman and Skylark series

 

[turbo]

If anybody reading this thread has not read Ender's Game, do it now. It is that good. Then follow up with Speaker for the Dead. OSC is a fantastic author. I have loved the works of Heinlen and Asimov (among others), but Card is in a league of his own, IMO.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Snowcrash was recommended to me by both Evo & Char.Limit.
It was excellent.

ah thanks for the reminder. I met someone on one of my travels who recommended it too and of course I forgot. I'm going straight to amazon now! :)

Has anyone read the classics "The Island of Doctor Moreau" and "The Lost World"? I've been thinking of picking them up.

 

[phyzguy]

No Larry Niven fans in this crowd?? I'd highly recommend "Ringworld", "Protector", and "The Integral Trees". All are highly imaginative and represent what I think of as "hard" science fiction, as opposed to fantasy. Another novel I'd recommend is "Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson.

 

[cobalt124]

...Has anyone read the classics "The Island of Doctor Moreau"...

Read this a long time ago, dark, atmospheric, suspenseful and scary, definitely recommend.

 

[Aziraphale]

Nice suggestions. I'm addicted to the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series, but that's not Sci-Fi... I've been meaning to re-read Snow Crash for a long time, since I've forgotten pretty much all of it. Maybe I'll try to borrow it from you, Greg, if you're done by Xmas. As for my favorites, definitely the Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow series, although the more recent books are definitely not as good as the first in each series.

Ditto comments about KSR's Mars Trilogy. Very interesting story, but way too much filler.

Other suggestions: Margaret Atwood is great at good, old-fashioned social commentary through science fiction. I liked Oryx and Crake for its take on the possibilities of genetic engineering run amok. I'll come back and post more once I've had a chance to think...

 

[OmCheeto]

This thread needs to have the "edit" time limit eliminated, as I keep seeing books I've read that were simply incredible.

Rendezvous with Rama!

A really big cylinder, astronauts, and no aliens. How could anyone write an interesting story about that?

All I can remember is that I loved it.