What are some of your favorite science-fiction novels?

[HallsofIvy]

Jules Verne, in my opinion, played a little too fast and loose with physics. In "2000 leagues under the sea" he seemed to think that batteries were a source of energy and it wasn't necessary to say anything about how they charged the batteries. (In the "Disney version" there is an implication that they had a nuclear power source but that isn't in the book.)

I haven't looked through all of the posts so I don't know if it has been already mentioned but I very much liked Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven". In a foreword, she says "It is an artist's job to say that which cannot be said in words. A novelist is an artist whose medium is words. That is, it is a novelist's job to say that which cannot be said in words, in words! We do that using a technique called "the lie". I have always loved that.

 

[dragoneyes001]

David Weber : Honor Harrington series.

1. On Basilisk Station (April 1993) [PLAIN]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/067157793X[/PLAIN]
2. The Honor of the Queen (June 1993)
3. The Short Victorious War (April 1994)
4. Field of Dishonor (October 1994)
5. Flag in Exile (September 1995)
6. Honor Among Enemies (February 1996)
7. In Enemy Hands (July 1997)
8. Echoes of Honor (October 1998)
9. Ashes of Victory (March 2000)
10. War of Honor (October 2002)
11. At All Costs (November 2005)
12. Mission of Honor (June 2010)
13. A Rising Thunder (March 6, 2012)

Elizabeth Moon :Heris Serrano trilogy

• • Hunting Party (July 1993)
  • Sporting Chance (September 1994)
  • Winning Colors (August 1995)
  • Vatta's War
  • • Trading in Danger ( October 2003)
    • Marque and Reprisal ( October 2004)—Moving Target in the UK, New Zealand and Australia
    • Engaging The Enemy ( March 2006)
    • Command Decision ( February 2007)
    • Victory Conditions
  • Planet Pirates
    
  • • Sassinak ( March 1990), Anne McCaffrey and Moon
    • The Death of Sleep ( June 1990), McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye
    • Generation Warriors ( February 1991), McCaffrey and Moon
• Other novels,
  • Remnant Population (May 1996)
  • The Speed of Dark (October 2002)
• 
  
• 
  
• these are all good reads in si-fi I enjoyed the characters and the environment these Authors wrote about.
• most of the classics like Asimov and Verne ...etc have been mentioned
  

 

[willbell]

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr is incredible, the story of a post-apocalyptic monastery that spans millennia. Not only is it a great work of science fiction but perhaps the greatest book I have ever read.

Dune by Frank Herbert is another excellent work, a great adventure, an epic world, and themes that remain relevant today. One of my favourite books as well.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was great, it is jarring from the very start meeting a fireman who's life's work is to start fires rather than to end them. That itself has an "up is down, black is white" quality to it.

Not totally science fiction, but with a science fiction premise, Blindness by Jose Saramago (who won a Nobel Prize for Literature) is very powerful, people talk about not being able to put down a thriller but it wasn't the pace that stopped me from putting this down, it is just an amazing book. The experimental writing style is really cool as well.

I'm not finished it yet, but if you were to ask me when I'm done, I'm sure The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi would be on this list as well, he is pretty great and just like Saramago (but not to the same extent) he is willing to push the boundaries of writing style.

 

[arabianights]

I really loved 'Hiero's Journey' and 'Unforsaken Hiero' by Sterling E. Lanier

recently I've been reading Peter Hamilton's space opera novels (the Great North Road and Pandora's Star), he has some interesting thoughts , probably just me - but I found all his novels have an overly unnecessary religious tone

 

[DaveC426913]

recently I've been reading Peter Hamilton's space opera novels (the Great North Road and Pandora's Star), he has some interesting thoughts , probably just me - but I found all his novels have an overly unnecessary religious tone

Yeah. Pandora's Star keeps showing up in my list of 'suggested reads' when looking for new ebooks, but each time I read the blurb, I hum and haw, and move on.

 

[TheBiologist]

Alex Rider is pretty good. Make sure to read the whole series! A fourteen year old boy, lethal weapon and the best the British Secret Services have to offer.

 

[Khatti]

Hmmmm...where to start? For a very long time the book I would have told you I wish I had written would have been The End of the Matter by Alan Dean Foster. No one is ever going to think of Foster as a hard-SF writer, but I loved the way he could take a concept and just run with it. He has a writing style that reminds me of Dickens in a lot of ways. If you're a Star Wars freak, and you want to find something else to read, you have to check out Foster's Flinx novels.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is the first Heinlein novel I read. Read it when I was still in high school. It incorporated the ideas from Stranger in a Strange Land and made them palatable. It also made me a life-long advocate for polyamory and group marriage.

A series of books I think deserve to not be forgotten are the Demon Princes Novels by Jack Vance (The Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams) Vance is another writer that no one is ever going to refer to as a Hard Science Fiction writer. his concepts are quite fanciful, but he was a phenomenal stylist, and he had a take on the human condition is wicked, funny, and apt. The Demon Princes novels are both science fiction and mysteries. The main character is trying to avenge a wrong done to him by five, mysterious characters known as the Demon Princes. Each of the five novels deal with the Protagonist finding the identity of a demon prince. Another set of books that can show the reader what space opera can be used to do.

 

[DaveC426913]

I just finished Crichton's latest novel-from-beyond-the-grave 'Micro'.

A few clarifiers:

1] It is not a book; it is a movie plot, written in paragraph form (as most of his latest are, this one shamelessly so).

2] This is not Crichton-esque science thrills. This is 'And then he stepped into the HandWave-o-matic Shrink-o-Ray Machine' science. There's more scientific diligence in 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids'. And I do not hyperbolize.

3] I am absolutely gobsmacked to find out that it was finished by a professional writer (Richard Preston, brother of bestseller Douglas Preston). I would have bet money it was written by a fan/amateur. It had some painful writing.

4] Naturally, I could not put it down.

 

[Khatti]

4] Naturally, I could not put it down.

Don't think of it as feeling dirty, think of it as feeling kinky. This will just go much better then.

 

[Aaronvan]

I wonder if MC would have approved of this edition? I understand it was just a rough draft when he died. I bet they had to bring in a ghost to finish it.

 

[Khatti]

I wonder if MC would have approved of this edition? I understand it was just a rough draft when he died. I bet they had to bring in a ghost to finish it

Ghosting can still be done quite well. Ace Atkins continuation of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels are quite true to the originals. The only thing I've seen Atkins do is add bits and pieces of Boston to the mix that only a tourist and not a native would see.

 

[Khatti]

Plug for almost anything by Roger Zelazny. He rides a fine line between SF and fantasy, but always makes the fantasy seem plausible. Unlike many of the hard SF writers (which I love), his prose is a thing of beauty. Try: This Immortal to start, or any of his short story collections (where he truly excels) such as "The Last Defender of Camelot" or "Unicorn Variations.

I'm very sensitive for writing style, part of the reason I suppose I'm not into the hardest of hard-SF. And I love Zelazny. All of my major influences (Robert E Howard, Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, Alan Dean Foster, Micheal Moorcock, John D. MacDonald, Jack Vance, and yes, Roger Zelazny) were phenomenal stylists. If you really want to learn how to write fiction read MacDonald and Zelazny.

 

[Khatti]

I've been reading stories from Saberhagen's Berserker series over the least few years as quasi-research. I've always liked the way Saberhagen did space battles. I think of the Berserker series and Saberhagen as appearing more hard-SF than he actually was. He was certainly a writer from the Baen school.

 

[enorbet]

Greetings. I read all 7 pages of this thread to see if any of my faves were missed. There are a few but quite naturally only a few because prior to the late 20th Century the Science Fiction community was quite small and rather binary (superb or hopeless trash with little middle ground) being avid if not rabid and the Classics are just that for good reason. It is a bit of a chore to find anything written by Heinlein that's truly just bad because first and foremost the man brought quality writing to the table and I daresay that out of some 30+ novels and ~60 short stories he scores well above any Bell Curve, and a few like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are just amazing in scope and imagination.

Perhaps with not quite as high a "batting average" or not quite as prolific or both are the other 2 legs of "The Triumverate" of Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov were standard setters and it's a safe bet that any stories one stumbles upon are likely at least decent, offering good character development, and reasonably coherent plot, and intelligent imagination. Childhoods End and the Foundation Trilogy are definitely in my Top 5 of all time.

Some people have very strict preferences regarding Hard Science vs/ Soft or Fantasy but it is my opinion that if the writer is good, suspension of disbelief is made smoothly so that at the very least those skirting or even diving into Fantasy are at least an imaginative adventure. There is also the factor of "wiggle room" which changes over time. An example of this is Edgar Rice Burroughs which by todays' standards are pretty much Hard Fantasy, but I love almost everything of his I've ever read, as apparently did Ray Bradbury.

Conversely, Andre Norton, a lady writer who wrote under Andrew North for a time perceiving that Science Fiction was "where the mens hang out", I found to be an excellent writer and I devoured the ForeRunner Series even though she had a strong propensity toward Fantasy. Early work revealed considerable interest in Telepathic abilities even between different species and she made that work rather well but over time she drifted to Sword and Sorcery which disappointed me anyway as I'd always hoped she would also continue the harder stuff, but she moved in and settled down, and I could visit briefly but I couldn't stay long. The first book of hers I read was Galactic Derelict (literally couldn't put it down at 15 years of age and an adult revisit finds it still a compelling story that made me think for a long time after and hungering for a lot more) which was out of sequence being number 2 iirc of the Forerunner Series but her writing was solid enough that it didn't hurt the larger story at all.

It seems we have a few here that are rather new to Science Fiction so I'd like to recommend picking up Anthologies where you might be introduced to Clifford Simak, Robert Silverman, Eric Frank Russell, Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson among many who have something worthwhile to offer and usually that starts with the fundamentals of good writing. Their unique styles, like Russell's humor, or Phillip Dick's wild imagination and darker humor (and not so humorous) will cause a reader to either love or hate their style. They are generally not bland Oatmeal or mere Space Opera/Westerns.

One well-crafted oldie but goodie that I've not seen mentioned is Wine of the Dreamers by John MacDonald who has been compared favorably with Frederick Pohl and Poul Anderson and still commands a 4 3/5 Amazon Rating (out of 5.0).

Somehow I've managed to hold on to quite a few anthologies and even a dozen of so Amazing and Analog and it may be worthy of note that some of that fiction is so hard that it is where I first read a serious Foreward/OpEd by John Carpenter iirc describing the evolution/formation of neutron stars. Anthologies and periodicals are great places to start or revisit.

 

[Kechel8]

all novel of paul scheerbart, german writer. He wrotes some fantastic fantasy and sci-fi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Scheerbart

 

[Moustaches]

My current favourite is between the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, a Trilogy of Four by Douglas Adam. The former is more aimed towards the YA audience and loosely based around science, but still an amazing read. The latter is sci-fi humour in the best way.

 

[johanw]

After finishing the Dune universe books (I am still waiting for the 3rd nosvel in the great schools of Dune series) I started with the Saga of Seven Suns from Kevin Anderson. Fortunately I found they wrote a prequel i comic form, I would advise anyone who wants to start with the series to read that first.

 

[Joseph Blauth]

You should try "Liege Killer" by a little known author named Christopher Hinz, Set after the apocalypse, the remnants of humanity are living in orbiting cylinders. I don't want to give spoilers, but the monster is unique and the story has a great twist. Very well written, and I believe it won an award. This is one I wish they would make into a movie instead of some of the trash we have been subjected to recently.

 

[Svein]

(Turning around and looking at my bookshelf) Most of the classics have been mentioned but let's see:

• Catherine Asaro: The Quantum Rose
• Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man
• David Brin: The Uplift Sagas
• Lois McMaster Bujold: Paladin of Souls
• Samuel R. Delany: Babel 17 and The Einstein Intersection
• Gordon R. Dickson: The Dorsai sagas
• Neil Gaiman: American Gods, Anansi Boys, Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane
• Jack McDevitt: The Alex Benedict novels
• China Miéville: The City & the City
• Elizabeth Moon: The Paksennarion saga
• Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
• Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light, This Immortal

 

[Mathias]

Oh gosh, limiting them is hard, they are all such a good read.
If you haven't started Asimov's Foundation series I highly recommend it. I usually listen to audio books rather than reading, but Foundation just had it all. I loved all the little short stories and how it progressed.
To change it up a little bit, you could try Asimov's Detective Robot series, which I really enjoyed. The climax of "The Naked Sun" was chilling, I couldn't stop listening, the way he put everything together was just awesome. Asimov does truly a remarkable job at story telling. If you do get at audio book try to get the narrator "Scott Brick" I think is his name, his voices are awesome, especially his female voices are a right laugh. The way in which narrates Elijah Bailey fits his persona perfectly.
Some other books I've read a little bit but haven't gotten much in are:
Ringworld
Martian Chronicles - this is a pretty hilarious sci-fi.

 

[AgentSmith]

Larry Niven's The Man-Kzin Wars is pretty good also. I think he is got up to about 13 or 14 books in that series.

Robert Buettner is good also. He lives very close to me but I have not been able to pin it down. Would love to drop in for a drink and chat.

 

[mpresic]

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
The Andromeda Strain Michael Crichton, (although this was science fiction in 1969 when it was popular; it is interesting to read this today as the world has changed so much.)

 

[mpresic]

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov; The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton , interesting since the world has changed so much since this was written 1n 1969. What was SF in 1969 is routine and commonplace or obsolete today;

 

[heatengine516]

Andromeda Strain is one of my favorites too. Also:

The Martian Chronicles
Fahrenheit 451
1984 (does it count?)
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds

All S-tier. I chose to read mostly science fiction novels back in high school for book reports. The one good thing about having to write those is the amount of classic science fiction I was able to expose myself to.

 

[Stephanus]

The late Michael Crichton is not bad. But Dan Brown is my favorite (if his book can be considered SF).

 

[Stephanus]

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov; The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton , interesting since the world has changed so much since this was written 1n 1969. What was SF in 1969 is routine and commonplace or obsolete today;

Don't underestimate The Andromeda Strain . I just realized that the lab rats were cloned to make experiment less biased. What more precise than 500 labs uses 500 identical genetic rats to test their product, no biased effect.

 

[Stephanus]

Not War of the worlds and Time Machine!
They were 100 years before, before relativity I think. Like Jules Verne better.
I once read that War of the Worlds broadcasted through radio causes panick in New York (? and caused street accident, some killed?)
Three films based on War of the Worlds
- War of the Worlds - Tom Cruise, dir: Steven Spielberg. 2005
- Mars Attack - Jack Nicholson; Pierce Brosnan; Glenn Close; forgot who the director was
- Independence Day - Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pulman, my favorite Jude Hircsh, dir: Roland Emerich. 1996 if I'm not mistaken.
Time Machine is in 2003 played by Guy Richie.

 

[Priyadarshini]

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is really good!

 

[Stephanus]

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is really good!

Another Trivia:
There are three 'recent' movies based on Asimove three laws of robot:
1. Bicentennial man, 2000: Robin Williams, Sam Neil
2. A.I, director: Spielberg
3. I Robot, Will Smith, Bruce Greenwood.

 

[DaveC426913]

Spoiler: Speaking of Asimov...