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