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Your favourite science-fiction author and book?

 
 
 
DrZoidberg

DrZoidberg

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I need to find new authors to read. I mostly read science-fiction. So why not keep it simple. This thread is my brilliant plan to find new stuff.

My favourite author is Kurt Vonnegut, and his best book IMHO is Cat's Cradle.

I love the humour of it. Fits this forum especially well since it is a critique of religion/Christianity.

Hit me
 
Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

John Scalzi, Old Man's War
 
i like most of everything i've seen by peter f. hamilton, even if some of his books get a bit ridiculously long winded and mired in minutia - but they are the epitome of "space opera" in a very epic and technical way.
his Reality Dysfunction trilogy has a lot of neat sci-fi ideas as well as philosophical concepts - it's get a bit dodgy around the middle, but overall is very worth it especially if you like digging into gigantic sprawling stories.

the Honorverse novels by David Weber are all pretty good too, though much more light reading - sort of like the book form of a procedural on TV, but pretty hard sci-fi.

richard k. morgan has some great sci-fi books, the trilogy of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies are all great.
 
James Brown said:
Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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Cool. I already have this. I've been vacillating on whether or not to give it a chance. I guess I should then.

Not related to your post, I am now reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Man that guy is out there. The fact that he was an actual schizophrenic explains so much about this book.
 
Philip Dick has many great books and stories, some of which have inelegantly been transformed into movies.
 
DrZoidberg said:
James Brown said:
Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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Cool. I already have this. I've been vacillating on whether or not to give it a chance. I guess I should then.

Not related to your post, I am now reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Man that guy is out there. The fact that he was an actual schizophrenic explains so much about this book.
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your posts indicate a penchant towards older sci-fi so don't forget to also check out bruce sterling.

also neal stephenson has some great sci-fi, but you have to kind of be careful to winnow it out between his bloviated tomes of history-fiction - The Diamond Age and Snow Crash are both great, but anything else by him is a bit.... atlas shrugged (in that it's an interminable slog through 1500 pages of dreck, not for any philosophical reasons)

do you enjoy fantasy at all, or do you stick strictly to sci-fi?
 
prideandfall said:
DrZoidberg said:
Cool. I already have this. I've been vacillating on whether or not to give it a chance. I guess I should then.

Not related to your post, I am now reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Man that guy is out there. The fact that he was an actual schizophrenic explains so much about this book.
Click to expand...
your posts indicate a penchant towards older sci-fi so don't forget to also check out bruce sterling.

also neal stephenson has some great sci-fi, but you have to kind of be careful to winnow it out between his bloviated tomes of history-fiction - The Diamond Age and Snow Crash are both great, but anything else by him is a bit.... atlas shrugged (in that it's an interminable slog through 1500 pages of dreck, not for any philosophical reasons)

do you enjoy fantasy at all, or do you stick strictly to sci-fi?
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Yup, love Neal Stephenson. Have read and loved both of those. I'll check out Bruce Sterling. Have heard of him but not read. I don't think I have a preference for older science fiction. It's more that they're so established that it's easy to come across them.

No, I think fantasy is pretty silly. When I try to figure out what the metaphors it's mostly conservative racist and sexist tripe. I'm aware there are stuff that isn't. But I haven't found any. So I'm open to being wrong.
 
DrZoidberg said:
No, I think fantasy is pretty silly. When I try to figure out what the metaphors it's mostly conservative racist and sexist tripe. I'm aware there are stuff that isn't. But I haven't found any. So I'm open to being wrong.
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oh dear god.... yeah. there is so much out there that is not that, but i totally see where you're coming from because a lot of fantasy is that and a lot of idiots really like a lot of fantasy that is like that.

if you're willing to put some faith into the suggestion of a random person on the internet, there is some AMAZING fantasy out there right now that is not bound to the ridiculous story tripe of LOTR-cloning nor shackled to the backwards social thinking that is so endemic to older fantasy, nor endless recycled cliches of sword-and-sorcery jesus metaphor bullshit.

The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks - this is probably the best fiction of any medium being produced right now. it's in the 3rd book of a planned 4 book series, the next one being due out late next year.
the black prism, the blinding knife, the broken eye - all should be in paperback, and cheap, and are SO GOOD OH MY GOD WHY ARE THESE BOOKS SO GOD DAMN GOOD!?

pretty much anything and everything written by Brandon Sanderson is awesome, especially his Mistborn trilogy and The Way of Kings series, which is only 2 books in but it's awesome.

patrick rothfuss is a ground-breaking master in the art of telling long sprawling stories in which absolutely NOTHING happens and it's the most amazing shit you've ever read in your life.
the name of the wind, and the wise man's fear are both utterly incredible and not a single thing happens, and it's really weird and kind of confusing but in a really cool way.

peter brett is a new author with a great little series that is fantastic in the tradition of light, faced-paced action fantasy but with a good story behind it and good characters, called the demon cycle.
the warded man, the desert spear, the daylight war, the skull throne are the first 4 books in what i think is planning to be a 5 or 6 book series.

also he's not sci-fi or fantasy, but i've been reading the complete works of Christopher Moore lately and it's brilliant stuff - great absurdist fiction, if i had to compare it to something i'd say douglas adams or neil gaiman... not like either of those two, but i mean if i had to try and give a genre to relate it to, it would be that sort of thing.
 
I used to be a voracious reader of just about any sci-fi I could get my hands on, but not so much these days. Favourite authors at the time were Phillip K.Dick, Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Niven & Pournelle, Robert Sheckley, Vonnegut, among others, but I think my Numero Uno had to be Michael Moorcock.

Impossible to choose one single book as a particular favourite. Maybe Moorcock's The Dancers At The End Of Time trilogy or his "Jesus" book, Behold The Man.

I'd also recommend Moorcock, in particular his Elric and Corum novels to DrZoidberg, in the context of his search for non-conservative, non-racist, non-sexist fantasy works.
 
From the golden age of sci-fi, it is hard to beat Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. Each had a different approach to the genre, and it is hard for me to choose a favorite from the three, much less a favorite book, but if pressed hard enough, I would choose The Gods Themselves by Asimov, Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein, and Rendezvous with Rama by Clarke.

A bit more modern is Greg Bear, and I like his older work a bit better. Blood Music is a quick read, and was my first exposure to Bear. Eon is probably my favorite from him, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Clarke's Rama series, but ultimately goes in a different direction with it, and I like Bear's approach much better.

I think John Scalzi is one of the best new sci-fi authors, though I have only read Redshirts and The first two books in the Old Man's War series from him.
 
I like Iain M. Banks. Space operas with sense of wonder. For example, The Algebraist.
 
Can we include fantasy in this?

I have a real soft spot for the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon. She's a marine and I assume she has a passion for military history, because in places it reads like a fantasy Tom Clancy novel with incredible details about day to day military life, like weird details about sanitation during prolonged sieges, details about what it's like to march with and train with a military unit from some fictional pre-gunpowder civilization.

Mostly, though, I like it because it reads like you are listening in on someone else's pen & paper D&D session (if the session was played by much better writers than your high school friends).

Another favorite of mine is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It has a gargantuan cast of characters, most of whom spend their time plotting and scheming against each other. If you liked all the backstabbing and complex politics of the Klingon episodes of STtNG or STDS9, you will probably enjoy this. Also, the author seems to have done his homework as it is mostly hard science fiction, which is a dying breed I'm afraid. Other than the discovery of immortality, most of the technology is quite believable and not much more advanced than our own. It's newer sci-fi but it's written a lot like old school "hard" science fiction, but with a fair amount of sociology and political science thrown in as the settlers of Mars experiment with radical new (and old) ways of arranging society and government, which leads to a lot of the political conflicts.
 
Underseer said:
Can we include fantasy in this?

I have a real soft spot for the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon. She's a marine and I assume she has a passion for military history, because in places it reads like a fantasy Tom Clancy novel with incredible details about day to day military life, like weird details about sanitation during prolonged sieges, details about what it's like to march with and train with a military unit from some fictional pre-gunpowder civilization.

Mostly, though, I like it because it reads like you are listening in on someone else's pen & paper D&D session (if the session was played by much better writers than your high school friends).

Another favorite of mine is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It has a gargantuan cast of characters, most of whom spend their time plotting and scheming against each other. If you liked all the backstabbing and complex politics of the Klingon episodes of STtNG or STDS9, you will probably enjoy this. Also, the author seems to have done his homework as it is mostly hard science fiction, which is a dying breed I'm afraid. Other than the discovery of immortality, most of the technology is quite believable and not much more advanced than our own. It's newer sci-fi but it's written a lot like old school "hard" science fiction, but with a fair amount of sociology and political science thrown in as the settlers of Mars experiment with radical new (and old) ways of arranging society and government, which leads to a lot of the political conflicts.
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I love the Mars trilogy. Not only because I'm a fan of terraforming it and settlement. I read the entire series just within a few weeks on holiday.
 
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