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Wait, I thought Phillip Dick did Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Did Asimov do one of nearly the same title as well, or are you saying he did an anthology of stories?

biccat wrote:
I'd consider Asimov to be one of the essential reads. The Foundation series is excellent and most of his short stories (Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? and I Robot are good anthologies) are brilliant and (were) groundbreaking.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a Philip K. Dick short story, not an Asimov one. It's the short story which was adapted into Blade Runner. I can't find any compilation called Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? in Google either, so I'm guessing this was just a mix up of authors?

AustonT wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I would avoid Heinlein and go straight for Alfred Bester - 'The demolished man,' and 'The stars my destination (also called Tiger Tiger).

It's an old argument about who is better, but IMO it's Bester any day of the week.

I would avoid Dune as well. Great film, terrible book.

Come again?

WHAT

Right. The Asimov book is "Robot Dreams"

GalacticDefender wrote:

AustonT wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I would avoid Heinlein and go straight for Alfred Bester - 'The demolished man,' and 'The stars my destination (also called Tiger Tiger).

It's an old argument about who is better, but IMO it's Bester any day of the week.

I would avoid Dune as well. Great film, terrible book.

Come again?

WHAT

He obviously prefers noise boxes over Desert Ninjas who cut you to pieces with knives made out of Sandworm teeth.

@A town called Malus

lol


I read a lot of the older SF for about two years, but for the past year or so I've been reading mostly newer stuff, mainly space opera. (and if the OP doesn't know what that is, no, its not opera in space, it means something set on a great variety of different planets, mainly in space, etc.)

Alastair Reynolds is awesome; I would definitely recommend Revelation Space and Chasm City. They are space operas on the harder side of SF, and there is actually no FTL travel, which makes for an interesting universe.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is also awesome if you like hard SF. Haven't read the other books.

Leviathan Wakes by "James S.A. Corey" is one of the best SF books to have come out this ear, imo, and was actually nominated for the Hugo Award. It is a great, quite realistic space opera set in our solar system.


Anyone else know of some good recent SF to add to this list?

GalacticDefender wrote:@A town called Malus

lol


I read a lot of the older SF for about two years, but for the past year or so I've been reading mostly newer stuff, mainly space opera. (and if the OP doesn't know what that is, no, its not opera in space, it means something set on a great variety of different planets, mainly in space, etc.)

Alastair Reynolds is awesome; I would definitely recommend Revelation Space and Chasm City. They are space operas on the harder side of SF, and there is actually no FTL travel, which makes for an interesting universe.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is also awesome if you like hard SF. Haven't read the other books.

Leviathan Wakes by "James S.A. Corey" is one of the best SF books to have come out this ear, imo, and was actually nominated for the Hugo Award. It is a great, quite realistic space opera set in our solar system.


Anyone else know of some good recent SF to add to this list?

As I previously mentioned David Weber's Honorverse is excellent and also falls into the space opera category. The storylines and battles are modeled on historical events which are hidden nuggets of awesome if you love history.

Starship Troopers by Heinlein is probably my favorite science fiction book. Other than that I dont really focus on authors but rather just specific sf books inn general. Mainley post apocolyptic or space war books. The book Im currently reading, The Forever War, is a good example.

LordofHats wrote:Orson Scott Card and Robert Heinlein by miles. Enders Game is one of my favorite books, and Starship Troopers is one of the first real books I ever read.

I'd also throw a hat to Eric Nylund. He's mostly known for the Halo books, but the guy isn't half bad as a writer and I enjoy his style.

AustonT wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I would avoid Heinlein and go straight for Alfred Bester - 'The demolished man,' and 'The stars my destination (also called Tiger Tiger).

It's an old argument about who is better, but IMO it's Bester any day of the week.

I would avoid Dune as well. Great film, terrible book.

Come again?

Indeed.

Thirded. Although I must agree that both "The Demolished Man" and "The stars my destination" are awesome books and definitely belong at the top of the genre.
Heinlein still edges out Bester though. Although I find "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" one of his best works. Just hilarious. Stranger, I think, is overrated as a novel, though its influence is undeniable.
In any case, I think it's not Heinleins novels that rank him among the Big Three of sf - it's his short stories. Those are, without exception, pure awesome.

Other favoured sf writers:
Larry Niven (including his collaborations with Pournelle)
Roger Zelazny (Amber, Lord of Light)
Fred Pohl (Gateway - stay away from the sequel-, Jem -not very uplifting, but very good-, Wolfsbane)
Greg Bear (Eon, A song of Earth and Power)

I kind of liked Ender's Game, except for the last two (?) chapters. The book should have ended after the climactic revelation Frazzled mentioned, IMO, and don't really care much for Card's other books, TBH.

I would actually also recommend some of the Halo books. Glasslands, Contact Harvest, and The Cole Protocol are awesome reads, and they would be awesome even if set in their own SF universe. I guess what I am saying is it's not just Halo that makes these books awesome, because they are very well written and have awesome plots.

Cryptum is excellent as well.

Don't you dare mention Glasslands around me!



May Karen Travis burn in an unending fire.

Pretty much anything by Isaac Asimov. As big a fan of Sci-Fi, I'm actually not into much in the way of novels. The Foundation novels are amazing reads, even the last four, and the Complete Robot collection along with the Robot novels are a must-read. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the Empire series, but his other two series are amazing.

GalacticDefender wrote:
I read a lot of the older SF for about two years, but for the past year or so I've been reading mostly newer stuff, mainly space opera. (and if the OP doesn't know what that is, no, its not opera in space, it means something set on a great variety of different planets, mainly in space, etc.)

"Space" opera comes from the same roots as "soap" operas and "horse" operas (westerns). They are just SET in space.
For example, Star Trek is a "space opera" as it was conceived as a "wagon train to the stars" kind of show or a "horse opera" in space. Space Operas tend to favour the more over-arching "big picture" stories (or in the case of Roddenberry, over-reaching).
Lensman is "space opera", Foundation is "space opera".

Locclo wrote:Pretty much anything by Isaac Asimov. As big a fan of Sci-Fi, I'm actually not into much in the way of novels. The Foundation novels are amazing reads, even the last four, and the Complete Robot collection along with the Robot novels are a must-read. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the Empire series, but his other two series are amazing.

Perhaps his best series:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Physics

The Gap Chronicle by Stephen R. Donaldson. Absolutely one of the darkest, grittiest, and well written SF series I have ever read.

Aside from the big ones brought up by everyone, I like a lot of David Drake and John Ringo, which is about the best military sci fi out there of which I am aware.

- Ranks of Bronze is pretty damned awesome,
also the Forever War by Joe Haldeman
and most of Timothy Zahn's stuff that i've read.

Bromsy wrote:Aside from the big ones brought up by everyone, I like a lot of David Drake and John Ringo, which is about the best military sci fi out there of which I am aware.

- Ranks of Bronze is pretty damned awesome,
also the Forever War by Joe Haldeman
and most of Timothy Zahn's stuff that i've read.

This is really good.
The Trilogy is great, definitely one of my favourites...

Gene Wolfe. Anything. Possibly the greatest living fantasy/SF writer we have left.

Dune is absolutely brilliant. The later books in the series not as much.

Heinlein is great, but has his foibles and his later works get more than a little self-indulgent. If you're starting on him, I really recommend the ones referred to as "juveniles"; kind of young adult fiction. The writing is tight, the pacing great, the stories evocative and intelligent. Tunnel in the Sky, for example, is great. People who dump on Starship Troopers are almost invariably people who never read it or fundamentally misunderstood it, and the folks who call Heinlein a fascist are deeply ignorant. The politics in there are a bit reactionary, and it was written when he was in a pretty militant mood, but it's partially based on Switzerland, and he advocated utterly antithetical political ideas in some of his other books. ST was my first Heinlein, at 12, but there's certainly better stuff. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is, for my money, better than Stranger. Time Enough for Love is pretty awesome, but kind of long and I'd recommend folks start with his shorter stuff and see if you fall in love.

Ender's Game is pretty good, and undeniably a classic, though remember it started life as a short story, and was later expanded to a novel. That's part of why there's not as much character development as you might expect. IMO Speaker for the Dead is substantially the better book, though I liked Game better as a teenager, of course.

Philip K. Dick, of course, was a visionary. His stories are packed with ideas which have been mined by Hollywood for decades. Always challenging you with unreliable narrators and lack of clarity about what is real and true.

Timothy Zahn if you're a Star Wars fan. His Heir to the Empire books make Star Wars fiction kind or respectable and genuinely enjoyable.

Mike Stackpole and Bob Charette wrote some fun Battletech novels back in the day. Actually Stackpole made a lot more money writing Star Wars books later (the Rogue Squadron series, centered on Luke's friend Wedge Antilles, which I've always heard good things about).

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You really don't need to read anything else.

If you are into Star Wars I heartily recommend the Rogue Squadron books, you don't even have to be an intimate fan like some of the other SW books. More or less all of the characters are not on screen (with the exception of wedge who has what two lines in three movies?) and completely self contained in the series.
There is also a trilogy that follows Han in the years preceeding the first movie, including the Kessel Run, finding chewie etc. And ends in the Mos Eisley Cantina meeting Obi Wan; great series. Can't be bothered to find them in my library ATM (mostly because it's my birthday and I'm not home)

AustonT wrote:If you are into Star Wars I heartily recommend the Rogue Squadron books, you don't even have to be an intimate fan like some of the other SW books. More or less all of the characters are not on screen (with the exception of wedge who has what two lines in three movies?) and completely self contained in the series.
There is also a trilogy that follows Han in the years preceeding the first movie, including the Kessel Run, finding chewie etc. And ends in the Mos Eisley Cantina meeting Obi Wan; great series. Can't be bothered to find them in my library ATM (mostly because it's my birthday and I'm not home)

The Legacy of the Force series is also quite good, if I recall.

AustonT wrote:If you are into Star Wars I heartily recommend the Rogue Squadron books, you don't even have to be an intimate fan like some of the other SW books. More or less all of the characters are not on screen (with the exception of wedge who has what two lines in three movies?) and completely self contained in the series.
There is also a trilogy that follows Han in the years preceeding the first movie, including the Kessel Run, finding chewie etc. And ends in the Mos Eisley Cantina meeting Obi Wan; great series. Can't be bothered to find them in my library ATM (mostly because it's my birthday and I'm not home)

the timathy zahn books those were great. those should have been made into movies instead of the prequils.

The Lensman series, by Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith, is a great set of books and will show you where most of the sci fi writters got their inspirations

Even though they're not classic scifi, the Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn Duology were very enjoyable reads and the best Star Wars fiction I've read.

If we're counting Stephenson as sci-fi, then I would have to go with William Gibson as well. Although, I love Stephenson more than anything.

I would also Heinlein, Ringo (someone got me on the first couple books for the earth invasion trilogy thingy), Douglas Adams, Phillip K. Dick, Herbert (I liked Dune)

I'd add Andre Norton as old school classic.

He's such a douche, but I have to add Harlan Ellison to the list.

The Player Of Games, by Iain Banks is quality, as is pretty much all of his SF stuff. Interestingly his non-Sci Fi material tends to be weirder than the SF books!
I like Peter F Hamilton's work - Pandora's Star is a good jumping in point.
China Mieville is an interesting and sometimes challenging author; Perdido Street Station is more of the steam punk genre, and The Scar is a good follow up novel.

Herbert and Bradbury are my personal pillars of SF. I respect Asimov, but Herbert's ideas grabbed me more, while Bradbury's prose is better IMO.

Lovecraft did some SF, and a lot of his work involves the cosmic, but he's a much better fit in the 'horror' category. You could make a case against Bradbury being a pure SF writer, but since some of his best-known works are in the SF category, I think he still fits best there.

In the underrated category, I think Richard Matheson deserves the nod, although again he kinda straddles SF and horror. When you look at the guy's resume, it's surprising he isn't mentioned more.

IMO the only thing worse than Heinlein is Asimov! Asimov can be basically summed up as technology and progress = bad, and the usual fodder of robots taking over the world.
Philip K Dick is a worthy writer, because instead of Asimov's simplicity, his idea is to explore the moral themes. For example, instead of the usual fare of robots taking over the world, why not explore the morals of humans sleeping with robots/androids. It will happen one day!
So yeah, K Dick is the man!

As for Dune, I don't care if it outsold Kim Jon IL in the North Korean bookcharts, it's the literature equivalent of cod liver oil - good for you, yeah, but you don't really want to take it!

As for those who expressed surprise that I like the film over the book, a film that contained Jurgen Prochow, Patrick Stuart, Kyle Macglachin (sic) Al from quantum leap, soundtrack by Toto etc etc you bet your ass I prefer the film!!!

Thanks for clarifying your position! I also agree that night is day, up is down, the remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds is way better than the original, and this sex thing is a silly waste of time which will never catch on.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:IMO the only thing worse than Heinlein is Asimov! Asimov can be basically summed up as technology and progress = bad, and the usual fodder of robots taking over the world.

Yep. I think that falls squarely under Did Not Read The Book.