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Looking for a list of good novels (something more recently published).

Went to a couple of local book stores to get my friend some birthday presents and for the most part it seems like SciFi novels are an endangered species. Tons of Love, Fantasy, mystery and others. A bit surprised being that SciFi seems to dominate video games, movies, TV shows, and table top games.

The Horus Heresy is actually an amazing read. Horus Rising, False Gods, and Galaxy in Flames especially, as they focus on Horus's change from a benevolent leader to a grim monster. It's what Lucas could(should) have done with Anakin.

Do you just want good sci-fi or good sci-fi that was published recently?

The Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Burton & Swinburne series by Mark Hodder

The Prestige by Christopher Priest



Try these. The stuff by Farmer is from the 1970s, but it's a little more obscure than the usual heavy hitters like Heinlein and Card.

Jack Campbell isn't bad.

Assuming you don't just want new sci-fi:

Footfall
Lucifer's Hammer
Mote in God's Eye
Ender's Game
Snow Crash
Starship Troopers
Neuromancer

Meh, I got bored. That's the 'top X' type sci-fi. That'll get you started.

Define 'more recently.'

The Damned trilogy, by Alan Dean Foster. For a prolific guy who mostly wrote mediocre tie-in fiction or tepid solo novels for most of his career, with a few moderately readable series, I was surprised to find something so amazing in his work. The first book is called A Call to Arms, and I think it might be one of the best sci-fi books ever written. I don't mean that as hyperbole, by the way, I really did enjoy it that much.

For another good read, you might check out the Faded Sun trilogy by CJ Cherryh. Pretty decent stuff there.

 pretre wrote:
Do you just want good sci-fi or good sci-fi that was published recently?

Good scifi that has been published recently, if that exists. Seems like everything that has ever been recommended to me in my life is 15+ years old.

My friend pretty much owns everything from the 90s and prior to that. And owns all that star wars books. Cyber Punk would be his favorite material overall.

Got him all the Game of Thrones books (that were released) and the Walking Dead comics last year.

But he is primarily a SciFi guy.

There just doesn't seem to be anything standing out right now. Guess it goes in cycles? Book store owner recommended lots of Fantasy related stuff.

are there any Cyber Punk novellas or graphic novels that are worth taking a look at?

That is a good trilogy if I'm thinking of the right one. The aliens come to recruit us for warriors.

Speaking of that type of trilogy: the posleen books.

If you like the Aliens franchise, consider the first three novelizations of the Dark Horse comic book sequel (yes sequel; later retconned) to James Cameron's movie. They are called Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum, and The Female War.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
The Horus Heresy is actually an amazing read. Horus Rising, False Gods, and Galaxy in Flames especially, as they focus on Horus's change from a benevolent leader to a grim monster. It's what Lucas could(should) have done with Anakin.

thanks.

I'll look into it.

It would be safe to assume one does not need to play 40k to enjoy the material from Black Library?

Absolutely. Heck, it might even help!

Try the Looking Glass and Troy Rising series by John Ringo.

I went back and checked some publication dates. You want something more recent than 15 years ago, I recommend Tanya Huff's Valor Confederation series. (The first novel is Valor's Choice.) Great military drama, great 'humans-as-barbarians" story, which is part of the reason I recommended Foster's work above.

Roman Legion's of Videsso......like three or four cohort get snagged into another reality.....oh and they manage to get a Gaul Warrior Prince (?) caught up in it.

I loved Guns Of the South - a civil war alternate history sci fi extravaganza.

Ahhhh Turtledove did a seris of books to of alien invasion during the American second World War Two....Aliens were expecting knights and hunter/gather type of locals.....not countries at war with each other with modern weapons

Pretre stole half of mine!

How about the Astropolis series? Saturn Returns, Earth Ascendant & The Grand Conjunction. I quite liked the series, it's a bit odd and the whole time differences and clones of clones within clones but some aren't clones they are individual can get a bit weird, but I really enjoyed it.

Well, I was going to recommend the quite excellent Robot and Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, but since mister fancypants here wants his recent science fiction...

The Halo novels are actually pretty good. Contact: Harvest is my personal favorite, but The Fall of Reach and First Strike are also good.

Black Library also publishes a number of great Warhammer 40,000 novels - your enjoyment kind of depends on what armies you like (I just didn't like Gaunt's Ghosts, for example) but there are a lot of excellent ones out there. The Horus Heresy series has been decent thus far, and I always have to recommend the two Space Wolf trilogies.

I'm also going to recommend a few lesser-known ones by Gary Paulsen (author of The Hatchet, if you ever had to read that as a kid). The first is White Fox Chronicles, which is about a freedom fighter leading a resistance movement in 2057, and the second is The Transall Saga, which follows a young man's journey through a strange, exotic world. Both are pretty good, if aimed at a younger audience. I dunno, I still enjoy them.

I guess I'm just too attached to the past to give you much more. I personally love all of Asimov's Robot and Foundation sagas, as well as Michael Crichton's numerous sci-fi novels.