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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/24/2010 9:34:33 AM

kdsub

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I got into science fiction many years ago when I picked up an old serial copy of the First Lensmen by EE Doc Smith.

To me at least the series of 6 books are the very best of Science Fiction.

Butch

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/24/2010 9:45:00 AM

DCWoody

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Really like Iain M Banks stuff. Against a Dark Background stands out in the memory.

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/24/2010 12:14:40 PM

DomImus

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Chromosome 6 - Robin Cook

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/24/2010 1:13:56 PM

kiwisub12

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the stories of the Black Company - forget the author right now, but they are good enough to keep my attention while i was in labour.

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/24/2010 1:31:53 PM

hertz

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyRian

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin

Yes. I liked this story a lot.

quote:

ORIGINAL: playfulotter

A trilogy by C.S. Lewis which includes: "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength".

I remember reading these at school. They're not especially well known, I think.

I'd like to suggest 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood.

And hey! Where's Edgar Rice Burroughs? And Michael Moorcock? (The Dancers At The End Of Time trilogy would be my pick)

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/25/2010 7:07:18 PM

January

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That blog list you linked to, JohnSteed, is way, way too heavy on cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is SO self-conscious, brittle and stilted, IMO. And that SF genre pretty much died in the 80's.

I agree with including Ray Bradbury and the mature Heinlein, and surely the Dune and Ringworld books.

I would also like to suggest Kate Wilhelm and Marion Zimmer Bradley (in addition to the already mentioned Ursula K LeGuin). Wilhelm and Bradley are two superior female writers (Did I see any women represented in that blog list? Maybe not, because it was nearly all cyberpunk, and woman don't generally write it.)

Oh yeah, and for literary SF by a woman who won the Pulitzer recently, I nominate Doris Lessing for her Shikasta series. For a non-woman author I suggest Brian Aldiss. I loved his Helliconia trilogy.

January

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/25/2010 9:31:23 PM

Hippiekinkster

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quote:

ORIGINAL: calamitysandra

The Peace War by Venor Vinge.

Hell, anything by Vernor Vinge (I am going to HAVE to visit Köln).
A Deepness In The Sky was superb. The On/Off star, and the "Spider" race that lived on its sole planet... just brilliant.

I'm more into Fantasy these days, but I grew up on Ace Doubles.
http://people.uncw.edu/smithms/ACE_doubles.html
So many great authors. Andre Norton (first real SF book I read - "The Stars are Ours!" IIRC (hey, it was almost 50 years ago. memory fades)); L SPrague de Camp; Keith Laumer; Isaac Asimov; A.E. Van Vogt; Philip K. Fat; Poul Anderson; Robert Silverberg; Harlan Ellison, and so many others...

I got hooked back in the 2nd or 3rd grade with a series about an eccentric scientist named Mr. Tycho Bass (Basidomycetes), who convinces two young boys to build a rocket ship that will take them to a tiny moon, "Basidium", only 50,000 miles from Earth. Wow, these books really captured my imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Cameron

Then there were the Tom Swift books that I somehow inherited. The series started in 1910. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift

When I was about 14, I got turned on to the Doc Savage books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Savage
I still have about 60 or so of the Bantam reprints of the Doc Savage series.

I'm really not, and never have been, a fan of the "cyberpunk" stuff. Dystopias are boring. Except for Horselover Fat's stuff. That's the kind of shit Rethuglicans fap to... welfare queens and commie Leebrils take over the planet, leaving it up to (cue "Ride of the Valkyries" (da da da DA da DA DA DA DA DA...) TeaPartyman!!! to come to the rescue! Saving America for the Koch, Scaife, Wyly, Hilton, Perot, Hunt, Bush, Kennedy, yada yada Families from the irrational, unjust demands that the Great Unwashed be paid living wages and get some decent health care!)

SF has always been about "What If?"

Read "Dune" again. Or watch it (not the Kyle McLachlan one). It's about the politics of a scarce commodity, oil or water, take your pick. It's about the lengths powerful factions will go to to control said commodity (Harkonnen = Bush, IMO).

As I said, I prefer the Fantasy genre. Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, L.E.Modesitt, David & Leigh Eddings ( a favorite; The Belgariad quintilogy is superb, IMO), Tolkein, and the like, afford me more avenues of Escapism, as it were.

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RE: sci-fi novels you should read - 9/27/2010 2:14:39 AM

switch2please

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I second Jules Verne and the C.S. Lewis series (and I have to disagree about The Handmaid's Tale out of personal preference - I didn't enjoy it, so I can't honestly recommend it)

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