Sci-Fi Recommendations - for the unenlightened

[tiny99]

Can I recommend Feist......Raymond E......start with "Magician" and just carry on from there.

 

[Briareus Delta]

This thread scarcely needs any more recommendations - some excellent stuff here. However, I've scanned through the pages and have not found any mention of Bob Shaw and I couldn't let that pass.

The Ceres Solution - Bob Shaw is one of the best books of any kind that I have read. It really turns the concept of beauty on its head and not being blessed in the looks department myself......

Also Other Days, Other Eyes and Vertigo by Bob - both excellent.

Also The Twilight of Briareus by Richard Cowper - from whence my online identity is derived. Good post-apocalypse book.

 

[Chrystelia]

Hi guys,

Need recommendation of great single volume fantasy titles, not series. Thanks in advance.

 

[j d worthington]

Hi, Chrystelia:

Take a look at the Fantasy Recommendations thread for a start; it's chock-full of both series and individual titles covering a wide variety of types of fantasy. There's also the question of whether you want the sort of fantasy that's being done now, or the more diverse classic fantasy, which would cover things as diverse as The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson, to A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, and The Sorcerer's Ship, by Hannes Bok. There's also The Well of the Unicorn, by Fletcher Pratt, and for humorous fantasy, The Complete Compleat Enchanter, by Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp. Lilith, by George MacDonald, is also very good, though somewhat dense and dark, and can be a little difficult for some. Several of William Morris' novels (the man who basically created the genre back in the 19th century), such as The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at the World's End, The Sundering Flood, etc., are excellent single fantasies (though Well is a two-volume novel).

But to start with, I'd definitely suggest taking a look at the companion thread devoted to fantasy; I think you'll find more than enough single titles to keep you busy for years, if not decades....

http://www.chronicles-network.com/f...ghlight=fantasy+recommendations+unenlightened

http://www.chronicles-network.com/f...ed-2-a.html?highlight=fantasy+recommendations

 

[Hawk]

Hi, all... this is my saviour thread!

However, there are SO many recommendations in here, I really don't know what to do! If money was not a problem, I suppose I'd just randomly pick one which sounded good and buy that, but... I can't. "Why," I hear you ask, "don't you look in a library?"
Because the only one I have regular access to is our school one, and it has a very bad Sci-Fi section. We do have a City Library, but it really isn't worth mentioning. Its stocks have depleted significantly over the years and I'm not sure there's much left in it.

So. If you could recommend one single book, what would it be?

I have just finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's Rama Cycle... should I read another of Clarke's books, or try something different?

 

[Jonathan Sarkos]

Hi, all... this is my saviour thread!

So. If you could recommend one single book, what would it be?

I have just finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's Rama Cycle... should I read another of Clarke's books, or try something different?

Try "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons and the sequel of it - "Fall of Hyperion". I take full responsibility for this advice.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, I'm going to do something that's often considered heresy these days, and recommend you find a really good anthology to begin with. Problem is, there are so many of those, as well, and it all depends on what you're looking for... early days of sf (pre-Campbell era), the "Golden Age", the "Second Revolution" or "New Worlds" era, Cyberpunk, etc.; not to mention "hard" (based in the physical sciences) or "soft" (based in the social sciences) sf....

I may not be able to come up with a single book of the kind, but I'll toss out a few:

The Ascent of Wonder, edited by David G. Hartwell -- a good overview of several eras of (hard) sf

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes One (edited by Robert Silverberg), 2A and 2B (edited by Ben Bova) -- these are stories picked by the writers as among the best in the field prior to 1964 (the first Nebula awards, for the same purpose, were given out in 1965 for works published in 1964)

Before the Golden Age, edited by Isaac Asimov -- quite a good overview of the sf of the 1930s, ending with the inception of the Campbell era

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction (two volumes), edited by Anthony Boucher -- covers a wide range of both hard and soft sf from the early days to the end of the Campbell era, including four novels which are classics of the period

Any of the Year's Best SF anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois or David Hartwell, as they give a cornucopia of selections from each year, and these cover the more recent trends in sf (Dozois' series began in 1984, Hartwell's began in 1996 -- since 2001 co-edited with Kathryn Cramer).

I suggest anthologies because they give a wide range of writers and types of sf in short compass, which would allow you to more effectively know what appeals to you, to use for comparison when seeking out full-length novels or story collections by various writers. Also, all of these I've suggested (with the exception of the Hartwell Year's Best anthologies) massive tomes, so you'd definitely be getting your money's worth. I always found this a good guide for finding writers or types of books I'd especially like.

The reason I call this "heresy" is that the short story has been getting (if you'll pardon the pun) short shrift lately, which it does not deserve. From my experience, you can often find short stories that have as many ideas and can be as expanding to the mind as many novels -- they are a different form, with different criteria; but some of the richest writing in any field is often in the short story.

 

[The Wanderer]

The Wanderer - Fritz Leiber - 1964

OK, it has dated elements, but it's endearing, memorable and vivid

 

[Ragnar]

Any of John Brunner's 'Big Four';

The Sheep Look Up (my personal favourite SF novel of all time)
Stand on Zanzibar
The Jagged Orbit
Shockwave Rider

 

[murphy]

Off topic, but where is the thread starter, Gollum? He seems to have disappeared from the board.

 

[j d worthington]

Any of John Brunner's 'Big Four';

The Sheep Look Up (my personal favourite SF novel of all time)
Stand on Zanzibar
The Jagged Orbit
Shockwave Rider

Indeed. Very good choices. Three of those have been called his "dystopian trilogy", as they develop many of the same themes and techniques, and the order is:

Stand on Zanzibar
The Jagged Orbit
The Sheep Look Up

Shockwave Rider is just a wonderful read, period. But then, Brunner wrote an awful lot of very good things over the years....

Murphy: That's what many of us have been asking for some time. I wish like blazes we knew...

 

[judge_mel]

Some unusual recommendations a bit outside the mainstream:

The Dumarest Saga, by E.C. Tubb.

The longest running SF series by a single author, still had me intrigued over two dozen books in (32 at final count).

The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny

His first novel, an expanded novela, has a unique quality of future vision that he lost when he decided to pursue his 'immortal man' stories.

City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clark

A gem of a novel, also an expanded novella, which, as Clark's first novel, also written in a manner that he abandoned for colorless hard SF)

Floating Worlds by Cecillia Holland

An ignored masterpiece of early 70's science fiction. She was normally a writer of History novels, but this one is a dark gem of the distant future, colored by the era's cycnicism of the future, but with startling imagination.

 

[MolotovCocktail]

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

 

[Connavar]

I wonder if someone could recommend me some good cyberpunk books?


I have heard of some writers that are good at that like William Gibson,Neal Stephenson,Alfred Bester, Vernor Vinge



Also are people like Philip K.Dick considered cyberpunk cause i read in wiki that he has elements of that.

 

[j d worthington]

I wonder if someone could recommend me some good cyberpunk books?


I have heard of some writers that are good at that like William Gibson,Neal Stephenson,Alfred Bester, Vernor Vinge



Also are people like Philip K.Dick considered cyberpunk cause i read in wiki that he has elements of that.

I'm not sure I'd include either Bester or Vinge in there. Bester came long before Cyberpunk was even around; though he might be said to have influenced it. The same could well be said for Dick. Another good one to look for is Bruce Sterling. There's also Rudy Rucker. If you've not read it before, you might want to take a look at Mirrorshades, ed. by Sterling:

Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling

Cyberpunk isn't my speciality, I'll admit... though I liked a fair amount of what I've read there, I just never explored that far into it.

Definitely (even though it has become somewhat dated) go for Neuromancer, it's one of the classics of the genre. So is the "Ware Tetralogy" by Rucker: Sofware, Wetware, Freeware, Realware... the first two of which are the most notable, I'd say.

 

[stellarexplorer]

Emergence by David R Palmer : wonderful voice, delightful 11-year old female protagonist

 

[stellarexplorer]

Also:


Childhoods End by Arthur C Clarke
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller
Earth Abides by George R Stewart
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Farmer

Island by Aldous Huxley
Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut

The Man who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson
Jumper by Steven Gould
Arslan by M J Engh

The first four are classics without controversy (unless someone wishes to dispute this). The middle two are classics but only arguably SF. The last four are accessible personal favorites and great fun. Well, the Engh is not so accessible, nor much fun, but quite good nevertheless.

 

[stellarexplorer]

Ok, now I finished reading through the entire thread, so I have to second a number of books I failed to include but have been reminded of (not an exhaustive list):

Simmons Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion; CJ Cherryh Cyteen and Downbelow Station; Gateway by Pohl; much of Poul Anderson; Jules Verne; Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series; Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt, Mars Trilogy, and I LOVED his recent near-future trilogy starting with Forty Signs of Rain; Ian McDonald's River of Gods; Stephenson's Snow Crash; Dune.

Sad to report that the original Foundation Trilogy fails, upon rereading, to measure up to the shining brilliance it cast upon my adolescence. But such is adolescence. And adulthood.

 

[Connavar]

I'm not sure I'd include either Bester or Vinge in there. Bester came long before Cyberpunk was even around; though he might be said to have influenced it. The same could well be said for Dick. Another good one to look for is Bruce Sterling. There's also Rudy Rucker. If you've not read it before, you might want to take a look at Mirrorshades, ed. by Sterling:

Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling

Cyberpunk isn't my speciality, I'll admit... though I liked a fair amount of what I've read there, I just never explored that far into it.

Definitely (even though it has become somewhat dated) go for Neuromancer, it's one of the classics of the genre. So is the "Ware Tetralogy" by Rucker: Sofware, Wetware, Freeware, Realware... the first two of which are the most notable, I'd say.

About Vinge apparently he wrote cyberpunk like before the genre existed. I read about a novel of his it sound alot like what that is now cyberpunk


Thanks for the tips.


Neuromancer i am excited about cause i read what its about, it doesnt matter if its dated. I dont let that stuff get to me. A good story is a good story no matter its new or a 100 years old.

 

[Razorback]

I wonder if someone could recommend me some good cyberpunk books?

I second j.d.’s recommendation of Neuromancer. I also liked Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age and, for something more recent, Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon. I’m not sure if it’s generally regarded as Cyberpunk, but Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels struck me as such, and it was a pretty interesting, if somewhat challenging, read.