So I see that we have a thread for fantasy, but nothing for the other side of the genre coin - Sci-Fi. Fantasy always seems to do better than Sci-Fi in the world of books, but I'm an equally voracious reader of both.

Got my start in early secondary with Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy as well as Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Heir to the Empire books. For the next few years at least it was almost certainly a mix of stuff like the GrandMasters (Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Heinlen, Silverberg, LeGuin) & classics like Roger Zelazny (Lord of Light), Joe Haldeman (Forever War) along with mass-market novelizations like the Star Wars & Star Trek books. I still have a soft spot for the Star Trek books of Peter David & the Deep Space Nine: Relaunch books.

My more recent reads tend to be all over the place. Some highlights:

A Fire Upon the Deep & A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. High level space science fiction, set in the faaaar future. Not a new series, but still very good and worth a read if you can find them.

The Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by Richard Morgan - an interesting sci-fi dystopia. There's no faster than light travel, but there is FTL communication, which allows people - like the main character, a military specialist - to be downloaded into freshly created bodies clear across the stars. Very grim & gritty, and very good.

Iain M Banks' Culture novels - Another high level space science fiction, set in the faaaar future with AIs, ringworlds, metaphysical threats but still possessing humour as well as emotional resonance. There are several books, and they are all good, but by far the best (and a must read for any fan of SF) are The Player of Games, Use of Weapons & Look to Windward - the last of which is one of the few books that managed to gut-punch me emotionally, not with any specific scene but simply with the general tone. Excellent, and highly recommended.

Neal Stephenson, specifically Snowcrash (of course ), Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon & Anathem. Despite a common weakness (still can't really write an ending...), these are some excellent sci-fi. The first two are more cyberpunk, and the last two are...not. They are all incredibly good, & some of the few books that I regularly re-read.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi.If you've ever read Starship Troopers, this is the perfect counterpoint novel. If you haven't, it's still a damn good & fun read. BTW, if you ever find a copy of his older book called Agent of the Stars, read it. It's hillarious... Scalzi has a very good touch with humour.

I'm sure there are other Sci-Fi fans out here. What are your favourites & what are some of your recent highlights?

I used to read a lot of Asimov. I, Robot and the Foundation novels were favorites. Was also a huge fan of Frank Herbert's dune. Read every single one of his original books, even though the later ones were confusing for my then younger self.

Later on I read Crichton. He's not really sci-fi I guess, but related nonetheless.

Nowadays I read Philip K. d*** and a bit of William Gibson (actually, just Neuromancer). I've been tempted to pick up Kevin J. Anderson's epic Saga of the Seven Suns, but two things hold me back: I can't find the entire series, and Kevin J. Anderson's reputation as a writer.

*snicker*. The auto censor here is really screwed up.

Yeah, remeber the Dune books.... gave up after God Emperor, IIRC. Don't plan on reading Seven Suns, as sounds a bit silly (hidden aliens popping up suddenly) and KJA... well, I don't really have high opinion of him.

Anybody tried Ender's Game and Ender's series?

I was just reading it for fun, and was surprised by how good and deep it is. Makes me wonder if Starship Troopers stories of alien bugs is based from there. Warning though, this book is rather deep and mature.

Yea im always sci-fi fans but never fantasy's. I cant believe this thread only exist very recently and there are so many others prefer fantasy than this.

I dont read much of those you mentioned here, but what i read were classified as Sci-Fi in most book stores. They are more like some findings/sharing of some existing scientists/scholars. This is why it caught my eyes and entered this thread when I saw the word Singularity.

Authors I mentioned that I read/keep on their publications are:
Zecharia Sitchin, Carl Sagan, Ervin Laszlo etc, especially EL contains cutting-edge science consistent with spiritual knowledge... gosh am i out of topic here? Sorry if it is. Im longing to meet more bookworms and share thoughts with.

for dune, you gotta read the starting 3 which is the most relevant i guess. after which it kinda dies off.

philip k dic's short stories are very good. The short stories in which comes with minority report is really good. he has this very good sense of the time continuity. I haven't touched that book for ages.

i think critchton has great ideas but not a great writer. his movies some how surpass his books. which is usually the other way around generally.

Personally, I'm still a big fan of the classics.....Clarke and Asimov are 2 of the main authors i follow....

Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy was a classic and it was so awesome at the end
In terms of pure enjoyment, I prefer all the short stories that they wrote....the Robot stories from Asimov and the random short stories from Clarke...I still like the collection from Clarke called Tales from the White Hart (if I'm not mistaken) and it's main character Harry Purvis

Robotech novels were the first fiction books I ever read. Still love it. Nevermind the anime-background, I loved the writing style (2 men writing under one name).

After that I followed the Battletech series, before the franchise reboot of "Mechwarrior: Dark Age" killed my interest.

You guys should try the Honorverse series by David Webber.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse

Each of the 11 books so far can be downloaded or read online for free (links at the bottom of each novel's Wiki entry). Good reads, though the main character seems "too perfect" by the end of the series. Rumors of a movie adaptation is in the works, and a MMO game is coming soon too.

snowcrash - do u come back here at all?!

Still here, down to lurking though. My current reading is more fantasy than SF (waiting for paperback of Iain Banks Matter to come out)

Tried reading Weber, but yeah, the main character is the literal definition of a Mary Sue.

Haven't read most of the authors secretquirrel mentioned, except for Sagan. My main exposure to singularity in sf has been through guys like Robert Charles Wilson & Tobias S. Buckell. I'm actually not to enamoured of singularity as a concept as I like my SF to be more mundane, not really keen on a lot of pie-in-the-sky notions.

Ender's Game is one of the finest SF books ever written. Everything else by Card is a disappointment in comparison, so my suggestion is just read EG & stop there.

This post has been edited by snowcrash: May 25 2009, 02:35 AM

Yeah, Honor Harrington is a Mary Sue character. The author didn't hide the fact, in fact he says in the foreword the series is sort of a futuristic homage to the Horatio Hornblower series (Napoleonic Age British officer who rose to Admiral).

Still, I liked the books. The kind you bring with you into the toilet while you sit on the Frozen Throne because you can easily put it aside when you're done and get back to it on your next visit.

To each their own, Weber is too much like Goodkind for me to like his writing, but he's certainly good for light fluff reading.

My recomendation to readers who space opera's like Honor Harrington is to look for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. I don't know if any collected versions exist, but the main books are these:

Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
Diplomatic Immunity


They're, excellent & suitably epic books & pack a fair few emotional punches. Read the first 4 as close together as you can for the biggest impact.

I'm a sci-fi fan but haven't quite read much sci-fi. Have read some staples like Snow Crash (classic) or Stranger In A Strange Land (hated it, so campy and so "male"-centric, and recommended by exbf barf).

The sci-fi I'm in the process of reading Gibson's Neuromancer and my guy keeps asking me to start in on Horus Rising. He btw reads lots of sci-fi especially the Black Library or Warhammer40k stuff.

Lately am exploring the section a little more. I have a few of Neal Stephenson's got on a book sale but they're thick tomes and haven't gotten round to them Recent trip to Kino also picked up Pattern Recognition by Gibson and Glasshouse by Stross.

What are must reads in the sci-fi world?

Hi redninja, & welcome to the sf/f genre!

Neal Stephenson is a good read, but I hesitate to recommend his books (other than Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon & maybe Diamond Age) to someone getting into genre fiction, as he is a very demanding writer. His Baroque Cycle books (which I suspect are what you have) are very good, but very tough reading as well.

I've never been fond of Heinlein either, so I understand your dislike of Stranger.... Try some Arthur C Clarke, Asimov or Zelazny if you want to read the old masters. Be warned though - these are writers of a different time and generationn so they will be somewhat chauvinistic/ male-dominated. Try Ursula K. Le Guin & Julian May for old school writers who are somewhat different in their approach.

Looking at newer writers, if you liked Snow Crash, you 1. display very good taste , and 2. may like some of recc's from the first post, like Richard Morgan, Iain M Banks & John Scalzi. Their writing is more contemporary than the old masters, & tends to be more action oriented as well.

Redninja, I like your boyfriend's taste =P

Warhammer40k is excellent. A bit of warning though, personally, I find the its universe very enthralling and very deep, and I find that most of the enjoyment I derive from reading the novels are due to the lore and the setting of the environment, not due to the plots cause some of them are really absurd (Space marine almost loses, GETS MIRACULOUS STRENGTH OMFG CHAOS PHAILS. Gets a bit stale after a while =(

If you are planning to get started in the W40kverse, do try Space Wolves. I've read a lot of BL novels, and I loved that series the most.

And snowcrash, I read Ender's Game due to your recommendation, and decided to venture on to Ender's Shadow.

Honestly, I loved Ender's Shadow more than Ender's Game. Haven't tried the others, hopefully they're not as bad as you say they are =)

Do try Childhood's End as well. Excellent novel, though the complete lack of action might turn some people off.

Cheers.

I read Naruto, does that count?

Anyways, had nothing better to do the past few days, so picked up an old Alastair Reynolds novel to reread. Got a reminder of what an awesome space-opera writer the guy is.

Also picked up Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan couple weeks ago, really awesome sci-fi thriller. Kinda like Robert Ludlum with nanoids.

Never tried Neal Stephenson, although the old Cyberpunk RPG used to expound his work, his and William Gibson. Will give snow crash a read soon.

This post has been edited by pleasuresaurus: Jun 12 2009, 04:27 PM

Any post-apocalyptic novels to recommend? Just caught a glimpse of Nick Sagan's Edenborn in Kino today..

Didn't notice this thread. Not one mention of Greg Egan, my favourite science-fiction author ever. (And I read a lot of science fiction, even short stories published in Analog and Asimovs.)

Hi, everyone. Ya, Greg Egan. Super hard SF. I read Diaspora. Cool. Also Permutation City and 'tried' to read some others. Sometimes hard SF are difficult read. Not that they are no good, just...... but the way Greag Egan manage to make you feel like a nuclear physicist, is plain fanforkintastic. that is if you manage to finish reading them.

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Added on September 6, 2009, 4:41 pmDestiny's Road by Larry Niven -post-apocalyptic feel (a favourite)
The Postman by David Brin -post-apocalyptic
Octavia E. Butler. Parable of the Sower -post-apocalyptic
Octavia E. Butler. Xenogenesis -post-apocalyptic+alien
* (Dawn. 1987)
* (Adulthood Rites. 1988)
* (Imago. 1989)
lots of PA SF out there but, its mixed w other flavour so we do not necessary remember them as post-apocalyptic in specific.

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Added on September 6, 2009, 4:50 pmWell, if you read Ender's game, you should follow up by Speaker for the Dead (one of my all time fav, and best book to reread). I think other OSC's books are mostly solid and readable, though not all fantastic. unlike Magaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's books after the 2 dragonlance series, all....dissapointing letdown.

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Added on September 6, 2009, 5:16 pmhmmm, i never like William Gibson but love Neal Stephenson. I think its my preference towards story telling than style. SF world is well balance by both male and female writers. i would recommend
Family Tree or Grass by Sheri Tepper (or any of her other books).
and like snowcrash mention, any of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga ant her other excellent books.
Octavia E. Butler's book.
recommended these not because they are written by women, but because they are great SF writers, with strong human touch, what they call soft SF. Asimov and all classics is great but books w with strong human touch is easier to connect. While everyone have diff taste, its pretty hard to find someone (and practically impossible to find a female SF reader!) who does not like Lois McMaster Bujold's book.

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Added on September 6, 2009, 7:38 pmA Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness in the Sky is superb SF. So is Dan Simmon's Ilium/Olympos, Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion/The Rise of Endymion.
Neal Stephenson my fav writer as well and will always be. i get what you mean when you say The Baroque Cycle is not strictly SF. if thats his 1st work, he could well be catogarized as a historical fiction writer. but since all his SF fans say its SF, it just is. the good thing is, he is getting better with each book.
My other favourite writers are Ben Bova, Lois McMaster B, David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Philip Jose Farmer, Larry Niven, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis and many more.
Books that i'd buy and be pretty sure of a good read: any Connie Willis, Sean McMullen, Sherri S Tepper and Larry Niven (the master story teller).
Books that i'd buy hardcover after reading: Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Speaker for the Dead, Ender's Game. I get what you mean too when when you say OSC's other work is lame compare to Ender's Game (and i have to add Speaker for the Dead). his fans will forgive his for that since its almost impossible to out do Ender & Speaker.
My all time favourite: Speaker for the Dead by OSC.

This post has been edited by tender: Sep 6 2009, 07:38 PM

As long the books have a "Based on XXX game", it's gonna end up in my bookshelf.

So far my bookshelf have Warhammer 40k(Eisenhorn, Sabbat Martyr, Heroes of Space Marine, Emperor's Mercy) , Halo (Cole Protocol, Contact Harvest, Ghosts of Onyx, Fall of Reach and First Strike) ,Perfect Dark (Initial Vector).