Recommend a good Sci-Fi book

RedPlanet

Hi,

I don't ordinarily read Sci-Fi but i've got a bit of a bug for it atm.
Anybody got any recommendations?
I'm really looking for something that would take place in our solar system.
Like 2001:Space Odyssey.
And maybe i should read that but i've seen the movie so many times.
Anyway, figured i'd see if anybody had other ideas.

ixoy

Can you be a bit more specific? For example, do you care about the science element - should the science be realistic or semi-plausible? If so, I'd recommend Greg Bear's "Eon".
Would you prefer something lighter? Would you like it set in the far future or just project a couple of years down the line?

vasch_ro

Enders Game or Ilium

RedPlanet

Of the titles mentioned Ilium sounds neat, i'll have a look for it.
I suppose i'm looking for someting semi-plausible, and not something light.
I want some wow-factor in there.

ixoy

I'd back up "Ilium" then. In fact the next book on my "to read" list is its sequel "Olympos". It's a great little tale, made a bit better if you've some familiarity with Homer's "Iliad".

qwertz

How about Kim Stanley Robinsons Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy?

And you should read 2001, it is well worth it.

bonkey

ixoy wrote: »

If so, I'd recommend Greg Bear's "Eon".

I'll see your Eon, and raise you an Earth, by David Brin.

Contact, by Carl Sagan, is also well worth a read. Vastly superior to the movie they made of it.

Misanthropy

Arthur C. Clarke is probably the best for slar system stuff. His Space Odyssey series and Rendez-vous with Rama are very good.

AnCapaillMor

If you're reading simmon's ilium, i can't recomend his Hyperion and endymion enough.

RedPlanet

Picked up Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, enjoying it so far, 100 pages in.

sendic

AnCapaillMor wrote: »

If you're reading simmon's ilium, i can't recomend his Hyperion and endymion enough.

+1 for the hyperion books

ive been meaning to read some peter f hamilton. not sure where to start, any reccomendations?

AnCapaillMor

Hamiltons good. Only read the nights dawn trilogy and the commonwealth stories, but i enjoyed them. Nights dawn is good but huge, 3 X 800+ page books. Common wealth, Pandora's star and Judas unleashed were great books.

Another series to check out is Kevin J Andersons saga of the seven suns. 7 500+ page books, good story, has a ridiculous amount fo characters and bad guys that just keep getting nastier and nastier every book.

ixoy

sendic wrote: »

ive been meaning to read some peter f hamilton. not sure where to start, any reccomendations?

I'd recommend "Night's Dawn" trilogy first off. Book 1 is "The Reality Dysfunction" and it's excellent. It's on a very big scale and Hamilton has a great ability to describe action scenes.
If you're not up to such a large series, try "Fallen Dragon" instead for a flavour of the type of books he now writes. The Greg Mandel series are good too, but they're less indicative of his other works. Don't try "Misspent Youth" as a starter which is comparatively weak.

Dades

bonkey wrote: »

Contact, by Carl Sagan, is also well worth a read. Vastly superior to the movie they made of it.

Not exactly hardcore - but one of the best SF I've read.

I found EON a bit meandering, tbh. Rama, though enjoyable got just plain weird.

irishshogun

The stars my destination Alfred Bester
The anvil of God Greg Bear
The time ships Stephen Baxter (read the time machine first tho)
Anything (not a title ) by philip K dick

thats a good start

Shinjuku

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. It's about an elite soldier sent to war far far away from earth (his HQ is earth so hopefully that meets your crieria!). The huge distances & speed at which he travels causes the earth to age faster than he does (time dilation)... so when he reports back to earth, all is changed..... oOOOOOOOooooooooooo

ixoy

Shinjuku wrote: »

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. It's about an elite soldier sent to war far far away from earth (his HQ is earth so hopefully that meets your crieria!). The huge distances & speed at which he travels causes the earth to age faster than he does (time dilation)... so when he reports back to earth, all is changed..... oOOOOOOOooooooooooo

Reading 'Forever Free' currently - not as good as the first instalment (so far) as it doesn't quite capture the sense of alienation and displacement of the first.

presotrader

Some good books recommended here... if you are into retro-sci-fi or building up to more *recent* times.

On acceleration and singularity, get Charles Stross' Accelerando. Hard to read (some of his books are quite geeky), but smart and nimble. Good blog too, very active and mind stimulating.

A good take on technology, sociology and modern problems in any of Greg Egan's books - hard to recommend only one - maybe the collection Luminous.

Get William Gibson's Pattern Recognition - easier to follow if you are familiar with The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (not sci-fi, but good reading).

On the fantasy field I would suggest to step aside from mainstream (Pratchett, Rowling) and move to juicy stuff like Doctorow, Gaiman and a young british chap, China Mieville.

I can give you hints and ideas on other genres as well (for the taste of it try cyberpunk - Walter Jon Williams, early Gibson titles, steampunk, hard sci-fi like Gregory Benford's etc) - let me know what are you into first...

mcgovern

presotrader wrote: »

Some good books recommended here... if you are into retro-sci-fi or building up to more *recent* times.

On acceleration and singularity, get Charles Stross' Accelerando. Hard to read (some of his books are quite geeky), but smart and nimble. Good blog too, very active and mind stimulating.

A good take on technology, sociology and modern problems in any of Greg Egan's books - hard to recommend only one - maybe the collection Luminous.

Get William Gibson's Pattern Recognition - easier to follow if you are familiar with The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (not sci-fi, but good reading).

On the fantasy field I would suggest to step aside from mainstream (Pratchett, Rowling) and move to juicy stuff like Doctorow, Gaiman and a young british chap, China Mieville.

I can give you hints and ideas on other genres as well (for the taste of it try cyberpunk - Walter Jon Williams, early Gibson titles, steampunk, hard sci-fi like Gregory Benford's etc) - let me know what are you into first...

I liked Gibson's other work but wasn't impressed with Pattern Recognition.

presotrader

I would not call it his best, but at least he broke loose from the cyberpunk series of Mona Lisa Overdrive etc. A good move - he was becoming obsolete at the same rate the genre was being populated / diluted by mainstream takes like Matrix. Now that I think of it, PR is diluted as well - you can easily miss the point with his style of phrasing.

I haven't seen Larry Niven mentioned in the retro enumeration earlier - you might want to give him a try - also wrote some nice co-ops with Jerry Pournelle, like The Mote in God's Eye which I found very pleasant in an old-school way.

ixoy

presotrader wrote: »

On acceleration and singularity, get Charles Stross' Accelerando. Hard to read (some of his books are quite geeky), but smart and nimble.

Great book but it's not very accessible and it's probably not the best for an introduction into sci-fi. It's full of great ideas, as you know, but I reckon it would scare off all but the more dedicated sci-fi fans.

On the fantasy field I would suggest to step aside from mainstream (Pratchett, Rowling) and move to juicy stuff like Doctorow, Gaiman and a young british chap, China Mieville.

There's plenty of great stuff in mainstream fantasy and again I'd be a little wary of putting someone onto the likes of Mieville as an introduction into a genre. Now I love his work (in fact I'm reading "King Rat" right now) but I feel that his prose and language is more for those who may have evolved from mainstream, rather than those just getting into it. Still nice to see others acknowledging the guy - he's not nearly as popular as he should be.

Johnny Storm

presotrader wrote: »

I haven't seen Larry Niven mentioned in the retro enumeration earlier - you might want to give him a try - also wrote some nice co-ops with Jerry Pournelle, like The Mote in God's Eye which I found very pleasant in an old-school way.

Ringworld is an absolute sf classic

presotrader

I do not want to derail from the topic, but just for my 2 cents here...
hard to see one path better than the other to approach a genre - Mieville says about his style to be "wierd fiction" (as opposed to uncool names), so any way to get there from mainstream is tough, be it via sci-fi flavours or not.

same for Stross... what I am trying to advocate is a direct take on the subject, starting with the present and its most powerful voices. looking back to early 1960s-1990s is fun and interesting, but a different era altogether.

a sad example: for some reasons I read Herbert's Dune cycle very late (early 1990s) and made the mistake of underestimating its roots in the author's timeline at the moment of the writing. I barely escaped the sad franchise built by his son afterwards... this is why I would recommend reading the latest Hugo and Nebula prizes first instead of dusting off Asimov's Foundation and the likes.

on a positive note, the quality of this thread is surprising - it is a pleasure to meet here all of you