Sci-Fi Books

CiDeRmAn

Anyone else out there feel, as I do, that sci-fi is wandering off a bit, going for big hollywood style blockbusters with little other than sex and violence as content and not much else, all wraped up in multibook sagas, a far cry from introducing you to new concepts and expanding your mind, they go to the trouble of showing you this new place, new playground and then stay put, for years at a time, all of a writers efforts churning out stuff based on the same characters and places.
At least Iain M Banks knew when to put the Culture books to bed and write some original sci-fi, a feat he was already achieving with books like Against A Dark Background and as his Iain Banks alter-ego.
It just seems like the age of truely great sci-fi is long gone, that most of it was written before mist of us were even born, even me!
Even those with promise, like Stephen Baxter, have flittered it away and so we find sci-fi under appreciated in this world and shrinking on their own book shelfspace in our stores while over whelmed by books about orc, trolls and dwarves who sing about feckin' gold!

Where are our Herberts, Blishes, Dicks (snigger snigger)?
Hardly a peep from Michael Marshall Smith in the sci-fi genre after he re-invigorated a sorely underappreciated mode of writing, the sci-fi short story in What You Make It, I don't know about you but I cut my reading teeth on short story compilations from Bradbury and Clarke, why not more of this? Because I think most modern sci-fi authors lack the ability to create a meaningful tale in anything less than a 1000 pages these days!

Ah well, perhaps a little of topic, or am I the only one to be on topic? Hmmm, a question for the philosophy dept. perhaps????

Johnny Storm

+1 for PKD, his best regarded novels are Solar Lottery (his first), Man in the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip, Clans of the Alphane Moon, 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Dr Bloodmoney, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, A maze of death, Flow my Tears the Policeman said, A Scanner Darkly. His early short stories are full of invention and energy.

+1 for Dune, Ringworld, (forget the sequels, with the possible exception of Dune Messiah), Red, Blue, Green Mars (enjoy the martian time-slip reference). All classics.

+1 for Gibson - Neuromancer, Count Zero - excellent

I'd also recommend Rudy Rucker - zany, smart, entertaining SF. His trilogy - Software, Hardware and Wetware is a minor classic as is his short-story collection: Transreal.

Bruce Sterling is another very smart SF writer.

Tenshot

Lots of good authors above - here are a few more not mentioned yet:

Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon The Deep; excellent far-future hard SF

John Varley - Gaean Trilogy: Titan, Wizard, Demon; really well done first encounter series

Harry Harrison - Wheel-World Trilogy; also, his Stainless Steel Rat series is good fun if you're looking for something a bit lighter

Robert Forward - Dragon's Egg, nice analysis of how an alien race might develop using non-chemical reactions. If you enjoy this, his other stuff is similar.

AnTaoiseach

try Dan Simmons Hyperion books
I'm not much of a sci fi fan but I found them to be very good.

AnCapaillMor

They better be, just started on the hyperion omnibus thingy.

Surprised noones mentioned Kevin j andersons saga of the 7 suns. Good book series. Still ongoing. 7 books, the fifth is due out soon.

Jimboo_Jones

the seven suns is a fun read - pages just seem to fly by.

That said I thought that the last book was a bit of a let down though

hyperion is ace, you may think that the first book is a little weird, but stick with it.

Johnny Storm

Having struggled through a few of the awful Dune prequels co-written by Kevin J Anderson I do not think highly of him at all. That's just my personal opinion, of course.

Stark

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson . A very quick read actually due to the fast pace of the book.

Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons. Most enjoyable.

Neal Stephenson - Cryptonimicon. Fast, sharp, hilarious, cutting yet encapsulating some very complicated concepts. Excellent.

Stephenson: The Baroque cycle
Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World
A trilogy set hundreds of years before Cryptonimicon (set in WWII and current day) yet containing many of the same characters Superb but you have to stick with it.

I agree with Cryptonomicon, fantastic book. I thought Quicksilver was ****e though.

Johnny Storm

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Anyone else out there feel, as I do, that sci-fi is wandering off a bit, going for big hollywood style blockbusters with little other than sex and violence as content and not much else, all wraped up in multibook sagas, a far cry from introducing you to new concepts and expanding your mind, they go to the trouble of showing you this new place, new playground and then stay put, for years at a time, all of a writers efforts churning out stuff based on the same characters and places.
At least Iain M Banks knew when to put the Culture books to bed and write some original sci-fi, a feat he was already achieving with books like Against A Dark Background and as his Iain Banks alter-ego.
It just seems like the age of truely great sci-fi is long gone, that most of it was written before mist of us were even born, even me!
Even those with promise, like Stephen Baxter, have flittered it away and so we find sci-fi under appreciated in this world and shrinking on their own book shelfspace in our stores while over whelmed by books about orc, trolls and dwarves who sing about feckin' gold!

Where are our Herberts, Blishes, Dicks (snigger snigger)?
Hardly a peep from Michael Marshall Smith in the sci-fi genre after he re-invigorated a sorely underappreciated mode of writing, the sci-fi short story in What You Make It, I don't know about you but I cut my reading teeth on short story compilations from Bradbury and Clarke, why not more of this? Because I think most modern sci-fi authors lack the ability to create a meaningful tale in anything less than a 1000 pages these days!

Ah well, perhaps a little of topic, or am I the only one to be on topic? Hmmm, a question for the philosophy dept. perhaps????

Yeah, I do agree with you. I also think SF was in a similar situation a few years ago and was revived by the arrival of Iain Banks and a few others. It's all cyclical so I'm looking forward to the next batch of hot writers.

FWIW in his book "This is the stuff our dreams are made of" Thomas Distch (sp?) says all great SF writers eventually fall victim to their own use of grass, or whiskey and start to churn out dull parodies of their early great works (?!?!?! - well it's a theory :cool: )

ambro25

Johnny Storm wrote:

Having struggled through a few of the awful Dune prequels co-written by Kevin J Anderson I do not think highly of him at all. That's just my personal opinion, of course.

Give the 7 Suns a go, best Space Opera read in many years IMHO - the day this story is made into a series of decent movies à la Star Wars, well... old Luke, Vader & Co. will fade into oblivion methinks

(;) - I have books 2/3/4 available FS if anyone is after them, mint/untouched, got them in double at Xmas).

mcgovern

I think all my fav sci-fi authors have been mention already, apart from L.Ron Hubbard.
Not everyones cup of tea, but don't let the Church of Scientology crap he founded put you off some great books!
P.S. If anyone knows where I can get Mission Earth 9 from (apart from Amazon who charge extra for it due to it being hard to find), please let me know!