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Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Scifi recommendations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
caffeine Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
This is not so much a book review, as a plea for help.
I like science fiction. Or, I should say, I like the idea of science fiction. In practice I find most of it deeply disappointing. I know the old adage that 95% of everything is shit, and that sci-fi is no different from anything else in this respect. But I'm often surprised by how terrible some of the 'great classics' turn out to be. I'm currently reading The Mote in God's Eye, which I've been led to believe is one of the all time greats. I haven't finished (no spoilers please!), so maybe it improves, but I'll have to be honest that my initial impressions are that it's really shit. Cardboard characters, a setting that shattered my suspension of disbelief right from the beginning, tedious writing style. The idea that engrossing fiction should show, not tell, is not a new one, and yet it seems never to have occurred to Niven and Pournelle. Much of it reads less like a novel and more like a sourcebook for an rpg. The discovery that scientists of the far future have a 20th century journalist's understanding of evolution is not unexpected, but doesn't improve my view of the book. So, having said all that, can anyone recommend me good scifi? There must be more of it out there. I promise not to complain if I hate your recommendations. Not much, anyway.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6 |
The Iain M Banks series of Culture books is probably as good as SF gets. Also the Wasp Factory. He's a 'proper' novelist writing non-SF as Iain Banks.
Classics like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions too.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
The Mote in God’s Eye is hardly recent.
I don’t know your tastes, but if modern:Space Opera is your thing you could try the late Ian M Banks Culture series (start with The Player of Games, even though Consider Phlebas was published first and is chronologically first). Alistair Reynolds’s Revelation Space is worth a look. So is Anne Leckie’s Imperial Raadch series, starting with Ancilliary Justice If you want something (much) more down to Earth, the alternate history space program in Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars might appeal. (It won the Hugo for best novel this year - presented by Jeanette Epps - very appropriate). If you are prepared to put up with fantastic elements in your SF, then N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy or Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire series might be worth trying (for the latter read The Battle of Candle Arc first - as a taster and because it introduces some of the weirder stuff}
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ringo Member (Idle past 665 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Classics like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions too.
I rather liked Vonnegut too. But my favorite science fiction author is Kilgore Trout. His ideas are put out there but don't get beaten to death like a lot of pulp sci-fi."Come all of you cowboys and don't ever run As long as there's bullets in both of your guns" -- Woody Guthrie
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Diomedes Member Posts: 998 From: Central Florida, USA Joined: |
One book series I can recommend is The Expanse books that are also the reference material for The Expanse TV show.
The first book in the series is Leviathan Wakes and there are a total of eight books currently in the series. The ninth book, which will be the last, is due out next year. The books themselves are a combination of sci fi battles, political intrigue and science that is more grounded in modern physics. Which adds to some interesting plot devices and story lines. Additionally, if one likes the type of sci fi you normally find with Arthur C Clarke, these books are akin to that type of storytelling.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Probably the best sf book I've read in the last year is Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie. The protagonist is an Al which used to run a interplanetary warship but is now confined to a single human body. Something happened and now the protagonist is seeking revenge, but the protagonist-narrator takes the entire length of the book to little by little give out the details, and the mystery of what was actually going on was riveting to me. The novel is the beginning of a trilogy.
Another interesting aspect is that the language used by the narrator doesn't have gendered pronouns; the English uses she/her to refer to all the characters. Only occasionally does something biological get mentioned to give away a character's sex. So far, I've liked everything I've read by Vernor Vinge.It says something about the qualities of our current president that the best argument anyone has made in his defense is that he didn't know what he was talking about. -- Paul Krugman
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6 |
ringo writes: His ideas are put out there but don't get beaten to death like a lot of pulp sci-fi. And so it goes.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
The Iain M Banks series of Culture books is probably as good as SF gets. Also the Wasp Factory. He's a 'proper' novelist writing non-SF as Iain Banks. Classics like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions too. I've read a lot of Iain Banks, but oddly none of the books where he has a middle initial. I did enjoy some of his books, so will certainly give them a try.
Slaughterhouse 5 is great, but I'm not really sure I'd consider it scifi. Kind of hard to classify.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
The Mote in God’s Eye is hardly recent. The great classics rarely are, by definition. Publication date is not a concern. Recommendations noted. Ancillary Justice and the Culture novels got multiple votes, so I might opt for them.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: I don’t think that The Mote in God’s Eye is a great classic in that sense. It was a work of its time and - in SF - a major work in its time. But things change. For real classics I’d go to Stapledon for First and Last Men or Wells for War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.Or some of Ursula le Guin’s SF - The Dispossesed is considered a classic. For influential works I’d go for E. E. Smith’s pulpy Lensman series (skip Triplanetary for sure and probably First Lensman too). Maybe the original Foundation trilogy, too (although I haven’t reread it at all recently and I was greatly disappointed by a reread of Asimov’s robot stories).
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4597 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 9.7 |
I liked Frank Herbert's books, and in recent years his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written a series that back stories to the Dune books that I enjoyed.
I also like Neal Stephenson's books, especially Seveneves. I thought 11-22-63 by Stephen King was quite good.What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
For influential works I’d go for E. E. Smith’s pulpy Lensman series (skip Triplanetary for sure and probably First Lensman too). Maybe the original Foundation trilogy, too (although I haven’t reread it at all recently and I was greatly disappointed by a reread of Asimov’s robot stories). The Foundation books were another in the line of supposed classics that disappointed me greatly, and I've never read I, Robot as a result. They struck me as Asimov more describing a concept than writing a novel.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1278 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I liked Frank Herbert's books, and in recent years his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written a series that back stories to the Dune books that I enjoyed. I remember really enjoying Dune - are the sequels worth delving into?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: I have...heard of those.
quote: I think that Anathem is pretty good. The Rise And Fall of D.O.D.O. is fun.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17918 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
There’s a reason I pointed to them as influential, rather than good.
But Donald Kingsbury wrote a rather good unauthorised sequel Psychohistorical Crisis with numerous changes of names.
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