"Good" SF Books

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
Dune -- Frank Herbert
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant -- Stephen Donaldson
Dragonriders of Pern -- Anne McCaffrey

Tico, read your first 3, as well as Restaurant at the end of the universe, Life, the universe, and everything, So long & thanks for the fish, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency by Adams, and Time enough for love by Heinlein.

I think you and I are related tico.

Asimov:

Foundation? read 'em all, and most of the Robot novels as well.

I Robot ... APP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgJA7lPkb1o

Three out of four from that list. I have read, and own, Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, and Waldo and Magic Incorporated, and most of the rest of his stuff.

John Barnes' Mother of Storms is one I can't recommend too highly.

thought I'd expand this a bit & throw in 5 stories/novellas, what have you, and invite a2k SF fandom to do likewise :wink:

It's a Good Life - Jerome Bixby
The Veldt - Ray Bradbury
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman - Harlan Ellison
Light of Other Days - Bob Shaw
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick

Day of the Triffids: John Windham
There were others in the series but I cant remember the Names.

didn't get around in time to posting links to the first 4 stories in my last post; i'm more harlequin than ticktockman :wink:

http://www.lucifera-shadow.com/inanna_cornfield.html
http://courseweb.hopkins.k12.mn.us/file.php/456/Literary_Analysis/TheVeldt.pdf
http://www.stanford.edu/~rahkan/Ellison-Ticktockman.pdf
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/shaw/shaw1.html

Dune - Herbert
Ender's Game - Card
Hyperion Series
Devices and Desires (trilogy) - Parker
Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Gavriel Kay

Questioner--

I'm with you on K.J. Parker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._J._Parker

I've read and re-read The Fencer Trilogy and I'm working on The Scavenger Trilogy.

I've got a soft spot for Larry Niven (Tales of Known Space), Vernor Vinge (Fire From the Deep and those stasis bubble stories) and Brian Aldiss (Helliconia trilogy).

I use to like Heinlein's big books (Stranger, Time Enough.., Fear No Evil) - but he got sillier and sillier as time went on. The Hyperion stuff was great.

I've become much more of a fan of short science fiction and always hunt down anthologies.

Fred Pohl is another fave (Heechee stories etc). Frank Herbert (but not so much Dune as the Jesus Incident)

Among my guilty pleasures are Piers Anthony and Philip Jose Farmer.

Asimov had good ideas but I didn't much like his fiction writing style (his non-fiction is great though). Arthur Clarke was the master of the awe-inspiring short short story - Nine Billion Names Of God for example.


What about Blish & Disch. Eric Frank Russell, William Gibson, Dick, Silverberg, Coney, Shaw

omigosh, just went through my library thing and realised I'd left out Joe Haldemann (Forever War & Peace) and David Brinn (Uplift series).

Overrated, but by no means bad: Poul Anderson, AE Van Vogt,

Sigh. Tales of wonder....

hingehead, we're on the same wavelength. Pohl/gateway was great, niven/pournelle/mote in god's eye likewise, and i read the entire brin uplift series, all six vols. But i'm really surprised nobody else apparently has read Zelazny's Lord of Light. It won either Hugo or Nebula, and it's extremely clever and entertaining. I'm especially curious if anyone from India has read it, since Hinduism is a big element of the tale.

It won the Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula. I think I remember trying to read it but it didn't grab me. Maybe I read it too soon after Farmer's 'World Of Tiers' series and I was over mythology remakes.

I read his 'this immortal' and 'today we choose faces' and I guess he just didn't speak to me so I never persisted with his work. It is weird how some authors hit the right note. Asimov is a legend to many but I always feel like his stuff is aimed at 14 year olds (very precocious 14 year olds).

I forgot to mention Greg Egan, he was burst of challenging brilliance in the 1990s (and an Australian).

I don't read as much SF as I should - is there are thread in here somewhere with a list of good recent titles?

hingehead,

i have a similar feeling about Asimov. the laws of robotics were great, but his characters just didn't appeal to me too much. I'm not sure who the *rising stars* of SF are these days. I just love Neal Stephenson, but his recent books are too long-winded & convoluted for me to follow. Incidentally, if you liked Snow Crash, check out Interface, by one Stephen Bury (pseudonym for Stephenson & his uncle). Earlier you mentioned short stories. Philip K. Dick wrote his share of dandies, i thought, but i find many of his novels impenetrable.

Yeah I can understand that a Dick novel can be murky - but for some reason they take me somewhere entertaining - I loved Ubik and Through A Scanner Darkly (it felt like inhabiting a bad dream). I also loved Aldiss's Cryptozoic - what a bizarre resolution..... set up brilliantly and so unexpected.

I think I'm a sucker for a cool idea, rather than literary brilliance, which explains the short story fixation. Silverberg's 'Up The Line' is one of the few books I've read more than once, it's no masterpiece but I enjoy it.

The grand interwoven scope of Niven's Known Space stories, with a million interesting thoughts, and I think that's what I found so appealing about Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I really want to get a hold of Orson Scott Card's Enders Game as well (I bought an anthology of prequels/sequels and sidequels of famous SF story cycles and the Enders one was brilliant - in fact they all were, but I'd already read the other ones).

i've read most of the Ender stuff, except the last ones that are written from the perspective of Bean (i have that one, but haven't read it yet). I especially liked Speaker for the Dead, the middle work.

don't know what kind of ideas are cool to you, but Robert (?) Forward's (?) Dragon's Egg seemed pretty cool to me. ditto Theodore Sturgeon's Microcosmic God (a short story).

Hi Yit, Yeah, Dragon's Egg was cool. I also liked a lot of Stephen Baxter's stuff. I liked what little Sturgeon shorts I've read but I don't remember Microcosmic God - it's on my list!

I also enjoyed some Harry Harrison - particularly that alternative universe one where reptiles rule the US (can't for the life of me remember what it's called)