Books

[Bigger]

+1 CSLewis

i've read the space trilogy, all the narnia books, mere Christianity and the screwtape letters (awesome). After a dozen recommendations from friends, I finally have a copy of the Great Divorce, which I'll be reading soon .

[Lewwyn]

Robin Hobb is wonderful. Start with Assassin's Apprentice and go from there. Beautiful worldbuilder and character writer.

[Ilios]

I have immensely enjoyed the Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. Brilliant.

[Old Harry]

Ted Chiang's Stories of your life & others is the best hard sci-fi book I've read, unfortunately its the only thing he's done.

I love Heinlein in spite of disagreeing with some of the politics.

I love Iain Banks in spite of most of the endings being weak.

Fifty years ago Fred Pohl's the space merchants foresaw a future ruled by corporations using advertising on a level of mind control - up to you how accurate you think that is.

And Vonnegut is just great. "We were put on this planet to fart around, don't let anyone tell you different"

[kjn]

Ted Chiang has written quite a bit after that as well, but almost all of it in the novella or short-novel format, and most of it published in magazines or by small presses. He won the Hugo as late as 2010 with The Lifecycle of Software Objects.

[darrelljs]

I have immensely enjoyed the Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. Brilliant.

+1. Most of his works fall into this bucket.

For SciFi Philip K. Dick is my favorite "legacy" author. Also, this list might prove helpful:

http://www.locusmag.com/2012/AllCenturyP...sults.html

Darrell

[Old Harry]

Ted Chiang has written quite a bit after that as well, but almost all of it in the novella or short-novel format, and most of it published in magazines or by small presses. He won the Hugo as late as 2010 with The Lifecycle of Software Objects.

Ah, I'd forgotten that one - it's also very good... But I haven't found any other stuff that wasn't in Stories Of Your Life - I'll go check google now - thanks!

[kjn]

Some tips:

Olaf Stapledon's works has just been released as free e-books. He's one of the writers of sf (though he didn't view himself as an sf writer and wasn't viewed as such in the UK either) in the 30's that are still eminently readable today, and his most well-known books - Last and First Men and Star Maker - are grand in scope.

For the fantasy fans out there, especially those who like role-playing games, I can recommend Ryk Spoor's Phoenix Rising. It falls within the tradition of Elizabeth Moon's Paksennarion books, maybe not as gritty or as strong a tale yet, but definitely smarter. Spoor is one of the current crop of writers who otherwise tries to go back to the "roots of sf" while still staying modern (John Scalzi is probably the most famous example of this). (Full disclosure: I am a beta reader for Spoor.)

Otherwise, I've mainly read history in Swedish lately, and none of that is available in English.

[novice]

My in-laws gave me The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

I'm enjoying it so far.

[mostly_harmless]

I recommend Iain Banks for feel-good scifi and Alistair Reynolds for really good, but often depressing hard scifi.
A classical space opera is the Nights Dawn trilogy from Peter Hamilton.

Enders Game is a classic and a must-read if one claims to be into good scifi books.

I am currently sampling some older works. Asimov's Foundation is not very agreeable to me. Larry Niven's Ringworld is more to my taste. Heinlein, despite all the political critique he is getting, has produced some amazingly well written stories, Friday, Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers (its far better than the movie, believe me).

A more "shallow" read but with some interesting ideas is "Old Man's War".

I also read The Illuminatus! Trilogy several times, which I fail to classify, but it is really weird good.

All personal opinions of course.

mh