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Recently read and loved the following and would love to know any recomendations of a similar nature;
Michael Cobley - Humanity's fire
Asimov - foundation trilogy
Frank Herbert - Dune
Joe Haldeman - Peace & war
Douglas Adam - Hitchhikers guide
Robert Heinlein - Starship troopers
Dan Simmons - Endymion Omnibus
H G Wells - Time machine, War of worlds
Iain M Banks - Culture series
Loved them all and hungry for more.
Julian May; Intervention then two trilogies, Galactic Milieu & The Saga of Pliocene Exile
Anything by Neil Asher & Charles Stross,
This post will probably cost me a fortune.
I liked a lot of Heinlein's works - Stranger In A Strange Land, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress in particular
Asimov did the books on which I, Robot was based
Blade Runner was based on Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick. Wasn't Total Recall based on one of his short stories?
A big +1 on Neal Asher, particularly the Polity Series
You've continued with the Dune series?
How about cyberpunk stuff?
Snow Crash
Neuromancer
Those two will show you where the ideas for The Matrix came from.
Do androids dream of electric sheep
I'm reluctant to suggest given his views but Ender's game is a very good book.
Space opera: Peter F. Hamilton. Great books, though I should say the ending's are always slightly disappointing. Still worth reading, though don't start expecting shakespearian literature...
How about some Ben Bova - no laughing at the back. Contact by Carl Sagan
Did not realise Dune went on past the three books, brilliant!
Squeezed in 'do androids dream of electric sheep' on a flight to Oz. Pissed the wife off no end as didn't speak to her once. I had a great time though!
Try Enders Game before you ruin it by watching the film
Another suggestion: Dredd. Well worth catching up on his adventures if you used to read him, the stories have grown up a lot, they're no longer children's comics by any stretch of the imagination.
Altered Carbon
Red Mars
Enders Game etc
Dragon's Egg - Robert L Forward
Brave New World, Huxley. One of my favourites but it's the only book of his I've read. Must read more!
I so badly wanted to like this as it's a seminal work but despite the great idea/concept I thought it was terribly written which really spoilt it for me.Neuromancer
I so badly wanted to like this as it's a seminal work but despite the great idea/concept I thought it was terribly written which really spoilt it for me.
Really? I thought it was amazing, razor sharp noir writing.
Alistair reynolds Revelation Space Series is quite ian m banks esque
Id really reccomend the Dan simmonds Hyperion and Endymion books and his later Ilium/Olympus is excellent
"We can remember it for you wholesale" was the book that Total Recall was based on.
Try Hyperion, it's a classic in ever sense of the word. Maybe also consider "The Star Fraction" by Ken MacLeod. It's a damn fine book and part of a good trilogy (the other two are also worth reading.
To be honest, you could do worse than to go to baen.co and just work through the free library. It's a cruel trick though, you read a couple, then you end up buying the other books of the series from their shop!
Some already mentioned:
Snow Crash
Cryptonomicon
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (superb, this)
Red/Green/Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson- fairly hard work but if you can get into the groove of it, nothing better
Star Fraction by Ken Macleod and Vurt by Jeff Noon- I love these 2, I've worn out my copy of Vurt.
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner (er, I think)
Spares by Michael Marshall Smith
aaaand, if you can stand the terrible sex and criminal lack of an editor, the Night's Dawn series by Peter F Hamilton. Space opera, very silly at times, but his setpieces are superb- it's like a series of boss fights.
Alistair Reynolds
Iain M Banks rip 🙁
Jon Courtney Grimwood
Williams Gibson
Contact by Carl Sagan
The film is pretty good with its single plot twist, the book has a superb double plot twist.
Sagan was taken too soon.
The forever war
Good book.
I'm currently reading "Echo City" by Tim Lebbon. fantasy rather than SF but still damn good. Also by him I've read "Fallen" and "The Heretic Land", both very good
+1 for Julian May's Saga of The Exiles, starting with The Many-Coloured Land
Deathworld - Harry Harrison
I am a massive HH fan and I love all the Stainless Steel Rat books. Bill The Galactic Hero is a real laugh too, quality work poking fun at so much stuff.
I never understand why fantasy is lumped in with SF. Could not be more different.
I collect mid century short story SF books, some I have read just blow my mind.
+1 for altered carbon, enders game & the forever war
Also would recommend:
Robopocalypse by daniel h. wilson
Wool by Hugh howey (part 1 of a trilogy)
Dark eden - cant remember the author but very good
And classics like:
The difference engine
Rendezvous with rama by a.c. clarke
Flowers for algernon
I'm also big Stephen Baxter fan but his books arent for everyone, especially some of the trilogies like phase space which seem to concentrate on the sience rather than caricatures. However books like The Time Ships, which is an imaginative 'what if' sequel to hg wells time machine, and his collaborative stuff with ac clarke are pretty good main stream si-fi.
Two things:
Tiger, Tiger by Alfred Bester
How many have you read from [url= http://www.listchallenges.com/npr-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-books ]this Top 100 SF/F list?[/url]
Ooh, good shout on Altered Carbon. And Flowers For Algernon is just astonishing, some day I might be able to read the ending without crying my eyes out...
robdob - MemberI never understand why fantasy is lumped in with SF. Could not be more different.
Well, it depends. Is Zelazny's Lord of Light fantasy or SF? (even Amber has a big dash of sf in its world-building) Mary Gentle's Ash? How about Anne McCaffrey's Pern series?
Anne McCaffrey. Read most of her Pern books as a teenager. at first it starts as fantasy, but then they discover the ships buried on the southern continent. ships from where I wonder...
I remember the Stainless Steel Rat...
which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Michael Moorcock. Was he really smoking stuff with Hawkwind or what?
from that top 100 I've read 17
30 of that top 100....
Sci-Fi on my Kindle at present:
Exiles
Mongoliad
Divergent
Ender's Game
Pandora: End of days
Hard Duty
First Contact
The Last Praetorian
First Activation
EDEN
The Survivor Chronicles
Dark Space
The City and The Stars
Rendezvous with Rama
Childhood's End
Leviathan Wakes
The Kane Chronicles
Mindstar Rising
Great North Rising
Zoo City
Moxyland
The Lost Stars
Seeds of Earth
Mainspring
Necropath
The Reality Dysfunction
Ringworld by Larry Niven
The Lensman series by EE Doc Smith
More Heinlein books, anything you can get your hands on!!
Another vote for Wool by Hugh Howey. Started reading it this evening and suddenly I'm halfway through it.
Good to see things being recommended here that I haven't heard of (adds to reading list).
Recently enjoyed a couple of Russian gems:
Metro 2033 and a classic sci-fi short, Roadside Picnic.
Now continuing to work my way through Philip K Dick's stuff.
As always lots of good books/author above.
All the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Morgan are great, waiting for the final A Land Fit For Heroes book,....
I like Alastair Reynald Revelation space series
I throughly recommend the China Melville series, not pure sci-fi or fantasy, but great story telling
56 off that list
Glad I'm not the only person who thinks Deathworld is great. Never really understood why it hasn't been a film - would make a great B movie type thing.
Ken MacLeod is another good one to try.
100 off that list. I set myself the target to read them all.
It stopped being fun after a while.
Not seen that list before, and there's lots I wouldn't bother with, but I've read 49.
I would recommend Roger Zelazney's entire works, if you can find them. I've read most of them many times, in particular Roadmarks and Today We Choose Faces. Larry Niven has also written a very large number of novels and short works, many very humorous, and all very much worth reading. All of William Gibson, Charles Stross, and Cory Doctorow's books are almost essential to anyone who likes intelligent fiction, SF or otherwise; Stross's 'Laundry' books are brilliant, James Bond against Cthulhu! And his other books, Halting State/Rule 34, Iron Sunrise, Saturn's Children, are superb, very like Zelazney in his style of writing.
Many others mentioned above are all good reads, like Neil Asher's Polity series, for example.
So many books, so little time... 😐
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Demon Princes by Jack Vance
Dragons Egg really is excelelnt - read it a few years ago but it's stayed with me. Any other books like it?
Read enders game a few months ago - also very good, tho some of the later ones in the serious are a bit laboured.
Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, a pro SF writer and a NASA scientist team up to make the best current SF novel I've read.
Plus anything else by Niven, his known space stuff is mind-stretching. It would help to read it in order.
100 off that list. I set myself the target to read them all.It stopped being fun after a while
I'm not surprised, that a not the best top "100 list" I've seen, stuff on there I read a young teenager & have looked at since and found it very poor..
Gunna add David Brin's Uplift series to the my list, & Douglas Adams.. just because...
And a question - who is now writing hard SF in the tradition of Asimov, Clarke and Niven?
Umm Niven ain't quite done yet...