Having trouble being inspired to try different authors for a long trip planned. I like character driven Sci-Fi, Alt history/reality and fantasy with good dialogue and a bit of dark humour. I’ve listed a few of my favourites below, any suggestions in a similar vein greatly appreciated. Please inspire me…….

Cryptonomicon, Baroque cycle, Anathem – Neal Stephenson
Excession, Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
PC Peter Grant series – Ben Aaronovich
Hidden Academy – Jon Rosenberg
Locke Lamora series – Scott Lynch
Anything by Joe Abercrombie
The Dresden Files – Jim Butcher

I reccomend recommend one on spelling! 😉

Huh. Funny how phones auto-correct only when they want to.

I don’t enjoy reading much for pleasure, but i picked up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel a couple of months back and devoured it in three days. Loved it. It’s sort of post-apocalypse, but with loads of flashbacks to various times in the past.

At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, have you read any Terry Pratchett.

Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson…

Kraken, by China Mieville.

The City and The City is also very good, but I think you might enjoy Kraken more because of the mixture of Banks and supernatural stuff in your list.

Hatter – all of them, many times over!

nach – cheers, read CandC and enjoyed it. Will try Kraken.

bencooper – Always meant to read the Mars trilogy, cheers. Can’t stand Reynolds though. I like the ideas but his writing style leaves me dead.

CaptJon – looks like a good option, cheers.

Brandon Sanderson maybe, to follow on from Abercrombie, he’s quite an old-school fantasy writer but really bloody good. Nobody else could have saved the Wheel of Time 😆 Mistborn series, probably.

And yeah, Ken Macleod. Never know where to say to start, I absolutely love Star Fraction though. It’s a bit more straightlaced than Neal Stevenson tends to be but if you like one you’d probably like the other. He’s gone a bit grim lately.

And something by Michael Marshall Smith, Spares maybe. They’re all basically the same tbh!

Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Heinlein and Lord of Light by Zelazny. Actually, Zelazny’s Amber might be right up your street, one of the first great modern fantasies.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an absolute genius. But can be hard going. I’d start with Mars. Some of the recent ones are just plain iffy though, Galileo’s Dream is rubbish and Shaman is just a bit pointless

Yes, Neal Stephenson has gone a bit iffy lately too – if you haven’t yet, though, try his earlier books – Zodiac, Snow Crash and Diamond Age. KSR’s Mars trilogy, Antarctica and the Orange County trilogy are excellent.

Terry Pratchett’s Nation – not one of his Discworld books, it’s the book he said was his favourite, and it’s wonderful. Though there is a scene that gets me just thinking about it.

Adam Roberts? On is mindbendingly brilliant.

I couldn’t get into Roberts, I liked the basic idea of On but I can’t say I liked anything else. Salt was the same deal, really cool concepts but the rest didn’t stick

Charlie Stross maybe? Not a fan of his space opera stuff, but the Laundry might be ideal for you, probably a good match for the PC Grant stuff. Faint recommendation from me but others love him

(to his great credit, I accidentally once told him to his face I thought Singularity Sky was shite, he took it incredibly well. That was a total setup, and I’m reasonably sure that it was Hannu Rajaniemi that did it to me, which leads me neatly to recommending the Quantium Thief- which is kind of Locke Lamora In Space. Very challenging writing style though, he seems to take pride in incomprehensibility, I don’t really appreciate that… But still well worth the read. Reminds me of Lord of Light, and of the Culture in general. But always feels a little bit like you missed a page)

Also, Flowers For Algernon, everyone should read Flowers For Algernon. And Stand On Zanzibar.

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

John Wyndham – The Day Of The Triffids of course, but I don’t think he wrote a duff book. Or John Christopher’s The Death OF Grass.

Not alt or fantasy but I really enjoyed Conn Igguldun’s books. I like a lot of what you’ve mentioned and reckon these are in the ballpark.

The years of salt and rice – Kim Stanley Robinson

I have this very morning just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Sounds like just your sort of thing, and it was very good.

John Scalzi – old man’s war series is pretty good as are his other books
Alex Scarrow – last light

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hyperion-Omnibus-Fall-GOLLANCZ-S-F/dp/0575076267/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434789126&sr=1-2&keywords=hyperion

Character driven scifi try Dan Abnett’s books from the Black Library. based on the Warhammer 40k universe, but don’t let that put you off (if it does).

Try the Eisenhorn series, or Gaunt’s Ghosts. Also they have a massive series called The Horus Heresy with various authors. Some of the books are better than others, but it will give you plenty to be getting on with.

For historical novels Bernard Cornwell has some great series, try the Warrior Chronicals or Grail Quest.

Hatter – all of them, many times over!

Ha! Suspected as much but they weren’t on the list so….w

The Taking, by Dean Koontz.

Most of his books are just airport trash, but this one is quietly disturbing.
Recommended.

+1 for American Gods (Gaiman). Launched into full blown Norse mythology off the back of it.

Spook Country by William Gibson (plus most of his recent stuff, the older classics are a bit too much of their time for me).

As someone mentioned John Wyndham I’d add The Chrysalids. Loved that in my formative years.

On the Dan Abnett note, give Triumff a read, one of his non-Black Library books. Alternate history, fantasy and humour rolled into one. Also Embedded is a book I enjoyed for a sci-fi novel from the same author. His Black Library stuff is brilliant if you like the setting, those 2 books are great if you don’t.

Added to kindle wish list, thanks Durhambiker

Anything by Neil Gaiman, Graveyard Shift and Stardust(books better than the film which I enjoyed all the same).

I also like Historic fantasy stuff so anything by David Gemmel or Raymond.E.Fiest is good also.

Grand, thanks all. Should be enough there to get me through.

Have you read the chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook?
One of the first fantasy writers to really go against the grain of humourless high fantasy – black, cynical humour that never turns into a pastiche. Fast paced easy readers, from the 80s.

He’s not as good a writer as some of the modern dark fantasy guys, but his stuff still stands up. Steve Erikson has been very effusive in acknowledging Cook’s influence, which has gotten him some nice recognition [don’t think he was ever that well known in the UK].

Neal Asher’s Polity series are pretty good. Also similar to the Dresden files are the Hellequin novels by Steve McHugh which are OK for a bit of light reading.

The Emberverse series by S.M. Stirling.

Anything by Charles Stross, Roger Zelazney, a fair bit by Larry Niven; the Known Space books are all very entertaining.
Kate Griffin’s Urban Magic books, the Matthew Swift series starting with A Madness Of Angels are pretty dark, and are very character driven, and the two she’s written as Clair North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, and Touch, are extremely good, again character driven, with interesting spins on older SF memes.

Neil Gaiman – some good choices up there but Neverwhere is just brilliant. I really wanted him to write a follow up.

A bit left field but the Jack Nightingale series (written by Stephen Leather) are a lot of fun. I’ve only listened to the audio books on the way to Morzine and back, but really enjoyed them

And 2nd on Nation, I loved the Discworld novels but this is something different and so well written.

Alt history/reality and fantasy with good dialogue and a bit of dark humour.

Robert Rankin, then?

The Fermata by Nicholson Baker.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

The book consists of six nested stories, from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are each interrupted at a pivotal moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Each story contains a document, movie, or tradition that appears in a previous story.