I’m looking for a series of books to read.
Of late I’ve really enjoyed the Culture and Kevin J Anderson’s Saga of Seven Suns. Although at present I’m struggling to get through Feersum Endjin, which surprises me as I have enjoyed every other Ian Banks book I have read. Also a lot by Philip k Dick and some Ray Bradbury, Sam Delaney and quite a few of the Sci Fi masterworks series.

Thanks for your recommendations.

Something out of left field – Early Rider, by Jasper Fforde.

Not everyone digs it, but I loved Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.

Also always recommend The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, for batshitness.

For military space opera Elizabeth Moons trading in danger series. Very good as is her other series Serrano connection.

Peter Hamiltons early books are good – SF ( not sci fi unless you are an american geek) detective stories MIndstar rising etc

If yo haven’t yet read Gibsons Neuromancer trilogy you should

Old Skool – lensman series.

Recently I have been reading loads of golden era / pulp SF shorts. I love them

Edit – Ann Lekie I enjoyed

I’ve been re-reading quite a bit of Gene Wolfe since the great man passed earlier this year, God Damn he was some writer. Book of the New Sun his SF masterpiece but also extremely good in the short form ‘Book of Days’, ‘Endangered species’ etc. If you enjoy Delany BotNS will probably work for you. He wrote plenty of other novels but his later stuff is not the place to start.

Stars in my pocket like grains of sand is my favourite Delany book if you’ve not read that one – absolute top drawer, fair to say there’s nothing else like it. He’s promised a sequel for 25 years, but think his interests have long since moved on.

SF fans – I have around a thousand SF books that have to go. Anyone? Ranging from a full set of lensman to everything by Iain M Banks

Just read Neil Asher’s “The Soldier” and “The Warship”. Quite enjoyable space opera/sci-fi, not as good as The Reality Dysfunction or The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F Hamilton.

Sargasso of Space, Plague Ship and Post Marked the Stars by Andre Norton are good old school 50’s science fiction (no computers/good old fashioned blasters and the terror of deep space travel)

Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley is a great read with unpleasant twists and turns.

Illium/Olympus & Hyperion by Dan Simmonds

Revelation Space berries by Alistair reynolds, obvs

Children of time by Adrian chaikovsky, just one book, but it’s ace

CyberStorm by Matthew Mather is currently free on Kindle.

N K Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy is good.

The Expanse series by James SA Corey, starting with Leviathan Wakes is very very good indeed, full on space opera/political saga/interplanetary war etc.

Another series to get into is “Three Body Problem” by Liu Cixin: v. good Chinese SciFi all about what to do if you know there is going to be an alien invasion in 400 years time…

SevenEves by Neal Stephenson is full on end of the world stuff. Actually pretty much all of Neal Stephensons work is awesome, try the “baroque cycle” books as well.

The latest books from William Gibson are worth reading, quite a step on from his original cyber-punk works, try “The Peripheral” which is near future or ” Pattern Recognition” set a few years after 9/11

Not very long but I really enjoyed Roadside Picnic.

A few books have piqued my interest in this thread.👍

Sassinak. by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon, published by Baen Books in 1990. It is the first book in the Planet Pirates trilogy. I read them many years ago and think they were ahead of their time.

I really enjoyed Ancillary Justice and the subsequent books, by Ann Leckie.

Snowcrash, by Neal Stephenson was great fun.

It’s not sci-fi but I’m going to recommend Chickenhawk by Robert Mason for being utterly unputdownable.

Adrian Tchaikovsky has written some great sci-fi. Children of Time, Children of Ruin and Dogs of War are all good reads. Not to everyone’s tastes, but some of Richard Morgan’s books are worth a read too. C Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust is also pretty good.

Children of time by Adrian chaikovsky, just one book, but it’s ace

Just seen this. Children of Ruin follows it and is also a great book

Bruce sterling’s Schismatrix plus for some grungy space-based cyber punk.

He was a big influence on Alistair Reynolds, who does good space opera, and in some ways is IMBs successor.

Charles Stross has some good stuff. Some full space opera, some not so serious. His Laundry Files series is fun, kind of IT consultants with monsters from another dimension.

Eric Frank Russell is a greatly under appreciated author from the Golden Era.

I read Dune for the first time recently and was amazed at the influence it’s obviously had on other sci-fi. I must get round to reading the rest of the series.

As above, Expanse series is good.

And if we’re going off topic with Chickenhawk, which is fantastic, I’ll suggest Lonesome Dove

TJ – I’m happy to take some off your hands, I’d maybe try the Elizabeth Moon stuff you recommended?

quite a few of the Sci Fi masterworks series.

this is what I was going to recommend when I read the thread title.

I like some of the older “classic” stuff. Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman are definitely worth a read if you haven’t done them.

I really wanted to like Hyperion. It’s the Ulysses of the Sci-Fi genre. I know I should finish it but it just beats me every time 😉

I’ve really enjoyed Craig Alanson 12 book (I think he’s just finished 8) Expeditionary Force. It’s a proper space opera, some interesting concepts, funny in parts although there is a bit of ‘waiting for the next crisis to happen’.

If you like fantasy SF then the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson might be worth a look.

I found Hyperion completely unreadable

Not really a natural sci-fi reader.

I’ve read a few of the culture series just because I’d finished off all of Banks’ ‘normal’ books. They were OK but not sure I’ll go back for more.

This summer I listened to the audible HG Wells collection because I thought I ought to – weirdly Sci-Fi and a historical perspective the thoughts of 100 year ago.

Also read all of John Wyndham partly because of it’s historical context plus he also lived in the village I live in now and the subtle references are fun to find.

Of more recent stuff I would recommend the bobiverse series by Dennis E Taylor. I’d describe it a holiday reading or the Sci-Fi equivalent of chick lit; very unchallenging. A pleasant read nonetheless.

I read Dune for the first time recently and was amazed at the influence it’s obviously had on other sci-fi. I must get round to reading the rest of the series.

I’m reading that at the moment, and am finding it quite similar to the Ancillary series in that it mainly seems to focus on the people, their conversations and their thoughts’ rather than the ‘action’ of what’s happening (so to speak).

I am a broken record.
So I will post what I always post.
Spook Country by Bill Gibson (and yeah the Blue Ant stuff) which isn’t strictly sci-fi but is cyberpunk.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. This book has recently gained a new (Nd) significance to me. Pretty much anything by Neal I like.
American Gods by Neil Gaimen I’ll add (although not really SF…) but I am a broken record…

Currently rattling through the series of these:

and this:

And yes, it’s he of Alien fame..

IHN Member
I read Dune for the first time recently and was amazed at the influence it’s obviously had on other sci-fi. I must get round to reading the rest of the series.

I tried a number of them, and going my own and by other ppl reaction’s, don’t bother. Dune was the best and only one worth reading
Hyperion is excellent but then I audiobook, so make ‘reading’ (or following) stuff a lot easier.
As alway I’m going to continue to recommend John Scalzi, his stand alone and old man series are great (& skippy/the bobiverse series mentioned above for amusing easy listening, that I wouldn’t be without).

I really enjoyed Christopher Ruocchio’s “Empire of Silence” Book number 2 in the series, “Howling Dark” was released recently.

If amusing, fun, albeit not the best written pulpish mil-sci-fi is your thing then I highly recommend “Columbus Day” by Craig ALanson (first part of the ExFor series) although enjoyable in written form the audiobooks are better. Skippy the Magnificent is my favourite asshole beer can in all of literature.

Not Sci-Fi but the author Will Wight gave away nearly all of his titles on 4th July. “Bought” them and have just finished piling through all 6 “Cradle” novels which are a kind of psychedelic Japanese fantasy RPG. Read if you like to power up. Can’t wait for book 7.

Thanks for those, I will work my way down through the list which should keep me going for several years.

TJ – am interested in your offer.

I read a lot of sci-fi including many of the excellent recommendations given above. I’m currently working my way through the works of Octavia E. Butler – she tells a great story, well written.

I thought The Expanse book Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey was fairly poor. Something about the writing style just put me in mind that they* had written it with the deliberate aim of selling the film/ TV rights later. It didn’t read very well to me. Couldn’t really put my finger on it, but just a bit writing by numbers. *The fact that James SA Corey is two people irrationally put me off as well. Why not just put both your names on the cover? Definitely not in the same league as Iain M Banks.

Anyway, some recommendations for book series:

Someone else mentioned John Scalzi. I enjoyed Old Man’s War , but not enough to read the related series. I would heartily recommend the Interdependency series by Scalzi though – The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire. Funny, a little bit sweary, political plotting and a decent amount of action. Won’t take you long to read each one, mind. Book 3 is out next year I think.

Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and the follow up A Closed And Common Orbit. Celebrates people’s interactions with each other (human, alien and machine), but still properly science fiction with good plots to drive the narrative along.

Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs series of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. Bit violent, good plotting.

Ian banks wrote violence really well in his books, thinking about the Skaffen Amtiskaw massacre in Use of Weapons, the ending of Look to Windward and Djan in the early parts of Matter.

It’s interesting to get different takes on the same books, gives you more of a feel than a critics review.

has anybody read any Kameron Hurley? She has come up on book searches.

roger_mellie

Subscriber

Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and the follow up A Closed And Common Orbit. Celebrates people’s interactions with each other (human, alien and machine), but still properly science fiction with good plots to drive the narrative along.

Aye, good shout. It took the first one a bit too long to stop being a Firefly fanfic but I loved the second one.

Slightly left-field, but I’m just starting on the Long Earth series (Terry Pratchett & Steven Baxter). They’re definitely not the normal Pratchett Discworld stuff, very good so far.

Becky Chambers, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and the follow up A Closed And Common Orbit.

I really enjoyed the first one, enjoyed the second slightly less and tbh the third one (Record of a Spaceborn Few) is a bit of a plod. It’s still probably better than 90% of the SF out there though!

Wool trilogy by Hugh Howey, good Fallout-esque vault living saga

Osiris Project series by EJ Swift was excellent. Left a lot unexplained which made a refreshing change

Didnt click with the 3 body stuff, might need another go. Found Becky Chambers a bit simplistic

Currently enjoying Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Loads of classics available on Kindle via the SF Masterworks collection, now finally includes Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy

Vernor Vinge – A Fire Upon the Deep

+1 Neal Asher – Start with Gridlinked and work through, it’s quite a journey.
Also Richard Morgan including the fantasy books – they are related to Kovacs.
I’m pretty sure the Expanse was written as a pre-screenplay but it works (for me) in both media.
I didn’t like Anne Leckie.
Dune still holds it’s own whereas I found the Foundation quite dated.
Heinlein wrote some crackers – Starship Tropers, Friday and some stinkers.
I liked Red Rising – Pierce Brown, in a teenage rebel way but didn’t like the sequel and won’t bother with the end.

Thanks to the other posters, enough to keep me going for a while. As for the 1000 book offer, yes please (actually, I haven’t got room for another 1000 books)