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My favorite ever sci-fi is still Hyperion from Dan Simmons. I also read his other works, but they weren't quite as good in my opinion.
I also agree that Dune is kind of not-optional if you want to read sci-fi, because of it's historical place in the genre. It's also really not a bad book at all. After the first book it kind of goes downhill in my opinion though and I didn't have the stomach to finish the entire series.
Another recommendation would be the Culture novels from Lain Banks. Especially 'The player of games' is a good read for all us gaming fanatics
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Not to repeat what others have posted, I will just point out one amazing book that's strangely missing from this thread: Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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On August 09 2010 15:16 Stratos wrote:Well you can't go wrong with Roger Zelazny. He's not precisely sci-fi, it's more of a combination of fantasy + sci-fi, but you won't be disappointed. Probably the most famous work is Lord of Light, it's not the easiest of reads however, but any of you shouldn't miss it. It takes place in a space colony far away, where a handful of people decide to pretend to be hindu gods, they develop special powers and try to guide the rest of the people (well actually they force them to use praying machines etc.) When I first heard about that idea I wasn't interested at all.. but how awesome can that turn out? Check these out: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_151xaYaZnMs/SL271ZxVVAI/AAAAAAAAAVE/5gQ0EJsND7I/s1600-h/LOL Montage (small).jpgAnyways whatever it is from Zelazny, you can't go wrong and I mean that. He's a witty writer that will never bore you like Tolkien. If you search the internets you can also find his series of Amber narrated by him alone which is one of the things that'll always have place in my mp3 player.
only just reading one book from zelazny (children of ashes) and i have to agree i enjoyed his writing ALOT! thx for giving me a flaschback gonna check more from him out now
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I read this amazing story about a future where people decided to become aliens and the robot servant of a family became the patriarch of the world and intelligent ants took over the world. And dogs became intelligent too and travelled into a paralell universe.
Now that I reread what I just wrote, scratch amazing and replace it with sketchy.
Oh and I forgot to ask if anyone knows what book I'm talking about?
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
Am I the only one who thought that Ender's Game wasn't that good I would take Dune and Hyperion over it any day.
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Iain M Banks is my favourite sci-fi author. His world of 'the Culture' is incredibly creative and enjoyable - depicting future human society as a technological utopia, which has to play complex political games with alien races.
He's also often funny, which I think counts for a lot amongst all the seriousness.
Excession is a good one to start with, as shown by this fantastic blurb:
"Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back."
I also agree with Lann555 that 'The Player of Games' should be pretty resonant with a lot of this forum.
In a similar 'wow this is nearly literature' vein, Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles' has kind of stayed with me, as has E.M Forster's short story 'The machine stops'.
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I think anyone who's read Snow Crash will agree it's a must. This book enriches your mind so much in addition to being incredibly entertaining.
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There is before, and there is after one reads Dune.
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Hyperion is one of the best novels ever written.
Dune, excellent. The entire series is fascinating but it veers into fantasy territory.
Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are also great fun, but The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas, and Excession are the best, in that order. The other ones don't do a good enough job of establishing dramatic tension (though still entertaining and thought-provoking).
Zelazny's Lord of Light was a fun book to read - It was a bit more fantasy than science fiction overall. But the author really managed to pull off something amazing by making this an interesting and not-heavy-handed story.
Neal Stephenson is a great author but he can take a long, long time to get his stories going. The exception is Snow Crash, which is a fast paced romp. I enjoyed Anathem the most out of any of the books I've read by him, but you need to give it a couple hundred pages before any of the plot even begins.
A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge are extremely high caliber sci fi. The latter I liked perhaps even a little more than the former.
I haven't seen anyone mention Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan here so I'll recommend that - Great semi-near future detective story, light on science but highly plausible technology and a great sense of the social implications of it.
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Sorry if some of the positions were already mentioned, treat is a another good reason to read them.
Dune F.Herbert - a must read, middle books are kind tough, but fiorest and last are just great
Hyperion -Dan Simmons A great read also, but i hate all soco-philosopic crap tha authors throws at You, it gets worse with every book, still a great read nontheless
Issac Asimov -Fundation classic, a good read but not great, still a mandatory position. Robot series are also classical, but not that great. "Gods Themselves" also worth reading.
P.K.Dick -Pretty much everything is worth Your time. "The Man in the High Castle[" , The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch my personal favorite, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And many more
William Gibson- classic of Cyberpunk Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Brian Aldiss- NonStop , Hothouse - great books!
Robert Silverberg- a lot of differrnt books, depends on the taste, but defienetly worth cheking
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic, Monday Begins on Saturday especially
Orwell -1984
Aldus Huxley- Brave New World
Anthony Burgess- Clockwork orange
Stanisław Lem- Solaris is in fact one of his weakest books, his books are very deep and philosophical not everyone like them, but if u ask me worth Your time.
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Robert Heinlein is my favourite SF author. You absolutely MUST READ 'Stranger In A Strange Land'.
I strongly recommend Huxley's 'Brave New World'.
Another recommendation is Alastair Reynolds. His 'Revelation Space' series is great, but his latest book, 'Terminal World' is fantastic! A must read.
Oh, and Richard Morgan's 'Black Man' was very, very good.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Roadside Picnic and Beetle in the Anthill from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Great books! Any other I read from them did not disappoint either. I read whole Beetle in the Anthill in about 8 hours straight. I just couldn't stop.
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On August 09 2010 13:42 heishe wrote: what can you suggest to someone like me who loves the Mass Effect universe? I just like the setting, with humanity relatively fresh in space travel and not on their own (found alien artifacts and reverse engineered them), plus I like very "semi-realistic" settings - I mean with stuff that is completely made up but sounds very reasonable - Mass Effect is mostly realistic, at least what their faster-than-light travel is based on sounds reasonable (basically an element with zero mass, that can bend spacetime if it's exposed to electric current, its supposed to be dark energy), they also explain why the different alien races look the way they do etc. (for example the krogan with their thick skin because of the high radiation exposure on their planet) ? It should not make an astronomy-buff sigh every second line because something is totally inaccurate.
Erm... with the exception of the ME books of course. You could try the Altered Carbon series written by Richard Morgan. It contains of 3 books (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels & Woken Furies).
Market Forces from Richard Morgan is also a very good read but not SciFi as you would normally describe it. In short it's about a society ruled by the big cooperations where the way to aquire new clients is to drive your competitors of the road.
I can also recommend all the books of Alastair Reynolds. He specialises in dark hard science fiction. He has an PhD in either physics or astronomy (I forgot which) and worked 12 years for the European Space Research and Technology Centre (a part of the European Space Agency) before he became a fulltime writer. So most science he uses in his books is very solid.
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This one jump started me on sci fi. It's a great classic though he goes off the deep end at the end, in classic Heinlein fashion.
Fantastic, action-packed and unashamedly Space Opera. Great stuff and leads into the sequel, Judas Unchained.
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Other suggestions for the OP (suprised nobody mentioned them before): (not really time to properly summerize them so please look them up in wikipedia for more info)
Jack Vance: Almost all of his books are really good but the Demon Princes series (The Star King, The Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams) is simply AMAZING.
Larry Niven: The Ringworld series (Ringworld, The Ringworld engineers, The Ringworld throne (and to a lesser degree, Ringworld's children)) is a must read. Other great books of him include The Mote in God's eye & The Gripping hand. He also wrote so good fantasy if you are also into that.
Rober A. Heinlein: Most notably I think are these books of him: The moon is a harsh mistress, The unpleasant profession of Jonathan Hoag, Citizen of the galaxy
A.E. van Vogt: Most notably I think are these books of him: Slan, The Null-A books (The world of Null-A, The players of Null-A, Null-A three) The weapon shops of Isher & The weapon makers
Other great books like Snowcrash, I Robot, Ender's Game etc. are already mentioned so I won't.
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On August 09 2010 18:06 Random() wrote:Am I the only one who thought that Ender's Game wasn't that good I would take Dune and Hyperion over it any day.
I'm with you there. I hated this book.
My favorite sci-fi serie is the trilogy of Mars from Kim Stanley Robinson. He just describes the future of humanity in a way that makes me dream, while trying to explain everything scientifically.
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World // Haruki Murakami
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The forever war by Joe Haldeman
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On August 09 2010 14:50 Pellucidity wrote:Hyperion The Fall of Hyperion Ilium I don't know.. Dan Simmons is an excellent writer in my opinion. He has some great books check him out. http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons
I agree with this, its basically a space opera with amazing detail and description along with one of the most cleverly laid out plots. I recently tried to go through and read past hugo and nebula winners to find good sci-fi and I found this novel. Another decent book (kinda like starship troopers) is the forever war by Joe Haldeman, (it also won the hugo and the nebula).
*EDIT didn't see the Haldeman mention above..., but I guess it goes to show you that its good.
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I just read Glasshouse by Charles Stross a few weeks ago when I was stuck at the airport for a connecting flight. I'd recommend it as an entertaining read!
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