Recommendation - Sci-Fi Books

[Atlantis]

Alright, I've read some of issac Asimov's books such as the most popular ones and the same thing with Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Since I am getting bored of watching less and less tv these days (due to the lack of sci-fi or any well written shows of any other genre). Does anyone else here recommend any good sci-fi books out there?

Oh I don't mind fantasy either but please no Harry Potter sort of fantasy that's pretty childish for me.

 

[Joelist]

Larry Niven: Tales of Known Space, Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, Lucifer's Hammer

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend

C J Cherryh: Downbelow Station, Merchanters Luck, Tripoint, Finity's End

Jerry Pournelle: Janissaries

 

[Rac80]

Books books books!!!

Have you ventured into Ray Bradbury's books? I highly reccomend the Martian Chronicles.
For fantasy I reccomend Terry Brook's novels...he has 2 distinct series (there were three but he merged two of them) the Shannara books are wonderful...they tell the story of what happens to earth & people after mankind has total biological, chemical, & nuclear war. The earlier books weren't connected to the Knight of the word books, but he connected those in the Armegeddon's children trilogy. Then there is the magic kingdom series- a New York lawyer buys a magic kingdom that is real.... those are great too!

Edit- i forgot Michael Crichton (shame on me!)- read Andromeda Strain and Jurrassic park --- much MUCH better than the movies. I also reccommend his State of Fear. excellent book!

 

[Atlantis]

Have you ventured into Ray Bradbury's books? I highly reccomend the Martian Chronicles.
For fantasy I reccomend Terry Brook's novels...he has 2 distinct series (there were three but he merged two of them) the Shannara books are wonderful...they tell the story of what happens to earth & people after mankind has total biological, chemical, & nuclear war. The earlier books weren't connected to the Knight of the word books, but he connected those in the Armegeddon's children trilogy. Then there is the magic kingdom series- a New York lawyer buys a magic kingdom that is real.... those are great too!

Edit- i forgot Michael Crichton (shame on me!)- read Andromeda Strain and Jurrassic park --- much MUCH better than the movies. I also reccommend his State of Fear. excellent book!

Read Jurassic Park for sure of course and no I haven't I'll look into his stuff Any good recent ones?

 

[Rac80]

I am not familiar with Bradbury's more recent works but I loved The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked this way comes. you might look for his short story collections...he has been very prolific there (written around 400) and you can find a number of collections of his work.

 

[mzzz]

Try Brandon Sanderson, any one of his books really. I say this because you'll probably finish one of his books in a couple of days because he just makes them extremely readable and doesn't go for over-flowery speech. He has this one trilogy you can try although I haven't read the new one. Or you can try his The Way of Kings, that took me about 8 hrs. To me his books are page turners. His books are all fantasy but he takes a while to explain his magic system in a sorta sciency way, as in consistent order and logic. Pretty creative magic systems.

Or you can try George Martin's books if you want, the general fantasy crowd are still fawning over his books which I personally found to be silly and written for shock and awe rather than telling a story. Not much fantasy in it. To me, it was pretty pretentious.

For sci-fi, I don't know, have you read Ender's Game? A movie is coming out about it, you can join us when we start lambasting it just cause, haha.

Dresden Files is also very good and fun. Lots of humour and magic/fantasy in modern times, think they call it urban fantasy or something. I mostly enjoy it for the humour and sorta Angel vibe.

Anyways, a few recommendations, sorry for the lack of sci-fi, haven't read a lot of sci-fi.

Surprised gatefan hasn't posted yet.

 

[Atlantis]

No problem mate, thanks for the recommendations, its just quite odd that I read a lot of people posting on Blastr and on many other websites that there are a lot of good Sci-Fi Books out there which could potentially be turned into TV Shows.Which is why I posted this topic in the first place.

 

[Gatefan1976]

I have been summoned??
Douglas Adams is good, but I more reccomend the hitchhiker's series rather than the Dirk Gently stories.
William Gibson wrote some awesome books (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Hardwired)
Jullian May's Saga of the Exiles.
Sterling E Lanier's "heiro" series.
Michael Stackpole has written some very cool stories in existing universes (such as the Battletech universe and Star wars)

For Fantasy, Raymond E Feist and David Gemmel are *must reads* for me.

 

[Illiterati]

My kid's gotten me reading Neal Stephenson (sp).

Interesting stuff, that.

 

[shavedape]

I have been summoned??
Douglas Adams is good, but I more reccomend the hitchhiker's series rather than the Dirk Gently stories.
William Gibson wrote some awesome books (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Hardwired)
Jullian May's Saga of the Exiles.
Sterling E Lanier's "heiro" series.
Michael Stackpole has written some very cool stories in existing universes (such as the Battletech universe and Star wars)

For Fantasy, Raymond E Feist and David Gemmel are *must reads* for me.

I remember reading the "Heiro" stuff back in highschool. Shame he only did 2 of them. Good reads.

 

[Atlantis]

Thanks for the recommendation been trying to hunt down these books from my local library but came up empty handed may have to look online in order to get a copy. By the way are the Stargate SG-1 and SGA books worth reading? Do they differ in story and plot and adventure from the series?

 

[Gatefan1976]

The SGA ones are stand alone, how good they are I dunno, don't read much of that kind of thing.

 

[mzzz]

I'd recommend you head over to goodreads.com and register, then go browse some of the books you really liked and some of the books you really disliked and read the reviews for them by people underneath. Then you can usually find some review that just hits all the right buttons, just really speaks what you thought. I'd click on that person and check out the books they've read and how they've rated them to get an idea of pretty good recommendations.

It works for me for the most part. What kind of genres do you like to read? Sci-fi is a genre but nowdays, it's very broad, and there are a lot of subgenres in sci-fi. Bradbury's Martian Chronicles were pretty good. The only large scale epic sci-fi I've read is Hyperion which was ok, but was too Keats-obsessed and high literary prose-obsessed for my taste.

You can always try old school classics: Cordwainer Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Phillip K. Dick, etc.

 

[Atlantis]

I'd recommend you head over to goodreads.com and register, then go browse some of the books you really liked and some of the books you really disliked and read the reviews for them by people underneath. Then you can usually find some review that just hits all the right buttons, just really speaks what you thought. I'd click on that person and check out the books they've read and how they've rated them to get an idea of pretty good recommendations.

It works for me for the most part. What kind of genres do you like to read? Sci-fi is a genre but nowdays, it's very broad, and there are a lot of subgenres in sci-fi. Bradbury's Martian Chronicles were pretty good. The only large scale epic sci-fi I've read is Hyperion which was ok, but was too Keats-obsessed and high literary prose-obsessed for my taste.

You can always try old school classics: Cordwainer Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Phillip K. $#@!, etc.

Well I am a big fan of spaced based sci-fi and sci-fi adventure sort of books. I must admit I've haven't really delved deep into sci-fi but a lot of stuff is called sci-fi indeed.

 

[Joelist]

That's why I recommended Larry Niven and CJ Cherryh's "Alliance-Union" books. They are hard Sci-Fi not fantasy disguised as Sci-Fi.

From Niven, books like Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers, Tales of Known Space, Protector, World of Ptavvs are all excellent hard Sci-Fi.

From Cherryh, books like Downbelow Station, Merchanters Luck, Rimrunners, Finity's End, Cyteen, The Faden Sun trilogy and others are hard Sci-Fi with very well crafted characters. Downbelow Station has of the more memorable female military Sci-Fi characters in Signy Mallory.