Science fiction: what do you recommend?

[Erunáme]

I'm looking forward to getting to read this in the future. I've just started reading my first Sci-Fi book and I'm enjoying it. I didn't think I'd like Sci-Fi, but I seem to.

edit: I didn't start this thread. It was split off from Prim's Getting Published thread. The "this" I am looking forward to reading is her book.

[Cerin]

Your very first, Eru?! How did you pick what to start with?

For the Sci Fi afficianados here, any suggestions on what the uninitiated of us might begin with, to 'acclimate' ourselves in preparation for Prim's novel?

[Frelga]

Jules Verne? He's the granddaddy of the genre, after all. The Mysterious Island has always been my favorite.

Perhaps Asimov, Steel Caves, that sort of thing. It's a sci-fi mystery.

How do you feel about LeGuinn? Left Hand of the Darkness is somewhere on the edge between Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and is absolutely brilliant. Dispossessed is more on the Sci-Fi side, IMO, and a harder read, but packs a huge punch.

Or just wait a bit and start at the top with Prim's book.

[Jnyusa]

Asimov is a wonderful author to start with because his stories don't depend on the sci-fi angle for their appeal. He wrote more than 200 books and countless short stories. Every one of them is good.

jn

[Griffon64]

Eru - I envy you --- you still have the whole wonderful world of Sci-Fi to work though! I've devoured much of what the genre had that appealed to me before I hit 15!

I remember going down to the library on Friday afternoons ( with a friend, it was our ritual! ). We'd be armed with sturdy backpacks, and the library cards of the entire family ( 4 books to a card! Luxury you'd think, and yet about half an hour was spent sifting through possible choices and working out the optimal combination of books to take out this time --- 'If you take THIS one, I can come borrow it from you Monday ...' ). I remember the tall Sci-Fi and Fantasy shelves, how Tolkien occupied the right hand half of the third shelf from the bottom, and the left hand third of the shelf below it ... I still remember where all my favourite authors was located on those shelves!

Oh yes, what a geeky little bookworm I was! My favourite passtime was on my back, maybe with the afternoon sun filtering through the window, reading, reading, reading ... sometimes I'd have some snack, sometimes not. Later on I had to shift position because I've been reading so long, maybe putting the book on the floor and dangling my head over the bed ... but wow! I spend almost every waking hour in some world of words, or in imaginary adventures of my own.

I want to be small again

[Erunáme]

Your very first, Eru?! How did you pick what to start with?

Actually I lied...I remembered that I've read Contact and I suppose that counts as a Sci-Fi book.

How did I pick the one I'm reading now? Iavas brought them back from England when we were there for Christmas. He loves that author so I figured I'd give it a go. The story is pretty interesting.

For the Sci Fi afficianados here, any suggestions on what the uninitiated of us might begin with, to 'acclimate' ourselves in preparation for Prim's novel?

I really enjoyed Contact by Carl Sagan. I found the astronomy stuff interesting, but wasn't bogged down in it because the story is excellent and there's enough "normal" stuff in the book.

[Cerin]

Thanks for the recommendations, everyone!

Griff, how nice that you had a friend who shared your enthusiasm for books and the library! That's such a lovely picture of the two of you optimizing your combinations.

[Primula Baggins]

Those are all great recommendations!

I'm fond of Lois McMaster Bujold. She's got a publisher who slaps horrible, gaudy "military SF" covers on her books, but she writes wonderful characters, and her main protagonist is a young man with severe birth defects but a brilliant, devious mind who makes his own way in a society obsessed with military service and physical perfection. Her books are funny, too, and one book in the series is the only SF book I've read with a strong flavor of Georgette Heyer.

I love Ursula LeGuin, though she's not to everyone's taste. The Earthsea books are among the few fantasy books other than Tolkien that I really enjoy. Her SF is character-driven and she writes beautifully—she has a spare, minimalist style that still conveys a lot.

Many people love Orson Scott Card, and he's a fine writer. I find there's too much cruelty in his books.

James Tiptree, Jr., a woman who wrote under a man's name, has some brilliant short story collections that may still be in print and should be in libraries. Libraries may put her books under "Alice B. Sheldon."

Julian May and Vonda McIntyre write sweeping SF epics that are still very approachable.

Anything that is labeled as "an SF classic" and was first published between 1945 and 1965 is probably going to be a lot of fun to read. There are collections of stories from that time that are a gold mine of great escapist reading. Isaac Asimov edited many of them. The "Hugo Winners" anthologies are among the best.

(Frelga, my book is nowhere near the top of any list! I'm very happy it's going to be published, communication being the point of writing and all, but the thought of my work being "out there," warts and all, for all you wonderful and insightful and deeply perceptive people to read makes me just want to put my head in a bucket and whimper. )

[yovargas]

The "Hugo Winners" anthologies are among the best.

I took an elective course in college about Science Fiction (fun class!) and these anthologies were our "textbooks". I noticed in the anthologies how much more fun and memorable the older classics were to the more modern stuff. Old SF is great stuff. My personal fav (though I don't know if I'd recommend it to the uninitiated) is Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles". Bradbury is a wonderful writer, IMO.

[Alatar]

Of the few classics I've read I liked Asimovs Foundation books and his Robot series. I enjoyed Heinleins "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Starship Troopers". I never read much of Arthur C. Clarkes besides a few short stories and his own fuller treatment of 2001.

But this should probably be in the Library.

[Primula Baggins]

I'd recommend Bradbury's other collections, too—R Is for Rocket and S Is for Space are two of them. (SF books used to have pretty bald names to go with their lurid covers.)

For more thoughtful, "literary" SF, I'd recommend Edgar S. Pangborn, LeGuin, Tiptree, Gene Wolfe, Samuel R. Delaney, Ken MacLeod, Cordwainer Smith, Maureen F. McHugh, and the classic A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

For pure SF fun that's well written and full of kewl ideas, you almost can't go wrong with anything by Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Fredrik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, or John Varley.

Robert Heinlein was a grand master and I love his earlier novels, especially those for young adults he wrote in the 1950s. He had strong conservative political beliefs and a very un-modern view of women, which are more than some people can read past.

I certainly haven't read everything, especially lately, so there is a lot more that's good.

[Impenitent]

I certainly haven't read everything, especially lately, so there is a lot more that's good.

You mean, there are even more than you mentioned!? I can't remember the name of a single author beyond the last 2 or 3 I've read. It's pathetic, really; but hearing the names usually prods my memory.

Well, my memory has hardly received a tickle. It seems I've read so few of those authors (unless my memory is even worse than I'm willing to admit) beyond Asimov.

I don't know what I spent my time on; no point in asking. A misspent youth, obviously.

[Primula Baggins]

Imp, I couldn't have come close to naming all those except that I have all my SF books shelved right in my office. I just walked along the shelves noting names. So really, I cheated.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If you are into SF with an emphasis on the "science" part, I highly recommend James Hogan's Giants Trilogy (Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants and Ganymede and The Giant's Star). Not a great writer, but competent enough, and really interesting stories based on biology, physics, etc. Really good imagination. He also wrote a fourth book in the series called "Entoverse" (in which he does mention Tolkien's Ents) which while still interesting got just a little too far out there for my tastes.

How did Prim's thread become a thread for recommending good SF?

[anthriel]

How did my SF thread end up being about food?





Come to think about it, this thread will end up being about food, soon, too.

'Tis an inevitable thing..

[Holbytla]

I am quite sure it is all my fault.
Most things are.

Say Prim?
Any thoughts about writing a cookbook?

[Primula Baggins]

365 Quick 'n' Simple Dinners with Lutefisk

EZ Salads with Pickled Fish

Fruit Soup Dreamin'

Quick White Casseroles

See, Anth, now it's about books and food.

Should the SF recommendations go into a thread in the Library, as Alatar suggested?

[Primula Baggins]

Aaaaand . . . they did. *ting*

Does anyone else have anything to recommend?

Anyone want to dispute any recommendations made so far?

[yovargas]

Well, I must say that I now find Arthur C. Clarke terribly bland. I read 2001 when I was youngish (mid-teens I think) and loved it but when I read it years later I found it quite stale (specially compared to the film). I tried a few others (Rendezvous with Rama was required for my sci-fi class) and consistently found him sorely lacking storywise.

[Primula Baggins]

I think his stories are great; it's his characters that make them seem bland, perhaps. They aren't very distinct or distinctive. But of course Clarke is writing in an old SF tradition, where the point of the story or novel was the kewl ideas, and characters were just there to populate the story and spout explanatory dialog. These days, except in the hardest of hard SF or the most military of military SF, I don't think writers can get away with that.