Favorite Works of Sci-Fi

[daveman]

I'm not a huge reader of Sci-Fi, but works of Sci-Fi are definitely among my very favorite works of fiction.

My all-time favorite is A Canticle for Leibowitz. Other favorites are The Martian Chronicles, Brave New World, Ender's Game, Frankenstein, Stranger in a Strange Land, Watchers, Starship Troopers, The Foundation Trilogy.

I haven't read Canticle, Chronicles, and Foundation since I was a kid. I expect I missed a lot of subtleties. Heinlein's always been a favorite, especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough for Love. The later titles in the "Future History" series are good, but there's a lot in them that made me uncomfortable. I got through them just to be able to say I did.

The Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle collabs are great. Lucifer's Hammer, Oath of Fealty, The Mote in God's Eye & The Gripping Hand. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series and The Fountains of Paradise. Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern series and The Ship Who Sang and the other Shellperson titles.

 

[daveman]

Heechee saga, Fredrick Pohl.

Oh, man, I loved those!

 

[daveman]

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Steven Donaldson.

Read the first six when I was younger. Then, a couple of years ago, I discovered there were 4 more, so I bought all ten online and started at the beginning.

 

[Gabe Lackmann]

Dune--Herbert
Martian Chronicles--Bradbury
The Last Man on Earth--Asimov

 

[daveman]

Expect a vocabulary lesson because Steven went all in on words. I have the whole collection. Did get a little crazy for the last 4 books though.

Yeah. Dude wore out a thesaurus.

I don't think I'll read the last 4 ever again. Waaaaay too dark and hopeless.

 

[Ringel05]

Yeah. Dude wore out a thesaurus.

I don't think I'll read the last 4 ever again. Waaaaay too dark and hopeless.

A lot of sci-fi series books tended to get darker with each successive book.

 

[Ringtone]

Canticle of Leibowitz!! I love that one. I have read it various times, but I have it saved now for Latin practice ---- LOTS AND LOTS of Latin. Of course you can slide over that, but the next time I read it, EVERY WORD.

Which still won't help me understand WHO is the two-headed woman at the end: what is that symbol OF? Anyone? Little help here ---

She represents primeval innocence and absolution.

 

[fncceo]

Favorite recent SciFi novel ... "We are Legion (We are Bob)" by Dennis Taylor...

Four novels so far in the series, each excellent.

A software creator sells his company and decides to splurge by signing up for a cryogenic procedure when he dies. He dies the same day, crossing the street going to Comic Con. He wakes up a couple hundred years in the future where he is a disembodied brain controlling an exploratory space probe.

He, and clones of himself, that he can replicate, explore the galaxy and find other species ... he ultimately saves (a very ungrateful) human race.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I haven't read Canticle, Chronicles, and Foundation since I was a kid. I expect I missed a lot of subtleties. Heinlein's always been a favorite, especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough for Love. The later titles in the "Future History" series are good, but there's a lot in them that made me uncomfortable. I got through them just to be able to say I did.

The Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle collabs are great. Lucifer's Hammer, Oath of Fealty, The Mote in God's Eye & The Gripping Hand. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series and The Fountains of Paradise. Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern series and The Ship Who Sang and the other Shellperson titles.

Yep Lucifer's Hammer, what happens to humanity when all shit hits the fan. Also read the Perns books, great read...

 

[fncceo]

Also good ... "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Humans seed a planet with intelligent life (hoping to breed a race of servants that will worship and serve mankind). Human culture is destroyed by war before the experiment can be concluded. When the planet is discovered centuries later, the experiment has taken a very different turn...

 

[fncceo]

Iain Banks, "Culture Series" -- particularly the first two books.

The story of a utopian human society, as told mostly by those who are observing it from the outside.

 

[Ringtone]

I haven't read Canticle, Chronicles, and Foundation since I was a kid. I expect I missed a lot of subtleties. Heinlein's always been a favorite, especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough for Love. The later titles in the "Future History" series are good, but there's a lot in them that made me uncomfortable. I got through them just to be able to say I did.

The Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle collabs are great. Lucifer's Hammer, Oath of Fealty, The Mote in God's Eye & The Gripping Hand. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series and The Fountains of Paradise. Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern series and The Ship Who Sang and the other Shellperson titles.

Yep. Canticle is one you especially have to read as an adult.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Yeah. Dude wore out a thesaurus.

I don't think I'll read the last 4 ever again. Waaaaay too dark and hopeless.

I would come upon a word i never heard of, opened up the thesaurus and ended up increasing my vocabulary 10 fold. Shame the uneducated people dont read some of those books, would be enlightening for sure.

 

[daveman]

A lot of sci-fi series books tended to get darker with each successive book.

True. I was a little disappointed in the ending, too. Kinda felt like Donaldson was just tired of the whole thing and phoned it in.

 

[petro]

Not only the Dune series by Frank Herbert, but his other series of books Destination Void.

Destination: Void is a science fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert, the first of four novels in the Pandora Sequence series. It first appeared in Galaxy Magazine—illustrated by John Giunta—in August 1965, under the title "Do I Wake or Dream?",[2] but was published in book form as Destination: Void the following year.[3] A revised edition, edited and updated by the author, was released in 1978. The book stands alone but the story is continued - and embellished with more details of the Moonbase project and the history of the clones - in Herbert's other novels The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect and The Ascension Factor, co-authored by Bill Ransom.

Many will notice parallels to the hostile world called Pandora in Avatar which also featured a planet wide conciousness that connected all life.

 

[daveman]

I would come upon a word i never heard of, opened up the thesaurus and ended up increasing my vocabulary 10 fold. Shame the uneducated people dont read some of those books, would be enlightening for sure.

Many of them you could get from context, but I had to look up a bunch, too. I think he was toying with his editor.

 

[daveman]

Man. There's far more to read than there is time to read it.

 

[petro]

Good novel, and I thought the recent miniseries was a good representation.

 

[fncceo]

Shame the uneducated people dont read some of those books

By definition, an uneducated person wouldn't read books.

 

[miketx]

There's a good series By Raymond Weil (RIP) called The Slaver Wars. Entertaining. It's about astronauts returning to the moon and something interferes with their landing radio beacon and they crash land. The guys decide to try and find the source of the jamming so they can call for help and much to their surprise find the remains of a crashed alien space ship over 600 meters long, and the AI that runs it is still alive...

It's about 7 books I think, pretty good.