Posted on 08/19/2006 7:09:57 PM PDT by Hacksaw
There have been several science fiction threads floating around in the near past - and I thought it would be good to hash out the books.
Here are my thoughts:
Almost anything by Larry Niven is worth it - especially stuff from the Known Space series. Jerry Pournelle is also good, but under-rated. His Janissaries books were a good read, along with Starswarm.
RAH - most of his books are very enjoyable. His later stuff (which some consider his classics) I didn't like at all, especially that one about a guy getting his brain transplanted in a womans body. I didn't make it 1/3 of the way through before I gave up.
Ben Bova - readable. Not great, but still a page turner.
Star Trek books - unfortuneately, many of these are BORING. Notable exceptions are those written by by Diane Duane or Michael Jan Friedman. JM Dillard also seems good.
Asimov - almost always worth it.
Orson Scott Card - most of the time worth it. The Enders Game series was very good.
Saberhagen - good read. His berserker concept has also been picked up by other authors.
Kim Stanley Robinson - bleech. I kept wishing the characters in his books would get killed. Unfortuneately they were the heroes. Picture a bunch of disciples of Hugo Chavez colonizing Mars and you get the picture.
AC Clarke - very entertaining. Safe bets.
Other thoughts?
My personal Sci-Fi-Fantasy favorite has been the Dragonlance series. Rasitlin is one bad dude.
I don't think Heinlein ever wrote such a book. It was a possibility mentioned in one IIRC, but to my knowledge there was never an entire book written with that premise.
Try "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" or "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", or my personal favorite "Friday" by RAH.
L
bump
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover series. Anne McCaffery - Pern. Andre Norton. The old Van Vogt books. I like sc fic, not magic/sorcery/fantasy.
You forgot Robert Heinlein. "Stranger In A Strange Land" is one of my all time favorite books.
Oh, and my favorite RAH book was "Farnhams Freehold".
I'm not familiar with that one. Heinlein was way ahead of his time if you ask me. I didn't much care for "Stranger In A Strange Land" but that's the one that really put him 'on the map' so to speak.
Try "Grumbles From The Grave" or "Farnhams Freehold" for some pretty good reads. "Time Enough For Love" is a classic of the genre if you ask me. Also "Puppet Masters" was truly scary.
"Starship Troopers" is a much better book than that cheesy movie they made of it, although I do enjoy the movie I must admit.
Heinlein tossed in a very 'conservative' political philosophy without getting preachy IMO.
Thanks for the thread. I'm always looking for good books to read. Once I finish the pile of non-fictions stuff I'm working on it'll be back to some lighther fare.
L
I like Terry Brooks and for sheer amusement, Peirs Anthony.
Yeah, the movie and the book had little more than the title in common, but it was still an entertaining movie (and it was cheesy). I thought the concept of citizneship from the book was interesting.
Kim Stanley Robinson's first book, "The Wild Shore," was good, IIRC. OTOH, everything else I've picked up by him(?) was terrible. I felt tricked by the first one into buying the rest. Finally have given up.
To me, however, they all represent the past. Their heyday was primarily the 60s, 70s and 80s. For today I simply recommend that folks who liked those books check out Baen.COM. If you liked the authors you listed you'll probably really like their roster.
I would particularly recommend Ringo, Flint and Weber. One nice thing about Baen is that they have a free library where you can download ebook versions of their authors books to try out. They don't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Like good drug dealers the first taste is free. They fully expect you to get hooked and then buy the rest of those authors books.
I enjoyed "Pallas" very much.
L
The Kzinti even made their way into a Star Trek cartoon (written by Niven, of course). Didn't you get killed by a belter?
Lois McMasters Bujold. All around fun, but she slips "Hmmmm" moments into her stories.
CJ Cherryh. Some authors have only a couple of stories and they tell them over and over again. She doesn't.
Debra Doyal and James McDonald. Try em.
David Webb: Honor is good, but Colin is a personal favorite.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. A Japanese Jane Austin in Space.
Alan Dean Foster, The novels of the Humanx Commonwealth are great. His others are a bit hit or miss.
Pohl. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and the entire Heechee series.
He had William Proxmire, of all people, getting federal funding for a time machine. Proxmire used his clout to get it built then used it to go back in time to the ship RAH was serving on as a young naval officer before he got sick (TB?) and he injected him with a vaccine to prvent his illness. The fictional Proxmire's reasoning was that if RAH never got sick and left the navy he wouldn't write those nasty SF books and no one would be inspired to do things like go to the Moon. He comes back to a changed world to find Admiral Henilein head of the US Space Command and colonies on Mars.
Lovely little story.
Best series ever -- Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
The first page will draw you in.
I love Robert Heinlein, and his Future History books are his classics, it's just that they are full of logical extrapolations about the future of human interpersonal relationships that make Christian fundamentalists have kittens and thus dampen his popularity on FR.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is a must read.
Ben Bova is pretty good, but he has drunk the global warming Kool-Aid - like so many other authors these days.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is brilliant, but again, you have to wade through the Leftism of both author and characters.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are very good.
Vernor Vinge doesn't get mentioned often enough - "A Deepness in the Sky" is a fantastic book.
I like William Gibson, but not his imitators. His dystopian visions of a corporate-controlled future are actually a comforting alternative to a world faced with dhimmitude.
And I have no use for fantasy any more - it's all trite, repetitive, and boring except for Tolkien and George R. R. Martin.
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