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?
Phsstpok wrote: They took one of his Known Space stories, I think The Soft Weapon, and replaced the Kzinti with Klingons, IIRC.
It was The Soft Weapon, renamed to The Slaver Weapon, but it did not replace the Kzinti with Klingons. In fact, Niven rewrote it himself.
I found his line from the collection Playgrounds of the Mind about this:
The Slaver weapon is "soft" as Salvador Dali used the word: it changes shape. Those are "soft" watches in Dali's "The Persistence of Memory."
See "The Lost Ideas" for details on how this typical early-Niven puzzle story became a Star Trek animation called "The Slaver Weapon." I thought hard before giving the Kzinti to the Star Trek universe. I did it because I thought it would be fun to see what others would do with them. And I was right!
The section from "The Lost Ideas" in the same book about his involvement with Star Trek is:
I've had little involvement with movies and television.
Dorothy Fontana invited me to write a Star Trek animation. I feared (groundlessly) that nobody at Filmation would see their chance to use real aliens rather than actors in rubber suits. So I wrote a story treatment using Outsiders (built like a black cat-o'-nine-tails, using photoelectric metabolism at near absolute zero) and quantum black holes. For Saturday morning TV!
Dorothy advised me that wouldn't work. My next attempt was too bloody . . .
Dorothy and I presently spent part of an afternoon at Gene Roddenberry's place. Gene suggested rewriting "The Soft Weapon" from NEUTRON STAR. That worked, as "The Slaver Weapon," with Spock playing a Pierson's puppeteer. I was given permission to leave Kirk out.
My first attempt (quantum black holes) became the basis for "The Borderland of Sol."
And Paramount sold to Ballantine Books the right to turn my script into a book. Alan Dean Foster did that. So "The Soft Weapon" wound up competing with itself ...
"I favor military sci-fi. "
have you read any glen cook stuff? His black company series is the most famous but the Dread Empire series was far more epic (better? different), and he has a number of other novels that I think are excellent. Most of his work is out of print. his military sci-fi stuff includes The Dragon Never Sleeps (maybe his best?), shadowline and the starfishers trilogy, passage at arms, and I am probably forgetting something. He quit writing SF in the 80's unfortunately and writes only fantasy now.
Dan Abnett has had some very good books among his warhammer40k list, including the eisenhorn & ravenor trilogies and SOME (not all) of the gaunt's ghosts series. i am not a warhammer fan but those books are enjoyable at times.
I liked ringo's prince roger series (weber outlines from what I can tell), though having read posleen and council war series it certainly seems familiar...
i like most of alastair reynolds stuff though I didn't like his conclusion to the inhibitors series.
i have been less than impressed with niven's later work, both solo and with pournelle (not to mention his 'building harlequin's moon' duo). Given the choice of the burning tower or a novel set in the post-codominium universe (the gripping hand, say) I would certainly like a return to the latter universe but that isn't what they are doing now...enjoyed the 4th ringworld 'short novel' but it was just that.
draco tavern was very enjoyable I thought.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.