Did a search and couldn’t find any thread discussing sci-fi books…which I can’t believe!
I’ve now been reading sci-fi for a year and have loved it. I’ve read a lot of the must-reads recommend on different forums and lists etc. After years of never being into it, my Dad is thrilled because he’s always been a big fan!
Anyone else here enjoy reading sci-fi? Any favourites to recommend?
I’ve been reading for 55 years starting with Heinlein’s Starman Jones.
Greatest single work? A Canticle For Leibowitz. And Dune. And Lucifer’s Hammer. And Roadside Picnic. And… Excession … War of the Worlds, Brave New World, The Hole in the Zero, City … A Plague of Pythons, Camp Concentration … To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Mote in God’s Eye, Footfall … the vast treasure trove of golden age anthologies, all of Bradbury, Heinlein, Pohl, Anderson, Le Guin, Simak, Kornbluth, Clarke, Bear. Card. Oh yes!! Blood Music, Darwin’s Radio, Eon (the dying radio chatter during WWIII alone), Darwin’s Children. The Killing Thing. Baxter. Baxter and Pratchett. Robinson. Mieville. Foundation. Kate Wilhelm’s The Killing Thing was minimally perfect. And to this teenage sexist that a woman could write so! Took a week off work to read The Stand, unabridged. It was worth it.
Wyndham. Hodder-Williams, Aldiss, Budrys, Bester - Tiger, Tiger; ‘I kill you Vorga-T, I kill you deadly’, Edmund Cooper.
Fade-Out.
And I’m still grieving for Banks.
Yeah - it is surprising that no threads are explicitly dedicated to sci-fi reading; at least not recently. We have some threads about movies and one from a way back that delved into a specific sci-fi work: “The Sparrow” and its sequel “Children of God” by Mary Doriah Russell. That had its own entire thread for a while, so no need to rehash it here.
Looks like we have quite a list already from Martin! Are there any that stand apart for you?
That is probably the first work of science fiction I ever read and I remember being very favorably impressed. But that was at least fifty years ago in high school so I don’t remember anything about it. I had a friend in college who pushed a number of books on me which I read and enjoyed. Of those whose titles which are not lost to the ravages of my memory, I read the Foundation Series, EarthSea Trilogy, Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land. The last sci fi I read was The Sparrow and Children of God, on Mervin’s recommendation (which I can now recommend as well). All the ones I liked most were ones which went beyond the hardware and the phantasmagorical to something interesting about us from the inside.
But since retiring I find I am generally less enthusiastic about the genre. The whole angle of transformation of the species through our own ingenuity holds much less appeal now. Such progress now seems a will o the wisp to me. While some things may change I don’t think what is the most essentially true about us will. In fact -and I feel like the old guy yelling at the kids to stay off his lawn as I say this- I think the impulse to escape or transcend our nature through science will absolutely destroy what is best about mankind. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate and find science fascinating, but I think the most we should hope for is answers to discrete questions and perhaps better health and comfort. That’s it. Now I like novels that give me a look at how other people have experienced this life and what meanings they found in it. Okay, I’ll go back to grumbling on my front lawn now.
I’m not well read in this genre, but I have enjoyed what I’ve read of Orson Scott Card, especially Ender’s Game. I gave my husband a Ted Chiang book for Christmas (Exhalation) and he said it was good, so I’d like to read that at some point.
Old curmudgeonry is under rated. 
I’ve not read Exhalation, but I have his short story collection ‘Story of Your Life & Others’. The story ‘Story of Your Life’ is very good (it was also adapted into the recent-ish movie Arrival). I’ve only read one other in the collection, but to plan to finish it during the next few months.
@Klax - lots of names there I recognize, some of which I’ve read.
@Mervin_Bitikofer I have the book you mentioned on my list, I think I found the recommendation through this forum somewhere!
There has been threads on books and it is there you will find many sci-fi fans listing the books they like.
My favorites… (all books I own and read over again regularly)
Hunter of Worlds, CJ Cherryh
Player of Games, Ian Banks
Crystal Singer, Anne McCaffrey
Mote in God’s Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell
Speaker for the Dead (Ender’s Game series), Orson Scott Card
Host, Stephanie Meyer
Dosadi Experiment & Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert
Tar Aim Krang (Pip & Flinx series), Alan Dean Foster
Exile’s Song (Darkover series), Marion Zimmer Bradley
Tactics of Mistake, Gordon Dickson
Ecologic Envoy, L.E. Moddesitt
Citizen of the Galaxy & Have Spacesuit will Travel, Robert Heinlein
Peeps, Scott Westerfield (do not own yet)
This last one is particularly interesting. Even though it is about vampires it is in some ways more science fiction than any of the others. Not only is it based on believable science, but every other chapter discusses real parasites and the bizarre things they do.
I am a fan of science fiction as well. I mostly like the stuff with a touch of horror in it. I’ve been searching for botanically influenced science fiction as well.
I don’t really like the “spiritual warfare” style science fiction where it’s demons misleading a community into believing they are aliens type of stuff though.
McCaffrey! How could I forget? I nearly included Dickson. Soldier Ask Not. Joe Haldeman, The Forever War.
I have “Solder Ask Not” as well, but don’t read it so often. I not only read “Tactics of Mistakes” quite often but I have even quoted it in discussions. I haven’t read Joe Haldeman or the Forever War. I have several other books by McCaffrey but don’t read them as often.
In my youth I read everything from Asimov to McCaffery and much in between… I think my favourite was Arthur C Clarke, I think Moondust was one of his. More recently I have tended to watch Star Trek or other TV rather than sit and read. With the latest panic measures in prospect perhaps I will find the time and inclination to read again.
Richard
Dan Simmons’s Hyperion/Endymion cycle is at the top of my list.
I recently reread Dune (still love it). Also reread one of the Foundation books, but realized all the main characters are men who smoke who a lot, so this one didn’t stand the test of time for me. Can’t watch the Ender’s Game film because it doesn’t do justice to the book, which blew me away when I read it shortly after it was published (long before any of us contemplated sophisticated computer/video games).
My father studied engineering at the University of Toronto in the early 1940’s, and he lived very close to the main public library, which had a large science fiction collection. That’s when he became a lifelong fan. He’s 96 now, and he’s still reading some of his favourite authors, including Modesitt. He passed on his love of speculative fiction to me. Then I passed it onto my son.
When my father turned 90, we all gave him things that related to his passions in life. My son, who is an artist, used a photo of my father to create this poster for him:
Right? I know what you mean.
Read the news.
We’re living in a 1960s science fiction novel where a worldwide plague threatens humanity and a quirky eccentric genius has built his own fortune to revolutionize technology and re-invigorate space travel.
Musk is deluded.
Now that you mention it…it all makes sense now.
I’m generally not a big sci-fi fan…in fact I don’t read much fiction at all, for better or worse; always seems to be too many other things in which I’m interested. But several weeks back I did read Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which is the source material for the 1983 Ridley Scott film “Bladerunner.” The film has long been a favorite of mine; I remember being pretty blown away by it when I saw it in the theater. Pretty groundbreaking visionary stuff by Mr. Scott.
The novel was fairly disappointing, I’m afraid. For those familiar w/ the movie, the novel involves a few other storylines, in particular a quasi-religion called Mercerism. Still, I felt it was one of those rare instances where the movie adaptation is superior to the original book.
As an aside, another of Mr. Dick’s novels has also recently been adapted, “The Man in the High Castle.” This is a four-season TV series on Amazon Prime that wrapped up a few months ago. That series was fantastic, if you haven’t seen it. Without spoiling anything, I thought in general that the fourth & final season was up there among the best seasons of ANY TV show, although I’m afraid that they also rushed the ending a bit in the final episode or two.
About what?
Considering how he has accomplished what he has set out to do so far, I cannot see how delusion has any part of it.
Yeah, putting a Tesla in orbit.
He’s deluded about colonizing Mars.
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