Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Only Thread

[Buck]

There is a great thread in the lounge about Books in general, but to be honest, all I really want to read is Sci-Fi (including post-apocalyptic), and Fantasy.

In this OP I will compile every poster's top 3 Fantasy/SciFi suggestions if they give me them. I will try to keep the posters in alphabetical order in case you want to find someone's suggestions easier.

CP POSTER SUGGESTIONS

Baby Lee
1. Fritz Lieber's Swords Against series.
2. George R.R. Martin's SoIaF series [no brainer that will probably make tons of other lists]
3. Umberto Eco, Foucalt's Pendulum [a little more obscure/forgotten to make up for GRRM]

Frosty
1.Raymond Feist - Riftwar Saga
2.Terry Brooks - Shannara series (starting with the Knight of the Word books)
3.Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn

Huffmeister
(1) Dune - Frank Herbert
(2) The Stand - Stephen King (1000+ page unabridged)
(3) Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein (checkout the song by Yes, too. lots of great bass)

Jawshco
1. "Book of the Long Sun" by Gene Wolfe
2. "Paradise War" by Stephen R Lawhead
3. "The Dragonbone Chair" by Tad Williams

listopencil
1. Edgar Rice Burroughs, any series
2. Robert Heinlein, everything he has written in chronological order (but read Starship Troopers first)
3. Doc Smith's Lensman series

vailpass
1. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1, 2A & 2B books are a gold mine for sampling the evolution of sci-fi. (below)
2.The Nebula Awards and Hugo Awards (selected yearly, pick a year)
3. Years Best SF Annual publication, pick any volume from 1 to the current volume 17
See Post 142

[lawrenceRaider]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

About to go HAM on some Dune stuff.

Butlerian Jihad, Machine Crusade, whatever the third book is called, and Paul of Dune.

The prequels get panned quite a bit, but I enjoyed them. Granted it's been a long time since I read any of them.

[Barret]

Don't know if this has been mentioned but

Armor - John Steakley

Also I heard a rumor they are making a film about "Foundation" from Asimov

[BleedingRed]

Old Mans War

[lawrenceRaider]

Originally Posted by BleedingRed

Old Mans War

I really enjoyed these.

Scalzi himself not so much.

[BleedingRed]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

I really enjoyed these.

Scalzi himself not so much.

I love guardians of the galaxy.... James Gunn not so much.

[Graystoke]

Originally Posted by Bowser

It's been decades since I've read any Dune. With the movie coming out, I should at least brush up on it before it gets here.

No kidding. I read Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune but that was years ago.
When is the movie officially out?

edit-I see scheduled release date of Oct 2021. Hope they don't **** it up like last time.

[Mennonite]

Dune is a great story poorly written. I remember reading it and then, years later, describing the plot to someone and thinking "This actually sounds awesome - why the heck didn't I love this?". So I reread it and remembered why.

[Mennonite]

I'm trying to remember the name of a story I read or heard a few years ago. It was about a group of refugees from a war-torn and polluted Earth who escape to Mars only to find that Mars was also in ruins. The twist was that mankind is actually descended from Martians who had fled their home planet after wrecking their environment.

Ring any bells? It may have been an old radio program eepisode.

[Mennonite]

More time travel stories:


"Try and Change the Past" by Fritz Leiber
"Caveat Time Traveler by Gregory Benford
“The Third Level” by Jack Finney
“Such Interesting Neighbors” by Jack Finney
“Time and Time Again” by H. Beam Piper
"The Wind Over the World" by Steven Utley
“Twilight” by John W. Campbell
“Life-Line” by Robert Heinlein
“By His Bootstraps” by Robert Heinlein
“—All You Zombies—” by Robert Heinlein
"Against the Current" by Robert Silverberg
“Absolutely Inflexible“ by Robert Silverberg
The Guardians of Time by Poul Anderson
"Soldier" by Harlan Ellison
“Time Wants a Skeleton” by Ross Rocklynne
“As Never Was” by P. Schuyler Miller
“Compound Interest” by Mack Reynolds
“Let’s Go to Golgotha” by Gary Kilworth
“Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation” by Larry Niven
“Who’s Cribbing?“ by Jack Lewis
“A Statue for Father” by Isaac Asimov
“The Hundred-Light-Year Diary“ by Greg Egan
”The Fox and the Forest” by Ray Bradbury
“Night Meeting” by Ray Bradbury
"The Very Slow Time Machine" by Ian Watson
"In the Beginning, Nothing Lasts..." by Mike Strahan
"After-Images" by Malcolm Edwards
“Flight to Forever” by Poul Anderson



Thoughts:


1- The stories dealing with paradoxes ("By His Bootstraps" "Let's Go to Golgotha!") are fun and often clever, but never seem to resolve in a satisfactory manner.

2 - Harlan Ellison is an asshole and it's preposterous that his story "Soldier" is given credit as an influence for Terminator.

3 - I give credit to "The Very Slow Time Machine" and "The 100 Light-Year-Diary" for trying something different but neither of them manages to stick the landing. Both are worth a read though.


The best of this bunch was probably Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever." Its concept was blatantly ripped off by one of the better latter day episodes of Futurama "The Late Philip J. Fry." It's about a time traveler with a time machine that really only works when going forward in time. He can only go backwards in short hops. So he's forced to go further and further in time in the hope that future generations will find a way to make backwards time travel possible.

My only real complaint is that I wish Anderson had done a better job explaining why you can't travel far into the past. What's the difference between one long jump, and several small jumps? He says there is a difference, but I wish he had concocted a more concrete reason as to why it is so.





I guess this is the end of my time travel story reading for a while. Mostly disappointing, but that 's true of everything I guess. The stories that I liked best::

"The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells
"My Object All Sublime" by Poul Anderson
"The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" by Alfred Bester
"Twenty-one" by Michael Merriam
"Sailing to Byzantium" by Robert Silverberg
"The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson
"Flight to Forever" by Poul Anderson
“The Lost Pilgrim” by Gene Wolfe
“The Mouse Ran Down” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
“Under Siege” by George R. R. Martin
“Fire Watch” by Connie Willis
“Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore

[lawrenceRaider]

If you have room for one more time travel story, give Paradox Bound by Peter Clines a try.

[Mennonite]

I'll add it to my "to read" list. Thanks!

[Mennonite]

100 Great Science Fiction Short Stories. edited by Isaac Asimov


The stories are extremely short, as you might imagine, and several of them are flash fiction. Not a particularly strong anthology. The absence of Fredric Brown's "Answer" is notable, but considering who the editor is maybe not.

Top three:

"Dry Spell" by Bill Pronzini
"Shall the Dust Praise Thee?" by Damon Knight
"The Die-Hard" by Alfred Bester

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Bowser

I'm reading A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White. It's different, but I'm enjoying it two thirds of the way through. First part of a trilogy and I'm certain I'll read the other two.

Thanks to the Covids, I completely forgot about this series. Just picked up the third in the trilogy, The Worst of All Possible Worlds. THis is a very quirky but highly enjoyable trilogy, if you're looking for something new. Do recommend.

- Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
- Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy
- The Worst of All possible Worlds

by Alex White

Apparently he has written a total of five books, with three of them this trilogy.

[Mennonite]

The Other Side of Tomorrow

This is a small anthology from the early 70s. It probably qualifies as YA. Dated but not terrible.


The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories.


I'm about 85% of the way through with this one. Nothing I'd recommend so far.

I used to think that there were a lot of great sci-fi short stories out there and that I'd find them if I just kept searching. I no longer believe that. Once you get past the genuine classics, the good to garbage ratio is probably less than 4 in 100. And you might find 1 really good story out of 150. Unless you can find a writer that you really like you might as well stick to pulp; at least that stuff isn't boring.

[Mennonite]

I am (foolishly) determined to read all of the Hugo nominated short stories.


Oldies:

Mack Reynolds "Status Quo"
Clifford D. Simak "Desertion"
Clifford D. Simak "Huddling Place"
Orson Scott Card "The Lost Boys" (It's a ghost story)
Gary Jennings "Myrrh" (a weak horror story)
James Patrick Kelly "Itsy Bitsy Spider"
Gene Wolfe "No Planets Strike"
Robert J. Sawyer "The Hand You're Dealt"
Karen Joy Fowler "Standing Room Only"
Andy Duncan "Beluthahatchie"
Michael Swanwick "The Very Pulse of the Machine"
Bruce Sterling "Maneki Neko"


Woke era shit:

“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen



The Hand You're Dealt, Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Very Pulse of the Machine are probably my three favorites of the bunch. Nothing must-read or anything.



I also re-read a couple of Hugo nominees that appeared in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies:

The Moon Moth by Jack Vance. This one is ok but it needed two things: 1) a more plausible reason why the fugitive couldn't be identified and 2) a stronger closing sentence. The story reminds me of David D. Levine's Tk Tk Tk a little bit.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny. I like this one quite a bit. This level of quality is what I'm looking for (hoping for) when I pick up an anthology of "The Best" or "Award Winning" science fiction.