I have been reading since the 80's. I have stopped now and then. There was a time when I was a kid that I read so many books that I used them as credit at a used book store and I had too much credit.
I recently got rid of all my books because I moved. I am now reading on my ipad.
I would like some ideas of some good authors and or titles to look at. I would like to get a fresh start if possible, so here is a list of as many authors as I can think of:
*Arthur C. Clarke
Isaac Asimov
*Larry Niven
Jerry Pornelle
*Allen Dean Foster
*Douglas Adams
*Piers Anthony
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
Ben Bova
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Terry Brooks
F.M. Busby
Orson Scott Card
C. J. Cherryh
Jo Clayton
Glen Cook
*Barbara Hambly
Harry Harrison
Frank Herbert
C.S. Lewis
George R. R. Martin
Robert Silverberg
E.E. Smith
Roger Zelazny
The ones with stars next to them I read a lot of, like Larry Niven. I read all of his books.
I could go to the local book store, but it is a bit of a drive away. There isn't anything local anymore. It'd be nice to find a new author and read all their books.
My recommendations to get you out of your established comfort zone: Some of them have books I particularly recommend, but you can't go wrong with any of them.
Harlan Ellison If you really want some insight in the gutters of "Star Trek", I recommend his book "City on the Edge of Forever".
Kurt Vonnegut "Sirens of Titan", "Slaughterhouse 5" "Player Piano"
Phillip K. Dick "The Man in the High Castle"
Michael Moorcock,
Ursula K LeGuin, one of the few Masters of both Fantasy and Science Fiction. "The Dispossessed" "The Earthsea Trilogy"
Samuel R. Delaney "Empire Star", Canticle for Leibowitz
It's fantasy rather than science-fiction*, but you can't go wrong with Terry Pratchett (PBUH) - if you like Douglas Adams, you'll probably like him.
* = Then again, he did write some books other than the Discworld series, and some of them are proper science-fiction.
For the most part, science fiction is really a subset of fantasy anyway.
David Weber's "Honor Harrison" series is pretty great: Horatio Hornblower in space. For something older Piers Anthony's "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series is also a good choice. It's written in the 1st person perspective and follows his rise from refugee to military leader to politician to benevolent despot, and his death (& a bit beyond...). Gini Koch's "Alien" series is also a fun read- all comic book action (complete with super powers) and gonzo b-movie type plots with a smart-mouthed heroine who even refers to herself as "Wolverine with boobs".
Hope some of these help! ' ;D
Some science fiction purists have claimed that his books aren't true science fiction, but I strongly disagree. I'm referring to Michael Crichton. I particularly liked two of his novels: The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. If we ever contact extraterrestrials in real life, and it happened in accordance with a science fiction story, I think that story might be The Andromeda Strain. And Jurassic Park made clever use of chaos theory, as well as the more obvious subjects such as paleontology and genetics.
For a fun military space opera, I might suggest the Conquerors trilogy by Timothy Zahn.
Robert Heinlein
Richard Harland
Ray Bradburry
Seems all my recommendations need to have an R first name, odd.
Thanks for some of the ideas. Commonwealth by Hamilton looks interesting. The military type stories don't peak my interests. I once tried to read a Heinlein book once and didn't get very far. The same goes for Bradbury.
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My recommendations to get you out of your established comfort zone: Some of them have books I particularly recommend, but you can't go wrong with any of them.
Harlan Ellison If you really want some insight in the gutters of "Star Trek", I recommend his book "City on the Edge of Forever".
Kurt Vonnegut "Sirens of Titan", "Slaughterhouse 5" "Player Piano"
Phillip K. Dick "The Man in the High Castle"
Michael Moorcock,
Ursula K LeGuin, one of the few Masters of both Fantasy and Science Fiction. "The Dispossessed" "The Earthsea Trilogy"
Samuel R. Delaney "Empire Star", Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller wrote "A Canticle for Leibowitz," not Delaney. Delaney wrote "Dhalgren" which is a book that really intimidates me (and most books don't intimidate me).
Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series. Postcyberpunk noir.
Ready Player One
The Expanse
China Mieville's Ambassadortown
Timothy Zahn
William Dietz
Samuel Delany
Gordon R. Dickson
David Weber
David Drake
Alistair Reynolds
Robert Heinlein
Lester Del Rey
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Heinlein, Zahn, and Delany, Del Rey, and Burroughs are masters of classic science fiction (though some would contest Burroughs Princess of Mars series is more Fantasy/Space Opera/Space Fantasy than Science fiction).
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Miles Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
I know you already brought him up, but if you have not read Lord of Light by Zelazny, do so.
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I'm surprised nobody brought up Alistair Reynolds yet - call him hard SF or space opera (I think of his stuff as pretty hard but some disputed me in these forums so who knows), the man writes some pretty mind bending, cosmic scale SF. His book that I liked the most so far is Pushing Ice, which I understand should appeal to fans of Rendezvous With Rama, but his most popular works are Revelation Space and House of Suns, I think.
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, is firmly space opera, but is also the best SF I've read. A grand and sweeping story with an interesting structure, Hyperion and The Fall Of Hyperion are must-reads. While we're at it, though, avoid Simmon's other big SF story, Illium, because even though most of it is good stuff the end is one of the biggest fizzles I've ever encountered.
Andy Weir is a newcomer and only wrote one novel, The Martian, but that one took the world by a storm. I'd very strongly recommend you check this one out, even if you did watch the movie already.
The Expanse is a great, action packed and well written bit of near-future space opera. It may not have the sheer scope of some of the other SF stories I've read, but it captures the mix of constant wonder and mundane grayness that living out in space will have for humans, and combines some cool physics with social commentary to make into more than just another action adventure with space battles.
I'm surprised nobody brought up Alistair Reynolds yet - call him hard SF or space opera (I think of his stuff as pretty hard but some disputed me in these forums so who knows), the man writes some pretty mind bending, cosmic scale SF. His book that I liked the most so far is Pushing Ice, which I understand should appeal to fans of Rendezvous With Rama, but his most popular works are Revelation Space and House of Suns, I think.
Look above you 6 posts.
"The Last Policeman" is great pre-apocalyptic SF by Ben Winters. More of a mystery, but really great characterizations and an interesting examination of a society that knows it has no future.
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Look above you 6 posts.I'm surprised nobody brought up Alistair Reynolds yet - call him hard SF or space opera (I think of his stuff as pretty hard but some disputed me in these forums so who knows), the man writes some pretty mind bending, cosmic scale SF. His book that I liked the most so far is Pushing Ice, which I understand should appeal to fans of Rendezvous With Rama, but his most popular works are Revelation Space and House of Suns, I think.
Fair, fair.
What's that novel with the pack-mind canids with prehensile mouths? It had different levels of technology/physical laws constraining light speed travel depending on where you were in the galaxy. It was real good. "A Fire Upon the Deep?"
*wiki search*
Yup! By Vernon Vinge.
I'm thinking of re-designing my conversion of neogi to be like them.
I'll second thejeff's Elizabeth Bear recommendation. The Jenny Casey books were the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best books I read last year (the best being Karen Memory, by... Elizabeth Bear).
The narrator voices are superbly done, and the occasional line of Canadian French only serves to add spice. (Also, not really a spoiler, how many books will you read where Canada is the pre-eminent military and economic power of the western world?)