Recommendations

Sorry about the link problem. This site underwent an overhaul a while back and as a result, some of the older thread links are no longer working. But, keep at it, there are still a gazillion good recommendations here.
 
Kamakhya said:
The SF group doesn't currently have a good recommendation thread, so I thought I would start one.

What books would you recommend to a newcomer to SF? What do you consider must-reads? Any books that make a good cross-over from fantasy to sf?

Perhaps you would just like to list your favorites, or maybe break them down by genre or date of publication.

I know, we do have past threads that touched on this topic, but a new current thread, to gain the attention of our new members is, imho, in order.

Kamakhya
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It is difficult for me because I love Science Fiction AND Fantasy. My reading days are about over due to my eyes but as I remember a FEW of my favorites I think I could recommend a couple to a budding SF reader.

1. Edgar Rice Burroughs- My Father had an ancient collection of HB Tarzan books that got me familiar with ERB's writing style. This lead me to read some of the Barsoom and Pellicudar stories. Princess of Mars would be a great beginning to check out. Since there is movie action in this area you may want to read it before Hollywood ruins your first impression.

The complete Mars series

A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
The Warlord of Mars
Thuvia, Maid of Mars
The Chessmen of Mars
The Master Mind of Mars
A Fighting Man of Mars
Swords of Mars
Synthetic Men of Mars
Llana of Gathol
John Carter of Mars

Source: http://www.tarzan.org/barsoom.html
http://www.johncarterofmars.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/ 2006

2. Jules Verne- Facinated by 'The Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' TV show as I was growing up my Dad got me reading "20,000 Leagues" which opened me up to JV writing style and Imagination. When I read "From The Earth To The Moon" I was fast becoming hooked on the fantastic worlds of Science Fiction.
Source: http://www.online-literature.com/verne/earth_to_moon/
Read it Online:
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28

3. Ray Bradbury- I must admit I have not read much of Bradbury except the "Martian Chronicles". But it was worth it. I wouldn't choose it as the FIRST science fiction book but I do recommend it.
Source: http://www.raybradbury.com/books/martianchronicles-hc.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080242/ 1980 miniseries
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/martian_chronicles.html

Rocket Summer, The Summer Night,, The Earth Men, The Third Expedition, And the Moon Be Still as Bright, The Green Morning, The Locusts, Night Meeting, The Musicians, Way in the Middle of the Air, The Naming of Names, Usher II, The Martian, The Luggage Store, The Off Season, The Silent Towns, The Long Years, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Million-Year Picnic

4. Orson Scott Card- "Ender's Game" Has to be in this list somewhere. This book was a huge success and once you read it you will understand why. Here is the first chapter courtesy of OSC website.
Source: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/endersgame/endersgame.shtml
If you like "Ender's Game" be sure to check out "Ender's Shadow" a parallel Novel. I have never read "Ender's Shadow" but I really do want to. It's been so long since I read "Ender's Game" that when I read "Ender's Shadow" It should bring up fond memories.
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/shadow.shtml
This book is, strictly speaking, not a sequel, because it begins about where Ender's Game begins, and also ends, very nearly, at the same place. In fact, it is another telling of the same tale, with many of the same characters and settings, only from the perspective of another character. It's hard to know what to call it. A companion novel? A parallel novel? Perhaps a "parallax," if I can move that scientific term into literature.
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5. David Gerrold- This Is where my passions take over. Some people don't like Gerrold's writing style, Some say he's to Hard SciFi for them. I like it!
These Selections are out of Print but according to his site there may be a revival soon so you might want to watch for him. I got A SciFi BookClub version of "The War Against The Chtorr-Invasion" back in the 80's when I was aboard ship in the US Navy. I read the entire 2 book series in one weekend. I was slobbering! Things happened and I never got to read the rest of the series. Gerrold is working on Book 5 "A Method For Madness" right now.
If you have not read this I highly recommend it if you can find it. I just recently reread "A Matter For Men" and "A Day For Damnation" the two books in "Invasion". If I happen across books 3 "A Rage For Revenge" & 4 "A Season For Slaughter" I will pounce on them immediately. If I don't have 3 & 4 when 5 comes out I will wait until 3 & 4 are available and buy all 3. BunnyDogs are Food...Thats where I left off.
Source: http://www.chtorr.com/
http://www.gerrold.com/
Gerrold has a Star Wolf Story I think I would enjoy as well
There are now 166,000 words of A Method For Madness finished, plus 30,000 words of interstitials (the little asides between the chapters), and another 66,000 words finished on book six, A Time For Treason. Plus a few chapters for book seven, as well. The 66,000 words I took off the end of book 5 were better suited in book 6 — where I could expand them the way they needed to be expanded. The remaining 166,000 words of book 5 will still grow to about 210,000 before I’m done, and it will be as fully fleshed out as it should have been in the first place. My mistake was trying to fit too much into the one book in the first place. This is better. You’ll see.
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7 books- Glad I went to the site! Publisher is TOR http://www.tor.com/tor.html
Here's Some fun Quotes from David http://www.gerrold.com/author-quotes/page.htm

Well there it is
5 Recommendations which includes 1 passion. I hope you enjoy the links I found to help accent my post.
 
Sci/Fi top list

My son in California enjoys the works of Francis Farmer, anyone else have comments on his works? :cool:
 
Hmm Hmm Hmm,

I will list a handful I haven't seen mentioned and I have enjoyed for a variety of reasons.

A very partial list and not necessarily the best of these authors.

_Holy Fire_ "Bruce Sterling" - Very insightful projection of current trends. Brings to mind an older style of SF, Gimme that old time religion ;) .

_Lord of Light_ or perhaps _Call Me Conrad_ "Roger Zelazney" you should read something Zelazney

_The Windwhales of Ishmael_ or _The Stone God Awakens_ "Philip Jose Farmer" for similar reasons as Zelazney

_Angels Station_ "Walter Jon Williams" don't recall details but it made a good enough impression that I read more of his stuff. That's saying something for an old cynic like me.

For something with a Mythic element maybe "Tim Powers" or "Neil Gaiman"

Maybe a bit of "Norman Spinrad" for the perspective. _Bug Jack Barron_ or _The Iron Dream_ maybe?

If you can find it. _The Gladiator_ "Philip Wylie"

Almost anything by "Jack Vance". Something like the _Demon Prince_ series might be a nice start as it covers a fairly wide chunk of time in his career; They are short and reaction to the five individual novels vary widely. Warning JV has a very distinct voice not to the taste of all readers but addictive to some.
 
i recommend:

amtrak wars books 1 to 6( patrick tilley)
sten books 1 to 8 (christ bunch+alan cole)
the rift war saga raymond e. fiest (spelling lets me down)
serpent war saga ( same as above)
some of fiest book he did with janny someone (sorry i cant remember)

just of the top of my head, i hate not being able to use the computer in my bed room, i could just turn around a list hundreds of good books.
 
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Hello, and recommendations needed

Hi, this is my first post here so a brief bio -

I work full-time as a IT Systems Adminstrator and programmer. I'm also a freelance writer/journalist/web designer, and if there's any of my spare time left after that, I write fiction, mainly sci-fi.

I know there is a recommendations thread, but it's got so many books listed it's difficult to choose some good ones.

I'm currently working my way through Philip K. Dick's collected stories, and really like his style, particularly the visions of the future he presents and the clever twists at the ends of his stories.
I also like Arthur C. Clarke, although find him a little hard-going at times, and I really liked Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I, Robot is also one of my favourite books, and I have read some other of Asimov's robot stories. I like the way he plays around with the mechanics of the three laws.

I don't like un-realistic stuff, or stuff that tries to sound really clever, but just ends up being really hard work and confusing. Actually the 'Architect' in the (2nd or 3rd? I can't remember) Matrix film is an example of what I don;t like. If I'd been reading it as a book I would have given up at that point!

So, based on that brief rundown of what I like, can anyone recommend any good authors/books to read?
 
Hi! Welcome to the board! One of the great things about this board, it that there is a diverse readership represented,so you're bound to find someone who's tastes line up with yours to some degree.
I recommend that you take a look at the thread below-everyone's all-time favorite books:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7792

There's an extensive discussion of short stories directly below that:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9701

Here's another good one:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9666

And this, which is everybody and their brother's 10 best list (and then some ;)) This one should arguably be a sticky.Perhaps I should make the suggestion to TPTB:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=453




There you go. Those threads will lead you in a better direction than any attempt at a singular recommend that I could make based on what you gave as an example of what you like. Good hunting!! :D



Postscript: Hey allrighht! The celestial moderators have made this a sticky! Neat-O :D
 
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New to the site, nice place. Some good recommendations from what I seen. Thought I'd throw another one into the mix.

This guy wrote an IT text book for students and I looked up to see if there was an updated text book and he'd written a scifi book(s).

http://www.stevemallard.com/pages/3/index.htm

So far the novella is what's available of the first book, each one is a novella and a novel. Pretty good read if you like cover-ups and hacking and all that. It's about the government "attacking" its own citizens by hacking into networks. Pretty cool stuff.

Well I guess while I'm at it buy the text book too, if you don't understand some of what's talked about in the novel, lol. It's good reference material imo. A lot better than my stupid networking text book anyways when I was in school. Not as in depth I guess but easier to understand.

Anyhow, read the book, it's worth it. I plan on buying the full version of it and the sequel(s) when they come out.
 
I really enjoyed all of these:

The Chronicles of Amber books 1-5 - Roger Zelazny (Classic Fantasy)
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny (Classic Sci-Fi)
Engines of Light trilogy - Ken Macleod (Great Sci-Fi)
The Human Front - Ken Macleod (Sci-Fi short story, 90 pages)
Replay - Ken Grimwood (Sci-Fi involving time-travel theme)

Some of the bigger titles are now available in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Masterworks edition.
 
if you are into robots in sci-fi then as 'thecornflake' said i,robot is good but i also think that 'more i,robot' should be read as it add detail, aswell as ties up some lose ends. its also qiute interesting. the reson i bring it up is that lots of people have read i,robot and/or watched the movie but few seem to have heared of more i, robot, this i think is a shame.
 
Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis

While I was finishing The Skinner -the book club selection for August, I picked up Walter Tevis' The Man Who Fell To Earth as a possible suggestion for October reading. I skimmed it, then started to actually read it,and ended up inhaling it in a day.
Oh well,I recommend it here instead.

It's a short simple novel very much like the movie but without the sex stuff. That's the Nicholas Roeg touch. ;)There are a number of scenes in the book that are not in the film, and they have a sad, quiet poignance. Tevis has a great ear for dialogue.
If you like the clean,simple poetic approach of a Ray Bradbury, you might find this book very much to your taste. :D

Walter Tevis also wrote the Hustler and the Color of Money.
So here's a cross over writer for you!
 
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i'm a real fan of BATTLEFIELD:EARTH by l.ron hubbard. :)
if you seen the film and was thinking the book was bad, it's not (i think) the film is very very wrong and the battlefield doesn't really mean after the psyclos have invades but some other bit, the film is about page 1 to 350/450 and the book has 106? pages so the film is really only a taster, well worth 50p at a car boot and very well worth free and a library!
 
Take the series of Book Of The New Song by Gene Wolf...if you love sf/ef books you're gonna love this.
 
Can't access these links NVM -- someone already reported this :-)

Rob B said:
Ok some of my recommendations:

Some Good Recent novels
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
Metaplanetary by Tony Daniel
The Confluence Trilogy by Paul J. McAuley

Here's the links to relavent topics
Please add to the topics below at any time. As with the topic in the Fantasy Section any NEW (as in after this topic is posted) pops up, it will automatically be DELETED
You can NEVER go wrong with Philip K. Dick:
Favourite Philip K Dick novel?
Philp K. Dick
PKD Print vs. Film

Miscellaneous Recommendation Threads:
Favourite short stories
Science fiction for young readers
Ten Best Science Fiction Novels
Authors of Merit
What do I read
Required Reading
New SF Authors?
What to read in Scifi?
Favorite Science Fiction Book
Recommendable authors/books
SF Recommendations
Favorite Worlds in SF
Classic writers vs. the newer generations
First Sci-Fi novel that you read
Which of these four authors
WORST sci-fi ever
Best book/author in last 5 years...?

Sub-Genres:
Military Sci-Fi
Just what is "cyberpunk" sci-fi? Best "hard" Sci novels?
Favorite "Big Idea" Stories/Books
Alternative History??
Time Travel Books
Books on Mars
Post Apocolyptic Books Post-Apocolyptic Authors
Define "Hard" Scifi?
Best Space Opera
If Robots are your thing: AI - A fresh look On Androids, Robots, Cyborgs etc.. artificial intelligence A.I. Killers

Star Wars:
Has anyone here experienced Star Wars burn out?
Star Wars books Star wars

Here are the past monthly Reading Tallies:
March Reads February Reads January Reads
2002
December Reads! September Reads Reading in Agosto July reads June Reads May Reads April Reads What are you reading in March?
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When I try to access these links I get a page that says:

The page you are trying to reach can not be found.
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The issue with those links not working has now been fixed. That was a relic from back when the forums were at sffworld.org...they all just needed to be made .com I went fast, so let me know if any of them aren't working now.
 
Note: You need to go back to the original links on page 1 of this thread. If you click on e.g. the links in Shunryu's reply, it doesn't work.

What you can do if you get to the 'page not found' message: it's easy enough to change the address from 'sffworld.org' to 'sffworld.com' in the URL pointer.
 
Soon Lee said:
Note: You need to go back to the original links on page 1 of this thread. If you click on e.g. the links in Shunryu's reply, it doesn't work.

What you can do if you get to the 'page not found' message: it's easy enough to change the address from 'sffworld.org' to 'sffworld.com' in the URL pointer.
Click to expand...

I've fixed it in Shun's quote now, too....so people don't have to go back and look for it at the top of the thread.
 
I've one I'd like to recommend and I'd be interested to hear who else has read it and what they think. It's one of those odd one offs (well, two offs since he did another called Godwhale). The book is Half-Past Human by T J Bass.
 
Coincidentally and otherwise...

The GodWhale is one of my top 10 favs, and Half Past Human is slated as my next read after The Cyberiad for the book club. :D
 
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