Sci-Fi Book Recommendations Please

[Skellington]

Check out Peter Hamilton's stuff, starting with The Reality Dysfunction. Sounds like it might be right up your alley.

A Hamilton novel is half a lifetime well spent . I'd recommend a one-off like The Nano Flower to get a taste for his style before moving on to one of the main courses. The Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained duology is huge and multi-faceted, and has one of the best-conceived alien menaces in fiction, imho.

Oh, and then there's the bible - Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, a blindingly obvious choice. It's basically human life through the lens of a man raised by Martians, a conceit that was basically just an excuse for the author to let rip with his thoughts and observations on the human condition. Stone-cold classic.

 

[Sky]

Joe Haldeman's Forever War. Don't bother with the sequel, though.

 

[Canadave]

You sound like you might like Robert J. Sawyer. Flashforward (which has a plot almost totally unrelated to the botched TV show based on it) and The Terminal Experiment are good, SF thrillers, and a good introduction to his work. Calculating God is probably my favourite of his, but it's not quite as fast-paced as the other two I mentioned, so it depends what you're looking for.

 

[Greg Cox]

Check out Peter Hamilton's stuff, starting with The Reality Dysfunction. Sounds like it might be right up your alley.

A Hamilton novel is half a lifetime well spent . I'd recommend a one-off like The Nano Flower to get a taste for his style before moving on to one of the main courses. The Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained duology is huge and multi-faceted, and has one of the best-conceived alien menaces in fiction, imho..

The Nano Flower is a good recommendation, too, but I feel obliged to point out that it was actually the third book in Hamilton's "Greg Mandel Trilogy," which began with Mindstar Rising . . . .

 

[Skellington]

The Nano Flower is a good recommendation, too, but I feel obliged to point out that it was actually the third book in Hamilton's "Greg Mandel Trilogy," which began with Mindstar Rising . . . .

Yeah, I remembered that after I posted. However, as I haven't myself read any other novels with Greg Mandel in them, I didn't edit my original post to reflect this. The Nano Flower worked just fine with no prior knowledge of the character.

 

[Greg Cox]

The Nano Flower is a good recommendation, too, but I feel obliged to point out that it was actually the third book in Hamilton's "Greg Mandel Trilogy," which began with Mindstar Rising . . . .

Yeah, I remembered that after I posted. However, as I haven't myself read any other novels with Greg Mandel in them, I didn't edit my original post to reflect this. The Nano Flower worked just fine with no prior knowledge of the character.

Indeed, as I recall, The Nano Flower actually takes place around twenty or thirty years after the first two books, and is much more futuristic than the earlier Mandel novels, which are more like near-future thrillers. In retrospect, you can see Hamilton evolving from the gritty, cyberpunk feel of his early books to the sweeping space adventure of his later stuff.

(True story: when we published those books at Tor, I actually forgot to tell the art department that Nano took place decades after the previous books--which is why Mandel still looked like a young man on the cover!)

 

[label]

It doesn't look overly sci-fi but it does look fun and an easy read. I was kind of hoping for some involved Sci-Fi battle/strategy/war kind of like the end of Wrath of Kahn or in the same vein as the Sanderson book from my first post but the Harrison stuff looks interesting as well.

Check out Peter Hamilton's stuff, starting with The Reality Dysfunction. Sounds like it might be right up your alley.

Alright, I think we have a winner:

I'll either start this series:

http://www.amazon.com/Pandoras-Star-ebook/dp/B000FC1AFC/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

or this series:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dreaming-...QLE/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2


It's description is 'an epic space opera'. It's available on the Kindle for $7. Both series sound epic and Sci-Fi/Space Opera. It's gotten great reviews and the description of the story sounds very much what I'm in the mood for.

I really appreciate all the suggestions and I've copied many of them down to my "to read" list.

 

[label]

Update: So before reading either of those series I read some more reviews and I got the sense from reviewers that with his books they can be

1) Gratuitously explicit (Sex/Language)
2) Overly verbose.

My favorite author is Stephen King so I'm certainly no prude, but I don't want a bunch of overly-used F bombs littered throughout for no reason as that'll tend to distract. Also, some have criticized his writing as being unnecessarily long and over-the-top descriptive.

So I've hesitated on starting either.

Instead I've started reading (I had already purchased it before starting this thread)

However, that book won't take more than a couple days an I'm considering :

http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Dragon...VU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1292045637&sr=1-10

To see what I think of the author. What's everyone think about that book as a representation of the author's work.

 

[label]

Update: So before reading either of those series I read some more reviews and I got the sense from reviewers that with his books they can be

1) Gratuitously explicit (Sex/Language)
2) Overly verbose.

My favorite author is Stephen King so I'm certainly no prude, but I don't want a bunch of overly-used F bombs littered throughout for no reason as that'll tend to distract. Also, some have criticized his writing as being unnecessarily long and over-the-top descriptive.

So I've hesitated on starting either.

Instead I've started reading (I had already purchased it before starting this thread)

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Gods-Te...2177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292097357&sr=8-1

However, that book won't take more than a couple days an I'm considering :

http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Dragon...VU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1292045637&sr=1-10

To see what I think of the author. What's everyone think about that book as a representation of the author's work.

 

[RandyS]

Parrallelities by Alan Dean Foster is another good one. A fun take on the concept of the Mulitverse.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Armor
Starship Troopers
Contact
Judas Unchained

 

[Iasius]

The two Antares novels deal with strategy on a grand scale.

In case you didn't know, Michael McCollum wrote a third book for that series: Antares Victory (2002). You can buy it here (his website).

However I haven't read it yet myself so I can't tell you how it compares to the earlier books.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ohh, Micheal McCollum is great. I only read one of his books, but I was rather impressed. It was Procyon's Promise, and if I remember correctly, it was part of a series, but it stood well enough on its own.

Robert J. Sawyer was already recommended, but I recommend his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. Very good stuff.

I also recommend Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear.

 

[Mistral]

The two Antares novels deal with strategy on a grand scale.

In case you didn't know, Michael McCollum wrote a third book for that series: Antares Victory (2002). You can buy it here (his website).

However I haven't read it yet myself so I can't tell you how it compares to the earlier books.

Thank you-I've always felt it needed more.....and never knew if he kept going.

RandyS has suggested one of the better things Foster has written in the last decade-check it out!

 

[JWolf]

You sound like you might like Robert J. Sawyer. Flashforward (which has a plot almost totally unrelated to the botched TV show based on it)

I've read Flashforward. Interesting premise, botched presentation.

 

[Ubik]

You sound like you might like Robert J. Sawyer. Flashforward (which has a plot almost totally unrelated to the botched TV show based on it)

I've read Flashforward. Interesting premise, botched presentation.

Robert J. Sawyer is awful. The fact that he's, apparently, the voice of Canadian sf is appalling to me. Mindscan wasn't bad, but both Hominids and Calculating God are cringe-inducingly unreadable. His writing feels fan-written, amateurish. He's got the emotional depth of a sitcom writer, but he tries to deal with plots straight out of Arthur C. Clarke. Ugh. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

 

[backstept]

The City and the Stars - Arthur C Clarke
Saturn's Children - Charles Stross

 

[Caliburn24]

Imagine the Enterprise finding the most important artifact in the universe. Now imagine it being hunted by fleets of warships from every spacefaring race in the Trek universe. Now imagine that Kirk, Spock and McCoy all sacrificed themselves months ago so that the Enterprise could escape. Now imagine that the crew of the Enterprise is all genetically engineered dolphins and monkeys, along with run of the mill humans, and they're all unable to return home to a blockaded Earth, and are being hounded by fleets of much more advanced and powerful alien ships.

That is what David Brin's novel Startide Rising could be described as, sort of.

It is a fabulous read.

 

[Starbreaker]

Imagine the Enterprise finding the most important artifact in the universe. Now imagine it being hunted by fleets of warships from every spacefaring race in the Trek universe. Now imagine that Kirk, Spock and McCoy all sacrificed themselves months ago so that the Enterprise could escape. Now imagine that the crew of the Enterprise is all genetically engineered dolphins and monkeys, along with run of the mill humans, and they're all unable to return home to a blockaded Earth, and are being hounded by fleets of much more advanced and powerful alien ships.

That is what David Brin's novel Startide Rising could be described as, sort of.

It is a fabulous read.

I've had the entire series sitting on my shelf for years but have never gotten around to it.

 

[UncleRogi]

I read through Firstborn: A Tor.Com Original to see if I liked Brandon Sanderson's style and the very short story (less than an hour to read) really whetted my appetite for a Sci-Fi story. (By the way, for Kindle owners, it's .99 cents and totally worth it)

I'm Not looking for Fantasy.....I've already got The Game of Thrones and The Mistborn Trilogy lined up to read once I get the itch read a fantasy again.

Some of the Sci-Fi I've read (and enjoyed) :
Ender's Game (through Children of the Mind)
Foundation Series
Mission:Earth
SnowCrash
Lots of Star Trek novels (I liked the Peter David ones best usually)

You get the picture. Hit me some suggestions please.

the best I can think of as a single title is This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, the author of Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives.