what is your favorite Sci Fi fiction?

[JitterbugPerfume]

mine is "A Canticle For Liebowitz" by Walter M Miller Jr. After a nuclear deluge Issac Edward Liebowitz dedicated his life to the preservation of scraps of information left over from the deluge . The Catholic Monks continue the preservation , and name Liebowitz a Saint .It takes you through the ages to a Renaissance and beyond . This a a VERY good book.

PK Dick is a close second .

What is yours?

[rucky]

1. I'm a big Dick fan

that didn't come out right.

But I'll take your rec on Walter Miller.

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. you wont be disappointed!

LOL:hi:

[Poll_Blind]

2. Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan both by Vonnegut.

There are parts in those books, which I must've read three times each, where I can't help but put down the book and weep.

PB

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. Vonnegut is in a category of his own

in my mind , no one can compare.

[Onceuponalife]

56. I was obsessed with Sirens of Titan as a teenager

I read it 3 or 4 times. I really need to read it again, along with Cat's Cradle. It made an awesome movie in my mind, but for some reason, no one has managed to bring it to the silver screen yet.

Oh, and Kilgore Trout is God.

[gateley]

3. Bookmarking because I want to get into SciFi fiction more. The

ones I have enjoyed are the Ender series (you can tell I'm a neophyte!), a favorite was Virtual Death, a One Hit Wonder by I believe a teacher writing under a pseudonym, and my fave of all time was Snow Crash -- LOVED that book!

Open to any recommendations. :hi:

[JitterbugPerfume]

6. that is one more reason I love DU!

you can always find good stuff here! Have you read Vonnegut? That would be a really good place to start.

[gateley]

8. No I haven't, and I'm seeing that I should! I'm of course familiar

with who he is but for some reason it never occurred to me to actually READ his stuff!

That's where I'll start!

And no kidding about DU! No matter what question somebody asks me I go "I'll ask DU" and there are ALWAYS people who know the answer and are willing to help out! I've searched on Google for stuff to no avail, come here, and I get numerous links and explanations. Amazing! :pals:

[DustyJoe]

7. So Many Faves

Chris Cole 'Sten' series
and
Lois Bujold 'Vorkosigan' series

Top my list.

[JitterbugPerfume]

10. I haven't read those

maybe I should?

[getting old in mke]

46. 'Nother vote for Miles!

[MicaelS]

55. Another vote for Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Vorkosigan' series

If you have never read the series, I urge you to do so in the strongest possible terms. Most of the books are available online for free. Bujold is a great writer, she truly understands men, and writes Miles Vorkosigan like a real man thinks.

[patrice]

9. As literature, McCarthy's The Road; as Science Fiction, Frank Herbert's Dune

Hard to pick though, because Orson Scott Card ranks real high with me too and Miller's Canticle for Liebowitz also ranks up there near the top.

[JitterbugPerfume]

13. The Road

is really intense ! I loved it .

Dune is also a long time favorite . Did you see the Sci Fi Channel series a couple of years ago? It was really good.

I miss the long involved discussions we used to have on books , but DU has changed--some good , some bad .

Mostly good.

[patrice]

16. Missed that Dune miniseries, should look for it in Netflix.

DU has changed.

I believe there are ir-reconcilable and, apparently, intolerable differences over Obama.

My life is changing AGAIN, so I don't spend as much time here as I used to.

[bread_and_roses]

19. And I hardly ever read fiction of any sort anymore...

...my loss. But I find the "real world" (and what is that, one might say, if one listens to the physicists, even without understanding them?) stranger than any fiction could possibly be these days.

[patrice]

20. That would limit my participation in discussion too.

[shimmergal]

11. Joan D. Vinge's

Snow Queen-World's End - Summer Queen trilogy, a much underappreciated trilogy.

[bread_and_roses]

12. "The Dispossessed" - LeGuin/ "Stand on Zanzibar" - Brunner

I've re-read "Dispossessed" many times and gotten something out of it every time.

A close second would be "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner.

I also like PK Dick.

I didn't care for "Canticle" - thought it was boring. Different strokes for different folks, though. That's doesn't mean it's not a "good" book - just that it did nothing for me.

[JitterbugPerfume]

14. well it would be a boring world

if we were all the same. I have never read Le Guin.

[patrice]

18. Oh yeah! Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar & The Sheep Look Up

[bengalherder]

24. Love Brunner.

Stand on Zanzibar holds up very well today.

[patrice]

25. John Brunner was a visionary, ergo the Hugo Award for Zanzibar. He also wrote a more

poetic novella called The Traveler in Black.

Love how Zanzibar ends with the ultimate "indignity"; they discover how to make Love into an aerosol.

[mitchtv]

15. "the Moon Maid" Edgar Rice Burroughs

along with his "martian series" or John Carter series.

[Casandia]

38. Planned to read those, but

I kept reading his Tarzan series, then moved on to other writers. Time to go to the library! :)

[WaitingforKarlRove]

61. I loved the John Carter of Mars series

I couldn't get enough of Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was young.

[arendt]

17. Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds

The Revelation Space series includes five novels, two novellas, and eight short stories set over a span of several centuries, spanning approximately 2200 to 40 000, although the novels are all set in a 300 year period spanning from 2427 to 2727. In this universe, extraterrestrial sentience exists but is elusive, and interstellar travel is primarily undertaken by a class of vessel called a lighthugger which only approaches the speed of light (faster than light travel is possible, but it is so dangerous that no race uses it). Fermi's paradox is explained as resulting from the activities of an inorganic alien race referred to by its victims as the Inhibitors, which exterminates sentient races if they proceed above a certain level of technology. The trilogy consisting of Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap deal with humanity coming to the attention of the inhibitors and the resultant war between them.

----------

This stuff is up to date. Written from 2000 to 2003, it feels very real. The characters are real, not cardboard cutouts. I especially love the chain-smoking ultra, Ilya Volodya. Its no accident that the plot starts out making sly references to "Dark Star".

[On the Road]

21. Haven't Read Sci-Fi Lately

but when I did, I enjoyed Paul Theroux's "O-Zone" immensely. Theroux mostly writes mainstream novels and travel books, and he incorporates a lot of his observations of third-world societies and economics into O-Zone.

[PDJane]

22. CJ Cherry....especially her 'Foreigner' series,

I am awaiting her latest next month. Weber's Honor Harrington Series. For lighter fare, Pratchett is useful. Oh, yes, and Tanya Huff.

[bengalherder]

23. Dick, Stephenson, Gibson, DiPhilippo

But I have found a new love who writes in many genres including hard sci-fi: Dan Simmons.

Edit to add one of my all-time faves: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

[YankeyMCC]

26. Empire, Robot and Foundation novels by Asimov

- Those are my most dear and re-read SF books.

That said, much of that love includes acceptance at the limitations Isaac Asimov had as a storyteller.

So, other highly treasured SF books.

- Hitchhiker's Guide stories by Doug Adams - It's always struck me as a bit funny that the HHGG presents pretty much a 180 degree different view of the idea of a galactic society from the Foundation series. Asimov presented a galaxy that could, however imperfectly, actually be governed as a single political entity, Adams would have non of that, no way such a large, really unbelievably, incredibly, really just huge, society could ever make an sense to our puny little brains.

- I'll second the mention of Revelation Space - but if you want something shorter and just as great to get a taste of Alastair Reynolds try "Pushing Ice"

- Red/Green/Blue Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson

I could go on and on but let me at least leave this one last recomendation.

Paolo Bacigalupi - Keep watching for his stories, "The Windup Girl" is going to be mentioned in the same breath as many other classics in SF.

IMHO

[patrice]

27. Those were spouse #1 & #2's favorites. And just about everyone loves Stranger in a Strange Land or

just any Heinlein.

[patrice]

28. Assimov used to Edit & publish a monthly Science Fiction digest of NEWER authors.

I have a crate of them in the basement.

[JitterbugPerfume]

29. there was a news stand on my way to school

when I was about 12-13 yr old that had newspapers from all over and it seemed like millions of magazines . On a "special" rack up front was Sci fi magazines like Amazing Stories with monsters and damsels in distress on the cover .

I would sneak a furtive glance at them , but in the mid 1950s a girl didn't even THINK of reading them unless she accidentally found them under her brothers mattress with other interesting stuff, but that is another story altogether.

It was in this same book nook that I later found my first issue of Discover and Omni magazines . I loved Omni and read every issue of it cover to cover

[patrice]

31. Omni was cool! . . . a real treat!

[YankeyMCC]

30. I subscribe

http://www.asimovs.com/2011_04-05/index.shtml

Actually short stories make up the bulk of my SF reading these days.

[patrice]

32. Thanks for the info!

[JitterbugPerfume]

34. Thanks

that looks interesting .

[RebelOne]

33. Anything written by Ray Bradbury

"The Martian Chronicles" has always been my favorite sci fi book.

[JitterbugPerfume]

35. Bradbury had a TV show several years ago

It was so cool! Other than Dr Who and Torchwood re runs I don't know of any other really good Sci fi on TV , and they are on BBC.

[RebelOne]

59. I know. I used to watch it. n/t

[pitohui]

36. pk dick, iain banks, alastair reynolds, peter hamilton, kim stanley robinson...

apparently i like modern space opera, clearly, i like the idea of a positive future yet it still has real humanity in it

some of these authors have set very difficult tasks for themselves indeed, the original form of space opera was a bit irritating and cartoonish (think star wars series for a movie version, just silliness in space with some princesses and outer space bombs)

[Casandia]

37. (Other than Slaughterhouse Five) Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart. It's probably out of print...bought the paperback in 1972. One of the most powerful books I have EVER read.

[SheilaT]

39. I have LOTS of favorites.

Currently I'm quite fond of the novels by Robert Charles Wilson and Robert J. Sawyer. Both are Canadian and seem to me to be much more imaginative than the current American authors. Sawyer wrote Flashforward, which was made into a pretty decent TV series. He also has a trilogy about humans from our world connecting to an alternate universe in which Homo Sapiens never evolved, and Neanderthals are the dominant Hominid. Really good.

Wilson has written some of my all time favorites, including A Bridge of Years. A man buys an abandoned home in the Pacific Northwest sometime in the early 1990's, as I recall, and discovers a tunnel from his basement to 1964 New York City.

I especially like time travel and alternate universe stories, so I like Connie Willis a lot.

One all time favorite is Time and Again by Jack Finney, as well as the sequel, From Time to Time. Love them both.

Others have already mentioned Harry Turtledove, and I want to recommend a novel of his I rarely see mentioned. A World of Difference is about an alternate universe in which our planet Mars is much larger, just about the size of Earth, and therefore kept its atmosphere and surface water, and intelligent life evolved there.

Another favorite AU novel is Alternaties by Michael Kube-McDowell. An earth not our own, discovers portals to alternate earths and a very repressive government controls those portals, and the trade between worlds. Complications ensue.

Another time travel novel I love is Time on My Hands by Peter delaCorte. A young man, while visiting a museum in Paris, falls into conversation with another American who provides him with a time machine and asks that he use it to go back and ensure that Ronald Reagan never become president.

[Casandia]

40. Oh wow - forgot Time and Again!

Great book.

[pitohui]

45. check out "century rain" by alastair reynolds

i have a very strong sense that you will be pleased

not familiar w. peter delacorte, but that "time on my hands" sounds like something i MUST find

[Mz Pip]

41. Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clark.

City and Way Station by Clifford Simak.

I like Isaac Asimov's books too.

[WaitingforKarlRove]

62. Childhood's End is up there at the top

I'll never forget the scene at the bullfight. It appealed to my sense of fair play.

[JitterbugPerfume]

42. The Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy series

Douglas Adams style has been compared to Lewis Carrol (Alice in Wonderland)

42 is the answer to everything!

[fadedrose]

43. THE MINERVAN EXPERIMENT by James P. Hogan

It's a giant book made up of 3 books, which are:

Inherit the Stars, Meet the Giants, and The Giants' Star.

Took a long time to read, but it was very good. Tells how we got here and where we came from and how...very engrossing.

[fadedrose]

44. Can't recall the title, but C. S. Lewis wrote a trilogy...

About a guy named Ransom who is transported to 3 different planets. It was so many years ago, I can't remember how he got there and back.

At the time I loved the triology, but after a few years, I viewed it differently. The book was totally against DNA science although C.S. Lewis was very liberal about smoking, etc., and that's why I liked the books so much - I smoked.

[mzteris]

47. Bear, Benford, Willis, Farmer, Kress

Silverberg, Moorcook, Asimov, Robinson (Kim Stanley), Simmons, Delaney, Swanwick, Bova, Kessel, Clarke, Gaiman, Sterling, Stirling, Gibson, Kelly (james patrick), Melissa Scott, Tepper, Butler (Olivia), Swanick, Stephenson, Haddon, Moon, Jo Clayton, Wingrove, then there's the &F part of the SF&F though some of the aforementioned fit this category as well: Wolfe, Kay, McKinley, LeGuin, Alexander,

Orson Scott Card? :puke: :puke: :puke:

because he IS one.

I used to like him, but the man is seriously f'd up and he projects that in his books. It "seems" okay until you really analyze what he's saying/advocating - think about it. Kill your oppressors, obliterate them. Domination by hook or by crook.

He has some very creepy underage sex, not to mention other sick twists in many of his books. (The Treasure Box, Wyrms, Lost Boys (not the movie) . . . )

The man is an ass with a christ-complex. He will never get another penny from me.

[Forkboy]

48. The Years of Rice and Salt, easily the most fascinating novel I've ever read in any genre.

Kim Stanley Robinson was already my favorite sci-fi writer with his early works, especially his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), but this one made him my favorite writer period. He tends to do very "hard" sci-fi, but The Years of Rice and Salt is, dare I say, almost spiritual. All his books have a strong Buddhist/Humanist feel to them, and this one really delves into it. There's a section called Wealth and the Four Great Inequalities that should be mandatory reading, which can be read here...
http://mitakuyeoyasinn.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

The book is set between about A.D. 1405 (783 solar years since the Hegira, by the Islamic calendar used in the book), and A.D. 2002 (1423 after Hegira). In the eighth Islamic century, almost 99% of the population of Medieval Europe is wiped out by the Black Death (rather than the approximately 30-60% that died in reality). This sets the stage for a world without Christianity as a major influence.

The novel follows a jāti of three to seven main characters and their reincarnation through the centuries in very different cultural and religious settings. The book features Muslim, Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American Indian, and Hindu culture, philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with their imagined global development in a world without Western Christendom.

The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a narrative style which reflects its setting/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt

For the most part, what a novelist tries to do with any given book is far less important that what he or she actually manages to accomplish, but it's impossible to read "The Years of Rice and Salt" without stopping now and then to contemplate the vastness of the task Robinson has set himself. Think of the challenges in writing a novel that ranges over seven centuries and most of the globe -- then imagine having to concoct all of the history for it as well, each year building on the events of the year before and taking Robinson's conjectural world further from the one we know. Creating a credible depiction of 10th century Beijing may seem relatively easy, but as time rolls on how will exploration unfold, civilizations bloom, technology and ideas evolve in a world where Christianity is a mere footnote and the great campaigns of Western colonialism have never taken place?

After having cut out so much cerebral work for himself, Robinson could hardly be blamed if he lost track of more intimate matters in this book. But perhaps what's most remarkable about "The Years of Rice and Salt" is the way it hews so closely to the lineaments of the human heart even as it fans out across such a mammoth stage. To carry us over many years and to many lands, Robinson uses the device of reincarnation; the novel is divided into 10 "books," each one set in a different part of the world at a different point in time, yet the central characters are fundamentally the same, even if sometimes they're men, sometimes women and once, memorably, one is reborn as a tiger. To help the reader find her way, Robinson makes sure that in each new incarnation a soul's name always begins with the same letter.

The players are: K, a classically choleric type who first appears as a young African boy sold as a slave to a Chinese merchant fleet and castrated by imperial eunuchs (bodily mutilation is a recurring theme in K's incarnations); B, a compassionate and gentle individual, initially a Mongolian horseman who witnesses firsthand the plague-stricken ghost villages of Europe; I, a scholar of omnivorous intellectual appetite who we first meet as a Hangzhou restaurateur who acquires an encyclopedic knowledge of China's fabled cuisine. (There are some other recurring figures as well, but these three are the main ones.) After their deaths, the characters meet up in a place between lives called the "bardo" where the gods preside over the judgment of the dead. Only in the bardo do they fully recognize each other and grasp their eternal identities.

http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2002/03/06/europe/

It came out in 2003 and I've already read it three times, getting new stuff from it each time. It's grand in scope, and a tour de force of writing and ideas. And the last line is wonderfully poetic. Best book I've ever read, as the length of this post might indicate. :)

[JitterbugPerfume]

49. that sounds great Forkboy!

It is on my list. What else can you recommend by this author? The Mars books?

what else?

[Forkboy]

50. His latest is a book called Galileo's Dream, which is really fun.

In a novel of stunning dimensions, the acclaimed author of the MARS trilogy brings us the story of the incredible life -- and death -- of Galileo, the First Scientist. Late Renaissance Italy still abounds in alchemy and Aristotle, yet it trembles on the brink of the modern world. Galileo's new telescope encapsulates all the contradictions of this emerging reality. Then one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through. Galileo is not sure if he is in a dream, an enchantment, a vision, or something else as yet undefined. The blasted wasteland he sees when he points the telescope at Jupiter, of harsh yellows and reds and blacks, looks just like hell as described by the Catholic church, and Galileo is a devout Catholic. But he's also a scientist, perhaps the very first in history. What he's looking at is the future, the world of Jovian humans three thousand years hence. He is looking at Jupiter from the vantage point of one of its moons whose inhabitants maintain that Galileo has to succeed in his own world for their history to come to pass. Their ability to reach back into the past and call Galileo "into resonance" with the later time is an action that will have implications for both periods, and those in between, like our own. By day Galileo's life unfurls in early seventeenth century Italy, leading inexorably to his trial for heresy. By night Galileo struggles to be a kind of sage, or an arbiter in a conflict ...but understanding what that conflict might be is no easy matter, and resolving his double life is even harder. This sumptuous, gloriously thought-provoking and suspenseful novel recalls Robinson's magnificent Mars books as well as bringing to us Galileo as we have always wanted to know him, in full.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Dream

Before that he did a trilogy on climate change called the Science in the Capital trilogy. The books are Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting. Despite my own hardcore cynicism, KSR doesn't do dystopian stuff, and always has a positive vibe. This trilogy is no exception, despite the serious topic.

Personally, I don't think you can wrong with any of his stuff.

I will give a warning. KSR has some parts to his books that some find very dry. It doesn't bother me at all, but it's the one complaint I've heard about him.

Here's his wiki page. He's a cool guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson

[pitohui]

53. i can recommend "the gold coast" by KSR

although every time i read it i cry, very sad, so fair warning if you don't like a sad book...

[JitterbugPerfume]

54. thanks

I will check it out

[SheilaT]

51. YES! One of the all-time great alternate

history books out there, and it just isn't very well known, so far as I can tell.

Several years ago my s-f book club read it, and I was quite distressed that at least one person in the group totally misunderstood the underlying logic, and at least one other had very negative opinions about Islam and so simply didn't like the book at all. And this is a group who reads lots and lots of s-f, and the group has been meeting now for at least fifteen years.

I should reread it.

[Forkboy]

52. There is a decent amount of RW sci-fi fans and authors.

Sadly. So those responses don't entirely surprise me, though it kind of bums me out that people are missing out on a truly soul enriching novel. It really had an impact on me, so it's sad when people willingly shut themselves off from any chance of feeling that same thing that I felt when I closed that novel. It's it's own way it was as close to the spiritual as I've ever gotten. That's how poetic and right this book felt to me. To give you some context, I listen to "Satanic" Black Metal on an almost daily basis (though I believe in neither God nor Satan), so for a book to hit me in such a spiritual way really speaks volumes, even more so coming from a writer known for "hard" sci-fi.

Just talking about it with you and Jitterbug makes me want to read it yet again. :)

[Odin2005]

64. I love that book, it's EPIC in it's awesomeness.

[Onceuponalife]

57. My all-time favorite is The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Unfortunately, I believe it is out of print (I still have my same copy from 30 years ago!). It is about a man who can chage reality with his dreams. Whatever he dreams happens and only he can remember the old realities. Then he is exploited by a crazy therapist who attempts to create a utopia. It blew my mind as a teenager and I've been a Le Guin fan ever since.

Others I can highly recommend are the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke (the ending of the last book made me cry!), Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Speaker For the Dead by Orson Scott Card (the best Ender novel, imo), the Commonwealth Series (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained) by Peter F. Hamilton, Dune by Frank Herbert (only read the first one so far), and just about anything by Stephen Baxter. I also like alien invasion novels like Niven's Footfall and end-of-the-world scenarios like King's The Stand and Kevin J. Anderson's Ill Wind.

I'll be reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt sometime this year for sure. Cheers, Forkboy!:toast:

[pscot]

58. Canticle for Liebowitz

is my gold standard, but I've read ém all. The best I've read recently was A Fire on the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.

[closeupready]

60. I would have to say Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke.

Or else House on the Borderland, both of which I devoured in a single sitting.

[Odin2005]

63. Issac Asimov, AC Clarke, Frank Herbert, and KSR.

I grew up reading Asimov's Robot and Foundation books; Clarke's 2001 and Rama books; Herbert's Dune books; and Robinson's Mars trilogy.

[raccoon]

65. DYING INSIDE by Robert Silverberg, ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank,

as well as some other stuff already mentioned here.

[RebelOne]

69. Read Alas Babylon. There was also a movie made based on the book.n/t

[pitohui]

66. well i hate to pick favorites but there's some good stuff out there

i actually saw this thread some time ago and just put a quick note or two before but there's an awful lot of great stuff out there

pkdick is prob. my favorite, such stories as "the martian time-slip" which is both science fiction but also about suburbia or "the three stigmata of palmer eldrich" which is sf but also about drugs, reality, striving...if anyone described the downwardly mobile formerly middle class person bettter than he, i don't know who it would be...he knows what it's like to have your grasp always exceed your reach

but there are great writers working now, and for positive futures i am a great fan of iain banks, if you can read only one, "the algebraist" is just wonderful

but i would start with "consider phlebas" if you want to know where modern space opera got its start--hell of a read!!!

niven, card, heinlein etc. they're all thin gruel next to the rich brew that banks dreams up, people ask me why i find "stars wars" movie thin gruel, hell, i'm spoiled by visionaries like banks!

peter hamilton is wonderful space opera also, someone mentioned "pandora's star," etc. in this thread already

pkdick and ksrobinson touch my heart with their people & images, pkdick i think has nostalgia for a life he/we never quite had, robinson quite obviously has nostalgia for the lost world of our frontier and our beautiful landscapes...but i also like the BIG stories too that banks and hamilton pull off with such ease

i get impatient with too much war and writing diagrams but i liked greg bear's "blood music" very much and many people like hubby love anything bear comes out with

there's a lot of good stuff out there, too much to keep track of

i think i have tired of apocalypse/depressing end of the world stuff, i had no patience for "the road," it seemed like beautiful sculpted crap to me

[Curmudgeoness]

67. Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. nt

[BlueIris]

68. I like good ole' Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles, especially. nt