Sci-Fi books

[jmashore]

I have read so many books in my life but the one genre I have not delved into much is Sci-Fi.  I have been reading mostly Fantasy over the last 7 years or so and would like to get into SciFi.  It never interested me until I played the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect.  That game was so great and had such a good story that I want some more.  Can you please list some good authors and books to get my SciFi adventures started.  BTW, I have read a little of the Dune series and loved that.  I only read the first two because I felt the 2nd book was such a good ending that I would stop there for now.

[Thorum]

"Dreamsongs" by George Martin

 

Best-known for Song of Ice and Fire, but this is a collection of 20-50 pp. long scifi "articles". For about 1000 pp in total

[bRANDan]

I just picked up Dune, glad to hear you liked it. I like anything Isaac Asimov writes. Nemesis, The Gods Themselves, Foundation series, Nightfall.. He's written over 400 books, sci-fi and fantasy.

 

Here's a link:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/isaac-asimov/

[jmashore]

"Dreamsongs" by George Martin

 

Best-known for Song of Ice and Fire, but this is a collection of 20-50 pp. long scifi "articles". For about 1000 pp in total

 

I love his ASOIAF series but haven't read anything else except for Fevre Dream.  Are his Wild Card books any good?

[42Bonzo88]

    Orson Scott Card is good with both Sci Fi and Fantasy. His Ender's Game is very well done and if you like battlerooms he has a good one. Now, he has three other books in the Ender series when Ender is grown up and I didn't like them as much because the battleroom wasn't there. Now, he has gone back and wrote another book called Ender's Shadow, that tells the story of Ender's game but through another kids perspective. Then there are more books in the shadow series and they are good because they happen while the kids are still kids.

I agree with bRANDan concerning Asimov. Very good writer.

[Thorum]

"Dreamsongs" by George Martin

 

Best-known for Song of Ice and Fire, but this is a collection of 20-50 pp. long scifi "articles". For about 1000 pp in total

 

I love his ASOIAF series but haven't read anything else except for Fevre Dream.  Are his Wild Card books any good?

 

Don't know. I read asoiaf and dreamsongs.

[Vambram]

If you are going to read Asimov, then I highly recommend his Foundation series of novels. Excellent science fiction novels there, and I also highly recommend just about all of the novels by another giant in science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke.

[Werthead]

Among the better modern SF authors is Peter F. Hamilton. Hamilton writes two sorts of book. The first is the near-future detective thriller. He is good at this but there are others who are better (Richard Morgan for one). Still, his Greg Mandel Trilogy is very enjoyable.

 

The other type is the further-into-the-future gargantuam blockbuster space opera with absolutely tons of characters, storylines, enormous space battles and a relentless page-turning pace. His best work in this field is the excellent Night's Dawn Trilogy, which is what you'd get if you threw Isaac Asimov and Stephen King into a room together. Possibly. It's excellent, but difficult to summarise without spoilers. Essentially it's the story of the Confederation,a huge alliance of human worlds divided between Adamists - our descendants - and Edenists, a telepathic off-shoot of our race who use living starships. Both are shaken by the unleashing of a terrible, unstoppable force upon the galaxy known as the reality dysfunction.

 

More recently Hamilton has created a new space opera universe, called (slightly confusingly) the Commonwealth Universe. The first series set there was The Commonwealth Saga, a two-book series which depicts the investigation into the sudden disappearance of two stars 1,000 light-years from Earth. This turns out to have been a bad idea, with the unleashing of a devastating war upon humanity as the result. The Void Trilogy picks up the story some 1,200 years further into the future with a new mystery and a new threat for the Commonwealth to confront.

 

The Greg Mandel Trilogy

Mindstar Rising

A Quantum Murder

The Nanoflower

 

The Night's Dawn Trilogy*

The Reality Dysfunction

The Neutronium Alchemist

The Naked God

A Second Chance at Eden (short story collection set in the same universe)

The Confederation Handbook (guidebook to the setting)

 

* Note that the three individual novels of the NDT are so huge (1200 pages in the UK paperback editions) that the US editions are split in two volumes apiece.

 

The Commonwealth Saga

Pandora's Star

Judas Unchained

 

The Void Trilogy

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void (out in October)

The Evolutionary Void (due in late 2009/early 2010)

 

Also worth a look is Alastair Reynolds, who is darker and slightly more serious than Hamilton. His books are concerned with surgical alterations to humans in the future and have a 'goth' feel to them. He is far more scientifically stringent than other writers, who no FTL travel or communications. His signature setting is the Revelation Space Universe, which consists of a trilogy, two stand-alone novels, two novellas and a short story collection. If you are looking for somewhere to start, I suggest Chasm City, a stand-alone thriller.

 

The Revelation Space Trilogy

Revelation Space

Redemption Ark

Absolution Gap

 

Other Books in the Revelation Space Universe

The Prefect

Diamond Dogs, Turqoise Days

Chasm City

Galactic North

 

Non-RS Books

Century Rain

Pushing Ice

House of Suns

[jmashore]

I went to the library yesterday and picked out Foundation, by Isaac Asimov.  I am about 50 pages in and it is good so far.  Thanks for recommending it.