Wheel of Time... Sci-Fi

[andrewks]

I've been trying to find some Sci-Fi to get into, and I need some inspiration! Without getting too far off topic from the Wheel of Time, is there anything out there that is epic and spans many books with returning characters? You can eliminate the Dune series. I read the first book and enjoyed it, but put down Dune Messiah as soon as I knew how much time was skipped. Thanks for any suggestions. :)

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

dragonriders of pern is good if you;re not looking for something with too adult a level of writing. thomas covenant is good. um... there are a lot of threads on the boards with many more suggestions, you should check out general discussion.

[Suttree]

I've been trying to find some Sci-Fi to get into, and I need some inspiration! Without getting too far off topic from the Wheel of Time, is there anything out there that is epic and spans many books with returning characters? You can eliminate the Dune series. I read the first book and enjoyed it, but put down Dune Messiah as soon as I knew how much time was skipped. Thanks for any suggestions. :)

 

The Takeshi Kovacs novels...Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan.

 

Other poster was right that General Discussion would be the correct place for this thread.

[bsmnt23]

The Dresdon Files by Jim Butcher are my number one with a bullet. It's going on its 15th book this year, he puts out a book every year...unlike SOME authors...<ahem!> The main character is a scarcastic son of a bitch proffesional wizard in Chicago and it reads like an old noir private dick series. With magic. It's a good read; goo humor, good action and a great suporting cast. I found the first novel Stormfront a little shakey, but like the Eye of the World, it got better as it went on.

[Luckers]

I've heard good things about Kevin Anderson's scifi series, but I've never read it.

 

I've been trying to find some Sci-Fi to get into, and I need some inspiration! Without getting too far off topic from the Wheel of Time, is there anything out there that is epic and spans many books with returning characters? You can eliminate the Dune series. I read the first book and enjoyed it, but put down Dune Messiah as soon as I knew how much time was skipped. Thanks for any suggestions. :)

 

The Takeshi Kovacs novels...Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan.

 

Other poster was right that General Discussion would be the correct place for this thread.

 

Have you read the Steel Remains and Cold Commands--his fantasy series? Gollancz sent me them, and they're amazing. I was looking to see if anyone knew how his scifi fits up...

[Suttree]

I've heard good things about Kevin Anderson's scifi series, but I've never read it.

 

I've been trying to find some Sci-Fi to get into, and I need some inspiration! Without getting too far off topic from the Wheel of Time, is there anything out there that is epic and spans many books with returning characters? You can eliminate the Dune series. I read the first book and enjoyed it, but put down Dune Messiah as soon as I knew how much time was skipped. Thanks for any suggestions. :)

 

The Takeshi Kovacs novels...Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan.

 

Other poster was right that General Discussion would be the correct place for this thread.

 

Have you read the Steel Remains and Cold Commands--his fantasy series? Gollancz sent me them, and they're amazing. I was looking to see if anyone knew how his scifi fits up...

 

Hey Luckers, Happy New Year! Yeah I actually started off the same way, was into the fantasy series first. Cold Commands was one of my top five for this year. Ringal is ace, that dude is one of my favorite fantasy characters in a very long time.

 

I am actually not all that much into scifi so not much to compare to but they stack up very well in regards to his fantasy work. Excellent prose and I am willing to say if I was really into scifi they may be a touch better. Morgan just seems to be a bit more assured in that genre. Fast paced action without any throwaway scenes and unique investigation into the meaning of "being good" in a world where the rules of life an death have been very drastically changed.

[Sleeper]

I've been trying to find some Sci-Fi to get into, and I need some inspiration! Without getting too far off topic from the Wheel of Time, is there anything out there that is epic and spans many books with returning characters? You can eliminate the Dune series. I read the first book and enjoyed it, but put down Dune Messiah as soon as I knew how much time was skipped. Thanks for any suggestions. :)

 

The Takeshi Kovacs novels...Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan.

 

Other poster was right that General Discussion would be the correct place for this thread.

Superb series of books right there. OP, if you haven't read those, give 'em a shot. Morgan's a great author.

 

EDIT: Just saw what Lurk posted, and I'd recommend The Dresden Files as well. Good books.

[LeeM.Erickson]

Might as well go with the obvious here, but Dune has some similar themes as WoT.

[bsmnt23]

Well, Drewcifer did say fogetaboutit to the Dune epic, but I second Imerickson; dont sell it short based on Children of Dune. Dune is truly the SCIFI epic as it takes place over literaly thousands of years and throughout the entire universe. There are some jarring jumps in time and space from varius books, but ... trying not to give too much away here ... Paul works it all out in the end? should that suffice? Anyway, even the newer books about the "thinking machine wars" a thousand years before the events in Dune are all part of the picture.

[bsmnt23]

Also, the Honor Harrington books by David Webber are a taste of someting diferent. They fall under the category of military scifi and emphasize the "military" a great deal. Former US Army here, but I still like the aspects of the books that feels like it comes directly out US Navy docterine. There is nothing of Star Trek in this series; its an epic intersteller war accross decades staring a superhot female officer (who, for my money sets the impossile standard of the perfect officer) moving up through the ranks by kickng ass and taking names, the technology is impecably designed and the science as spot-on as scifi gets without getting into boring "hard" scifi.

 

Then there's the Reality Disfunction by Peter F Hammilton. Sweeping Space Opera in which humans have expanded out from earth to claim a huge confederation of stars but still ahve a lot of the same problems we ahve always had. Until they discover a new problem on a distant colony world and then have to deal with the sudden knowlege that humans have souls...and now they're coming back en mass to posses the living. Yeah...its Star Trek meets superzombies, kids. Mind. Blown. Only way better and with a LOT more sex and violence . The characters are wonderfuly diverse and the series has easily the single greatest resolution I have yet to read (here's to hoping for WoT, but not expecting it).

 

So. Yeah. I get a little caried away when talking about books.

 

*edited for more misspellings

[Werthead]

Most SF series are actually episodic, with recurring characters but the stories tend to be self-contained in each novel (like the HONOR HARRINGTON and TAKESHI KOVACS books and a few others).

 

For a WoT-style, 'one big story unfolding over lots of novels' story there are several possibilities:

 

1: The ROBOTECH series by Jack McKinney

Based on an animated series from the 1980s, the books have a YA feel to them (at least at the start). There's an SF/fantasy crossover, as the books revolve around a quasi-mystical energy source called protoculture, which is amazingly energy-efficient and may be alive one some level. An alien spacecraft carrying the only protoculture-creating matrix in existence crashes on Earth in 1999, staving off WW3 and forcing humanity to unite against a possible alien threat. Sure enough, ten years later the aliens show up looking for their ship, sparking off a massive war (humanity having reverse-engineered the alien tech in the meantime and having some sweet ships and fighters to resist the aliens with) that lasts generations and draws in several other races. Simplistically-written, but the story is fairly epic and interesting. There's twenty books in the series, collected into several omnibus editions. First book: GENESIS.

 

2: The GAP series by Stephen Donaldson

A five-volume sequence involving politics, space battles, fugitives on the run and an utterly alien race whose motives are confusing. An influence on the fantasy SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series (George R.R. Martin borrowed the rotating POV structure from the GAP sequence). The first book in the GAP series is very odd, and totally unlike the rest of the series which is more straightforward, so I'd read on into the second volume before making any final decisions (fortunately the first book is very short). First book: THE GAP INTO CONFLICT: THE REAL STORY.

 

3: The NIGHT'S DAWN TRILOGY by Peter F. Hamilton

This should be your first port of call. A huge trilogy (3600 pages long in paperback) featuring humanity under attack by an insidious threat that consumes people and turns them against one another. Politics, massive space battles and moral quandries. Darker and more violent than WoT, with a fair amount of sex, but this probably comes closest to what you are looking for. First book: THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION.

[brujah]

READ THE MALAZAN BOOKS. EPIC SERIES. VAST UNIVERSE. MULTIPLE BOOKS. 7 OR 8 SO FAR. I'M ON BOOK 4 AND IT'S THE ONLY SERIES THAT GETS ME AS EXCITED AS WOT. ALTHOUGH IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS WOT. BUT IT IS MAGNIFICENT! TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. I ASKED THE SAME QUESTION FOR A LONG TIME, AND LOOKED OVER THE MALAZAN BOOKS EVEN THOUGH SUGGESTED TO ME MANY TIMES. IT IS PHENOMENAL.

[redarm]

I'll seconed the Malazan series. Just finished book 8, Toll the Hounds. There are 10 total finishing with The Crippled God. Add to that a handful of outriggers that contain many of the same characters/places and expand/add to the main story. I would put it right up there with WOT although it is a bit darker and the plotlines are sometimes a little less obvious. Highly recommended.

[Red2111]

i've heard "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card is a good series as well, though i've not presonally read it. though i have read both is political thrillers and those were good *nods*

[mandersen]

i've heard "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card is a good series as well, though i've not presonally read it. though i have read both is political thrillers and those were good *nods*

 

Ender's Game, and subsequent Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind made a great series. Many liked ender's game and not the rest, but i loved all four. Not what i'd call epic though.

[andrewks]

Thanks everyone for the advice, there seems to be some good books listed!

[Werthead]

The MALAZAN series is good, but it's fantasy, not SF.

[Owayn The Traveller]

Haven't read much sci fi. Trying to get into it a bit more. Werthead's post has some interesting ones there, might even try the gap series myself, but I might as well throw out a few I fancied. Joe handleman's Forever War, Richard Mathenson's The Incrediable Shrinking Man, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and Replay by Ken Grimwood.

All of them are fairly old and then to be light on science but have some interesting ideas in them and Flowers is excellent.