Science Fiction Novels
This is like my fantasy novels thread. I was going to wait a while to create this, but I really am interested in seeing Pike and Mister Adequate's suggestions.
Edit: I hit post too soon. What are your favorite sci-fi novels/stories? What are the things you look for in a good sci-fi story?
H.G. Wells - "The Time Machine", "War of The Worlds", "The Island of Dr. Moreau". FANTASTIC page-turning classic Victorian science fiction. The Island of Dr. Moreau is actually my personal favorite of his - I read it all in one sitting.
Jules Verne - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "Around the World in Eighty Days", etc. More classic Victorian sci-fi. Where Wells focused on the "fiction", Verne tended to focus on the "science", so his stuff can be a tougher read but he made some astonishingly mindblowing predictions about the future.
Isaac Asimov - "I, Robot" series, "Foundation" series (esp. the original Foundation Trilogy) - I don't even know where to begin with how good this stuff is, Foundation is just a brilliant series and some of the story twists are just magical. Also READ HIS SHORT STORIES THEY'RE SO GOOD ASL;KGFHA;SELTR
Robert A. Heinlein - he has a lot of stuff but read "Starship Troopers"; if you can get past his weird author monologues about spanking kids this is a real jewel of a book that brings a real human element to the idea of blasting bugs.
Phillip K. Dick - "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - turned into Blade Runner. Recommended.
William Gibson - "Neuromancer" - THE ultimate cyberpunk story and probably one of the greatest in that genre, if not THE greatest. A real mind-bender of a read.
Stanislaw Lem - "Solaris" - A neato read that makes the alien, well, alien. This guy also has some brilliant short stories.
And, of course:
Douglas Adams - "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - quite possibly the funniest book I've ever read.
I'm sure later I'll be kicking myself for forgetting somebody but hopefully Mister Adequate can pick up my slack
Everything Pike recommends is great, but let's see what I can add to the pile!
The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks - These are probably my favorite sci-fi novels ever, when taken as a whole. He imagines a world of astonishing depth and variety, the stories themselves are gripping and deeply meaningful, and the Culture is one of the most interesting settings I've ever seen, somehow entirely plausible despite being utopian. There are quite a few books in the Culture series and none are required to enjoy any others, though some are linked. Start with The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, and/or Excession.
Dune by Frank Herbert - Astonishing in every facet. Tells the story of Maud'dib, or Paul Atreides, as he joins the inhabitants of the titular Dune in their quest to overthrow the Empire which oppresses them, all in an effort to control the Spice that makes hyperspace travel, and the attendant interstellar society, possible. Astonishing in complexity and the richness of the setting. The other Dune books range from "Pretty good" to "Avoid at all costs" but the original is one of the best books ever written, genre be damned.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Atwood's work often has an implicit or explicit sci-fi setting, but this one is perhaps her best of all. Subtle, clever, and by far one of the most terrifyingly believable dystopias ever put to paper.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - I praise Atwood as a terrifyingly believable dystopia, but it pales in comparison to this one. The World State is the singularly most effective dystopian government (in the storytelling sense) in any sci-fi I have ever come across, for one simple reason: You can just as easily argue that it is a utopia. Crime is gone, free sex is safe, people use recreational drugs daily, there is little inequality, and the standard of living is tremendously high. The cost, though, is presented with astonishing acumen by Huxley. It's not a deliberately evil or cruel state and it's not run by some sacrificing a newborn every day to run it or anything like that. It's deeply provocative and I personally have always found it far, far more effective than the better-known 1984 by George Orwell.
Ringworld by Larry Niven - as much as I love dystopian fiction, the best sci-fi for me is always that which creates a world worth exploring. Ringworld is one of the prime examples of that, as the small group of adventurers travels to the impossible Ringworld to find out how it could have been built, and by whom.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - The book to refer to when wanting to know how to craft a mystery and keep the reader deeply interested in it. The alien craft, named Rama by humans, hurtles through the solar system with tremendous speed. The only ship that can hope to intercept and explore it is not trained or equipped for the task, and will not have long aboard it, so the desperation of the efforts to learn all that is possible in this extremely hard-science setting is palpable. It also contains the single best final line in any book I have ever read.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman - This is not actually a story about war itself to a large extent, though that does feature. Rather, it's an allegory for real soldiers who come back from combat to find home has changed dramatically. Haldeman does an extremely effective job in exploring the dislocation of these soldiers and the shortcomings of the generally well-meaning government that, as repeated campaigns make Earth more and more alien to the protagonist.
The Stars my Destination also known as Tiger! Tiger! by Alfred Bester - A tremendous tale of revenge that gripped me from start to finish with inventiveness and a very, very flawed protagonist.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Millar, Jr. - An all-time classic that has long since broken out of the sci-fi pigeonhole, but it remains fundamentally of that genre. It centers around a monastery established in the aftermath of a horrific nuclear war, which dedicates itself to the preservation of knowledge as society crumbles and turns explicitly against all learning as responsible for the 'Flame Deluge'. The novel spans almost two millennia, covering three distinct eras in the history of the Order, and it's all brilliant and will stay with you long after the last page.
Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson - Red, Green, and Blue Mars. If you want hard sci-fi with a thorough and deep political exploration of Martian colonization, this is pretty much the only book in the game. Fortunately, it's also a tremendously brilliant one that shows some of the very best aspects of sci-fi.
If you can find it, any Tumithak short story by Charles R. Tanner is very much worth the read. They were written in the 30s and have the definite "pulp adventure" feel of the era about them, but were radically ahead of their time and in my mind it's a great sin that these have become so forgotten.
Pike gave some great suggestions! I'd addin from Jules Verne 80 Days in a Baloon, and also Journey to the Interior of the Earth. Both of those are great reads.
I forget who wrote it but a quick google search should find it, The book the Frozen Pirate is also a great Victorian style read.
Staying with Classics, history wise G.A. Henty had great stories that told history in a new light, and I always enjoyed his books as well. His standout books were The White Hoods of Paris, and True to the Old Flag. Just a warning with Henty though, his books do get a little God heavy at times.
I've read most of the books on Pike's list and to be honest, none of them ever really did much for me. I do have 'Do Androids...' on my list to read someday. There have however been many other sci-fi novels that I've loved:
Ender Series - Ender's Game is a stand alone story and possibly my favorite sci-fi of all time. I love the games and how Ender rises through the ranks of battle school. The other three books in the 'first' Ender chronology are more like a continuing trilogy, but I loved them too. I love the philosophical/psychological themes explored by the series particularly when it comes to intelligent life in the last three books. I also read Ender's Shadow and it was interesting but not in the same league as his original work.
Dune - A definitive book in the genre. It's kind of the traditional Dances with Wolves type story but in space and with a lot of awesome kick-ass characters.
Hyperion - I just got into this series and I'm on the third book. I loved the first two books. The first one is written as a series of 7 independent but connected stories and the second book ties it all together. I loved the different styles of the stories and how it deals with some of the standard sci-fi themes of large interplanetary empires and our reliance on technology.
Brave New World - This one kind of started it all and it is creepy of how contemporary it was with it's vision of the future. It is much more in line with the traditional sci-fi novel that deals more with the setting and world than some epic tale but I still really liked it.
In general, I prefer more of the 'science fantasy' type stories than the traditional 'science fiction'. I like stories about epic adventures with a lot of stand-out characters. Ender, Dune, and Hyperion definitely fall more into that category. Hitchhiker's is also like that, but the type of humor in it wasn't really my style and you really have to get the humor to enjoy that one.
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Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide is definitely one of my all-time favorites.
One of my more modern favorites is Neal Stephenson's Anathem. It's very dense, and my first time through it took me 100 pages just to be able to start reading at a normal pace with all the made-up vocabulary, but it's an absolutely fascinating novel featuring awesome stuff like quantum physics and parallel universes.
I was much more of a fantasy genre reader growing up, so I'm still sorely lacking in a lot of science fiction knowledge. It's something I've been meaning to work on for years now.
Weirdly enough I never especially liked this series. I mean it was okay, and the second one (Speaker for the Dead) was probably the best of the lot. But I never got the extreme love a lot of people have for it. Orson Scott Card has a couple of decent short stories that I liked better than the entire Ender series.Originally Posted by Del Murder
Anyways I just realized I'm forgetting out on some MICHAEL CRICHTON! Jurassic Park is obviously a classic but I think Timeline is my favorite of all his books. Even if the movie sucked.
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson is a good one, if you're into dystopian futures & steampunk. I also recommend his novel Darwinia.
I agree. I was underwhelmed by Ender's Game after all the hype from my friends about it, and that was even before I knew what a huge douchebag Orson Scott Card is.Weirdly enough I never especially liked this series. I mean it was okay, and the second one (Speaker for the Dead) was probably the best of the lot. But I never got the extreme love a lot of people have for it. Orson Scott Card has a couple of decent short stories that I liked better than the entire Ender series.
Ender's Game, for many of the reasons Murder listed. The constant internal struggle Ender faces paired with the insane amount of pressure and mind games he endures makes for such an interesting story. Everything about his world from his struggles to balance between Peter and Valentine, finding his place in Battle School, his personal relationships with Graff and his fellow students, his dealings with Mazer Rackham and right down to the fairyland game and of course, the war. It's all such a wonderful construct of living in the mind of a genius who doesn't know he's a genius while he tries to survive being born the wrong child in the family and signing his soul away to do what he perceives as right for the human race.
What I love about Ender is that despite being the exceptional strategic genius that he is, his humanity manifests in confusion and lack of confidence in some of his choices and encounters with others, especially with dealing with people he cares for. The science feature factors here are war with a deadly alien race, space flight and colonization, "the miracle of relativity", futuristic programming, etc. War games in zero gravity.
I have loved this book for a very long time, and have been reading it over and over since I was ten years old and love it implicitly.
Speaker for the Dead - The second novel in the Ender quadrilogy with just as much of a striking story as the first book but in a totally and completely different direction. There's such a heavy element of pain and shame, but also hope. The entire theme of Speaker for the Dead, to me, is hope. Science fiction elements present in this book are space flight, off-Earth colonization and their recovery from a particularly deadly alien virus as a result of their exposure to the environment, xenology and xenobiology, introduction to a curious and peaceful-seeming new alien race who, for unexplained reasons, become particularly violent and murderous toward the xenologers and xenobiologists who study them, the unique alien environment and how the colonists manage life there, artificial intelligence beings, futuristic technology, and again, time and space relativity once more. There are so many incredible factors here that even without Ender, this story would still be amazing on its own. He is a shining beacon of the humility of humanity, though. He is my literary husband.
I've also always been specifically attached to this book because of the utterly shredded Ribeira family is, how dysfunctional they are, and for the pain they wallow in. It reminded me a lot of my family as I grew up, and I clung to this book a lot in the midst of some heavy things that happened in my family when I was young.
I'd also say many others that Pike has suggested - War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Also go for Starship Troopers and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov are the godfathers of science fiction, as far as I am concerned!
I'm very surprised no one has mentioned A Wrinkle In Time yet! It's such a wonderful series! Though obviously written for young people, I still think that the stories Madeleine L'Engel stand through even reaching adulthood.
For those with a specific interest in alien dealings, I would suggest recommended reading of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature. It features waves of concept drawings of life from many famous science fiction novels. There's an online version of it here with a link to all of the drawings uploaded. The entries feature neat details like habitat, culture, characteristics, etc.
This dude in particular has haunted my dreams since I was a wee thing:
Science fiction is my preferred genreI just started reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and am very excited!
Last edited by Shorty; 06-13-2015 at 04:00 AM.
I have read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead (as Shorty well knows!), and I do love those books. I actually didn't know anything about Ender's Game before I read it... I don't even remember why I read it. Likely it popped up in a conversation other people were happening while I was in the car or at the lunch table or something and I just happened to remember the name and get it. Speaker for the Dead I read a lot more recently.
I can see why people might not like Ender's Game to some extent, but when I was getting a renewed interest in the book not too long ago, most people I talked to about it just said it was crap or refused to read it solely on the basis of Orson Scott Card's personal life. I just think it's interesting how much his writing in these books contradicts the beliefs he spouts outside of them. Anyways, I love these books for everything Shorty mentioned.
I started reading the Hitchhiker's Guide books a couple years ago, but something came up that I just stopped. I REALLY liked what I read. I need to get back into them.
I'm interested in checking out a lot of the stuff mentioned here!
I read Ender's Game long before I knew anything about Orson Scott Card, and by then, it was too ingrained in me for me to judge it based on his personal life and nonsense spoutings. I completely separate him from his books.
Many people slag on Ender's Game and call it a "Hitler apologist novel," (probably due to Card's personal beliefs) which I think is absurd and an extreme reach, at the very best, and there is literally no way that the theme of this book and Hitler relate to each other except that they both happen to feature genocide (actually xenocide).
You're right, though, Scotty, it is interesting how his books seem to sortof deflect his own personal beliefs. I always thought there was some sort of borderline love that Ender felt for Alai. Another thing is that through his work, his overarching theme can kindof be seen as "just leave other races the smurf alone! don't fight! war is bad for everyone, let's just try understand each other and come to an amicable resolution!" yet he's a douchebee in real life. Ah well.
Even if I hadn't read Ender's Game before I knew of Orson Scott Card, it wouldn't have changed anything. I've never had any issue separating the art from the life of the artist. It's just a shame that it clouds the works themselves because I feel that at least Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead hold pretty positive and interesting ideas that could create a lot of good discussion. I can't speak for anything after that in the series, though.
I do think Speaker for the Dead is a really interesting direction to take the sequel of Ender's Game, though. If someone interprets Ender's Game as a Hitler apologist novel (which I'd never heard before and really can't see that interpretation), then Speaker for the Dead really contradicts that theme. Speaker makes a ton of sense as a follow up thematically while being completely different than the predecessor. I was not expecting the more slow, quiet, but very engaging pace of that novel.
I am a very big fan of Arthur C. Clarke's work - although, strangely moreso his non-fiction books. One of my favourite books growing up was the Chronicles of the Strange and Mysterious and I have a fabulous first edition that is so dog eared and it used to give me nightmares - but so fabulous! Wasn't really a Clarke book, but it's what introduced me to him!
ursula k le guin - the disposessed (the chronologically first novel of her hainish cycle, written last i believe)
heinlein's a stranger in a strange land
dune is lyrical
ender's game was good when i was younger
idlewild by nick sagan
dragonsong anne mccaffery
hunger games!! suzanne collins
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