Any Science Fiction readers here?

[Naismith]

Asimovs Foundation series is a must read even for those who don't appreciate the genre.
How about E.E. Doc Smith's classic Lensman series, has not fared so well with the predictions but still a good read.

[Dain Arns]

I'll throw in the classics, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells...

Add Harry Harrison to the list, who did a lot of different genres within the Science Fiction universe.
From the serious and dramatic "Make Room, Make Room!" which evntually was made into the movie "Soylent Green".
To the wonderful humor of the "Stainless Steel Rat" series.


My all time favorite science fiction author is not well known, but H. Beam Piper's Paratime series of books and short stories about the Paratime Patrol, I would recommend to anyone.
Especially those folks who enjoy time travel and alternate universe themes.

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

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...cifidimensions

[Jagdflieger]

HG Wells, David Drake, Jules Verne and Robert Heinlein are some of my favorites.

Starship Troopers by Heinlein is probably my favorite SF book. It's a shame Hollywood didn't do a better job of interpreting it.

[Lionheart]

Starship Troopers by Heinlein is probably my favorite SF book. It's a shame Hollywood didn't do a better job of interpreting it.

Roger that!

Great book. Nothing like the movie.

[CybrSlydr]

Good Lord...

Not a one of you posts someone who's written anything in the last 40 years...

I love Sci-Fi. Big into the expanded Star Wars universe up to the New Jedi stuff (never liked the whole Jacen/Jaina/Anakin stories...).

For more "original works", Jack McDevitt is one of my favorites. "A Talent for War" is one of my favorite books. About finding out a major, MAJOR event in a culture's history was not exactly what it was made out to be. He also has a series going, starting with "Engines of God".

With The Engines of God (1994), McDevitt introduced the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive on the scene. Although it was initially written as a standalone novel,^{[citation needed]} the main character of The Engines of God, pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in five more books, Deepsix (2001), Chindi (2002), Omega (2003), Odyssey (2006), and Cauldron (2007). The mystery surrounding the destructive "Omega Clouds" (which are introduced in The Engines of God) is left unexplored until Omega.^[1]

Another of my favorites from him is "Infinity Beach". It's a book about first contact between humans and an alien civilization.

Another I've read a lot of is L.E. Modesitt, Jr. You fantasy readers might notice that name. "The Ethos Effect" is one of my favorites from him. "The Forever Hero" series is quite the marathon, especially if you can find it in a compilation book as I did. Great read though. "The Parafaith War" is another good one. "Gravity Dreams", "Octagonal Raven", "Flash", "Archform: Beauty", etc.

I've also read a good number of Stephen Baxter's books. The "Manifold" series is one of the more bizarre series I've read. "Manifold Time/Space/Origin", Origin dealing with prehistoric humanity. A very vicious book.

Another good author is Alistair Reynolds. I've read his "Revelation" series and enjoyed it. (Reading on Wiki, apparently he's written another of the series since I last read, so now I have a book to get!)

I like grand, epic sci-fi stories dealing with advanced technology and ideas. I'm not into that "quaint" sci-fi from the 40s and 50s.

[dominique]

Among the many other good books I remember, I would add Clifford Simak's City and Way Station, Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, AE Van Vogt's The World of Null-A and The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and The Hand of Zei, Roger Zelazni's Lord of Light, Walter M. Miller's a Canticle for Leibowitz.

Herbert's Dune first three books are indeed epic (the sequels boring) but he wrote two other less known but texcellent books The Whipping Star and the Dosadi Experiment.

You cannot be wrong with these books .

As for Stephen King's The Regulators, one needs to read also its twin horror novel Desperation.

[TeaSea]

HG Wells, David Drake, Jules Verne and Robert Heinlein are some of my favorites.

Starship Troopers by Heinlein is probably my favorite SF book. It's a shame Hollywood didn't do a better job of interpreting it.

Required reading...crappy movie though....and it is one of those stories that could actually make a very good film, if people wouldn't mess with the storyline and the whole point of the book.

Ray Bradbury, "Martian Chronicles" -- one of my favorites.
Any of the "Dune" series (Frank Herbert's, not his son's).
Just about anything by Heinlein.
Asimov, "I Robot" being one of my particular favorites....

Oh, a movie that was actually BETTER in my opinion than the original story -- "Bladerunner", taken from Phillip K. Dicks "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The book was good, but the movie created an entire world (director's cut....I'm less fond of the original release).

[cheezyflier]

and anything by Arthur C Clarke, especially his Rama series. Good stuff. And I like Frank Herbert books too.

i agree. i love the rama series (the ones i have read) and the dune series, up until it gets to be a political thing. my attention span starts to drop off at that point.

hey, how about michael chricton? is that considered science fiction?

SF, I do read but more of a fanasty buff...

More into Of course Tolkien, but also
C.S. Lewis for both His fanasty, But also His Theology Books are great..
I like to read, but not limited to one type of books...

i like some fantasy stuff too, i used to like terry brooks alot, until he got into the habbit of not finishing his books. he would make the end of the story , the beginning of the next book and i would have to wait 2 years to find out what happened. that's what made me stop reading his stuff. and i have all of lewis' books. i thought "the problem of pain" was one of the coolest yet most complicated books i have ever read.

also, i don't know what category it belongs in, but i love to read dean koontz. i have read 80% of his books

[wbuchart]

... was a chronological anthology called "The Past Through Tomorrow".....

And yes, I never understood why Rendezvous wirh Rama was never made into a major movie.

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

For me basically Heinlein and Asimov. Heinlein's kids series were some of the best he did. This one was my favorite. This was my favorite as it so clearly represented the Manifest Destiny and resultant conflict of the American west.



Also it seems the USS Enterprise ran into Farmers in the Sky!



In Heinlein's other books the wisdom of Lazarus Long is beyond compare.

-Ed-

[wombat666]

My #1 is Ray Bradbury, started reading as a kid with 'The Silver Locusts' and now own all his writings.
Of course, Philip K. Dick and K. W. Jeter sit high on my list, along with a few Asimov titles and the lone Karl Sagan effort.

[n4gix]

My list would be several hundred pages long!

My entire worldview was irrevocably changed at the age of seven with (as it has been with many fans of the genre) Heinlein's youth series. Several years ago I donated my entire first edition collection of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov to the Hammond Public Library. I'd lugged it around for the past (mumble-mumble) decades, but thought they should find a good, permanent home.

Over the past few years I've become quite enchanted with David Weber (Honor Harrington, et al), David Drake (Cross the Stars, et al), and a neigbor of mine, Eric Flint (1632, et al).

There are also quite a number of relatively new authors I've been following, but they include, Robert Jordan (now deceased) and Brandon Sanderson ("The Wheel of Time" series, 15 volumes!).

Last year I (finally) discovered Anne McCaffrey's most excellent series of novels "The Dragonriders of Pern ." It is a series based on the (several thousand year) history of a group of colonists who lost contact with the rest of the human universe, and slowly lost most of their technology, and had to revert to a much simpler, existence. There was a "rogue planet" that the system had captured with such an eccentric orbit that it only came close to Pern on a roughly five-hundred year cycle. Unfortunately, during the fifty year period when it was close to Pern, a strange form of life that destroyed all other life would attempt to "migrate" to Pern. The only way to fight this "Thread" was to burn it out of existence.

Before they lost most of their science, the geneticists among them bred huge flying "Dragons" from a native lifeform they had named "Fire Lizards." Hence the title of the series. One of the unique abilities of the fire lizards was the ability to travel "between," instantly moving from one location to another, provided they knew (or someone could "visualize" for them) where it was they were going.

I'm also a far of "alternate history" stories such as Harry Turtledove's "American Empire" (Americal Civil War) and "Great War" (WWI and WWII) series, and his "alternate universe/history" series "Colonization," where an alien civilization attempts to assimilate humanity into their "empire" in order help fight some really nasty aliens who're bent on destroying all life in the universe save their own.

Good thread! While looking up some of this, I've noted no less that three "New Arrivals" at HPL...

Farland, David "The Wrymling Horde"
Eddings, David "Younger Gods"
Turtledove, Harry "disUnited States of America"

I'm off to the library! See ya! "N4GIX, three, six five!"

[Willy]

Cybr, I've been reading McDevitt since he first started being published. Discovered him by accident. McDevitt has also done a series based on the character Alex Benedict in A Talent for War (just re-read it for the first time in a few years a couple of days ago).

The Alex Benedict series: A Talent for War (1989), Polaris (2004), Seeker (2005/Nebula Award), The Devil's Eye (2008) & Echo (2010)

I'm re-reading his Eternity Road now.

[CybrSlydr]

Cybr, I've been reading McDevitt since he first started being published. Discovered him by accident. McDevitt has also done a series based on the character Alex Benedict in A Talent for War (just re-read it for the first time in a few years a couple of days ago).

The Alex Benedict series: A Talent for War (1989), Polaris (2004), Seeker (2005/Nebula Award), The Devil's Eye (2008) & Echo (2010)

I'm re-reading his Eternity Road now.

I knew I liked you for a reason, Willy. :D

I've read Talent, Polaris and Seeker, but haven't read Devil's Eye or Echo.

Eternity Road was not my favorite of his - decent read, but didn't hold me like his others.

[Willy]

So far, A Talent for War is my favorite of his. But I haven't read everything he's done either. With no bookstore nearby, my book buying is usually hit and miss, so I've missed a bunch of his work since I've moved up here.

Have to make an order to Amazon in the next few days, so I'll be picking up some more.