Recomend Good New Sci fi book

Hey I need some recomendations for some good New sci fi boox. New as in since 1990. Read all the classics.

 

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The Stone Canal-I forget who it's buy but it's pretty good. Stay away from that star wars stuff. Not too good.

 

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Iain Bank´s culture series:

Consider Phlebas
The Player of the Game
Use of Weapons (<- best of the culture books, in my opinion)
The State of Art

Or Michael Ely´s Sid Meier´s Alpha Centauri, trilogy:

Centauri Dawn
Dragon Sun
Twilight of the Mind (<- coming, not finished yet)

or Simon Ings

Hot Head
Hot Line

 

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Good book

Back in the good old days when I was the book buyer in a science fiction shop, there were a bunch of titles that I always had on the recommended shelf. Examples...

Barrayar or The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold. My favourite author.
Startide Rising or The Uplift War by David Brin
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

There's a range of stuff there; Lois Mcmaster Bujold writes space opera of the highest quality, Doomsday book is time travel, The Sparrow defies short description, except for the superlatives, and David Brin's Uplift series is eminently re-readable.

The Stone Canal was by Ken McLeod, btw.

 

Mad Scientist ...

Hummmm ... 'Read all the old classics'

How about 'Odd John' by Olaf Stapledon, 1935.

I think it was one of the first sf books I read and it really impressed me.

Per Google search: 'Odd John is about a superman, John Wainwright, as he matures and realizes his queerness, and how he seeks others of his kind ... '

It should make an interesting read even today.

Weird John

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See if you can find - Adventures in Time and Space - . It was published in 1946 and it contains about 35 novels,novelettes and stories written in the 1930's and 1940's.
Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt and a host of others.

 

Try Dawnthief I heard this was a really good sci fi book. It was written last year by British author James Barclay

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Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep and its sequel A Deepness in the Sky are excellent...

 

Neal Stephenson -
Snow Crash and Cryptonomicron are both great reads, though his endings can be a bit anti-climactic. Diamond age looks cool, but I haven't read it yet ...

It would help for giving suggestions to know what books you have liked though. It seems like there is a thread with people listing favourite authors going on under "Books: SF and fantasy"

 

Robert J Sawyer. any of his books.

Flash Foward,
Calculating god,
Factoring humanity,

philosophy and science. Great mix.

Old stuff? Michael Crichton - Andromeda Strain, Sphere.

 

by far, absolutely best

The Gap novels by Stephen donaldson are, by far, the best science fiction that I've ever read. There are 6 books in the series, the first is entitled "The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story." Be prepared, and if you are of weak constitution, you may want to pass on them.

Best

 

Agreed on Vinge's books, both "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" I read a book last week by a young author named Tony Daniel who seems very promising, though I couldn't find anything of his in the local bookstore. Read "The Flies of Memory" by Ian Watson about a month ago, he has some rather odd concepts and I wouldn't tall it true "hard sci-fi" for lack of a better word but I recommend his work.

 

I have now finished The Engines Of God by Jack McDevitt. A book that I posted about in another thread within this forum. A very good read. Find it and read it. The copywrite is 1994 and I would hope for a sequel for this one.

 

Vernor Vinge is good.
i like C. S. Friedman's Coldfire series, and Orson Scott Card has some good books.

 

Lindholm & Brust

Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm

• A reader review of Alien Earth @ Amazon.

Also I recommend 1990's Cowboy Feng's Space Bar & Grille by Steven Brust ... it's hard to find new (there may be a trade-paper reissue that I've seen; the Minneapolis crew has been reprinting their best lately, e.g To Reign in Hell by Brust and War for the Oaks by Bull).

Unfortunately, there is little in the way of reviews for Cowboy Feng, so to sum up: it's a 1990 novel about a crew of several people who live in a tavern that has the nasty habit of hopping through time and space in response to the outbreak of war. The common paperback has a few typos (it's Ace Books, after all), but still, it's a riotous read that goes by quickly if you let it. It helps to have a familiarity, if not an appreciation, of Irish music. And I suppose it helps to be aware of the United States during the 1980s. The book doesn't date itself, but every once in a while, I had this strange vision of the era that ended with the rise of Nirvana (e.g. 1992).

I think of it as a strong outing by a strong author. But one of the things about Brust is that he's a good enough storyteller (and this is a dangerous comparison because it can be taken in the wrong context) who, like a Bradbury or Rushdie, is forgiven certain points by his readers. Frankly, we forgive him so greatly that I cannot even tell you what those points are. But the dialogue, for instance, in To Reign in Hell, despite being pseudo-Elizabethan, moves as quickly as it does in, say, Bradbury's Graveyard for Lunatics, and has about the same narrative effect. That said, Bradbury and Rushdie and Brust are all separate classes within the scope of most readers, and that's the danger of the comparison. But Feng flows like a river and goes down like good whiskey. (And I also throw my vote behind the speculative fantasy To Reign in Hell, but it's not SF.)

thanx much,
Tiassa

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Groovy science-fiction books

Armour - John Steakley
The setting is similar to Starship Troopers, but I like this a lot more.

The Hyperion series - Dan Simmons
The first book is a set of short stories to set the scene, but once you get past that it's a nifty story.

The Deathstalker series - Simon Green
Plain old fun in space. Blasters, swords, groovy aliens, all that fun stuff.

A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge was quite interesting, as has already been mentioned.

 

While it relies on obsolete ideas of lunar geology, The Moon is Hell, by John Campbell, (1951) is an excellent book. Actually, I'd recommend just about anything he's written; The facts and physics were cockeyed, but he was a great writer.

Of the more modern authors, I read everything Bujold writes.

Charles Platt and Greg Benford's The Silicon Man was a great book, too.

I'll think up a few others, gotta go now.

 

my favs

My favorite sci fi authors/books:
Kim Stanley Robinson- red mars, green mars, blue mars.
Frank Herbert-dune series.
Ken MacLeod-the star fraction, cosmonaut keep, dark light.

 

Browse the bookstore or library until someting catches your eye, and if it catches your fancy too, read it.

The most annoying thing I know of is when they put reviews or a picture on the back instead of a summary-thing.

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Check these out:

Songmaster - Orson Scott Card (have some tissues ready; tons of trauma and tears)

Lord and Ladies - Terry Pratchett (hilarious!; includes evil elves, funny witches, and goofy wizards)

The Ugly Little Boy - Isaac Asimov (the long version; touching story which includes discrimination, time travel, and a small neaderthal boy)

Shade's Children - Garth Nix ("futuristic army of children" type; for X-Men lovers)

Sabriel - Garth Nix (if you like "beyond the dead" kinda stuff; features a necromancer)

Prosperos's Children - Jan Siegel (girl with hidden powers of Atlantis; very Atlantis oriented; comes in a trilogy, but the last one isn't out yet)

Daughter of the Forest - Juliet Marillier (classic tale of the youngest daughter and 6 brothers who are enchanted into being swans; comes in a trilogy)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Charles Sheffield (the future, one man's journey through time till the end of the universe)

The Pit Dragon Trilogy - Jane Yolen (using dragons for sport)

Harry Potter and ... - J.K. Rowling (hey, I like Harry Potter)

Animorphs - K.A. Applegate (wonderful series!! written perfectly from teen's point of view; very funny; features a bunch of teens given the technology to morph into animals to fight an alien invasion)

and so many more that I can't recall at the moment, because I read too much and remember too little.

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-BSB (nooo, not the Backstreet Boys...or the Bull Shit Boys for that matter, hehehe!)

(terribly sorry about the swearing

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