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anything and everything by arkady and boris strugatsky, they're like asimov but russian and two dudes, also they wrote the novel that stalker vidyagames are based on(roadside picnic)
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Aug 6, 2014 12:44
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Lichy posted:also they wrote the novel that stalker vidyagames are based on(roadside picnic)
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Aug 6, 2014 13:36
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SnowblindFatal posted:And Neuromancer has a sequel what the jesus. Not gonna read any of that crap. It has two sequels actually! They're not really directly related but are set in the same world. I have only read Count Zero but it is actually very good and deals with some of the consequences of the ending of Neuromancer. I recommend it. Kilmers Elbow posted:(Have just ordered Hyperion thanks to this thread. Christ knows if I'll ever get around to reading it but it's been in my Amazon wishlist since the last ice age.) You are going to want to get The Fall of Hyperion too as they are basically two halves of one book. They're written in different ways but it's one coherent story and Dan Simmons said something about it being one book but published as two because of length.
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Aug 6, 2014 13:58
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When it comes to philip k dick you have to remember he wrote something insane like close to 60 pages a day.
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Aug 6, 2014 15:01
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Any answer that isn't The Culture series by Banks is 100% wrong
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Aug 6, 2014 15:37
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Na'at posted:Any answer that isn't The Culture series by Banks is 100% wrong
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Aug 6, 2014 15:48
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Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. covers the fall of civilization
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Aug 6, 2014 18:18
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Passage at Arms by Glen Cook. Guy's a lot better at fantasy usually, but that book is probably my single favorite by him.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:45
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I hate 90% of literary scifi (I prefer my scifi soft like pudding) but Permutation City, Diaspora and Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan are amazing. They're not a series but they explore a lot of the same themes and ideas. I haven't got round to reading his latest books but apparently they're about a universe where special relativity works backwards or something, so if that sounds interesting I guess you could check that out too
Iprazochrome fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 19:02
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SnowblindFatal posted:loving hell. And here I thought Dune was a trilogy. I like Count Zero more than Neuromancer. Like someone else said, it share a setting, but not really any characters. It's a little more character driven and little less "wacky insane cyberpunk concepts 101". There's still a lot of cyberpunk poo poo in the setting, but I feel like it's more subdued, or something. Kilmers Elbow posted:Is Anathem any good? I just read LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness based on recommendations from book barn. I ended up liking it a lot, but it took me a few chapters to get into it. It was not as preachy as I expected from the premise, which just screams "this is a gender roles thought experiment". Once it gets going it's probably a pretty quick read (but I read it in 20 minute stints on my break at work every day, so maybe I'm wrong). If you do decide to pick it up, force yourself to make it at least three chapters before you decided you don't like it. I quit after one chapter, read all of Philip K. Dick's Valis, and then came back to it because it was still in my car... On that note, holy poo poo, I thought that Philip K. Dick was kind of a one-trick pony after reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and The Man in the High Castle, as well as many of his short stories. Valis is something completely different. It is... well it's nutso. But it left me craving more. If you like PKD but find a lot of his more popular stuff kind of meh, check out his less popular work. Also, if you are a fan of Zack Parsons's writing here on SA, his novel Liminal States is pretty interesting. There are parts of it near the beginning that I find so corny it's groanworthy, but these parts are quickly overshadowed by solid execution of well authored themes and concepts. If you haven't read any of Parsons's features here on SA, I absolutely love his series "That Insidious Beast"
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Aug 6, 2014 19:06
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Palpek posted:it's worth mentioning that it's nothing like the games and actually good the related movie (which is actually called STALKER) is really good aswell imo, if you're into weird soviet era art films some really nice pictures and great atmosphere throughout edit: oh hey, looks like the movie is public domain now (russian w/ english subs - turn on captions) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYEfJhkPK7o Das Butterbrot fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 20:46
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Carthoris posted:The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is definitely a must read. I've been thinking of reading some more Stephenson, but I couldn't stand his spergy, long winded digressions in Cryptonomicon. I felt they ruined what was an otherwise enjoyable read. Does he do this in his other books?
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Aug 6, 2014 22:31
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CoffeeBooze posted:I've been thinking of reading some more Stephenson, but I couldn't stand his spergy, long winded digressions in Cryptonomicon. I felt they ruined what was an otherwise enjoyable read. Does he do this in his other books? I'm pretty sure if you took out his long-winded digressions from any of his books you would left with a 50 page young-adult level story. I don't know what someone would like about Stephenson if they didn't like those.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:33
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JG Ballard is great SF, although you'll get the Asimov dorks tell you he's not 'real' Science Fiction, they're turning High Rise into a film soon that looks pretty spectacular. Ursula Le Guin's the Dispossessed is political sci-fi. Richard Morgan's Kovac's trilogy is fun. Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is about Hitler's sci-fi book.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:55
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Aatrek: First Contact was a good one op but it's def hard sci fi
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Aug 6, 2014 23:03
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CoffeeBooze posted:I've been thinking of reading some more Stephenson, but I couldn't stand his spergy, long winded digressions in Cryptonomicon. I felt they ruined what was an otherwise enjoyable read. Does he do this in his other books? He always does it to some extent. Snow Crash is pretty light on it, though. Anathem and The Baroque Cycle are pretty much entirely that kind of thing.
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Aug 6, 2014 23:17
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Actually, scanning through quickly i'm not seeing much love for women SF writers (apart from LeGuin) so i'd recommend Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, also Margie Atwood's stuff particularly Oryx and Crake.
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Aug 6, 2014 23:18
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Das Butterbrot posted:the related movie (which is actually called STALKER) is really good aswell imo, if you're into weird soviet era art films The movie is absolutely magnificent! Watch it! Part 2 of the movie (they had to split it for some reason I've forgotten) is in the related videos.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:13
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harpomarxist posted:Actually, scanning through quickly i'm not seeing much love for women SF writers (apart from LeGuin) so i'd recommend Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, also Margie Atwood's stuff particularly Oryx and Crake. The Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold are all fantastic
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Aug 7, 2014 00:18
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Das Butterbrot posted:the related movie (which is actually called STALKER) is really good aswell imo, if you're into weird soviet era art films The interesting thing about Tarkovsky's film is that the locations they were shooting in were so incredibly toxic that it killed about half of the production staff. There's one scene where there is this field where the ground is undulating in a disturbingly unnatural way. It's not an effect of any kind the ground where they shot that scene is just so incredibly polluted and toxic that poo poo like that happens Jim Barris fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 00:27
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There's nothing I love more then watching a eastern European man lie in a tepid pond while reciting poems. Stalker comes highly recommended if you share this feeling.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:29
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Na'at posted:The Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold are all fantastic The last few she's realeased haven't been all that great but the series as a whole is one of my absolute favorites.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:49
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Jim Barris posted:The interesting thing about Tarkovsky's film is that the locations they were shooting in were so incredibly toxic that it killed about half of the production staff. There's one scene where there is this field where the ground is undulating in a disturbingly unnatural way. It's not an effect of any kind the ground where they shot that scene is just so incredibly polluted and toxic that poo poo like that happens do u know the timestamp for this
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Aug 7, 2014 01:17
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it's all been said, everything goes to poo poo after Alastair Reynolds, Iain m banks, Dan Simmons and Peter f Hamilton. Read those, then call it a day on that genre and go back to standard airplane fiction. You keep trying after that and keep being disappointed.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:48
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there is no shortage of distressing sex in contemporary sf but philip jose farmer was both the first author to publish genre sf with sex in it and the wellspring from which all creepy, weird sf sex flowed. not really recommending him per se though. ballard has been mentioned. barry malzberg's books are full of weird sex and impotence hangups; like many other SF authors of his generation he also wrote straight-up non-SF smut, but he had much of it published under his own name rather than a pseudonym. a word about older sci-fi one thing to be aware about sf novels is that before the late 1970s very few authors set out to write science fiction novels from scratch; most the "classics" by sci-fi genre authors are fleshed out or cobbled together from short stories written for magazines. (i'm not talking about precursors like Verne and Wells or miscellanea like Capek and Zamytin; but rather science fiction by authors who were reading one another and who sold their stories to specialty magazines, primarily in the US) for me the mark of quality sci-fi is the use of ideas and concepts that couldn't easily be explored in other kinds of writing. i would argue that the best sci-fi writing has generally been done in the short form, which is close to extinct in any sort of paying form there days (aside from self-published pornography). most of the old classic novels would be considered extremely short by modern standards. i've gotten more enjoyment out of multi-author short story anthologies selected by good editors than I do from most full-length novels. i usually enjoy gardner dozois's "Year's Best" anthologies. robert silverburg, damon knight, and terry carr wrote enough trash themselves to be able to distinguish it from quality writing so a lot of the anthologies they edited contain good stuff and can be bought used for very cheap. i like the avon reader's guide to science fiction; it gives author recommendations based on other authors that the reader likes. it's 35 years out of date though and it's not tough enough on the consistently wretched authors. tupac holocron fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 03:16
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brave nazi aviator posted:there is no shortage of distressing sex in contemporary sf but philip jose farmer was both the first author to publish genre sf with sex in it and the wellspring from which all creepy, weird sf sex flowed. not really recommending him per se though Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" are amazing short stories, as are most of the short stories from the 1960's incarnation of New Worlds magazine where you had Jose Farmer, Ballard, Moorcock etc all writing shorts so I definitely agree.
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Aug 7, 2014 03:38
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Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stuff is roughly a billion times more interesting than Elric JG Ballard is definitely worth reading as well Joanna Russ, especially her short stories in fact, most of the New Wave heavyweights barring Ellison are worth reading
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Aug 7, 2014 04:02
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I don't think anyone mentioned Stephen Baxter, so here I go. I like the Xeelee Sequence series of books. I guess he's more of an idea guy as most of his characters are pretty forgettable, but he weaves an interesting tales around ideas like a universe where gravity is far more powerful than it is here. On the other hand, there are times when it feels like the story is getting in the way of the neat ideas. And then there's the Xeelee themselves, the "Baryonic Lords" waging a war that is, as the front cover of the omnibus proclaims, as long as the universe. I'd say Vacuum Diagrams is the best book to start with, as it's kind of an overview of the series along with its own story, and gives you an idea of whether or not you'd like to read the whole thing. Other than that, I was so impressed with Blindsight, I've pre-ordered its sequel Echopraxia, which is coming out at the end of the month. I just like the idea he presents, on the possible nature of extraterrestrial life. All the books are fairly sexless though.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:03
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harpomarxist posted:Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" are amazing short stories, as are most of the short stories from the 1960's incarnation of New Worlds magazine where you had Jose Farmer, Ballard, Moorcock etc all writing shorts so I definitely agree. Ellison edited a great anthology called Dangerous Visions that collects a lot of the best authors from that era. It's got Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage," which is a truly beautiful piece of prose. It's also got Samuel Delaney's "Aye, and Gomorrah," which is really outstanding. Both of those definitely meet the OPs request for weird sexual sci-fi. It's got some other good stuff from Damon Knight, Keith Laumer, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon...all those guys. It's a great primer on 60s science fiction.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:11
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lexan posted:Ellison edited a great anthology called Dangerous Visions that collects a lot of the best authors from that era. It's got Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage," which is a truly beautiful piece of prose. It's also got Samuel Delaney's "Aye, and Gomorrah," which is really outstanding. Both of those definitely meet the OPs request for weird sexual sci-fi. don't forget john brunner and fritz leiber! ellison is in full preen mode in his introductions too. it has some bizarre inclusions like the back to back robert bloch / harlan ellison jack the ripper stories and a graphic depiction of child rape written by the then-80-year-old miriam allen deford. if you liked "riders of the purple wage", you should check out "algorithm" by jean mark gawron, which addresses similar themes. one significant thing about dangerous visions is that a lot of the pieces were commissioned for it rather than recycled magazine pieces and the authors didn't have to concern themselves with magazine editorial standards (although new worlds had started to provide a venue for that too, as harpomarxist mentioned)
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Aug 7, 2014 04:43
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Alastair Reynolds for good hard sci-fi. Read the Revelation Space trilogy for a good space opera. Peter F. Hamilton is my #2 for hard sci-fi. Read the Reality Dysfunction for a good space opera. First two books of the Ender's Game series are fun for soft sci-fi, by Orson Scott Card. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan was good for a debut. Nothing too awesome. Jim Butcher is more "fun" for the modern-day wizard detective Dresden Files (technically counts as sci-fi). What is it, 16 books in the series now? Assiv Asimov (sp?) Foundation Trilogy if you never read that classic.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:55
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Na'at posted:Any answer that isn't The Culture series by Banks is 100% wrong sucked and were gay anyone who says snow crash is good is playing a joke on you op Fandyien posted:Forever War is one of the best sci fi novels ever written
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Aug 7, 2014 04:59
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brave nazi aviator posted:don't forget john brunner and fritz leiber! ellison is in full preen mode in his introductions too. it has some bizarre inclusions like the back to back robert bloch / harlan ellison jack the ripper stories and a graphic depiction of child rape written by the then-80-year-old miriam allen deford. If we're continuing with short stories the Semiotext[e] SF anthology was *very* good. It had stuff by Anton Wilson, Burroughs, Sterling (with this amazing story - http://www.revolutionsf.com/fiction/weseethings/01.html) Gibson, Sheckley, Rachel Pollack...
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Aug 7, 2014 05:05
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Ignore anyone who recommends either of Consider Phlebas(Banks) or Revelation Space(Reynolds), they were poo poo. Forever War is ok but it's basically just space-Vietnam War with some time dilation.
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Aug 7, 2014 05:42
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SnowblindFatal posted:The movie is absolutely magnificent! Watch it! Part 2 of the movie (they had to split it for some reason I've forgotten) is in the related videos. Stalker is one of the most best movies I ever saw but it is an incredibly russian movie, definitely not everyone will enjoy it the same.  Jim Barris posted:There's nothing I love more then watching a eastern European man lie in a tepid pond while reciting poems. Stalker comes highly recommended if you share this feeling. I mean technically that is something that happens but you can't just put it like that. 
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Aug 7, 2014 06:07
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Corey's Expanse Trilogy, starting with Leviathan Wakes, is amazing. Just finished it last night. Best scifi I've read since Banks died.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:22
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Seconding the notion that a lot of high quality sci-fi is in short story form. More than half my library is collections and anthologies of short stories. Speaking of short stories, has anyone read and do you remember a short story about an alien pre-invasion scouting party that is testing earth fauna for an "aggression index" and meet up with a grizzly bear, a wolverine, and finally two human children and decide to give the invasion a pass (because one of the kids smacked the wolverine on the head)? I'd like to find it and read it again.
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Aug 7, 2014 13:24
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queendom_of_Sol Wil McCarthy, programmable matter, fantastic ambit and surprisingly dark, given the opening tone. Seconding Stross, especially his taken on Amber in the Merchant Princes series.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:19
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Many others have already recommended Iain M Banks, and I heartily agree. Walter Jon Williams is very under-rated. The Drake Maijstral series is a lot of fun, and the Hardwired series is good cyberpunk, but his best in my opinion is Ambasador of Progress. Also check out Days of Atonement, not strictly sci-fi but has sci-fi elements. The late George Alec Effinger is also under-rated; I'd recommend the Marid Audran series. Eric Frank Russell is a genius and utterly hilarious; read anything, but if you only read one, make it Wasp. Roger Zelazny is also great. The Amber series is an absorbing epic, and Roadmarks is a masterpiece.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:55
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Ignore anyone who recommends either of Consider Phlebas(Banks) or Revelation Space(Reynolds), they were poo poo. I quite enjoyed Revelation Space, and all of Alistair Reynolds other books, but he is an astrophysicist by trade, not an author, and the stories fall a bit flat after having read all of Peter.f.Hamiltons epics (except his latest effort, The North Road. It didn't really capture my imagination like the rest of them). I havn't read any Banks yet.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:10
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