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uberkeyzer posted:Broken Angels is a pretty fantastic book. It has to do with a war that has been raging in and around the ruins of a "Martian" civilization. It's the second of three books that have Takeshi Kovacs as a main character, but there's no reason why you can't just jump in with this one, it stands alone. Any of the Takeshi Kovacs novels are pretty great in their own way.
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| # ? Apr 30, 2011 17:14 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 18:57 |
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Hedrigall posted:Any good books about discovering alien ruins/architecture on other planets? Something a little less depressing than Alastair Reynolds please! Not really after big dumb object stories like Rama, Ringworld, etc. I'm more interested in the former civilizations than the objects themselves. Want something with a solution, not just 400 pages of Here's another short story recommendation: Glory by Greg Egan. It fits your description perfectly: the two protagonists infiltrate an alien culture (in an interesting post-singularity fashion) in order to find an older alien culture's central artifacts. The plot sounds a bit goofy as I describe it, but it's really interesting, it's good hard science fiction, and is deeper than it sounds.
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| # ? Apr 30, 2011 19:22 |
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I'm currently on a Poul Anderson binge, Orion Shall Rise is some sweet 80s SF.
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| # ? Apr 30, 2011 22:08 |
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Hedrigall posted:Any good books about discovering alien ruins/architecture on other planets? Something a little less depressing than Alastair Reynolds please! Not really after big dumb object stories like Rama, Ringworld, etc. I'm more interested in the former civilizations than the objects themselves. Want something with a solution, not just 400 pages of Just a recommendation to stay away from Jack McDevitt then, since (although he presses the right alien archaeology buttons) he pretty much writes book after book of  with no end in sight.
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| # ? May 1, 2011 03:03 |
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Hedrigall posted:Any good books about discovering alien ruins/architecture on other planets? Something a little less depressing than Alastair Reynolds please! Not really after big dumb object stories like Rama, Ringworld, etc. I'm more interested in the former civilizations than the objects themselves. Want something with a solution, not just 400 pages of You read "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede"? Might pretty well fit the bill. [edit] First book is "Inherit the Stars"
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| # ? May 1, 2011 04:11 |
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Hobnob posted:Just a recommendation to stay away from Jack McDevitt then, since (although he presses the right alien archaeology buttons) he pretty much writes book after book of
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| # ? May 1, 2011 07:01 |
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Finished House of Suns and Pushing Ice as per recommendation, liked them both a lot except for some minor flaws. Anyway, I feel like a bit of a change, so I'm looking for books in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings without zombies. Nothing against zombie books, it's just that I've read a lot of them. Other than that it doesn't matter if it's nuclear, viral, gray goo, economic collapse, climate change, asteroids, solar flares, whatever. I enjoyed The Road a lot, though I'm open to anything from broad societal views to stories about individual survivors as in The Road. Bonus points if it actually includes both the downfall of society and the aftermath instead of just one or the other.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 15:40 |
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Doniazade posted:Finished House of Suns and Pushing Ice as per recommendation, liked them both a lot except for some minor flaws. Anyway, I feel like a bit of a change, so I'm looking for books in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings without zombies. Nothing against zombie books, it's just that I've read a lot of them. Other than that it doesn't matter if it's nuclear, viral, gray goo, economic collapse, climate change, asteroids, solar flares, whatever. Would The Stand interest you?
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| # ? May 2, 2011 15:42 |
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On The Beach Alas, Babylon Earth Abides The Postman
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| # ? May 2, 2011 15:42 |
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Ninja_Orca posted:Would The Stand interest you? edit: and Canticle for Leibowitz after I guess! Doniazade fucked around with this message at May 2, 2011 around 20:11 |
| # ? May 2, 2011 16:23 |
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Doniazade posted:Finished House of Suns and Pushing Ice as per recommendation, liked them both a lot except for some minor flaws. Anyway, I feel like a bit of a change, so I'm looking for books in apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings without zombies. Nothing against zombie books, it's just that I've read a lot of them. Other than that it doesn't matter if it's nuclear, viral, gray goo, economic collapse, climate change, asteroids, solar flares, whatever. Canticle for Leibowitz.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 19:17 |
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Doniazade posted:That does look interesting. I'll give it a shot, thanks. It's probably King's best work.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 19:37 |
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Doniazade posted:That does look interesting. I'll give it a shot, thanks. Cool. It's what I think of when I think apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, since it covers both of them pretty well. Don't get me wrong, The Road was good, but a bit too bleak for me to enjoy it over The Stand.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 19:44 |
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Slo-Tek posted:Canticle for Leibowitz. This can't be recommended enough. It's one of the best pieces of science fiction ever published.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 19:50 |
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The first half of The Stand is a great novel, the second half is kinda ehhh to me. Canticle for Liebowitz is a brilliant work of literature.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 19:52 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The first half of The Stand is a great novel, the second half is kinda ehhh to me. Bit of an odd question, but are there any hard sci-fi novels that are worth reading?
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| # ? May 2, 2011 22:51 |
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Flipswitch posted:
I am on the 3rd book of the Void series by Herbert and enjoying it. The Jesus Incident in particular was very good. The first book was good, and the third is decent so far. I also liked the Mote in God's Eye
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| # ? May 2, 2011 23:02 |
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nesbit37 posted:I am on the 3rd book of the Void series by Herbert and enjoying it. The Jesus Incident in particular was very good. The first book was good, and the third is decent so far. That's great stuff for metaphysics, but after the first book (with its analog computers) you're waaaaaaaaaay out into left field with things being the way they are because Ship wanted them that way.
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| # ? May 2, 2011 23:25 |
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Slo-Tek posted:Canticle for Leibowitz.
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| # ? May 3, 2011 22:46 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The first half of The Stand is a great novel, the second half is kinda ehhh to me. And then of course, the finalé's deus ex machina was loving terrible, and a letdown. Kinda felt like he ran out of ideas and just wanted to get it over with.
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| # ? May 3, 2011 23:02 |
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There's a reason Stephen King is known for lovely endings, and it's not because he writes good ones.  I still associate The Stand as much with that terrible miniseries as anything else, though. For some reason it really stuck out in my memory.
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| # ? May 3, 2011 23:18 |
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Some of King's best endings (at least for me) appear in his shorter stories. The Long Walk, The Running Man, and The Mist all feel like he had a complete arc in mind when he started, or he was at least able to reign things in before there were too many elements. While all of the above fit into the sci-fi genre to some degree, it would be interesting to see what King could do with a full-on outer space story - especially if he incorporated elements of the Bachman books. neongrey posted:I still associate The Stand as much with that terrible miniseries as anything else, though. For some reason it really stuck out in my memory. Corin Tucker's Stalker fucked around with this message at May 4, 2011 around 02:39 |
| # ? May 4, 2011 02:36 |
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coyo7e posted:The stand was a great read, until it got all turbo Christian yay God versus The Devil. And then of course, the finalé's deus ex machina was loving terrible, and a letdown. Kinda felt like he ran out of ideas and just wanted to get it over with. And people are right when they say that Stephen King is an absolutely awesome short story writer, and a kindof-okay novelist.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 02:45 |
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I loved the Stand despite its flaws. The first half is undoubtedly kick-rear end. As for the second half, I stopped viewing it as a Christian story and started looking at it as a contemporary Lord of the Rings set in America. Once the Captain Trips section is done, just ignore the god stuff and appreciate the awesomeness of the journeys and the characters. Anyway one of the main good guys is an atheist. It sort of gives the story different perspectives to the general Christian one.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 06:47 |
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I'm filing Glen Cook's Darkwar under "Well THAT didn't go where I expected it to from the first 100 pages." Book one starts off with a fairly low key fantasy with some light psychic contact powers and a tribe excited to trade for steel tools and once in a while a book. By the end of the book two HUGE SPOILERS the main character can murder hundreds at a time. Also nuclear strikes and interstellar warfare is kicking off and its only been about 10-15 years. To be fair the main character grew up in an area intentionally kept backwards by the powers that be. I'm not really sure how I'd want to classify it. Its certainly fantasy, Amazon summary flags it as proto-steampunk. But if you are like me and get annoyed by fantasy worlds that forever are stuck in static technology levels you should give it a shot. Magic ruled the world for a long time, but the oppressed minority are entirely capable of meeting or exceeding them through innovation.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 07:58 |
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Miss-Bomarc posted:The whole point is that it's the story of the apocalypse, the no-poo poo from-the-Bible Apocalypse. It's hardly surprising that God, the Devil, and deus ex machina figure heavily. Christ it's so dumb, I have a hard time even spoilering it.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 11:55 |
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I'm hoping that you guys can help me with a starting point for Larry Niven? I don't read huge amounts of sci-fi but his books sound really interesting but I don't know where to begin...
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| # ? May 4, 2011 11:58 |
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Pulling Teeth posted:I'm hoping that you guys can help me with a starting point for Larry Niven? I don't read huge amounts of sci-fi but his books sound really interesting but I don't know where to begin... Short story collections. Neutron Star is probably the best of those, though I liked Tales from the Draco Tavern pretty well also. As for novels, Ringworld is the most famous, but I prefer Integral Trees for large strange world building. He has a bit of a penchant for selling the same stories in three different collections, so double check before you buy that you aren't paying novel prices for 5 stories you already have, and a 6th that isn't very good. Also, avoid anything he's written in the last 30 years, or with a co-author (but I repeat myself). With the possible exception of Mote in Gods Eye. But if you liked, the sequel is garbage. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at May 4, 2011 around 12:43 |
| # ? May 4, 2011 12:38 |
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Alaan posted:I'm not really sure how I'd want to classify it. Its certainly fantasy, Amazon summary flags it as proto-steampunk. But if you are like me and get annoyed by fantasy worlds that forever are stuck in static technology levels you should give it a shot. Magic ruled the world for a long time, but the oppressed minority are entirely capable of meeting or exceeding them through innovation. That's one of his "screw genre conventions" series. It's its own story, it just looks like a "growing up with special powers" series at the start. What Darkwar is really about is Cook asking the question, "How does someone capable of wrecking worlds with her own power get that way and what happens to someone with that kind of power. Her world is just lucky they got her and not, say, Soulcatcher. The Dread Empire series does a lot with a similar question "how does someone go from a cute, smelly baby to someone capable of burning down a city because they annoyed him" and Swordbearer is a traditional "boy gets magic sword" overturned by nobody REALLY wanting Stormbringer's second cousin hanging from their belt, not if they knew what would really happen.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 14:51 |
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I'm collecting lots of good recommendations from this thread and the Space Opera thread and adding them to my BookDepository wishlist  Another request: Really really good single-author, contemporary short story collections. I have Joe Hill, China Miéville, Jeff Vandermeer, Neil Gaiman, Alastair Reynolds, Bruce McAllister, and just bought a Kindle collection of Tobias Buckell stories. Looking for collections with more of a sci-fi slant but any genre fic is fine.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 15:22 |
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Try: Greg Egan - Axiomatic, Dark Integers & Other Stories, Crystal Nights & Other Stores, Oceanic (which overlaps with Dark Integers and Crystal Nights) (concept driven hard science fiction, usually with a materialist/physicalist slant) Stephen Baxter - Vacuum Diagrams, Resplendent (mostly space based short stories set within a shared universe) Any of Kelly Link's books (general weirdness) Also I haven't read it yet but I've heard good things about Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 15:53 |
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Hedrigall posted:Another request: Really really good single-author, contemporary short story collections. I have Joe Hill, China Miéville, Jeff Vandermeer, Neil Gaiman, Alastair Reynolds, Bruce McAllister, and just bought a Kindle collection of Tobias Buckell stories. Looking for collections with more of a sci-fi slant but any genre fic is fine. I've said it before and I'll happily say it again: David Marusek's Getting to Know You. Vonnegut's While Mortals Sleep, while maybe not as contemporary as you'd like, was published a few months back, and Ron Currie, Jr's God is Dead and David Eagleman's Sum are also good, if not exactly full of happiness. Moving away from sci-fi-ish stuff, Sherman Alexie is excellent- I believe he has two collections, The Toughest Indian in the World and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. David Sedaris? I haven't read it myself, but I've been told Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower is decent, too.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 16:29 |
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Flipswitch posted:Bit of an odd question, but are there any hard sci-fi novels that are worth reading? I think a lot of the recommendations made in this thread fit that bill. How do you define 'hard sci-fi'?
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| # ? May 4, 2011 17:53 |
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coyo7e posted:
yes that, and also the fact that nothing any of the characters did in the story had anything to do with the evil character's demise. (yes I know.)
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| # ? May 4, 2011 18:36 |
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nesbit37 posted:I am on the 3rd book of the Void series by Herbert and enjoying it. The Jesus Incident in particular was very good. The first book was good, and the third is decent so far. I just finished The Lazarus Effect yesterday, myself, and getting ready to start The Ascension Factor. After The Jesus Incident not much was really all that surprising in The Lazarus Effect (since the whole thing is about returning things to the way they were at the end of The Jesus Incident, other than Bickel coming out of a hype tank and freaking out over the mutants he sees) and I'm not sure whether The Ascension Factor will be any better, but I might as well finish the series.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 19:25 |
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mllaneza posted:That's one of his "screw genre conventions" series. It's its own story, it just looks like a "growing up with special powers" series at the start. Probably a good way to look at it. That general approach of skewing off conventions also made Sung in Blood really weird. It was almost like someone else wrote the book. The world has a bit more tech than average, but its really generic fantasy otherwise. And the main character is the best at everything with basically no weaknesses mentally, morally, or physically. Generally the more bad rear end you are in a Cook book the bigger your gently caress up is.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 19:46 |
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Alaan posted:Probably a good way to look at it. That general approach of skewing off conventions also made Sung in Blood really weird. It was almost like someone else wrote the book. The world has a bit more tech than average, but its really generic fantasy otherwise. And the main character is the best at everything with basically no weaknesses mentally, morally, or physically. Generally the more bad rear end you are in a Cook book the bigger your gently caress up is. Now I want to know what he'd do with the Batman.
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| # ? May 4, 2011 22:15 |
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Habibi posted:I think a lot of the recommendations made in this thread fit that bill. How do you define 'hard sci-fi'?
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| # ? May 4, 2011 23:50 |
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Alaan posted:Probably a good way to look at it. That general approach of skewing off conventions also made Sung in Blood really weird. It was almost like someone else wrote the book. The world has a bit more tech than average, but its really generic fantasy otherwise. And the main character is the best at everything with basically no weaknesses mentally, morally, or physically. Generally the more bad rear end you are in a Cook book the bigger your gently caress up is. That was basically Doc Savage in magicland as I recall.
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| # ? May 5, 2011 00:29 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 18:57 |
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Hedrigall posted:I'm collecting lots of good recommendations from this thread and the Space Opera thread and adding them to my BookDepository wishlist There's a lot of great stuff, but one indispensable book. Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others I think like 75% of the stories in there either won a Hugo/Nebula or were nominated, and at least two stories in there are in the conversation for best SF short story I've ever read.
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| # ? May 5, 2011 01:43 |
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