your favorite scifi books?

[ftransform]

I bet quite a few of the users here enjoy science fiction books. What are your favorite books?
My top two are probobly
-starship troopers (written by Robert Heinlein, who worked as a military radio technician prior to his work as an author).
-the forever war (written by Joe Haldeman, who was a physics major)

 

[poptones]

Well, I've read Arthur C Clarke's 2001 (which wasn't even really a novel until he adapte it from the screenplay) many times and love it, in many ways more than the film itself. I once had a compilation of short stories that I enjoyed. It had stories by Steve Allen (yes that Steve Allen - called "The Hating") and a cool story by a Japanese writer called "The Savage Mouth." Definitely worth reading that one if you get a chance.

[ablacon64]

I'm feeling so old... heheh... I started reading Perry Rodhan!

[ErikTheNorwegian]

Any book by Sam J Lundwal.. a very unknown writer, Swedish, but has a good humor besides a good story..

[free_electron]

Well there's the trilogy in 5 books : Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy ....

And there's terry prattchet's discworld series. One of these days i'm going to build me a Hex ...

*** lemon lemon lemon ***
out of cheese
please reinstall universe

[nanofrog]

Got started as a kid by reading Issac Asimov.   

[poptones]

I think I got started reading Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury, but not the Martian Chronicles. I read that one only after watching the 70's TV miniseries with Rock Hudson. A couple I recall liking in High School were "The Terminal Man" and Heinlein's "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." That one isn't strictly science fiction but it is trippy and has sort of a David Cronenberg feel about it.

[GeoffS]

Started as a kid reading Asimov, John Wyndham, Clarke. EE Doc Smith.
Any book by Larry Niven, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson is worth the time to read.  For fantasy, Fritz Leiber.

Pratchett while not  sci fi is in a class of his own.

[bullet308]

Poul Anderson, Frederic Poul, Jerry Pournell, Ann McCafrey, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein (when he wasn't hitting the magic 'shrooms too hard), basically all the hard SF masters of the '60s and '70s. Spider Robinson's Calahan's books or Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books for irreverent humor. Kurt Vonnegut was only a SF writer in a tangential sense, but still very influential.

Most influential novel? Hmm...Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy? Anderson's Tau Zero? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five? All important in my development, for better or worse.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I love Harry Harrison's Death world and Stainless Steel Rat novels. I have to say that my favorite are Lois McMaster Bujold's VorKosigan series. Unique and rich background, and truly likeable characters that you really care about.

[poptones]

Oh my gosh I forgot all about Vonnegut! Slaughterhouse Five might have been another of those early influences that led me to read in Jr. High. I remember seeing the movie on TV, back then they would actually show the whole thing so I was delighted by the sight of Vallerie Perrine's boobs bouncing across the screen which, of course, led me to the book.

Another great Vonnegut read is Galapagos. That one really influenced my own ideas about writing. Vonnegut is awesome.

[SgtRock]

Dear Fouriert:

--You picked a good one for your favorite. Starship Troopers is the out and out favorite SF Novella of military veterans by a mile. The movies made of ST are some of the worst crap I have ever seen. I like to call them Piss Ants With Popguns.

--I highly recommend "Scanners Live In Vain" by Cordwainer Smith, a short story.

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

--And "The Stars My Destination" by Alfed Bester, a novel.

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

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
Robert Anson Heinlein 1907 - 1988

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[ftransform]

you really should check out the forever war its the closest thing I have read to starship troopers but it offers a way different viewpoint, way more 70's.
Orbital bombardment, time dilation & power armor are all included.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Iain M Banks, has written some great books.

very hard to get started but worth the struggle though.

[westfw]

John Brunner.  Especially "The Shockwave Rider"  (the book that gave us biological terms applied to computer programs, like "virus" and "worm.")

Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

Simak's "Way Station"

Niven's "Protector."  Other Niven as well; by himself Niven does a great job of extrapolating possible effects of technology.  With Pournelle, he's different but still good.

James Hogan had a nice take on "aware" computers in "the Two Faces of Tomorrow", and Sawyer in his "WWW:Wake" series.

For more modern authors, I like Lois Bujold (but she's a world builder, so you have to read several books before you realize how wonderfully things are put together.), Varley, Vinge (hmm.  Both of them, actually.  But Vernor is the "hard sf" writer), Walter Jon Williams, and Terry Pratchett...

[WhyMe]

In no special order my favs are:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Heechee Saga by Frederik Pohl (love this series!)
The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (love this too!)
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (a must read)
HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

[HLA-27b]

Ok Sci-Fi people time to test your cognitive interpolation skillz!

To what extent do you see your favorite writer's work becoming a reality? Give percentage and concrete examples.
How do you imagine the future in the next 10 50 100 500 1000 years?

You didn't read all this stuff just for entertainment right? You must have plans made for the future. You are technologists. Everybody on this forum is a technologist. Let us have an expert opinion.


P.S: It is amazing that Herbert and Lem are not mentioned yet. Are people afraid of being too mainstream?

P.P.S: Heinlein's Starship Troopers is the only work I have disliked so far. Too much island hopping invasion monkey to my taste. Not very relevant to the genre really.

[poorchava]

Honor Harrington series by David Weber
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Starfire series by David Weber and Steve White

[bullet308]

Heinlein is very much a mixed bag. You have your younger pseudo-fascisti militaristic Heinlein, and then you have your older, mushroom-laced weed-smoking hippy-esque Heinlein. Both had their strengths and weaknesses. Both could be enormously entertaining and/or frustrating. 

I tried reading Lem, but I don't think I was reading a very good translation from Polish to English.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

To what extent do you see your favorite writer's work becoming a reality? Give percentage and concrete examples.
How do you imagine the future in the next 10 50 100 500 1000 years?

You didn't read all this stuff just for entertainment right? You must have plans made for the future. You are technologists. Everybody on this forum is a technologist. Let us have an expert opinion.

Actually I think it was just for entertainment. But Iian M Banks and the 'Culture' struck me as more plausible than any other look forward scenarios.

Oh.. that is apart from self inflicted extinction by the human race.

http://io9.com/354739/welcome-to-the-culture-the-galactic-civilization-that-iain-m-banks-built

[ciccio]

Well, it is a deep question: my list could be too long, but Walter M. Miller Jr' "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is one of my favorites,  and it is the SF book that any engineer should read: thre are blueprints, inside the story....

Best regards

[jsoderquist]

Enders Game -Card
Old Man's Army -Scalzi
Also, most Andre Norton novels.

[HLA-27b]

Never red Leibowitz before but the audiobook seems to be the best audiobook recording I've seen to date!
Thanks ciccio

http://www.archive.org/download/http://archive.org/details/ACanticleForLiebowitz

[Kremmen]

Probably read nearly the whole production of almost all of those mentioned up to this point, and more. Can't be many missing. Got to check Miller, haven't read him yet.

Others i like, in no particular order:
Frank Herbert: the Dune series
Many titles by Stephen Baxter (but not all of them)
William Gibson: Neuromancer and others
Harry Turtledove: Noninterference
Vernor Vinge: A Fire upon the Deep
Mike Resnick: Second Contact
David Zindel: Neverness
David Brin: The Uplift War
John Mc Loughlin: The Helix and the Sword

While maybe not strictly science fiction, but close:
Charles Stross: the Laundry series (Stross does good scifi too)
Neal Stephenson: Anathem (and of course his great "Baroque Cycle" trilogy - Confusion; Quicksilver; the System of the World. Not scifi but in that spirit and well worth reading).

Hands down favorite: Iain M. Banks. The depth of his Culture makes many others look almost infantile. I have read every scifi book of his with full satisfaction, and now bliss: just TODAY mail brought his newest "The Hydrogen Sonata" from Amazon.

And let's not forget Terry Pratchett and the Discworld (TM) series. While good harmless fun, those books were written by a sharp mind.

[Neilm]

I was recently introduced to EE Doc Smiths Lensman series. Took me a while to realise that the computers that keep getting talked about in the space ships and star bases are men with adding up machines.

Neil