Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: jdjtcagle on July 25, 2004, 08:35:23 pm
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Point some out for me, post your favorite.
I'm reading a really good one, called "For More Than Glory" excellent book! :yes:
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The Culture books by Iain m banks are good, my favourite obviously being the "Use of Weapons".
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The Demolished Man. Or, really, anything by Bester. He is and will always be the best "light" sci-fi author ever.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is supposed to be second only to Bester's work, and is far more... I dunno, cerebral, but I could never get into it. Seems to make much ado about rather obvious points.
Asimov's I, Robot is really just a short story compilation, but then most of the really good science fiction from back in the day was short stories.
Uh, Foundation series, any collection of Philip K. Dick's short stories... oh, and look up Poul Anderson for some good old-fashioned sociology-oriented SF, like it used to mostly be about.
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:) :yes:
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[color=66ff00]Yeah, Banks kicks neck. :yes:
Personally I'm a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke, I could give you half a dozen titles that he's put out and I wouldn't even be scratching the surface of his catalogue.
Oh yeah, I Jedi rules. :nod:
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[color=66ff00]BTW any of you guys read Piers Anthony? I get a lot of mixed reviews so I'm not sure if he's a worthwhile read.
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Early books were decent. They get progressively worse as they go along, though.
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Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
Night's Dawn series by Peter F. Hamilton
Depths of Time and sequels by Roger Allen Macbride
A Doorway into Summer by Arthur C. Clarke
Uplift series by David Brin
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[color=66ff00]Saw a few in a second hand book store for cheap, might check them out, cheers GW. :nod:
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Piers Anthony and his vile ilk were what killed science fiction as a genre. ****in' disgusting.
If you could plod through Lord of the Rings, the Dune series aren't particularly awful, and there sure as hell are a lot of 'em. Wouldn't recommend them over anything else being suggested here, except for Anthony's crap. Good universe, tedious writing, and not really all that much of a point to justify the tediosity.
OOH! Gibson! Fun! And obligatory for earning your nerd credentials! Reading a Gibson novel is like watching an action movie, only they sort of have plots and the guns are much, much cooler. Cyberpunk trilogy for depth (and yes, you have to read all of them to get what's going on), the more modern Idoru trilogy for scenery and the cool guns.
I wants me one'a dem South African chain guns. After reading ATP, shotguns have just started sounding so... unimpressive.
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One group of stories I like are the old Gordon R. Dickson short stories. Much of the military SF isn't bad either (David Drake, David Weber, etc.)
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Chris Bunch - The Last Legion
Its really about a ground force on a distant world who are facing some problems with a rebellion. The story centers around the 3 main characters who participate in the force's effort to crush the rebellion.
Christ Bunch - Firemask
Sequel, where a race of aliens who had a mining colony on the very planet that was attacked, decide to wage war on the humans on the planet.
I enjoy his books! You should to, damnit!
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
I wants me one'a dem South African chain guns. After reading ATP, shotguns have just started sounding so... unimpressive.
Yeah, the chaingun was pretty damn cool. The rest of ATP was kind of meh though - my fav out of those was definately Virtual Light.
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Tom Swift? :nervous:
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The entire Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton(trust me, the premise isn't much, but it's good space opera with Al Capone, the good old fashioned supertech and a little metaphysics thrown in for good measure, the whole thing is about 3500 pages, or 6 paper backs(USA) or 3 hardbacks(UK, country of original publication))
Anything by Clarke, as Maeg said.
Most anything by Asimov, I liked the Robots and Murder series(The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn) which is set literally days after Daneel Olivaw's inital construction, I understand he plays a significant role in some of the more recent Foundation books.
The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn(not a SW book)
Ben Bova if you're want some hard science in your space opera
Most of my library comes from the Science Fiction Book Club so I apologize if some of the Titles I mentioned are unavailable.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention:
The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt
This book is more a collection of Short Stories by the Author, but every single major appliance in SF today can be traced back to this book, most especially the concept of the Alien as seen in the popular films.
Also, though I've only read one, the Lensmen series.
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I should ****ing murder you people for not mentioning Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
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Shrike: Yeah, to this day I'm not sure what the actual plot of that one was.
VL was much, much better. And, really, Slick Henry's little robot army from Mona Lisa beat out even the chaingun in coolitude. I want the Witch... Correction, I wanna live in Dog Solitude and make the Witch.
EDIT: HOLY ****ING **** (http://www.voidspace.org.uk/cyberpunk/neuromancer.shtml).
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[color=66ff00]To be honest an0n they don't really appeal to the modern day sci-fi fan. There's no question that they're well written and for the time rather revolutionary but taken for what they are, today, they just seem like quaint tales.
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I dunno, War of the Worlds is still pretty good, and Verne's stuff isn't really outdated. Don't know that they're not eclipsed by later stuff, though- Verne's in particular are basically the same traditional adventure genre as half the books from his time period, a type that doesn't really appeal to me personally.
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[color=66ff00]Yeah, I was thinking more of Verne when I said that.
War of the worlds is still pretty gripping even in this post ID4 world.
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Series and single books I've read and loved
Series
Hyperion series - Dan Simmons
Otherland series - Tad Williams
Culture series - Iain M. Banks
Tom Swift series (not the modern day ones, the future ones) - Victor Appleton
Single
Illium - Dan Simmons
Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Addams
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Originally posted by Liberator
Also, though I've only read one, the Lensmen series.
Dirigible planets! Negaspheres! Wooooo!
It's good old fashioned space opera, not cerebral, no hidden meaning things, just plain and simple mega-massive-huge space battles and such.
Some of the "archaic technology ideas" are fun too, like the massive computer ships used to handle all of the firing data for the fleets, etc.
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check out the Lost Regiment series. William R Forstchen. it's about a civil war regiment who are transported through time and spacre to a world where human are cattle. The being who rule the world are medeival in technology, but descend from the people who built the portals to begin with. it's more about the people and the impact of what they go through than it is about what they go through.
Also...i thoroughly enjoyed books 1 and 3 of the Faded Sun Trilogy, i liked the whole concept of the books. not realistic....then agian we play fs2 ;).
Beyond that....a friend of mine got me into reading the battletech novels....devouring them is more apt a term.
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currently reading through Starship Titanic, though I don't know if that can be classified as science-fiction. Its a sci-fi setting, sure enough, but like anything concieved by Douglas Adams (though written by someone else), humour is the main element.
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Thought of something else:
Robotech #1-18 by Jack McKinney
If you are a fan of the series/movies, and have never read/heard of these snatch up a set and read away. #1-#6 detail the lives and adventures of the crew of the SDF-1, before, during, and shortly after their traverse to Pluto and the subsequent journey home which is shortly thereafter razed by the Zentraedi(I pronounce it Zen-Tree-Dee, there is no way, phonetically, that it could be Zen-Tra-dee, or Zen-tr-a-edi, or anything else other that Zen-Tree-Dee. Though, I suppose a case could be made for Zen-Tray-Dee...)
#7-#12 Detail the life and adventure of Dana Sterling and friends in the 15th ATACs as they and the rest of the Army of the Southern Cross attempt to fend off the advances of far superior Tirolian(they are from the planet Tirol, which is actually a moon of the giant Fantoma)Robotech Masters and their clone army as they(the Masters) attempt to reclaim the Protoculture Matrix which is buried in the still radioactive husk of the destroyed SDF-1.
13-17 tell the tale of the REF(Rick Hunter and Co) as they travel to Tirol-space to try and make peace with the Tirolian Robotech Elders, who are the evil, wizened, protoculture addicted rulers of Tirol and once an vast empire controlled by their mind-controlled Zentraedi slave army. Instead they find a war in progress and are attacked by the insectoid Invid.
18 ties everything up fairly effectively and leaves no dangling plot holes save how Zor escapes the pocket reality that Haydon set up to observe Minmei and Rem(who is a clone of Zor and his father at the same time)
There are a couple of books, 19-2x that detail the "missing" 15 years that are between book 6 and book 7.
This is by far the most entertaining version of Robotech I have ever partaken of.
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Honor Harrington books-David Weber
Culture series - Iain M. Banks
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Those I really enjoyed reading
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Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Yeah, I was thinking more of Verne when I said that.
War of the worlds is still pretty gripping even in this post ID4 world.
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War of the Worlds is brilliant. The Time Machine isn't bad either. Haven't read the others but I've heard good things about them too.
As for other reccomendations,
Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead etc are well worth a read. They are fairly different styles though.
Greg Bear's Forge of Eath/Anvil of Stars are both pretty good. If you've read the first one you probably spent the whole book wondering how in hell they would save Earth from destruction. The answer was quite surprising :D
Larry Niven's earlier stuff was pretty damn good. Protector features some of the best examples of fighting at near lightspeed I've seen (i.e fire your weapon at the enemy. Wait three weeks to see if it killed him or not :D ) and Ringworld is definately an influence on Halo.
If you fancy some lighter reading I reccomend Harry Harrisons Stainless Steel Rat books. Well worth a read :)
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The Halo series. :yes:
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The HALO series was okay for a quick read, except for The Flood which I thought was horribly...
Patriarch's Hope was a good book by David Feintuch
and "Forever Free" and "Worlds" by Joe Haldeman are "thought-provoking.
Other than that I haven't read any other SF novels
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The Honor series by David Weber are pretty good, though the last couple of books are not centering on the interesting time period. And they're all available for free, as e-books.
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The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons are masterpieces. I really think they have the potential to become classics of literature.
-Almost anything by Arthur C. Clarke, as previously mentioned.
-Any of Stephen Baxter's work.
-1984, by George Orwell.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Larry Niven's earlier stuff was pretty damn good. Protector features some of the best examples of fighting at near lightspeed I've seen (i.e fire your weapon at the enemy. Wait three weeks to see if it killed him or not :D ) and Ringworld is definately an influence on Halo.
Oh, aye, Ringworld was damn excellent. Not as damn excellent as Clarke or Asimov type of excellence, but still quite good.
BTW, Clarke's Childhood's End is quite good, and the short story collection Expedition to Earth is just excellent.
And Verne is always good. If you haven't read anything by him yet, check out the 20 000 leagues/Mysterious Island/Children of captain Grant trilogy.
Then there's Orwell.
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there alot of books in here :) :yes:
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Thought I's point out Philip K. Dick again- he's the guy that wrote the original minority report. Good, original scifi in the old way, ala heinlen, but a lot more creepy.
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The Man in High Castle was pretty awful, though. Don't read that, unless you're really into I Ching.
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A. A. Attanasio - Centuries
I'm just impressed that he could stretch out a human's lifespan for over 600 years. It's a bit whacked though.
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Explain?
Curious...