[General Battuta]

I feel like I need some stimuli for writing, and I keep telling myself I should read more, but I'm not really sure what's good and what isn't. Can anyone recommend some scifi/fantasy books/stories with good writing? I know there was a thread for something like this a while back but I couldn't find it.

NOBODY MOVE I'm an expert. You can tell my opinion on what to read in order to write is great because I write books and then collapse into despair over how ****ing awful I am at writing and sell them

Most of the suggestions you get will be (alas) garbage, because so is most SF/F.

For prose inspiration I suggest:
Catherynne Valente
William Gibson
Cormac McCarthy
Ursula LeGuin
Junot Diaz (not strictly genre but **** it he rules)

For recent, decent space opera:
Anne Leckie
James S.A. Corey

For hard SF:
Peter Watts (bet you've read Blindsight already though)

I've also drawn a lot of inspiration from Stanislaw Lem, Garth Nix's Abhorsen books, Megan Whalen Turner's Queen of Attolia. Damn this list is white as ****

e: Although Dan Simmons is completely nuts, I think Hyperion is quite a good book

[Black Wolf]

Jist finished "Dreadnaught" and ?Castles of Steel" by Robert K Massie. I have "Capital in the 21st Century" waiting fir me when I get home tonight. Not, strictly speaking, literature, but very interesting.

[Mongoose]

Garth Nix's Abhorsen books

Orly?  I loved the hell out of those myself.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Thirding a recommendation for the Abhorsen books; they are seriously great.

[Grizzly]

Salomon Kroonenberg's "The Human Measure", a book which argues that our current and oncoming climitical problems are simply a static noise compared to the massive changes that our global climate systems go trough regurarely when viewed on a geological time scale.

[StarSlayer]

e: Although Dan Simmons is completely nuts, I think Hyperion is quite a good book

I second the Hyperion Cantos.  They are pretty great, very interesting universe, though I felt Rise of Endymion nearly jumped the shark in the third quarter before finishing strong.

[CommanderDJ]

I feel like I need some stimuli for writing, and I keep telling myself I should read more, but I'm not really sure what's good and what isn't. Can anyone recommend some scifi/fantasy books/stories with good writing? I know there was a thread for something like this a while back but I couldn't find it.

NOBODY MOVE I'm an expert. You can tell my opinion on what to read in order to write is great because I write books and then collapse into despair over how ****ing awful I am at writing and sell them

Most of the suggestions you get will be (alas) garbage, because so is most SF/F.

For prose inspiration I suggest:
Catherynne Valente
William Gibson
Cormac McCarthy
Ursula LeGuin
Junot Diaz (not strictly genre but **** it he rules)

For recent, decent space opera:
Anne Leckie
James S.A. Corey

For hard SF:
Peter Watts (bet you've read Blindsight already though)

I've also drawn a lot of inspiration from Stanislaw Lem, Garth Nix's Abhorsen books, Megan Whalen Turner's Queen of Attolia. Damn this list is white as ****

e: Although Dan Simmons is completely nuts, I think Hyperion is quite a good book

Holy crap, thanks! I'll look those right up! And no, I haven't read Blindsight yet (told you I don't read much (hoping to change that)), but I'm getting on it!

[LordMelvin]

Just picked up and blew through a couple volumes of Charles Stross's 'Laundry Files' series. They're right up there with Jim Butcher's urban fantasy stuff for making mash-ups of somewhat tired old genres into something fresh and new.

[Scourge of Ages]

Just started "Jam" by Yahtzee Croshaw

[StarSlayer]

Started:

Maurice Druon's The Strangled Queen (Book II THE ACCURSED KINGS)

[The E]

Just picked up and blew through a couple volumes of Charles Stross's 'Laundry Files' series. They're right up there with Jim Butcher's urban fantasy stuff for making mash-ups of somewhat tired old genres into something fresh and new.

I recommend you check out the Laundry shorts Equoid, Down on the Farm and Overtime as well. They're all available online at tor.com.

As for my reading, I started Neal Stephensons' REAMDE again.

[An4ximandros]

Wrapping up Heretics of Dune. Guldur, why has anyone not made a goddamn Heretics movie? That sex scene near the end... it would sell like Suk paper in modern ****tywood!

[CommanderDJ]

Got up to date on the short stories on BCS today - I see Battuta's continuing to make regular contributions.

A friend also lent me some of Tolstoy's stuff - it's a little sad so far, but still quite worth reading. I'm also planning on going to the library tomorrow to pick up some more books.

[CommanderDJ]

Double post!

Picked up Blindsight at 3:30pm today. Finished it by 11:45pm. Liked it a lot! I will definitely have to reread it at some point - a lot of the details no doubt slipped by me, and there were a few confusing parts. But some of the ideas presented in it were quite cool, and thought-provoking.

EDIT: Not to mention that I can definitely see some inspiration for BP in it!

[StarSlayer]

One of the coolest interpretations of Vampires I've seen.

[CommanderDJ]

Read Sabriel and Lirael (by Garth Nix), about to start Abhorsen today. Lirael in particular captures a feeling I really like, the feeling that the world wasn't created solely for the purpose of the story. It just reads naturally, with the story fitting into the setting without feeling contrived.

[Dragon]

Halfway thought "Perfect Vacuum" ("Doskonała Próżnia") by Stanislaw Lem. One of the better books I've read. Also contains the best joke I've ever read (it's a whole chapter and makes use of the book's format, so it can't quite be "told", though). It's an incredibly diverse and intelligent satire, dunno if it was ever translated into English.

[CommanderDJ]

Finished Abhorsen. I have read four books in the last six days, and that's more fiction than I have read in probably the last three years. I'm feeling slightly weird.

Next up, Leviathan Wakes.

[StarSlayer]

Wrapped Up:

Maurice Duron's The Strangled Queen (Book II THE ACCURSED KINGS)

Maurice Duron's The Poisoned Crown (Book III THE ACCURSED KINGS)

Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself (The First Law: Book One)

Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged (The First Law: Book Two)

Ripping Through:

Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings (The First Law: Book Three)

[CommanderDJ]

Finished Leviathan Wakes. I enjoyed reading it more than Blindsight (though Blindsight was more... educational? Thought-provoking?) - the characters were very likable and the whole thing fit together very nicely. So far I'm loving sci-fi that actually feature orbital mechanics - it's always interesting to see how the setting tackles Newtonian flight.