Science Fiction--Newer Books!

We’ve had a ton of threads here soliciting science fiction book recommendations, which are always full of great suggestions. But here’s the problem: Of the books that are generally recommended, I’ve either already read them or they’re on the to-read-when-I-find-a-cheap-copy-or-want-to-bother-filling-out-an-inter-library-loan-request list. Or I’ve specifically decided not to read them. (Dhalgren, I’m looking at you.) There’s a ton of newer stuff out there, but I don’t know what’s any good.

So let’s talk about newer science fiction books. Say, books published in the last 10 years or so. What do you think is worth a read? It doesn’t have to be a future classic or anything–just something that you think other people would enjoy.

Please include a brief description of what the book is about and why you are recommending it.

(Also, recently published books that are part of an established series don’t count. For example, Ender’s Game is already mentioned over and over in the other threads, and I’m sure the Orson Scott Card fans already know that Ender’s Colonoscopy came out earlier this year. )

I’ll start:

Spin. Robert Charles Wilson. 2005.
This is the book that inspired this thread, and I’m still in the middle of reading it. The present-day earth becomes shrouded in some sort of weird membrane that blocks out the stars and the moon. And it is soon discovered that time outside the membrane is moving millions of times faster than it’s moving on earth. Ooo!
Note: If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read the blurb on the back of the book. It gives away the whole darn story.

Futureland. Walter Mosley. 2001
This is a set of 9 related short stories. It’s very disturbing, but fascinating. From wikipedia: “The novel is set in a postcyberpunk dystopian universe populated by humans living in a shellshocked, unfairly stratified society overseen by super-rich technocrats.” Walter Mosley is best known for his detective stories, most notably Devil in a Blue Dress. All of the stories in Futureland have black protagonists and most deal with issues of race and class.

The Visitor. Sheri S. Tepper. 2002.
Well, a big asteroid hit the earth and the fundies took over. Fast forward nearly a thousand years. Things are even weirder than you might expect. I absolutely love this book and have read it many times, even though it has fantasy elements in it. If you liked Gate to Womens’ Country, read this. (also check out Tepper’s The Family Tree from 1997.)

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Michael Chabon. 2007.
This is a murder mystery set in an alternative history, based on the idea that during World War II, a settlement was created in Alaska for Jewish refugees. I didn’t love this one, as I find Michael Chabon’s work kind of tedious in general, but I think it’s worth a read. Some say that it’s not really science fiction, but it won the Hugo and the Nebula, so that’s good enough for me.

I learned about this one through the SDMB:

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Newest update of the Soldier in the Future genre. Very well done imagining of future soldiering when you can engineer soldiers’ bodies and have computer linking, along with relaxed sexual mores. Inevitably compared with Starship Troopers and The Forever War, and stands up well to them. I’ve read the first sequel, The Ghost Brigades, buut not the other two he’s written.

The Dark Wing by Walter H. Hunt – Space Opera-ish future war with an enemy psychologically different from people. Hunt does a good job of presenting both human and alien characters, and the alien civilization. This is the first of a four-book series, the others being **The Dark Path, The Dark Ascent, [/} and The Dark Crusade.

Robert J. Sawyer’s books are all good, as far as I’m concerned, but Calculating God (about aliens who visit a paleontologist and try to convince him that God created the universe), the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (about an accidental bridging of our universe with a parallel universe where Neanderthals became fully conscious instead of humans), and his new “WWW” trilogy (about a blind girl, a chimpanzee/bonobo hybrid, a Chinese dissident, and a newly self-aware entity on the Internet, among other things) are particularly good. Only the first book of the WWW trilogy, Wake, has been published so far, but it was amazingly good. The 2nd and 3rd books come out in the spring of 2010 and 2011, he says.

Oh, and Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies are really good. Grim, but good. They’re about a detective/soldier named Takeshi Kovacs, set a few hundred years in the future, where people wear an electronic device in their brain stem that stores your personality so you can be put in a new body if you die, and there are various wars and conflicts going on between the various human-settled worlds, plus ancient relics and ruins by an alien civilization. The first book is more of a detective story, the second a soldier/war story, and the third book an “investigate the ancient aliens” story. But they’re all awesome.

Michael Flynn’s “The Wreck of the River of Stars”, about a bunch of washed up failures on an obsolete spaceship.

L.E. Modesitt’s “Archform: Beauty” and “Flash”, which both take place in the same universe, in 24th century Earth. The first is about a series of murders that cover up a greater conspiracy, and the second is about a marketing consultant who finds himself caught up in yet another conspiracy.

John Scalzi is my newest SF love. For those who want a sampler, well, he has one: The Scalzi Creative Sampler | Whatever . Elsewhere, he has a blog, which he updates fairly frequently. Read the Old Man’s War first, then continue in the series, or read The Android’s Dream if you like.

I INSIST that everyone go and read the rest of the first chapter, right now.

I agree. I just read his entire “Old Man’s War” trilogy and am in the middle of the fourth book right now, and I just discovered that he has a couple other sci-fi novels as well. Yippee! I’m normally not a huge fan of military sci-fi, but his was incredibly engaging.

Great suggestions so far! Thanks. Starship Troopers is one of my all-time faves, and who doesn’t love The Forever War? So Old Man’s War sounds fantastic.

I understand The Road by Cormac McCarthy is excellent, but my best bud told me to avoid it for a while as it is very upsetting. I shall defer to her on this matter.

I also have Blindness by Jose Saramago on my shelf. I don’t think that’s really “science fiction.” Speculative fiction maybe? It chronicles the breakdown of society after…well, it’s not an apocalypse, but everybody going blind all at once is kind of a big deal, so I suppose it’s in the same vein as an apocalyptic sci fi novel.

I tried to read it, but I put it down because I had just read maybe 6 apocalyptic novels in a row, and I just couldn’t deal with seeing society disintegrate yet again. So I did the only sensible thing and read Lucifer’s Hammer. :smack: But Blindness is wonderfully written and the story sounds wild, so I’ll give it another go.

I don’t care much for SF and I don’t like multi-author novels and I don’t like novels with twists but I really liked Hunter’s Run by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham.

Recently published scifi I’ve read and liked include Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (teen hackers versus the Homeland Security Department) and Diaspora by Greg Egan (AIs in space save the remains of humanity from a supernova then go on a exploration to the ends of the universe, time, and other universes).

Despite feeling like a whore I plan on reading the new non-Douglas Adams HHGTTG book next week…

That said, io9.com has some pretty good reviews of new sci-fi books every week…

I’ll second the Tepper.

Bank’s *Matter *and The Algebraist were quite good, although not as good as older Culture stuff.

It’s harder to classify : either slightly distopian SF or Urban Fantasy, but Mieville’s The City & The City was very good.

I just finished reading The Dragon’s Nine Sons by Chris Roberson. The Dirty Dozen in Space!! Except the powers fighting the war over Mars colonies are Imperial China and an aggressive Aztec civilization. Veyr fun.

I strongly second “The Algebraist.” It’s the best syfy :smiley: i’ve read in years.

Also, thought it might be a bit more than 10 years old, Robert Reed’s “Marrow” about a planet size spaceship is super.

I see that Jack McDevitt has turned his Hugo-runnerup novella “Time Travelers Never Die” into a novel that comes out on Nov. 3. That should really be good. McDevitt, who couple of years back won best novel Neublea, is someone to seek out if you haven’t read him. Especially “Engines of God” and “Eternity Road.”

Oh, 10 years wasn’t meant to be a hard rule. Just a guideline.

FWIW, the short story “Marrow” is from 1997 and the novel is from 2000.

If you’ve read and enjoyed Heinlein’s older stuff, try John Varley’s Red Thunder. It’s a blatant homage to Rocket Ship Galileo, and a good light-hearted read.

If you love Time Travel, you can’t lose with The Accidental Time Machine (2008), by Joe Haldeman. Well, to be honest, it’s not the best time travel fiction I’ve read, but it was very entertaining, and even humorous in spots. I recommend it, but only if you give the author a little leeway. I read it in one night, which is pretty unusual.

I rather enjoyed Regenesis, C. J. Cherryh’s sequel to Cyteen, although it’s had a mixed reception. Her Union’s just a delightfully creepy society.

Two I would like to add, though I only read sci-fi intermittently, not an expert like you all:
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach http://www.amazon.com/Carpet-Makers-Andreas-Eschbach/dp/0765314908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255972561&sr=8-1
Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Lake-Robert-Charles-Wilson/dp/0765341603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255972691&sr=8-1

I didn’t know she’d written one!

Vernor Vinge, Rainbow’s End.

And of course, if you haven’t read A Fire Upon the Deep, (1992) do it.

Regenesis came out this past December, but for some reason it didn’t attract all that much attention. Too bad: I thought it was a decent read (even if, like most of Cherryh’s books these days, it ends with as many new loose ends started as it ties up).

And then follow it up immediately with A Deepness in the Sky, which is even better!