Another book post..sorry..Please could you list your favourite SciFi/Fantasy book

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I can’t comment on the more recent stuff, as my favorite period is the so-called “Golden Age” of Sci-Fi, up into the 50s. Nowdays, when I go to the Science Fiction section of the bookstore, what I mostly see is Sword-and-Sorcery Fantasy. Yuk.

Anyway, my recommendations for some of the older stuff (these are actually novellas–my library mostly consists of anthologies):

The Weapon Shops of Isher–A. E. Van Vogt

Re-Birth–John Wyndham

The Stars My Destination–Alfred Bester

anything by Lewis Padgett (pseudonym of Harry Kuttner)–for stories with an ironic or humorous bent

Way too many short stories to include here.

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Hmmm. It’s hard to pick only one in each category, but if I had to:

Novel: Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Series: Gerrold’s War Against the Chtorr series. I only wish he’d freakin’ finish book five already! ahem… excuse me.

But there’s just so much good stuff out there! I didn’t even mention Varley, or Spider Robinson, or Terry Pratchett, or Larry Niven, or Jerry Pournelle (seperately or together), or C.J. Cherryh, or…

“It’s a sunny little doomed planet, inhabited by a number of frisky little doomed animals.”

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My favorite fantasy/sci fi works are by Anne McCaffrey. I particularly like the dragonriders of Pern series and Crystalsinger series. The Ship who Sang and related works are also very moving.

Hearty second votes for Dune (particulary the first three novels) & The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings.

Inconceivable? I don’t think that word means what you think it does.

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Dittos to a bunch of these, particularly Ender’s Game and Eddings.

The one I haven’t heard mention is Iain M Banks. IMHO the most consistantly brilliant sci fi writer of our times. Also writes very good fiction, albiet often twisted.

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45

Many of you have mentioned books that also rank high on my favorites list, so I won’t repeat them. And thanks for the books mentioned that I haven’t read - I’ll have to check them out!

I thought I’d mention a few that haven’t been listed yet:

The Annals of the Black Company series, by Glen Cook.

The Dragonrider of Pern series, by Anne McCaffrey

The FT&T/Rowan/Damia series, by Anne McCaffrey.

The Crystalsinger series, by Anne McCaffrey.

The Recluce-Chaos/Order series, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

The John Grimes/Rimworlds series, by A. Bertram Chandler.

The Patternmaster series, by Octavia Butler.

Not sure what to call it, but two books about nighthorse riders by C.J. Cherryh - Cloud’s Rider and Rider at the Gate. Wish she’d write another one - I really liked those two!

And when in hell is another Wheel of Time book coming out? I’m afraid Robert Jordan is going to disappear and leave us hanging with the story half told!

BTW, obfusciatrist, there is a third book in the Fuzzy series, but I’ve not been able to find a copy. I found the same two that you’ve read in a used bookstore, and there was a third Fuzzy title listed on the flyleaf. Unfortunately, I’ve loaned mine out (and will probably never see them again), so I don’t even know the title!

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Hmmmmmm I was keeping quiet about things I think don’t measure up, because, after all, this is a taste question, not a GD thread. :slight_smile:

But I have to draw the line with Anne McCaffrey. That woman’s books, while entertaining, are not good science fiction. The Pern novels are based on the most silly premise: a planet that only manages to come close to the sun every 200 years, but while close seems to be able to have its spores travel to Pern even when PERN is on the other side of the sun from it, but NEVER arriving at Pern at night. OY! And the Crystal Singer books show she didn’t even understand music, given that she has singers singing things like “A minor” (a chord, not a note… try that one at home).
Good science fiction writers do their homework, first. :slight_smile:

Weapon Shops of Isher is a great classic, and ought to be injected into any of our 2nd Amendment discussions in GD :slight_smile:

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Good recommendation, jodih, for Ursula K. LeGuin. I personally prefer The Dispossessed by that author.

I’ll also agree with DSYoungEsq for his recommendation of C.J. Cherryh. Her best book (in my opinion) is Cyteen, better than Downbelow Station.

But in recent years, I haven’t read anything that surpassed Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy on Mars Exploration: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.

Of course, the first three Foundation Novels by Isaac Asimov are still a must-read. Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation.

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Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner

49

Favorite single Fantasy novel? Either
The Last Unicorn Peter S. Beagle
or
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld Patricia A. McKillip

Lots of good stuff posted above, of course. How these two authors got missed, I can’t imagine.

Of course, the entire James Branch Cabell oeuvre is outstanding in a totally different way.

Tom~

50

Umm, DS, why is it impossible, or even unlikely, for a planet to have a very elliptical, cometary-type orbit? I’m not an astronomer, so I don’t know, but I don’t see anything wrong with it.

I guess you’ve not read all of the books - the spores don’t come from the planet itself, they reside in the Oort cloud. Some of them are dragged behind the planet in a sort of tail when the planet passes through the Oort cloud during its orbit, and fall on Pern when Pern passes through this tail.

You’re right about them falling at night, though, and I’ve wondered about that myself. I seem to remember reading an explanation for that in one of the books, but can’t seem to recall it.

And I don’t know anything about music, so can’t comment on that - if I did, I might not like the books as much.

But, hell, if you can suspend disbelief enough to accept FTL space flight, I think nitpicking a minor detail that could possibly occur, (something known as ‘coincidence’, or even ‘serendipity’) is a little bit ridiculous. We are talking about fiction here, aren’t we?

Heck, if you’re going to find fault with the books, how about criticizing something obvious, like the telepathy between humans and dragons? The teleportation and fire-breathing abilities of the ‘dragons’ and firelizards? The ‘metasynth’ enhanced intelligent dolphins? Etc., etc.

Sheesh. Get an imagination, dude.

God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Therefore, Ray Charles is God.

51

Watership Down by Adams
The Plague Dogs by Adams
Ender’s Game by Card
The Iron Tower Trilogy & The Silver Call Duology by McKierron
Archangel by Shinn
The Rose of the Prophet Trilogy & The Dark Sword Trilogy by Weis & Hickman

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52

Gosh, I’m surprised at how much my tastes differ from most of those here. I either dislike, or have never wanted to read, most of the books mentioned here.

I only read Fantasy - I’ve never liked Science Fiction novels, unless you count Douglas Adams, which I wouldn’t.

So my faves include:

Dave Duncan
Julie V Jones
Terry Pratchett
Terry Goodkind - though his latest is not grabbing me yet
Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindholm)
Mark Oakley - he does a comic called Thieves and Kings
David Eddings’ Belgariad (the rest suck)
Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
Weis and Hickman, especially Dragonlance and The Death Gate Cycle

and tons more.

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53

Wrack and Roll

by Bradley Denton

Oh your from Wales?? Do you know a fella named Jonah?? He used to live in whales for a while.

54

My 20 Favorite Science Fiction Long Works (greater than 25,000 words)

  1. Olaf Stapledon First and Last Men
  2. Philip Jose Farmer The Riverworld Series
  3. Frank Herbert Dune (and maybe its sequels)
  4. Walter Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz
  5. Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination
  6. Ursula K. LeGuin The Left Hand of Darkness
  7. H. G. Wells The Time Machine
  8. Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle
  9. Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth The Space Merchants
  10. Theodore Sturgeon More than Human
  11. Roger Zelazny Lord of Light
  12. Arthur C. Clarke Against the Fall of Night
  13. Stanislaw Lem Solaris
  14. Ken Grimwood Replay
  15. Joe Haldeman The Forever War
  16. Michael Frayn The Tin Men
  17. Larry Niven Ringworld
  18. Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land
  19. Clifford Simak _City
  20. Isaac Asimov The End of Eternity

My 20 Favorite Fantasy Long Works (greater than 25,000 words)

  1. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
  2. J. R. R. Tolkien The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
  3. Peter Beagle The Last Unicorn
  4. Mervyn Peake The Gormenghast Trilogy
  5. C. S. Lewis Till We Have Faces
  6. Ursula K. LeGuin The Earthsea Books
  7. G. K. Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday
  8. Madeleine L’Engle The Time Quartet (A Wrinkle in Time_, The Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters)
  9. Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine
  10. John Fowles The Magus
  11. T. H. White The Once and Future King
  12. Patricia McKillip Stepping from the Shadows
  13. C. S. Lewis The Ransom Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength)
  14. R. A. McAvoy Tea with the Black Dragon
  15. H. P. Lovecraft The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath
  16. John Myers Myers Silverlock
  17. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman Good Omens
  18. L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz
  19. Daniel Pinkwater Borgel
  20. Mark Twain The Mysterious Stranger
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Uh-oh, now you’ve done it ;). Some of my current favorites:

The Castle books, John DeChancie (Strangely enough, Castle Perilous, the first book in the series, is not as high on my list as the others)

The Farseer/Assassin trilogy, Robin Hobb

The Jhereg novels, Steven Brust, especially Jhereg and Taltos

The Uplift War, David Brin

Sheri Tepper’s True Game novels, especially the Jinian novels

Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens, H. Beam Piper
Fuzzy Bones, William Tuning
(Fuzzies and Other People by Piper just doesn’t do anything for me, though. Probably because it contradicts Fuzzy Bones in places, which I read first.)

Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Place books

Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance novels

Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels

Ethan of Athos, Lois McMaster Bujold (Although I find the rest of the Vor novels only so-so)

Hunter’s Oath and Hunter’s Death, Michelle West

Cold Iron, Melisa Michaels

A College of Magic, I don’t remember the author, and my sister borrowed it.

David Feintuch’s Seafort series

Nancy Springer’s Isle series

Agent of Change and Conflict of Honors, Steve Miller & Sharon Lee

The Ecologic Envoy and The Ecolitan Enigma, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Also his Recluce novels.

Okay, I’ll shut up now.

56

Changed my mind; I wasn’t done yet.

The Songmaster, Orson Scott Card.

The Tales of Alvin Maker, Orson Scott Card

Dragon Companion, Don Callandar

A Logical Magician and Calculated Magic, Robert Weinberg

Sassinak and The Death of Sleep, Anne McCaffrey/Elizabeth Moon and Anne McCaffrey/Jody Lynn Nye

King’s Man and Thief, Christie Golden

The Dragon King Trilogy, Steven R. Lawhead

Talion: Revenant, Michael A. Stackpole

A Hero Born and An Enemy Reborn, Michael A. Stackpole

57

Of all the lists, only Wendell Wagner’s seems that good to me… those are mainly serious sci-fi books.

For me (in no particular order):
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanislaw Lem
Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
The Face on the Waters - Robert Silverberg
The Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
Valis - Philip K Dick

58

I’m surprised no one mentioned Michael Moorcock…guess I’m the only fan here.

59

Hmmm. No 1 mentioned Neal Stephenson. I think he is the hotest young writer in hard SF. For me, Snowcrash was a mind-blowing introduction to his work. I had avoided The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer because of the alternate title. But it rocks! Now Stephenson has a WW2 book out called the Cryptomonicon. I’ts still in hardcover so I don’t have it…yet.

The man has good ideas. And he can tell a story. And he does excellent action sequences.

As for fantasy:
honorable mention to The Black Company

But LotR kicks WoT’s ass. Start a “vs” thread. I dare you!

I have read most of the books mentioned. Thanks for the woolgathering moment everyone.

peace

60

Book of the New Sun-- by Gene Wolfe
Without a doubt the best SF series ever.
Also for earlier posters:

Lucifer’s Hammer was written by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.

Armor was written by John Steakley. (sp?)

Concrete,

Micheal Moorcock rules!!!

especially the Elric series and the
End of Time series.

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