Getting back into SF

[DaphneBlack]

RealityChuck, I love Jasper Fforde! Thursday Next rocks. I own, but have not yet read Shades of Grey. You’re right that I wasn’t really classing it as SF, but I can’t think why, right now.

A good friend of mine is always telling me to read Christopher Moore, but I’ve never been inspired to do so yet. Will check it out!

[Trinopus]

I don’t think of Christopher Moore as writing “science fiction” exactly – but he is very, very funny. “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove” is a delight: from wry to utterly hilarious, and filled with people just like the real people you know well in real life. A blessed gusher of fun!

[Declan]

@DaphneBlack

Based on this profile, any suggestions for new SF that I might enjoy, especially any written by women? Should I try Stranger again?

Its my opinion , but most sci/fi today has two branches, Military Scifi and Space Opera. If your current through the nineties, then you have read most “new” scifi. Most of the new material I am reading now is found on fanfic websites, and 95 cent specials on Amazon Kindle. I think that most folks replying to this, will pass on their recomendations with established writers, and mostly be solid.

With the price of paperbacks well over ten dollars a for a dead tree book, the Kindle app on my ipad, has brought back those glory days in the eighties, when a dead tree book did cost 95 cents and I could load up with 5 or 6 at a time, and not worry if I picked a lemon.

Declan

[Wendell_Wagner]

The price for paperback books was well above $.95 in the 1980’s. The average price for paperbacks was already $1.35 in 1975 and $5.78 in 2000. I can’t find anything online with a more precise timeline for paperback prices than this article:

Why do books cost so much?

[One_And_Only_Wanderers]

Iain M Banks Culture series is great. The Algebraist by same author (stand alone space opera) also very good

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Declan

Its my opinion , but most sci/fi today has two branches, Military Scifi and Space Opera. If your current through the nineties, then you have read most “new” scifi. Most of the new material I am reading now is found on fanfic websites, and 95 cent specials on Amazon Kindle. I think that most folks replying to this, will pass on their recomendations with established writers, and mostly be solid.

With the price of paperbacks well over ten dollars a for a dead tree book, the Kindle app on my ipad, has brought back those glory days in the eighties, when a dead tree book did cost 95 cents and I could load up with 5 or 6 at a time, and not worry if I picked a lemon.

Declan

Huh. I check out half a dozen novels at a time from the library, dropping them if they’re duds. My only fee for reading is the occasional late fee :).

And I think there’s plenty of SF not in those genres, albeit not all hard SF. Touch, by Claire North, is a fun book that’s not clearly SF or fantasy. Embassytown, by China Mieville, is set in space, but I wouldn’t call it space opera; it’s more like a punk version of something Le Guin would write, much more concerned with society-building than with anything else (and it’s VERY hard science fiction, as long as you recognize linguistics as a science). Jeff Van Der Meer’s Southern Reach trilogy is some of the weirdest SF I’ve ever read, neither military nor space opera.

[Andy_L]

@RealityChuck

I’ll mention two very obscure choices, both of which are amazingly good novels.

First off is Andreas Eschbach’s The Carpet Makers. Once you read the first chapter – especially the final sentence – you’re hooked. It space opera on a grand scale about a planet where people spend their lives making rugs out of human hair. No one knows why or what happens to them. It gives you one punch in the gut after another as things are revealed.

Next, is Jasper fforde. His Thursday Next novels are excellent, though they gleefully straddle the line between science fiction and fantasy. However his clear SF novel is Shades of Grey, set in a world where your status is determined by which shades of color you perceive. It sounds like fantasy, but slowly you discover it’s a science fiction dystopia. A sequel was planned, but fforde seems to have dropped it, probably due to another vastly popular novel with a very similar name.

Thanks, Chuck - I’ve added these to my to-read list.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@DaphneBlack

I should also add that my great love is detective/mystery stories, so any recs that bring in that element are also especially welcome.

The aforementioned Robert J. Sawyer has written at least a couple books that have a mystery/whodunnit aspect to them (Illegal Alien is one).

[Little_Nemo]

@DaphneBlack

I should also add that my great love is detective/mystery stories, so any recs that bring in that element are also especially welcome.

Then let me repeat my earlier recommendation for Peter Hamilton and specifically mention his Mindstar series: Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder, and The Nano Flower. They’re science fiction/mysteries.

[DaphneBlack]

@Little_Nemo

Then let me repeat my earlier recommendation for Peter Hamilton and specifically mention his Mindstar series: Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder, and The Nano Flower. They’re science fiction/mysteries.

Thank you! Perfect.

[Tom_Tildrum]

John C. Wright’s Golden Age trilogy is an amazing feat of far-future world-building that really displays what alien thought processes might look like. His other, more fantasy-oriented novels are fun but not as breathtaking.

His personal politics are quite off-putting, but they are not present in his fiction.

[Andy_L]

Say, how about Neal Stephenson? You might like Snowcrash, or Diamond Age, in particular.

[DaphneBlack]

Well, Sawyer fans, so far I’m really enjoying Flashforward!