Recommend a Science Fiction Book - Any Genera

Cafe Society
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Hugh Howey’s “Silo Saga”:
Wool 1-5
Shift 1-3
Dust

Dune by Frank Herbert (if you like it, also Dune Messiah and Children of Dune There are other books in the series that are decent, but those are the best (the 4th book is horrible, though)
Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (skip the rest of the series – OSC should have stopped writing after the second book, imho).
A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Waystation by Clifford D. Simak
City by Clifford D. Simak
Doomsday Book by Conniey Willis
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

I can go on and on, as I’ve been reading SF off and on for decades, starting back in the 1960s. I recommend checking the following lists:

http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/top-25-best-science-fiction-books.php

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So I just finished Ancillary Sword, the sequel to Ancillary Justice, and I continue to be amazed by the author’s audacity. I’ll give some minor spoilers, stuff that happens before the book begins:

[spoiler]The protagonist is a starship in human form.

Large spacecraft, in this world, are sentient, with massive AIs. In order to operate the ship effectively and to communicate with humans, they take human prisoners, execute them via mind-wipe, and download a mini-copy of the AI into the human’s brain, creating “ancillaries.” These ancillaries are semi-autonomous personalities, having both an individual identity and a network connection to all the other ancillaries and the ship.

The protagonist was the ancillary of a starship, until the starship was destroyed, leaving only her behind.

And things get weirder from there.[/spoiler]
Gender is weird in the book: for complex reasons, the protagonist calls almost everyone “she.” Some old-schoolers got freaked out by this and accused the book of all sorts of ill, but they need to get over themselves. It’s a great book.

I’m a fan.

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Here are some of my favorites:

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke – Powerful aliens offer us peace and prosperity, but we must give up our dreams of going to the stars.

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke – The challenges, setbacks and triumphs of building an orbital elevator or “beanstalk.”

All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman – A spy for a distant-future republic begins to lose his own sense of identity the longer his career runs.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman – Military sf novel about how relativity draws soldiers in an interstellar war away from their homeworld.

Tool of the Trade by Joe Haldeman – A Soviet sleeper agent in late 1980s Boston develops a practical form of mind control, and decides to use it for his own purposes as both the CIA and the KGB try to catch him.

Fatherland by Robert Harris - Chilling alternative history about a murder investigation in 1964 Nazi Germany.

Friday by Robert Heinlein – A courier/spy in the future is betrayed but decides to fights back.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein – Colonists on the Moon revolt against Earth’s harsh rule.

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein - A classic military sf novel about humanity fighting two alien races for survival.

Time for the Stars by Robert Heinlein – Telepaths are able to keep starships linked as we explore nearby worlds.

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin – An intriguing vampire novel set along the Mississippi River before the Civil War; the kind of book Bram Stoker and Mark Twain might have written together!

Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin - Satirical sf novel about ecological engineering, overpopulation, absolute power and war. Probably my all-time favorite sf book.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - The inadvertent and uncontrollable time-travelling of a young man wreaks havoc upon his decades-long romance with his eventual wife.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – Sardonic, clever military sf novel about humanity fighting several hostile alien races. There’ve been several very good sequels, too.

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Not to be confused with the movie they pretended was made from it. :mad: If you like the book, don’t watch the movie. If you saw the movie, try to forget it, and read the book.

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If you liked Fatherland, I’d recommend Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois. The two books have a similar feel to me. Resurrection Day is also an alternative history novel (although its turning point was the Cuban Missile Crisis) with a murder investigation and political intrigue.

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I cannot agree with this more. I’m currently rereading it, awe inspiring.

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Are you me?

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If you like hard Sci-Fi, I’d try Stephen Baxter. The Xelee, Destiny and Manifold series are all good. The Manifold series had me continually putting the books down just to think. I haven’t started the others yet.

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Except the ending. Hamilton painted himself into a corner and had to use a literal deus ex machine to fix it.

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I like alt-history generally, but must admit I was very disappointed in Resurrection Day. Not nearly as good as Fatherland IMHO.

Absolutely. Loved the series until the final 50 pages or so of the last book, when it all turned to crap. Ugh.

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Some old favorites:
The Demolished Man
Dune
The Foundation series
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Childhood’s End
The Stars My Destination
Ringworld
The Forever War
The Fountains of Paradise
Replay by Ken Grimwood (more fantasy than SF but a book I love)

Some new recent favorites:
2312 - kim stanley robinson
redshirts - john scalzi
the martian - andy weir
avogadro corporation, ai apocalypse, the last firewall - william hertling
the wild shore - kim stanley robinson (ksr’s first novel)
aurora - kim stanley robinson

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Ender’s Game
Neuromancer (any of Gibson’s earlier books)
Red Mars
Armor

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I very much liked* The Expanse *series:

Other Sci-Fi books I’ve liked recently are Iain Banks Culture series and Andy Weir’s The Martian.

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Most Strugatskii books are brilliant. Unfortunately, they’re best in the original, not in translation.

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So I’ll guess that I’ll tell my friend, who’s the translator of one of the Strugatsky’s novels, that he’s a total failure.

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Yes, cuz that’s exactly what I said.

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My favorite Larry Niven stories are the Draco Tavern series. These are some of his most recent work, and less dated than some of his older stuff. Among his novels, don’t overlook The Legacy of Heorot and its sequels.

My favorite Charles Stross novels are Singularity Sky and its sequel Iron Sunrise, two well conceived modern space opera novels.

It bothers me no one has mentioned Charles Sheffield. Brother to Dragons is a fairly unique coming of age novel, winning the hugo. His supernova novels Aftermath and Starfire are well regarded. He has written a ton of other stuff, both novels and short stories.

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Dammit, every time a thread like this comes up my already lengthy Kindle wish list gets even more formidable.

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This is a problem, tastes vary so much and so many people do not seem to explain why they do and do not like whatever.

I read both of those. I didn’t think much of TMitHC. I never particularly cared for PKD. The movie Blade Runner is great because they chaged it so much from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

The Mote in God’s Eye is great. Heinlein said so and he helped edit it.

I like the entire Vorkosigan series by Lois Bujold

Barrayar, Komarr and A Civil Campaign are the high points and

Warrior’s Apprentice and Ethan of Athos are the low points.

I think Ready Player One is great too. I avoided it for years because I figured an SF story about a gamer would be dumb but I was happily dissappointed. The economic portrayal of 2045 America is quite interesting even though most reviews don’t discuss that part.

Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy

Gotta stop somewhere, I could be here all day. :slight_smile:

psik

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So many good books listed, and so many I’ve not read. One omission is Theodore Sturgeon (unless I missed it somewhere), who wrote primarily short fiction, and was a sublime writer. Please look for a collection of his including the short story “Microcosmic God”, which has been voted one of the great short stories of SF.