Recommend Me Some Good New SF&F

[Ergates]

Hi Evil,

Just wanted to suggest a few of my favorite recent reads. They are not Space Opera though. However, your description of what you like is so close to what I like I thought you might also like these:

The Martian - Andy Weir
Ansillary Justice - Anne Leckie
Dark Eden - Chris Beckett

All are brilliant (especially The Martian, which is the least Space Opera-ish)

Cheers,
Ergates

[Ergates]

*favourite
*Ancillary

[Evil_Captor]

I’ll give The Martian a look. I’ve found some very good writers thanks to this thread, particularly Charles Stross, James Corey and Glen Cook, and more keep coming up. Even some of the flawed works, like Sclazi’s Old Man’s War and William’s Praxis series, have been fun reads in many respects. I’m very glad I started the thread.

[Sean_Factotum]

@Snowboarder_Bo

I also highly recommend David Weber’s Safehold series, although there are times when he gets bogged down in what many people call his “gun porn” phase. And the naming convention he uses is stupid, annoying and makes no sense given then context of the world he is writing about. But the story is truly epic and the characters are awesome. And despite myself, I’ve learned more about guns, explosives, artillery and quite a few other things from these books than I ever would have guessed I would know in my lifetime. The first book in the series is Off Armageddon Reef.

I even have the same peeves about the naming conventions in the books. I always convert them into contemporary names as I’m reading. But I would recommend this series.

Add to my recommendations Weber’s Honorverse novels. There’s a lot of material there, including some co-authored with Eric Flint, and a whole batch of short story collections. For the most part, the universe is already established and in the hands of humans, so there isn’t a lot of alien encounters. But you may enjoy the different factions of humans working with and/or against each other. And there are a lot of space battles.

One last author that I haven’t seen in this thread is C. J Cherryh. She has several series that may fit your tastes: Her Alliance-Union universe has both the Chanur series and the various novels that take place in the Downbelow Station area. And her Foreigner series, about a lost ship of human colonists that get lost and stumble across a planet of beings that are somewhat similar to (and yet dangerously different from) humans is one of the best, if not the best in my opinion, of interactions between humans and aliens.

And as an added bonus, all three of the above mentioned series are still being added to by the original authors, so it’ll be some time before you run out of entries.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Ergates

Ansillary Justice - Anne Leckie

With the typo corrected, I’ll second this one. It’s not the best book I’ve read this year, but it has one of the most intriguing POV characters I’ve ever read, and was a pleasure to read.

[Bridget_Burke]

@Evil_Captor

Been watching the TV series, it’s the BEST THING EVAH and avoiding the books because I want to be surprised by plot developments (can you say, “Red Wedding?”). But I’ll prolly pick up book one, one of these days.

Try GRRM’s Fevre Dream in the meantime. He been tending to wander in The Huge Epic, but this is one novel. About vampires & steamboats on the Old Mississippi…

[Meurglys]

My favourite sf novel of the year so far is A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
A human scientific expedition is investigating the deep ocean under the thick icesheets on an ice planet, and the strange life which has evolved there.
They also have a shaky treaty with another space-going species, who send their own team to check that the humans aren’t breaking the treaty. Loved the characterisations of all three species; it reminded me a bit of Larry Niven and Hal Clement.