Begin here. Start at the top and work down.
Ah, but did you read ALL of the Animorph books? I read them a decade ago (at bedtime to the kids when they were little)… and I went back and finished all 54 of them. And guess what? They held up as serious Science Fiction and they were SO much fun – big conflicts in the last couple of books, and lots of humor as the characterizations hold true til the end, and beyond. In fact, I’ve reread the last few books a couple of times.
Come to think of it, I’ve also reread Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games, and The Knife of Never Letting Go.
I guess the “Young Adult Fiction With A Sci-Fi Bent” that’s out now makes for the best narratives and characterizations. I’m not a huge SF fan (reading Dickens and Hemingway right now), but those “YA SF” classics are probably the only books I’ve read so far that I keep re-opening.
Maybe I just like “A Fun Read”. Hope you find some good ones.
Go nostalgic–crack open Heinlein’s juveniles, or Andre Norton.
I might have missed a couple in the middle of the series, but other than that, yes. Some of them more than once, especially the various _____ Chronicles that were part of the series. They were my brother’s and one day I was bored so I read one and got hooked. I do remember stuff starting to get pretty crazy towards the end of the series.
I see that I have tons of suggestions and links to look into now. I’m a relatively fast reader, but I think I’ll be busy for quite some time. Thanks for your help everyone!
The Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh is really really well done, and if you’re interested in geopolitics at all has a lot of parallels to modern diplomacy.
Here is another site of lists. There is a brief plot description for each book. I am using this list to round out my own reading, having read most of but not all.
A couple of anthologies that collect the “golden age” of science fiction:
Adventures in Time and Space (Healy and McComas)
and
A Treasury of Great Science Fiction (Boucher) – 2-volume set
You’ll get short stories, novellas, and novels from some of the greats–Heinlein, Kuttner (“Lewis Padgett”), Bester, van Vogt, Wyndham, Poul Anderson, Asimov, del Rey, de Camp, Campbell, Dick, Sturgeon, Bradbury, Clarke, etc.
These are the collections that turned me on to SF–you can’t hardly do any better if you like classic SF.
My all-time favorite sf book is Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin, a collection of interrelated short stories about a guy who finds an ancient ecological-engineering starship and decides to cash in on it. Good dark-humored fun.
Anything on Hunter’s list is fantastic, but there should be a footnote with Laumer. He had a stroke in the late '70s and anything before the stroke is going to be varying degrees of fantastic. Anything after the stroke is unreadable.
Heh–there was a huge, HUGE controversy when Baen reprinted Schmitz: Eric Flint (the editor) decided to update a few word choices (Schmitz used the term “newshen” for a female reporter, for instance and he took out a reference to someone smoking on an airplane…stuff like that). The usenet erupted into flames over Flint’s “butchery” of the work. Until a dozen or two authors (Bujold, S.M. Stirlling, etc) popped in and said: “Wait-they’ll reprint my back catalog, but they want to change a word or two? Fine with me.” which pretty much showed the writer’s perspective.
Lemme add Kuttner to the list. This is a kind of expensive collector’s edition, but it has many of his best stories.
A couple more that I should have added:
Stanley G. Weinbaum
James White, specifically the “Sector General” series
Murray Leinster (some of his stuff has also been reprinted by Baen)
A relatively recent series that I rather liked, the Vatta’s War series by Elizabeth Moon. About a young woman who is given command of a merchant ship in her family’s shipping company after she is drummed out of her planet’s military academy. No aliens, per se, but humans have a pretty wide variety in the setting of these books, both socially and physically. First book of the series is Trading In Danger.
I would normally suggest the Honor Harrington books by David Weber, but those are less “Wonders of the universe” sci-fi and more military fiction/political thrillers. Still interesting for the wide variety of human cultures (one of the major powers in the universe is mostly ethnically Chinese, but styled after the Prussians, with German as their official language. Another planet is run by the Mafia. And notorious for the strictest law enforcement in the galaxy. They’re with the good guys.).
And of course, wandering off topic from books a bit, but sci-fi in general, you might like Mass Effect (video games, mostly), which has a very epic (in the “huge, grand, expansive” sense, not the “totally cool” sense) feel to it, and a very rich universe for the game to take place in. They kinda deluge you in little details here and there to give you the impression of a place that exists rather than just being a collection of maps and levels in a game.
Why yes, I have been playing that lately, why do you ask?
Oh, back to books, I’m reading Hokas Pokas, about a planet of very enthusiastic anthropomorphic teddy bears who fully embrace anything they read about, much to the chagrin of anyone who has to deal with them while trying to figure out what book they have found themselves living in today. It’s absolutely hilarious.
Well, I finally got down to the bookstore today. I compiled my list based on these suggestions, which filled up both sides of the page, and headed out. As I walked up to the bookshelves in the sci-fi section, I reached into my back pocket for my handy-dandy list and found…nothing. :eek: Right away, I knew that I had left my carefully compiled list setting on my dresser. :smack:
I remembered The Mote in God’s Eye and that was about it. Of course, they didn’t have it. “Well”, I figured, “I guess I can look around and see if anything rings a bell.” So up and down the aisles I went, mentally kicking myself for not remembering the list, even though I reminded myself as I put the list on the dresser, “Now don’t do something stupid like leave without this list.” :rolleyes:
Then, like a smack to the face, there it was. Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton. Hell yeah! That was on the list! I picked it up, read the back to see what it was about, also saw that it was $9.00, and saw that this was very good. Off to the checkout counter I went; the disaster (and an unnecessary trip) was averted.
Once again, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I look forward to getting back into science fiction, and you all have saved me from the horrors of a terrible book and even worse, the horrors of wasting money! 
Hopefully, you realized I wasn’t kidding when I said Hamilton takes a thousand pages just to get a story started. Pandora’s Star is the opening book in the Commonwealth series - and the series is 4384 pages long.
Anything by Iain M. Banks (the M is important!). All his stuff is good but I just love, love, love his books on The Culture.
Blast! I did not remember that. Oh well, all I can do is try to get into it and see what happens. I see that Judas Unchained, is a part of this series, am I missing another one?
ETA: Nevermind, I see there is one called Misspent Youth, although it kind of looks like it isn’t necessary to be able to follow Pandora’s Star. J.U. was right next to the book I got, but I don’t remember seeing M.Y. there.
Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained are definitely mean to be read in succession - they’re basically two halves of a single book.
Misspent Youth is sort of a prologue to the series. It’s set about 300 years before the events of Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. It basically explains how the stuff we see in the later books got started.
The Void trilogy - The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void - is set about 1200 years after Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. The trilogy’s story is distinct but many of the characters from the earlier books reappear.
Tell me what kind of science fiction movies are your favorites, and I might be able to offer some more narrowed suggestions for you.
cmyk,I haven’t seen very many. I like the Star Wars movies. I really liked the Knights of the Old Republic games, mainly because of all the little facts about the Star Wars universe it gives. Most of that stuff seems to be glanced over in the movies.
I saw this older one about a submarine and crew that get shrunk and injected into someone’s body. That was pretty cool.
Terminator 1 and 2 were pretty cool, especially 1. I liked 2 better as a kid, but when I watch T1 now, I think it’s the better of the two just because of the mood it sets. I mean, how hopeless does it look for Sarah Connor after the Terminator single-handedly takes on that police station. Whatever uncertainty the viewer has about the effectiveness of small-arms fire on the T-800 pretty much evaporates after that. Plus Ahnuld is like the perfect actor for a emotionless killer cyborg.
I’ve seen some newer ones, like War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise version) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (I think; it had Keanu Reeves). Those were OK I guess. I don’t know though, I don’t find very many movies interesting these days. Avatar was pretty good I suppose.
Other than that, not too many things are ringing a bell here. Sorry, I know that doesn’t help very much.
Little Nemo, thanks for the info. If I like this one, I’ll know where to continue. I can deal with a slow developing story if the author is throwing enough interesting stuff out there. I like Stephen King’s books and they sometimes seem like they take awhile to develop. Generally, he keeps it interesting. There are exceptions though. There was one that I got about 60 pages or so into; just waiting for it to get going until finally I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was one of the very few books that I started, but did not finish. I think it was Lisey’s Story, but I could be wrong.
(I guess I should be italicizing these titles huh? Not sure where I’m getting the underline from.)
Oh, if you liked KotOR, you definitely want to play Mass Effect. Another sci-fi game series from the same people.
I hope you enjoy Hamilton. He really is an excellent writer and he does keep the ideas coming. It’s just that his work can be overwhelming - I think Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained have something like a hundred characters you need to keep track of.