I’m wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some relatively obscure but good sci-fi or fantasy. Some of the sort of stuff I’ve liked and disliked:
Liked:
The Diamond Age
American Gods (and pretty much everything by Gaiman)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
A Fire Upon the Deep (and pretty much everything by Vinge)
Earth
Magic, Inc.
Disliked:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Blue Mars (Robinson)
The Shannara Books
Lots of Harry Turtledove Books (not so much disliked as got fed up with the length of the series)
Any hints at all would be welcome. Thanks!
I’m a big Vernor Vinge fan too. Have you read anything by Peter F. Hamilton? Try the Night’s Dawn trilogy, starting with The Reality Dysfunction. Big, complex, intelligent SF that still manages to be a real page-turner.
Or, you could try his first Commonwealth book, Pandora’s Star. The prologue gives a good sample of his style.
If you liked Magic, Inc, you might like Turtledove’s The Case of the Toxic Spell dump ( just one book, so your ‘too long’ problem doesn’t come up ), and Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos & Operation Luna ( published together as Operation Otherworld ).
Glen Cook’s Black Company series as well as Steven Erikson’s Malazan series. George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire series.
Larry Niven’s Known Space series. Second the Iain Banks recommendation; I loved The Algebraist. Lois Mcmaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan stories. Anything by Rudy Rucker, especially the Software/Wetware/Freeware books.
I like both those, and I feel like a broken record about it, but John Varley.
Definitely the Titan Trilogy. (Titan, Demon and Wizard.) About a planet that is also a god, and not the nicest god in the universe.
And Blue Champagne, a collection of short stories, including The Pusher. It’s a great story about how people might deal with living on ships where faster than the speed of light isn’t possible and they spend their lives “pushing G’s and pulling Z’s” if I remember correctly.
Since Golden Globe, I haven’t really like that much of his stuff but his older work is great.
This caveat–If you want science stuff like “how wormholes work?” It’s not your thing. If you like (and if you like the Mars of Kim Stanley Robinson, I think you might) how people deal within this technological fabric? He’s great.
George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is fast becoming a seminal work in fantasy fiction. It’s very tightly and entertainingly written, the plot is consequent and exciting and there’s a very open-ended feel about the entire series. It’s one of the forebears of the new wave of gritty, realistic historical and fantasy fiction and Martin doesn’t play favourites at all with his characters. It’s loosely based - or analagous to - the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century England. Reading it with a historical background is pure bonus, though.
It also makes room for humour and fun, of course - my favourite characters being Dolorous Edd and Tyrion Lannister, who share this pervasive caustic humour that constantly relieve the series of it’s ongoing drama. For instance:
David Eddings’s Belgariad series is great, and of course I have to throw out the obligatory Pratchett rec.
If you liked Gaiman’s stuff, try Susanna Clarke: go for *The Ladies of Grace Adieu *first–it’s a collection of short stories–and if you like the tone and pacing, spring for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Christopher Moore does a hilarious turn on vampires; all of his stuff is good. Read any Douglas Adams yet?
Not that it’ll set you back a whole lot - The day before Halloween I found a shrink-wrapped copy of the hardback at the DOLLAR TREE!! But yes, I agree - I figure if Neil was gaga over it (he pushed it enough in his blog ), I’d probably like it as well, and I really did.
As far as the Black Company series - I have to disagree with the above recommendation - if you were frustrated at the length of Turtledove’s series, you might have a problem here. I got bored about halfway through the third book of the first series and never really picked the rest up.
However, I absolutely LOVE Cook’s Garrett Files series - while it is a series and there are some elements carried over in a really broad story arc you can really read each book separately. It’s great if you like humorous light fantasy mixed with a sardonic dose of hard-boiled detective novels.
Any good starting points for Ian M. Banks?
Never read any of Peter Hamilton’s stuff - the snippet looks good.
I may try The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump - I’ve seen it on my dad’s bookshelf but never read it. Ice and Fire seems like a favorite of many - that will be a must-read on the list.
Varley sounds good too - didn’t he write Earth Abides also? Not one of his best?
I dunno about Eddings - I read the Belgariad and some other series of his a long time ago, and I have to say I found it a little repetitive.
Pratchett I’m working my way through. Already read all the Vimes-centered books and I’m working my way Hubward from there.
Douglas Adams I’ve read everything (I think) - even Last Chance to See, which I highly recommend incidentally.
Cook’s Garrett Files sounds good. Is it anything like Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories? I loved those.
Has Burroughs aged well? Er - not him, his writing, I mean. I’ve got it in my head as this sort of classic that I might never be able to work myself through, kinda like Moby Dick.
Thank you all for some great suggestions!
Another good semi-obscure series is Randall Garrett ( the Lord Darcy author ) and Viki Ann Heydron’s Gandalara Cycle; seven mostly-short books or so, but a fast and good read I found.
If you like intrigue and martial arts in a sci-fi setting, try the Matador series by Steve Perry; the first is The Man Who Never Missed. While the series is fairly long by now, the first three books were written as a trilogy; by then you’ll know if you like him enough to read more. And you’ll know where certain posters got their usernames.
For older stuff, there’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen and The Fuzzy Chronicles by H. Beam Piper, if you can find them.
The best that I’ve read recently is Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. It reminds me a lot of Red Mars (which gets a shout-out in the book, btw), being a character-centered story in which the science never takes backstage. It’s also beautifully written.
George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is quite good, although each new gargantuan installment comes at an agonizingly slow pace. Try some of his SF, too: Tuf Voyaging is one of my all-time favorites, a clever, funny set of interrelated short stories about ecology, war, overpopulation and power; Dying of the Light is an interesting exploration of a very different human culture in the distant future; “Sandkings” and “The Way of Cross and Dragon” are two breathtakingly good (but very different) short stories. And Martin’s Fevre Dream is one of the best vampire novels ever written, set along the Mississippi River before the Civil War - think Bram Stoker crossed with Mark Twain. Simply excellent.
Joe Haldeman has an amazing talent. Here are three of his best: The Forever War is deservedly a classic, about a centuries-long interstellar conflict and the enduring love of two soldiers trapped in it. Tool of the Trade is a wonderful Cold War thriller about mind control. All My Sins Remembered is about an Earth spy in the distant future and how his long career erodes his own sense of identity.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is a bittersweet novel about First Contact and how it changes humanity forever. His 2001: A Space Odyssey is essential to understanding the movie, but is very good in its own right. And The Fountains of Paradise is an entertaining, well-written explanation of how an orbital elevator might be built and used.
And of course you should read some Tolkien! Start with The Hobbit, and if you love it as I hope you will, go on to The Lord of the Rings and, if you’re totally swept away by it, move on to The Silmarillion.
I just wanted to say thanks again for all the suggestions - I recently got back from a long trip and had some time to do some great reading.
I read Spin, which was recommended in this thread, and it was great! I really loved it - original ideas and good pacing. I wonder if I’ll need to get the sequels now.
I luckily found an Ian M. Banks novel (The Algebraist in a used bookstore in Kaikoura, New Zealand, so I read that too. It was good, but I thought his depiction of the Dweller aliens wasn’t very alien.
I picked up Use of Weapons by Banks later in the trip and enjoyed that a great deal too.
And finally I’m currently 160 pages into The Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton.
There’s a lot of other recommendations in this thread I’d love to get to eventually, but haven’t had the chance yet.
Thanks all! I knew I would get some great suggestions here.
I haven’t read a lot of Sci-Fi recently, but for fantasy I just finished the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks, (The Way of Shadows, Shadows Edge, & Beyond the Shadows) . I thoroughly enjoyed them.
A favourite of mine is Robin Hobb - particularly the Assassin’s Apprentice trilogy, that was superb. She has three other trilogies (Liveship Traders, Tawny Man, & Soldier Son) which were all enjoyable, but IMO didn’t quite hit the heights of the Assassin’s Apprentice series for me anyway. I happily recommend them all.
I think Earth Abides is excellent, but it’s actually by George R. Stewart, not John Varley.
Speaking of Varley, his recent books may appeal if you like Heinlein; there’s a loose trilogy beginning with Red Thunder, although there’s also one called Mammoth, which, despite my liking of mammoths, wasn’t that good, imo.
I’ll also chuck Jack McDevitt into the mix for good sf.
Thanks!