Top notch Scifi

[oksnoop2]

Starship Troopers is a good book.

[Neddie]

I believe there are multiple Starcraft novels, Machete. Star Wars did have some solid writers at one point, though of course, solid isn't good enough.

If you ask for top notch science fiction, don't put a date on it. You'll only disappoint yourself. After all, most science fiction produced at any time is rubbish. PressureLine has a point in regards to books aging differently than other media.

I'm not terribly fond of Heinlein, but I'm pretty hard to please. Most "hard" science fiction flows either into explicit scientific speculation and focuses on outer space - a place I have little hope for. Most "soft" science fiction takes this as an excuse not to develop the necessary "soft" content along with all the "hard details" - which incidentally are pretty easy to write and little more realistic than handwaves.

I was alright with Snow Crash, felt the writing didn't support the ideas well enough, and takes too much from the detail poor style of modernity promoted by that common fear of words, otherwise known as the desire to avoid "purple prose". Haven't read Hyperion, do have a copy. Greg Bear doesn't do very much for me.

Also, you can't expect to request something on a public forum and get immediate, precise responses. You asked for information, you'll probably get information, and suck up the discrepancies between what you requested and what you got.

[PicassoCT]

This interweb thing, is not just a AI-Simulation of people, created to do lipread every whim, every wish and for enternity do my biddings? Sim, im dissapoint!

[PicassoCT]

# The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995)
# Cryptonomicon (1999)

+1
+1 to Hyperion
+1 towards Uplift series

What i hate about SciFi is that it never focuses on the real trouble, the limits of logos, the bug that wriggles out of the human mind when technology solve one problem for them. For example, i never understood why in Star Trek, not everybody is fat, beeming from one station to another, completely erradicating the need for j-tubes, hallways, janeways, turbolifts- beam my 500 kgs into whalesickobay, the doctor has manned the nanoharpoon. I find the most interesting scifi in that term, to be written on 4chan, mainly in /b/ and r9k.

Its really intersting what some reactionprone social media (trollz) can coerce out of the human mind, guess in about ten years, we will see all those neurosience catching up to that research. And before you fire up - i know the pasta aint real, but the people reacting are. Makes you think about humanity less idealistic, but as most realism does, it offers hidden before options.

I also recommend David Brins Earth. While not written well, its positiv vision of a overcrowded, but due to electronics, still civil earth is interesting, although the story itself is shit.

Also: Hitchhikers Guide and All Men are mortal (if immortality is scifi)
and "Der letzte seiner Art" (Last of his kind) by Andreas Eschbach
Its about a military Cyborg, whose coldwarimplants are giving him a hard time during his disability pension, while he is hunted by reporters, secret service - and waste his time with long walks and reading epicurus.

Never laughed so hard, as when he described his dys-abilitys:
"It was one of the last, rushed surgerys, the docs had grinned proud, and now my boner can stand as long as i want, although i cant have sex, because my synthetic muscles would crush anybody during orgasm."
And that is one of his better working implants. Or the legendary beginning.
"I woke up, past midnight in my bed, and couldnt feel my left side, sometimes one of the un-shortable cables has a short, leaving me half seizured, paralysed, except from my left arm. With wich i reach below my bead, grab the timber beam i keep there, and start to beat the crap out of that damned spot on my right side. Im like a old drinkdispenser, some hits usually do the trick."

Its tragic, its the reality never made into shadowrun, snowcrash and therefore, its magic. I dont want SciFi to be escapism, i want to see ahead.

[Pxtl]

@Pressure Line

There was only 1 Forever War book. Haldeman can write a fantastic novel, but he can also right some catastrophically awful cash-ins. Forever War was great - one of my all-time favourites. Forever Free was one of the worst books I've ever read.

Forever War is also good when placed next to Starship Troopers, since it's nearly a perfect opposite, thematically. Basically, the idealized memory of WW2 vs. the harsh reality of Vietnam.

Really, Heinlein is kind of overrated in retrospect - the man was brilliantly creative... but his characters are pretty flat, and many of his stories were soapboxes for his unusual personal and political beliefs, and his stories were pretty much adolescent wish-fulfillment for adults.

That said, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" still holds up well.

As for Hyperion, the first book is incredibly awesome... but each book is slightly worse. The second provides nice closure to the first, so it's worth reading. The third and fourth books are unnecessary and merely "good" instead of heartstoppingly fantastic, so don't feel compelled to pick them up if you loved the first two. The worst part is that Simmons did near-constant retconning in the latter books, which kind of hurts the former.

[Hobo Joe]

Well, I really enjoyed all four, but I definitely agree that the first is best, closely followed by the second. I read the last two books mainly because I wanted to get all the final details and have all my questions answered, but they really lacked a big part of what made the first books so good, the complete mystery, the large number of characters and all their detailed stories, etc, whereas the last two books were primarily just one character, with other more minor characters.

I really liked the way he wrote the Pax, and how they were connected to the core, but I wasn't a big fan of the way that everyone could just tap into the void and basically do anything. He could have done what he did with the Pax and the core without that, I think, and have their downfall come in a more natural way, such as via the Shrike or the Ousters.

/scifi sperg


Anyway, they are still good books, and I still recommend them, you should at least read the first two.

[Panda]

"The HitchhikerÔÇÖs Guide to the Galaxy"
"Brave New World"
"Neuromancer"
"Dune"
"Stranger in a Strange Land"
"A Clockwork Orange"
"Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions"
"I, Robot"

"Brave New World" and "A Clockwork Orange" may be a bit much for many readers.

Madeleine L'Engle books even though they're on the banned books list over here:

"A Wrinkle in Time"
"A Wind in the Door"
"A Swiftly Tilting Planet"
"Many Waters"

[KaiserJ]

why the flip are those books banned

edit : in a re-read of hyperion... forgotten the true awesomeness and its nice to revisit

double edit : REALLY? banned because of themes of christian universalism? O LAWDY

[Panda]

Unfortunately, yep.

Five more good books that even teens can read:

Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein"
"My Teacher is an Alien"
"My Teacher Fried my Brains"
"My Teacher Glows in the Dark"
"My Teacher Flunked the Planet"

I used to read a lot of sci fi when I was a teen.

[Sucky_Lord]

SciFi/Fantasy: The Many Coloured Land

Though it isnt modern

[Hobo Joe]

Where do you live Panda? O_o


Wrinkle in Time is great, been years since I read it, might pick it up again.

[Panda]

Where do you live Panda? O_o


Wrinkle in Time is great, been years since I read it, might pick it up again.

The U.S., Louisiana. You can still find the book, but it's on the educational system's banned books list. I read it in the 5th grade anyway. Basically, it's just not endorsed over here. "A Wrinkle In Time" has always been one of my favorite books too.

[oksnoop2]

I read that book in school. I guess they are more lenient in Indiana... Or just less observant.

[PicassoCT]

Where do you live Panda? O_o


Wrinkle in Time is great, been years since I read it, might pick it up again.

The U.S., Louisiana. You can still find the book, but it's on the educational system's banned books list. I read it in the 5th grade anyway. Basically, it's just not endorsed over here. "A Wrinkle In Time" has always been one of my favorite books too.

Oh, the good old art of tricking children to read good books. No, sorry, you are not old&adult enough, its a dangerous book, its strictly forbidden, look its on the list. And with a Rebell yell- nothing better for education as overprotective parents

[Panda]

I wonder how often that actually works.

[Machete234]

"The HitchhikerÔÇÖs Guide to the Galaxy"
..
"A Clockwork Orange"

Both great, I would buy a compilation book of all hitchiker novels, its worth it.
A clockwork orange has a lot of russian in it so that you need at least 50 pages to get all the vocabulary.
Burgess thought for some reason there will be russian elements in the youth slang of the future.

Brave new world is a typical school book I would say just like 1984.

[PicassoCT]

Which reminds me to add the following sentence to my book.
"Should this novell be chosen for lecture in class, i hereby relief you of the homework of reading this piece of paper, and call the teacher a asshole, for forcing down it down your throat. Hide and forget this book, see you later in your life."

[Machete234]

Some teachers can ruin the best book on the planet by letting the class discuss about the most obvious things.
Your classmates are usually dumber than you but dont realize it. (thats life i guess)

Or the teacher forces you to concentrate on one aspect of the book that is uninteresting to you.
Or they overanalyze it until you puke because thats all they ever learned in their life.

Another good book
The man in the high castle by PKD (also old but I think its nonsense to concentrate on 90's or 2000's novels)
a distopia and alternate history where the allies have lost the war.
America is occupied by the japanese on the westcoast and the germans on the east coast.
Some sort of agent story is playing in the japanese occupied territory and the ending will ty a knot in your brain.

[d-gun]

Ender's Game

[smoth]

the foundation series. It is still on my want to finish list. I read forward the foundation when I was in college on a random whim and was moved by some of the parts in it. I used to read some other Asimov when I was a kid and always found his writing to flow.