A Science Fiction newbie...

Hi,

I'm new to this group and I'm new to the Science Fiction genre as well. I have read some other types of genre literature but now I've come to a point where I would like to broaden my literary horizons a little.

However, I don't really know where to begin as it seems there's so many different titles to choose from. I would very much appreciate if one of you would be so kind to suggest a good representative novel or two for the Science Fiction genre as such...

Tough question, as there are many different specific sub-genres in scifi, as well plenty of blending of them.

The best I can do is recommend a few books I really think you'll like, and which I'd call solidly scifi:

Altered Carbon
The Stars My Destination
Ender's Game
Truth Machine

This doesn't come anywhere close to trying to represent all the sub-genre's, but I think there's a high chance you'll like some or all of these books.

And they're mostly standalone books, so you don't have to commit to reading a series. Altered Carbon has two sequels with the same main character, but still they can be read as standalone novels. Ender's Game has sequels, but while some may enjoy them, they're unnecessary (and some of the later ones especially weren't my cup of tea).

Oh, that was quick. Thank you! I guess it was a tough question as I can imagine there's a lot of sub-genres to Science Fiction.

I will try my luck with Altered Carbon.

This has been discussed fairly often on LibraryThing, and all over the web. An extensive discussion from last year here on LT can be read here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/61977

From that you should be able to find things that go with your existing tastes or something different.

If you give us some idea of what you typically like in a book - strong heroines, coming of age, romance, adventure, mysteries, quests, dealing with the unknown, lots of action, lots of character - we can make even better recommendations!

Science fiction is a genre with a special place and prominence for short fiction, so if you want a wide sampling, I'd strongly recommend getting a good general anthology. Something like the annual "Year's Best Science Fiction" series. The latest volume is The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (covering 2008), though The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (covering 2005) seems like a particularly good recent year to me. It's a good way to get a feel for the broadness of the genre, with lots of different styles. And you can find specific writers you might like more in the future. One of my favorite SF novels ever Metaplanetary I first discovered as a short story which the author later expended into the full novel. And sure, there are the "classics," but I think the best science fiction is being written right now...it's a genre of the future, not the past.

Based on the stuff you like from your profile, there are lots of excellent post-apocalyptic SF novels. Paolo Bacigalupi is an upcoming writer who writes some dark, sometimes macabre stuff in that vein. Dan Simmons is also an excellent science fiction writer. His Hyperion series is very popular, and I absolutely loved his novella "Muse of Fire" (printed in The New Space Opera). Well, not like I have the psychic ability to read your taste...but if you're interested in reading more literary SF, I've always liked Geoff Ryman's somewhat surreal The Child Garden, and other works.

There's also the far end of singularity/posthuman science fiction and complex "hard SF" (full of technobabble and quantum speculation) like Greg Egan. Personally, that's my favorite part of SF, but it's sometimes too confusing or opaque for people new to the genre. There are likely a few stories in that vein in the anthologies I've mentioned, for at least a taste of it.

6> Yes, 2005 was quite a good one, wasn't it? I particularly enjoyed the Bacigalupi story "The People of Sand and Slag." "Start the Clock", "The Voluntary State", "The Clapping Hands of God" and "Mother Aegypt" were some standouts for me. And reading "Investments" and got me into the Walter Jon Williams Dread Empire's Fall series.

>7 brightcopy:
Sorry, I meant another one. The Twenty-Third Annual Collection came out in 2006, but covers the year 2005. Whereas the Twenty-Second came out in 2005, but covers the year 2004. It can get kind of confusing based on how you define it's "year," right? :P I realized the discrepancy right away since I thought, "Wait, I'm thinking of the one with Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man"..."

(I'm glad to hear that, though, since I just ordered that Twenty-Second volume from Amazon...it's got a special bargain price now: $4.08 from an MSRP of $19.95. Pretty good discount I'd say, pretty good discount.)

Ah yes, quite confusing. They're starting to blur together and I've only actually finished 22 and 26 and am in the middle of a 25. I think I'll try 23 next based on your recommendation. I'm up to 15 now.

That price is damned impressive. I thought I was doing great getting them all for $6/$7 at used bookstores! I'll have to poke around and see if there are any similar deals for the ones I'm missing. Probably not, considering the most recent one I'm missing is from 2000.

Thank you all,

#4 -> Sorry, I was actually looking for such a list but didn't find it. Thank you for the link.

#5 -> Well, I think I like those dystopian/post-apocalyptic settings quite a bit. Maybe also stories about how things would turn out if for example Hitler had won the war (alternate history?). I like novels that are character-driven but not so much that the story looses its momentum.

#6 -> Thank you. Have added The Windup Girl to my wishlist.

Maybe also stories about how things would turn out if Hitler had won the war etc.

May I then suggest Moon of Ice, SS-GB, Fatherland, and The Man in the High Castle.

Also, just about anything Harry Turtledove has written.

#11 -> Thanks. added The Man In The High Castle to my wishlist.

Edit: By the way, Moon of Ice also looked interesting. Unfortunately the title seems to be out of print nowadays...

I didn't think Moon of Ice was all that good. Fatherland and the The Man in the High Castle certainly are, however.

>8 einhorn303: Thanks for the heads-up on Vol. 22 being only $4.08! Vol. 25 is also bargain-priced at $7.85.

>1 Locke: My all-time favorite science-fiction book is Dune. A lot of people enjoy it, so I would add that to your TBR pile. Wonderful book. Just don't worry about the sequels...

13: I agree that Moon of Ice is probably the weakest of the books I listed (and I think its portrayal of the U.S. political system in the alternate reality is just silly), but it is one of the few "Nazi's won WWII" books that both has the Nazi's winning and has them remain as nutty and obsessed with the occult and pseudoscience and other silly ideas as they actually were. Most other "Nazis won" books have the Nazis suddenly becoming rational and sensible in order to explain their victory. Moon of Ice makes it a bizarre fluke and goes from there.

I just saw the thread you started in fantasy asking for recommendations. lol

I've always liked space opera such as Lois Bujold's Miles Vor series. Its not dystopian/post-apocalyptic, but based on what you liked in fantasy, you might like it. :P Dune fits quite a few of things you listed in fantasy. As does the Honor series by David Weber. Though I personally don't like the Honor books. Lots of people do though. And yeah I know that was your fantasy list, but quite a few science fiction stories do fit it. They may or may not have the horses, but there are plenty of troops and battles and different worlds (varying landscapes).

In fact, if you want a quick list of science fiction writers, Baen's Library (http://www.baen.com/library/) has a nice collection. You could read the first couple of chapters of whatever catches your interest, than buy the book (or read it online!) and then buy the rest of the series. It has some fantasy as well. Also a list of the baen cd's online: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ I think they are a good of trying out authors, you know? So you don't shell out money for books you won't like.

Dystopian/post-apocalyptic books . . . lets see. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde is new and pretty good. If you know The Giver by Lois Lowry, Shades of Grey has a similar feel.

I agree about the Vorkosigan books based on your thread in FantasyFans.

My favorite apocalypse lately has been World War Z, apocalypse by zombie and unexpectedly smart. I also quite liked Life as We Knew It, which is young adult, and The Postman.

My favorite dystopias have been Santa Olivia and then several more YA - The Knife of Never Letting Go, Hunger Games.

Other general 'awesome books' recs are Ender's Game and Old Man's War.

#17: I have World War Z. It's great!... :)

>17 Aerrin99: Re: dystopian fiction
If you've read Little Brother, how would you compare it to Santa Olivia? I am an evangelist for the former, and am considering moving the latter closer to the top of my TBR pile...

> 19 Extremely different. Very. I liked both, but I liked Santa Olivia better. Little Brother felt very preachy to me. I still liked it - I found it fun and engaging and fast, with lots going on all the time. But I wish it hadn't been quite as pushy.

Santa Olivia is a different beast. It's a study of dystopia in microcosm, a book which presents (for me) place-as-character in addition to character-as-character, and I think it does some interesting things with the ideas of hope, power, fear, complacency, etc. It also takes a pretty long view - the book starts several years before our protagonist is even born. I know some people feel it's slow because of this, but it worked for me.

They're both worth reading, I think, but there's not much comparison between the two outside of the dystopia label.

>20 Aerrin99: Thanks, Aerrin99. Your response was quite helpful, and I look forward, even more, to reading Santa Olivia.

I always suggest that anyone new to the genre, begin by reading short stories. And one of the best anthologies still out there, is The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume one.

In it, you will find a broad spectrum of styles and writers from the 1930's to the mid 60's. There are also two follow up volumes that took the series into the 80's.

From there, you can familiarize yourself with various styles and then ask "who is currently writing that is like Author X"?

Except there aren't many writing currently who are anything like writers from the 1930s to the 1960s... 21st century sf is a very different genre to early 20th century sf.

23: I'd qualify that to say that some 21st century SF is very different. Guys like Baxter aren't all that different. And there are guys who've been writing forever like Niven who were throwbacks even when they started writing.

I often miss the style of some of the 60s and 70s writers. Writers like Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg. Yes, I know they're not all dead and some are only recently dead. But there's just something about the flavor of the stories written in that period that calls to me. Maybe it's just that when I was cutting my teeth in sci-fi those are the books I was reading and it always just stuck with me.

I also miss the aliens. I feel like stories used to have a lot more aliens (including into the 80s). I've felt like there was a periods where aliens were out of style and the stories would be about humans in space, with the occasional mysterious alien at the fring or artifacts of vanished alien races.

But that may just be my impression from the books I wound up reading. I really wanted to like Brin's Uplift series but the writing put me to sleep. I find dolphins as sentient characters to be utterly un-fascinating.

Sure but something like The mammoth book of best short SF novels which has stuff from the last 20 or 30 years might be a better introduction.

Or a few of the year's best anthologies...

Yeah, recently there was a Best Of The Best anthology from the Dozois Best SF Of The Year series wasn't there?

Dozois' Best of the Best.

Each volume only covers the last 20 years and were published in 2005 and 2007.

ETA: The first is short stories, the second is novellas. All are pulled from his Year's Best series.

#22-26 -> I do enjoy The Mammoth Books. I have the the last couple of years editions of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Maybe I will go that route with SF too. Actually, it sounds like a great idea. Thank you all!

It is one big volume in the UK The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

Hi Locke, welcome aboard the HMS SF! Fan of Lost are we? ;)
Now, what type of SF do you fancy?
Time travel?
(H.G.Wells The Time Machine and Stephen Baxter's sequel The Time Ships, Robert Silverberg's The Masks of Time which I gave up with!)

Space Opera?
(E.E.Doc Smith's Lensman books), Iain M Banks Culture books-the only one I've read so far is Consider Phlebas which was excellent, or maybe Alan Dean Foster's Icerigger series, as well as his Pip and Flinx/Commonwealth books. Also Larry Niven's Ringworld, not to mention A.E.van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is kind of made up of stories, one such scene is reminiscent of the movie Alien, which came much much later!

Military SF?
How about The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, whixh was excellent!
I've not read this next one but Heinlein's Starship Troopers is an early example of the sub genre.

Other books I've read recently which dont fit into the above genres are Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K Dick, one of the few Dick books I've managed to enjoy!
Also Bob Shaw's Palace of Eternity which was very good,Islands in the Sky by Clarke,Emphyrio by Jack Vance, which is more like fantasy than SF, but not bad,3 for Tomorrow,an anthology based on an idea by Clarke of how our future might go drastically wrong!
It consists of 3 novellas; How it was When the Past Went Away by Robert Silverberg, The Eve of RUMOKO by Roger Zelazny and We All Die Naked by James Blish

#31 -> Yes, I found it on Amazon's UK site... :)

#32 -> Oh no, I stopped watching the series after season 4--not even Kate could hold my interest at that point, sorry. Anyway, I have used my middle name »Locke« as my LT nickname. Well, in danish it's »Løcke«; however, the character »ø« is not international standard.

Thank you for your recommendations. I might not be fan of Lost--but that's how I feel right know ;)

I'm really not sure what the sub genre »Space Opera« covers but »Military SF« sounds interesting... :)

Space opera is kind of...

the grandiose - intergalactic civilizations - starfaring species - massive space battles - dramatic everything. Writ large.

I'm sure someone else can describe it better, but that is what comes to mind when I think "space opera".

A couple of writers who I would consider current leaders of the sub-genre are Alastair Reynolds with his Revelation Space series and Peter F. Hamilton with perhaps his Night's Dawn series. Both are excellent (if not a little wordy in Hamilton's case) authors worth checking out if this genre sounds appealing to you.

And Iain M Banks' Culture novels, too.

33 Space Opera is well, think Star Wars, Star Trek, babylon 5, Battlestar Galactic etc, tho if you don't like those shows it doesn't mean you won't like books in that genre.

Brian Aldiss described the space opera sub-genre as 'wide-screen Baroque'.

I thought that only applied to one type of space opera? Admittedly, half the stories in the anthology Space Opera that he edited weren't, well, space opera stories...

>37 RobertDay:
It seems odd that Aldiss should try to describe a sub-genre in which he doesn't write!

39> Really? How many books have most of the people describing genres and sub-genres on this thread written? ;)

His The Eighty Minute hour is often described as space opera. But Aldiss has written sf of all types.

There is a wiki article on space opera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

there is also an article on military science fiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_science_fiction

>40 brightcopy:, ah, we may not write space opera, but we do enjoy reading it. An SF writer that doesnt write space opera might be seen as someone who doesnt like space opera per se and so never reads it. Just a thought.

>36 sf_addict::

Space Opera is well, think Star Wars, Star Trek, babylon 5, Battlestar Galactic etc, tho if you don't like those shows it doesn't mean you won't like books in that genre.

I'm sorry for being silent the last couple of months. I actually went out and bought myself the complete »Battlestar Galactica« tv-series and have been occupied since then. This show is fan-frakking-tastic!! Now, I must hit the bookstores and find me something like that in print. Input are more than welcome... :)

Locke-you like alt history?

1632 by Eric Flint is great

from Turtledove, his best is probably Guns of the South

SM Stirling wrote Marching Through Georgia
Under the Yoke
The Stone Dogs which are about a nation in S Africa that takes the concept of slavery to the extreme. The stories start in WWII and lead up to the present in this alt timeline. Not for the weak of stomach but fascinating in a horrid sort of way

and a classic timetravel/alt history story is:

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp, about an archeologist who travels back to the Fall of Rome-and tries to keep it from falling

Wasn't Locke the name used by one of Enders' siblings to manipulate the web in Ender's Game? What was the other name they used?

Demosthenes

eta wikipedia link

I'd suggest A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum (really) -- it's on Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and Librivox. It's a good story and a fair test of whether you'll like SF.

You also can't go wrong with most of the Hugo and Nebula award winners (availiable in various anthologies) or with collections of "Best" or historical retrospectives of SF. (There is also the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (named for the pseudonym of SF author Alice Sheldon) and the Women of Wonder anthologies if you would like to read how women (and feminism) have responded to this often very masculine genre.)

(Then again, if you like very masculine, read Starship Troopers ... I can never decide whether the tone of the book is serious or subtle parody.)

My random suggestions of excellent SF books:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright (the SF is Geology, of all things)
Double Star by Robert Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Bicentennial Man (the novella) by Isaac Asimov

-Lisa Shapter
(who writes feminist Sf about men ... go figure)

#48, After reading all the Heinlein stores, I came to the conclusion that Starship Troopers is not a parody, its actually what he believes. The references to being a citizen and flogging criminals behind the library, etc. If you want a flavour of that read Sixth Column. Ugghhh.

Anyways, you can't go wrong with a smattering of the classics
Cities in Flight epic space opera (everyone has square chins and blue hair)
Childhood's End social sci-fi that would make a good movie
The Dosadi Experiment social sci-fi that would make a good comic book
The Hero military sci-fi
Bureau 13 occult sci-fi
Inferno semi-religious sci-fi (sort of)
Dragon's Egg good old hard sci-fi
Needle wierd alien sci-fi
Ox incomprehensible plot line sci-fi
The Mind Parasites beats me what this one is but I like it!
The Genesis Machine get the bastards in the end sci-fi
The Lord's Pink Ocean read this and barf sci-fi
On a Pale Horse what-if (thought experiment) sci-fi
The source of Magic puns on steriods sci-fi

You shouldn't just focus on one genre as there are so many to enjoy.

Cheers

A bit of a list here, but a friend posted this on a SF forum.
He picked up a copy of a 2006 book edited by Emma Beare, entitled 501 Must-Read Books.

"There is a section devoted to Science Fiction which contains 50 titles along with descriptions and other notable books by the listed authors. It should be observed that no author is listed twice. I guess that is supposed to tell me that no SF writer could possibly pen more than one "must-read" tome.

Here's the list (the SF section covers numbers 352 through 401):"

•352. "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams
•353. "Hothouse," Brian Aldiss
•354. "Brain Wave," Poul Anderson
•355. "I, Robot," Isaac Asimov
•356. "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood
•357. "The Crystal World," J.G. Ballard
•358. "The Demolished Man," Alfred Bester
•359. "Who Goes There?," John W. Campbell
•360. "The Invention of Morel," Adolfo Bioy Casares
•361. "Planet of the Apes," Pierre Boulle
•362. "The Martian Chronicles," Ray Bradbury
•363. "The Sheep Look Up," John Brunner
•364. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess
•365. "Erewhon," Samuel Butler
•366. "Cosmicomics," Italo Calvino
•367. "2001: A Space Odyssey," Arthur C. Clarke
•368. "A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder," James De Mille
•369. "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," Philip K. Dick
•370. "To Your Scattered Bodies Go," Philip Jose Farmer
•371. "Neuromancer," William Gibson
•372. "Stranger in a Strange Land," Robert A. Heinlein
•373. "Dune," Frank Herbert
•374. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley
•375. "Two Planets," Kurd Lasswitz
•376. "Left Hand of Darkness," Ursula K. LeGuin
•377. "Solaris," Stanislaw Lem
•378. "Shikasta," Doris Lessing
•379. "Stepford Wives," Ira Levin
•380. "Out of the Silent Planet," C.S. Lewis
•381. "I Am Legend," Richard Matheson
•382. "Dwellers in the Mirage," Abraham Merritt
•383. "A Canticle for Leibowitz," Walter Miller
•384. "Ringworld," Larry Niven
•385. "Time Traders," Andre Norton
•386. "Nineteen Eighty-Four," George Orwell
•387. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket," Edgar Allan Poe
•388. "The Inverted World," Christopher Priest
•389. "The Green Child," Herbert Read
•390. "The Laxian Key," Robert Sheckley
•391. "City," Clifford D. Simak
•392. "Donovan's Brain," Curt Siodmak
•393. "Lest Darkness Fall," L. Sprague De Camp
•394. "Last and First Men," Olaf Stapledon
•395. "More than Human," Theodore Sturgeon
•396. "Slan," A.E. Van Vogt
•397. "A Journey to the Centre of the Earth," Jules Verne
•398. "Slaughterhouse-Five," Kurt Vonnegut
•399. "The Island of Dr Moreau," H.G. Wells
•400. "Islandia," Austin Tappan Wright
•401. "The Day of the Triffids," John Wyndham

49:

'Everyone has square chins and blue hair'

I'm sold, been meaning to read Cities in Flight for a while...