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Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#32

Post by yoyohello13 »

dcminter wrote: post #9
throwaway019254 wrote: post #5

Bobiverse series (Dennis E. Taylor) Old Man's War series (John Scalzi) The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

I haven't read any of the Bobiverse books, but I recall reading a review that stated something like "I realise this isn't going into what's so bad about it, but I honestly don't know where to start. It would be like explaining why murder was bad." :D Annoyingly I can't find the original any more, but I do note that most of the 1 star reviewers are angry about anti-religious tone, so perhaps that was the bee in their…

The Bobiverse series is amazing. Yes, there is a faction of religious extremists, but honestly it came off as pretty realistic to me, lol.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#34

Post by BruceEel »

Quite a few of my faves already mentioned in this thread so let me throw in a couple of relatively lesser-known ones:

   - City by Clifford Simak
   - Everything by M.A.Foster, but Waves and the Transformer Trilogy in particular
   - You Must Remember Us...? by Leonard Daventry
   - The Green Man and Other Stories by Rand B. Lee (in particular the story Knight of Shallows)
   - The Star Wolf series by David Gerrold
And a few easily overlooked ones by Philip K. Dick:

   - Clans of the Alphane Moon
   - The Game-Players of Titan
   - Now Wait for Last Year.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#35

Post by smithza »

As an author better known for other genres, C.S. Lewis wrote an exceptional as Sci-Fi trilogy beginning in the 1930s. He would finish it in by the 1950s. Heavy in philosophy and combatting the currently popular ideas of eugenics and Wells’ ideation of human conquering of the solar system and eventual universe, it was a great read.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#36

Post by whartung »

Daniel Keys Moran

  + Emerald Eyes
  + The Long Run
  + The Last Dancer
I don’t reread books as a rule, but I’ve reread these, and TLR at least five times.

I can rattle of an endless list of authors I like, but by organic evidence of “favorites” these stand out.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#37

Post by spapas82 »

I've read a lot of scifi but I'd recommend only one to make sure you get the point:

The "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...) which is more known as "the three body problem". All the books are great but my favourite by a large margin is "the dark forest" (part 2)

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#38

Post by spoiler »

The Expanse books are great. The TV show is a pretty good adaptation too, but I love the portrayal of the characters in the books.

A recent thing I started reading (first book release this month) is The Last Horizon series by Will Wight (author of Cradle, and Elder Empire books). This one's more of a sci-fi and fantasy blend, if you're into that sort of thing. In a nutshell, it's magic-as-technology, but with space travel.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#39

Post by kwooding »

Here’s a book I don’t expect to see on too many lists (and I’m surprised it’s on mine, as I don’t typically like big-property universes like Star Trek): The Final Reflection, John M Ford. It’s an ancient book (by Star Trek standards-1984) set in the original ST:TOS universe, but it did Klingon world-building before that was a thing (it’s not canon, as it did this long before Klingons were fleshed out in any real way). Loved the worldbuilding, loved that it made a then 2-dimensional alien into a rich 3-d society.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#40

Post by michaelbuckbee »

dcminter wrote: post #9
throwaway019254 wrote: post #5

Bobiverse series (Dennis E. Taylor) Old Man's War series (John Scalzi) The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

I haven't read any of the Bobiverse books, but I recall reading a review that stated something like "I realise this isn't going into what's so bad about it, but I honestly don't know where to start. It would be like explaining why murder was bad." :D Annoyingly I can't find the original any more, but I do note that most of the 1 star reviewers are angry about anti-religious tone, so perhaps that was the bee in their…

Roger Ebert always tried to review movies on what they were trying to do and not on an absolutist scale of good/bad.

IMO the Bobiverse books are trying to have a fun go at a few different big sci-fi concepts and on that basis I think they're fairly successful.

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