'Deep Six' (short story anthology) and 'Wind-up Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi.
What are your favourite sci-fi books?
21–30 of 110 posts
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#22A Fire Upon the Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
both by Vernor Vinge
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#23I have strong opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" fi…
How big of an expert on deserts do you have to be that Dune stops being interesting? Unless you still find it valuable emotionally or philosophically and just reject is as 'science fiction' I think it's a bit sad to just flat out get rid of such an interesting book!
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#24The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#25Neal Stephenson "Anathem"
Stanisław Lem "Cyberiad", "Solaris", "Futurologists' convent"
Greg Egan "Permutation City"
Jacek Dukaj "Black Oceans"
Iain M. Banks "Algebraist" (I read some books from culture series, but IMHO culture is just too overpowered to make an interesting story possible - you basicaly read to see at which point they will show their full superiority, and it doesn't work for me)
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#26One of the read-worthy books which immediately came to mind is Neverness [1] by David Zindell. It is actually the 'prequel' to a series ('A requiem for Homo Sapiens' [2]) which I have yet to read, but it stands by itself as far as I'm concerned. If you like SF, mathematics and deep ideas, this might be a book for you. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/968997.Neverness [2] http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/399…
Neverness is not a prequel since it was written before A Requiem For Homo Sapiens.
That sort of sloppy thinking would get you killed as a pilot. :-)
Also, autocorrect really doesn't want to let me type Neverness.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#27Top 3 for me, would be
1. Ender's Game
2. 2001 Space Odyssey - I sit down with Arthur for Tea at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka - He gave me a copy of his article in which he first described telecommunication via satellites
3. Snow Crash
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#28I have strong opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" fi…
Once upon a time I would have agreed - but these days I find poor characterisation stalls my suspension of disbelief just as much as dodgy physics. So my current favourite is Fiasco by Lem. The physics at least sounds convincing and the characters are all too human.
That reminds me of one reviewer who described the weirdest aliens in any science fiction novel as the human characters in a particular Robert L. Forward novel....
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#29Dune - Frank Herbert
There's something mystical and very powerful about this book and the theme of conquering fear. It also reads surprisingly well considering how dense some of the political and technical descriptions are.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#30I have strong opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" fi…
I'm sure you know this, but you never say so which makes it a bit frustrating: what you refer to as "real science fiction" is commonly known as "hard science fiction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction).
The "opposite", i.e. what you refer to as re-skinned fantasy, often falls into the "space opera" subgenre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera). For instance, "Star Wars" is often referred to as being space opera.