Eric Schwitzgebel composed a list of "philosophically interesting" SF from the recommendations of 34 professional philosophers:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/SF-Master...
It also includes non-printed media.
What are your favourite sci-fi books?
91–100 of 110 posts
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#92Just finished reading "Fiasco" by Stanislaw Lem. Between that "Cyberiad" I feel like Lem doesn't get enough credit. Maybe part of it is not being in the Western European writer's camp?
At any rate, I would say:
Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein
The Dispossessed, Le Guin
The Stars My Destination, Bester
Childhood's End, Clarke
Stand out as some of my favorites. I'm pretty terrible at making top-5 lists, but those stand out as ones that I would read again in a heartbeat if there weren't already 50 books on the floor next to my bed waiting for me :)
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#93Peter Watts's Blindsight - easily the best SF novel I've read in the last decade. I haven't got round to Echopraxia yet, but I doubt it'll fail to live up to its predecessor. Also, while I have no use whatsoever for Stross's "Singularity" stuff, his Laundry Files series excels, especially for an inveterate old Lovecraft fan such as myself. If you want a taste, there are some shorts available online -- "Overtime" and…
You better doubt it, Echopraxia fails to live up to Blindsight. Aren't sequels that match the original the exception rather than the rule?
Sure. On the other hand, I found Watts's Rifters trilogy to be strong throughout, and I'd previously assumed that he'd turn in the same strong performance with his latest series.
In what way does Echopraxia fail to live up to its predecessor? I'm eventually going to get around to it, but if it's going to disappoint me, I'd like to know ahead of time so that I can go into it with my expectations better calibrated.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#94Anything by Alastair Reynolds - his Revelation Space series is great, and House of Suns is a fantastic one-off. He's probably the closest to Ian Banks in creating galaxy-spanning civilisations across eons of time. Ian MacDonald is another good one. My favourite of his is The Dervish House, but his others are definitely worth reading. Charles Stross is good. Didn't get on with Accelerando, but his Laundry books are a…
I 2nd _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#95Neal 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)
The Algebraist is my favourite Iain M. Banks book too - the breadth of imagination in it is amazing I think Surface Detail is my favourite Culture novel. Many Iain Banks books (regular fiction as well as sci-fi) are really just wish-fulfillment stories, but they're so stylish and fun to read that I love them (plus there's usually at least one very insightful rant by a minor character to be found in nearly every book)
My favorite Culture story is actually fanfic - "Culture explores Warhammer 20k universe".
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#96Really surprised to see no mention of H. G. Wells here, so I'm just going to add it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine You can get it at project Gutemberg, so no excuse not to read it. Any book by French author Barjavel are also worth reading in my opinion, especially "La Nuit des Temps" / "The Ice People" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_%28Barjavel_nov... ) and "Ravage" / "Ashes, Ashes"…
On that note, I highly recommend The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter. He picks up where The Time Machine leaves off and takes the story into some amazing directions.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#97Just finished reading "Fiasco" by Stanislaw Lem. Between that "Cyberiad" I feel like Lem doesn't get enough credit. Maybe part of it is not being in the Western European writer's camp? At any rate, I would say: Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein The Dispossessed, Le Guin The Stars My Destination, Bester Childhood's End, Clarke Stand out as some of my favorites. I'm pretty terrible at making top-5 lists, but those sta…
If people knew of him at all, I'm afraid the Solaris films really damaged people's perceptions of Lem's work.
I've been reading his stuff since 1986 and he can be as innovative and experimental as Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, or Thomas Pynchon while still being fun and readable.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#98Neal 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)
IMB is a yes. All of it. Devour. Much like the works of Steven Erikson (Not SF) they're fantastically detailed, which isn't everyone's taste.
The Cyberiad is a trove of beauty, ridiculous, sublime, educational - touching on things as far apart as philosophy and maxwell's demon. Amazing that they're not even in English given the wonderous translation.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#99You realize not a single person has mentioned a female author? Let's fix that: The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Among Others by Jo Walton Feed by Mira Grant The Hunger Games! The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin Grass by Sheri S Tepper Gate of Ivrael and Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh And the fabulous space opera: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Octavia Butler wrote some amazing stuff too.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#100I 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…
Hard/strong arguments are always strange. Some of my childhood aesthetic favourites bridge the gap (Golden Witchbreed and the like). Some try to be hard sf, and concentrate hugely on one aspect but miss others (Niven, the integral trees). Clarke has his own hand-wavy moments (Cradle?). I'm not sure it's a dichotomy that yields that much value. Le Guin, Pohl, others - often venture into very fantasy settings, and still tell such wonderful tales, that tell us something about the very real, very unscientific and utterly irreducible human nature. Which I think is the true point of SF at all. Fresh landscapes, same paint. New stories.