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My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

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Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#11

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

For modern sci fi and fantasy, pretty much anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I also just discovered the short story collections of Rich Larson (Changelog and Tomorrow Factory are both recommended)

Just published as well is There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm. You can read the original on SCP [1], but it's now out in book form.

[1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#13

Post by mwigdahl »

auntienomen wrote: post #9
bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

Little, Big by John Crowley. Also everything else he's written.

Seconded!

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#14

Post by n4r9 »

bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

For cult sci fi classics you can't get much better than "Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Other goodies include Dune (of course), Gateway, and The Forever War.

I also recently read Speaker For The Dead (sequel to Enders Game) and was pleasantly surprised. Possibly better than the original.

A sibling comment mentions Tchaikovsky which I strongly concur with.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#15

Post by rapind »

bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

I think because a lot of sci-fi dips it’s toes in fantasy. Once you invent FTL it’s not much further to a medieval era species of telepathic dogs.

I’m with you though.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#16

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

Of course there is a significant overlap in readers of both genres. I am mostly the same as you though, I rarely read fantasy.

Always annoys me having to wade through fantasy to find the sci fi on bookshop shelves. At least you can filter to just sci fi for ebooks mostly.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#17

Post by georgefrowny »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #4
bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

> And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :) Permutation City is his best-known work, and while some people (including me) enjoy the density of ideas, others find the characterisation weak. I'd start with one of his short story collections, such as Luminous .

Second the short stories. Axiomatic has some great ones too with concepts that really stuck with me.

And if you like that, Phase Space by Stephen Baxter feels very similar.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#19

Post by nsavage »

bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

Bookstores like to make things easy for themselves by defining categories (a la Seeing Like A State), especially due to the perceived overlap between the readership of the two categories as the weird books the nerdy guys read.

While that may have been true historically, fantasy has a new, blossoming, largely female readership, although you could consider this to be overloading the term 'fantasy' as these new BookTok books seem to have little in common with the old school sword and sorcery.

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