Science/Fantasy fiction bukes (1 Viewer)

Diddles

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Staple reading material for me. On the fantasy front, at the moment I'm re-reading Magician by Raymond Feist - one of my favourites. Science fiction wise I love The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. Any new writers of these genres you'd recommend?
 
Fantasy you could check out George R Martin or Steven Eriksen, pretty epic stuff there.
Sci-fi just go with Robert Heinlein, brilliant writer.
My favourite though is a mixture of both, Jack Vance.
 
Thanks - lots to check out now. Will be reading a few over THE Christmas hopefully.

(and shut up about magician, it's deadly).
 
I'm rereading some of the older Stephen Baxter books. They're fairly clunky but have some interesting ideas in them. Some of the dialogue reads like those old Open University physics or maths lectures that used to be on early in the morning.
 
ive never been so annoyed by a book as i was by that rubbish. dreadful.
You obviously haven't read the Shannara books by Terry Brooks. What a pile of utter poo!

I recommend the Liveship books by Robin Hobb to you. Fantastic books with great characters. I devoured them! Her other stuff doen't seem of quite the same standard though.
 
the isaac asimov robot books are good, also some philip k dick, though not valis as it is the worst book ever written :rolleyes:

there's another dude called alastair reynolds who writes big huge epic scifi books
 
iain m. banks is excellent too - his duds are still quite readable.
the player of games and look to windward might be a good place to start.
 
Still my favourite genre.. I've essentially bought the sci-fi section in Waterstones..

My top picks:

Hyperion by Dan Simmons - simply sublime, and the sequels are (very unusually) just as good, if not better.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman - sci-fi with a soul. Very moving. You can tell it's written by a Vietnam vet.

Anything by Iain M Banks (as has been said, his worst stuff is still great)

Pandora's Star and sequel by Peter Hamilton. Great page turning stuff, and less overblown than his other books.

Metal Fatigue - Sean Williams. Just fantastic.. never goes quite where you expect.

Tiger Tiger (or the stars my destination as it's now called I think) - total classic.

There's loads more but sure that'll do for now!
 
I did a module called American Science Fiction for my literature degree but for some reason I can't remember hardly anything I read for it, except for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (good enough) and something by Ursula Le Guin (sp?) which everyone hated with a passion.

Oh and Farenheit 451 which is utterly brilliant.
 
Ursula Le Guin (sp?) which everyone hated with a passion.
Wizard of Earthsea? That's a very well loved book on this Arts and Culture board. I enjoyed it. I didn't think it was amazing or anything but it was grand. She writes sci-fi too which is supposed to be fantastic.

Oh, and Diddles, if anyone tells you not to read the Silmarillion by Tolkien, or that it is confusing, they are ignorant fools and should be ignored.
 
Ursula Le Guin (sp?) which everyone hated with a passion.

She's a great writer.. Eartsea was my favourite book as a kid. Kicks the absolute arse out of all that harry potter malarky. Did anyone else notice that none of the main characters are caucasian?! She purposely wrote it to counter the usual white boy hero crap in a lot of sci-fi, and the story has as much morality as Ender's Game.

Sequel to Ender's game is great by the way!

I've thought of more.. Foundation and the next two sequels were absolutely brilliant. Don't read the ones after that though.. totally buggers up the story.
 
Staple reading material for me. On the fantasy front, at the moment I'm re-reading Magician by Raymond Feist - one of my favourites. Science fiction wise I love The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. Any new writers of these genres you'd recommend?


Magician was my lord of the rings. Fantastic book that. Then i read lord of the rings and felt stupid.Never got into stephen donaldson. The Wheel of Time series by Robert jordan was pretty good too, but i lost interest after the 36th book. The first few Vampire Chronicles were'nt bad either; i'd also suggest 'I was a teengae Goth' by, uh...me.
 
William Gibson always did it for me, esp. Neuromancer and Count Zero.

Bradbury's a classic too...is he still alive i wonder? Anyhow, i've read and re-read most of his stuff literally dozens of times.
 
William Gibson always did it for me, esp. Neuromancer and Count Zero.

Bradbury's a classic too...is he still alive i wonder? Anyhow, i've read and re-read most of his stuff literally dozens of times.

he is alive still, he had a new book out recently. farenheit 451 and something wicked this way comes were my favorites, although its years since i read them. i read one of his more recent collections a while back - quicker than the eye - and he seemed to have become a bit bitter... that short story he had called "the foghorn" was deadly too - the one where the last fearsome sea monster left in the depths was summoned up to the surface every year by the foghorn that he kept mistaking for a potential lady friend...

i think it annoyed him to be called a sci-fi writer though.
 
She's a great writer.. Eartsea was my favourite book as a kid. Kicks the absolute arse out of all that harry potter malarky. Did anyone else notice that none of the main characters are caucasian?! She purposely wrote it to counter the usual white boy hero crap in a lot of sci-fi, and the story has as much morality as Ender's Game.

I did notice that, and some Japanese studio are making an animated version of it (it might possibly even be our beloved Miyazaki) and I saw screen caps from it and guess what? All the characters are white. FFS...
 
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