What's your favourite science fiction book?

[Profpointy]

i reckon both niven and banks got their idea's from freeman dyson, the idea that you could encompass a star to capture its energy is fantastic in every sense of the word, true sci-fi

bob Shaw's Orbitsville specifically references Dyson when they find one space aliens had constructed, a bit ling ringworld. not a bad read

 

[Profpointy]

I am in the mood for reading some more sci-fi. I finished The Time Machine last week. Interesting, invent a time machine to take you to 800,000 AD, then run around hitting people with an iron bar. I borrowed The Day of the Triffids off someone. I am intrigued by The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, shelved under G not L at Waterstones. I feel I ought to read Arthur C Clarke and Issac Asimov. Which of their books would you recommend if you could only read one of each.

i've not read any Clarke, which I should remedy, but do bear in mind Asimov is a pretty ropey writer, albeit with some great ideas. i hugely enjoyed Foundation when I first read it, but as an adult, the generally ropeyness doesn't do it much favours. still worth a few hours as it's an easy read. As the plot revolves around a more or less Marxist "theory of history" I'm surprised the yanks don't hate it with a vengeance. The sequels are less good, but ok.

Pebble in the sky, I remember as a rather better book, albeit without the grandeur of foundation.

 

[cyberknight]

My late fathers paperbacks of the entire Dune series .

 

[Yellow Fang]

I have started reading The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov, written in 1972. It has some proper science in it. I am making use of my E grade A level Physics. It is about a source of energy, which is unfortunately contaminating the environment in a major way, but which is so cheap and convenient nobody in authority wants to stop using it. It has this quote by the head of the Committee on Technology and the Environment:

'It is a mistake,' he said, 'to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

Couldn't have put it better.

 

[Tin Pot]

Against stupidity the gods themselves labour in vain (probably misquoted). Still one I fall back on weekly.

I haven't yet read Snowcrash, but it's on my to do list.

Robots of Dawn really affected me as a young teenager. Player of Games has been usurped by Surface Detail as it really has some ground breaking concepts IMO. Stephen Baxters Manifold Time and Space are excellent. Burning Chrome is one I love as it portrays cybercrime today but thirty years prescient.

Ultimately it's the short story collections that win the genre for me. Sci Fi isn't about story telling, it's about communicating a new idea, exploring the possibilities of science, throwing out mad concepts to ponder and sometimes turn into reality. Shorts stories get to the point quickly and reveal their gem - Ben Bova could take 3 books and 4000 pages to get to the same place.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem and its sequel, The Dark Forest, are excellent novels of alien contact via a very unusual method, and from a Chinese cultural background and perspective. Waiting for the third one to be published in English.

Also recently read Paulo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife - fast-moving and topical near future US eco-thriller about, well, water (and the lack of it). I enjoyed it rather less than I expected due to its rather sadistic attitude to the violent world it portrays. Also on an ecological theme, I found a reissue of an anthropological SF from the 80s of which I hadn't previously been aware - Marjorie Kellogg's Lear's Daughters. It is throught-provoking but will probably annoy hard SF folks like a lot of that genre.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

'When Worlds Collide', later turned into a film
I've, sadly, not seen it for a few years

I know he's not sci-fi, but HP Lovecraft still pleases me to read
'At The Mountains Of Madness'
'The Thing On The DoorStep'
Music of Eric Zann', etc....

 

[Padraig]

I think Ray Bradbury is my favourite science fiction author, although the stories of his I like best are not traditional science fiction. They used to be called science fantasy, but I suspect that term has since acquired a slightly different meaning. He spent some time in Dublin in the fifties, and wrote a number of short stories inspired by what he perceived to be the quirky nature of the place. These are well worth looking for. One was called The Anthem Sprinters, another The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge, and I believe there may have been one or two others whose titles escape me. They capture a very authentic flavour of Dublin in those days.

 

[raleighnut]

Ian M Banks (Ian Banks's scifi alterego) takes some beating too.

 

[fimm]

I have started reading The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov, written in 1972. It has some proper science in it. I am making use of my E grade A level Physics. It is about a source of energy, which is unfortunately contaminating the environment in a major way, but which is so cheap and convenient nobody in authority wants to stop using it. It has this quote by the head of the Committee on Technology and the Environment:

'It is a mistake,' he said, 'to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

Couldn't have put it better.

Wow. 1972...

 

[Stephenite]

I have been reading The Martian for the past few months. I thought i'd read it before the film came out, and treat myself to a cinematic experience. I'm just not finding the time to read it. I prefer to read in bed prior to sleeping but, these days, when i go to bed there are two or three people there already and they would not appreciate me turning a light on. There's even one of them who gets disturbed by the racket of a page being turned. Nevertheless, The Martian is a good read. A real page-turner. There isn't any fancy SF paradigm shifts (not that there's anything wrong with that), and the constant science/engineering waffle has the likes of little old me sufficiently convinced.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

'When Worlds Collide', later turned into a film
I've, sadly, not seen it for a few years

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcLaMyc4ecE

 

[smutchin]

I recently read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - the book that by all accounts inspired 1984, and to some extent Brave New World as well.

And I'm now reading Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, which also took some inspiration from Zamyatin, although it portrays a very American take on the dystopian future idea, compared to Zamyatin's Soviet Russian perspective.

Both are excellent. Although Vonnegut was always reluctant to accept the SF label, feeling it was limiting, and I would agree with him - it's more than just a genre work. But then I'd say the same is true of all the best SF books.

 

[martint235]

I am in the mood for reading some more sci-fi. I finished The Time Machine last week. Interesting, invent a time machine to take you to 800,000 AD, then run around hitting people with an iron bar. I borrowed The Day of the Triffids off someone. I am intrigued by The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, shelved under G not L at Waterstones. I feel I ought to read Arthur C Clarke and Issac Asimov. Which of their books would you recommend if you could only read one of each.

Foundation by Asimov (or count the original trilogy as one book ) and I can't remember the Clarke one, is it Rendezvous about a metal tube in space?

 

[jefmcg]

Yep Rama series, tis brill.

Only read the first one, but still remember

Spoiler: the last line

Ramans do everything in threes!

(possibly paraphrased)