What's your favourite science fiction book?

[MacB]

Well I've read almost every book mentioned so far and it's interesting to see how we all react/enjoy differently.

Philip K Dick - I find him very hit and miss
Ursula Le Guin - read them all twice and still to find what so many others do in them
Zelazny - I like
William Gibson - I read a lot of rave reviews about Neuromancer so thought I'd buy it, then realised it was on my book shelf. I'd read it but it didn't linger, read it again and enjoyable but not making a big impression.
Greg Egan - have most of his, can be hard work, just finished his short story collection, Luminous. Despite the assistance of google it was still pretty dense stuff.
Kim Stanley Robinson - good but not stand out for me, though I do seem to have a general dislike for alternate history type stuff.
Ian MacDonald - ok, not my fav though
Ray Bradbury - ok
HG Wells - enjoyable
Heinlein - dross
Douglas Adams - ok, jokes wear a bit thin pretty quickly though
Wyndham - good example of where you need to suspend certain parts of your mind to enjoy properly. Ignore the dated aspects and the ideas are quite good.
Julian May - the Exile Saga etc were good, she's done some other stuff and it's dreadful, was amazed it was by same author
Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker is more accessible, I enjoyed it, whereas Last and First Men was hard work. Yet the latter has stuck with me and I can see why it is so often cited as an influence.
Tiptree - ok
Russ- not familiar with
Lem - want to try some more of his


But the biggy, the one that everyone seems to rave about - M. John Harrison - I hate his stuff with a vengeance, though I admit to having given up now - I have 3 of his books and have read each of them twice trying to understand why he's so popular - I have failed miserably. Every time his writing just strikes me as w*nking by pen. Some pretty prose falls a long way short of being able to make up for an inability to tell a good story.

On the up side I do love short stories and have numerous collections, I like to trawl the secondhand book places. You find some real gems in the old pulp stuff. I always check the original publication dates before reading, tends to help with the 'dated' impact.

 

[rich p]

Well I've read almost every book mentioned so far and it's interesting to see how we all react/enjoy differently.

Philip K Dick - I find him very hit and miss
Ursula Le Guin - read them all twice and still to find what so many others do in them
Zelazny - I like
William Gibson - I read a lot of rave reviews about Neuromancer so thought I'd buy it, then realised it was on my book shelf. I'd read it but it didn't linger, read it again and enjoyable but not making a big impression.
Greg Egan - have most of his, can be hard work, just finished his short story collection, Luminous. Despite the assistance of google it was still pretty dense stuff.
Kim Stanley Robinson - good but not stand out for me, though I do seem to have a general dislike for alternate history type stuff.
Ian MacDonald - ok, not my fav though
Ray Bradbury - ok
HG Wells - enjoyable
Heinlein - dross
Douglas Adams - ok, jokes wear a bit thin pretty quickly though
Wyndham - good example of where you need to suspend certain parts of your mind to enjoy properly. Ignore the dated aspects and the ideas are quite good.
Julian May - the Exile Saga etc were good, she's done some other stuff and it's dreadful, was amazed it was by same author
Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker is more accessible, I enjoyed it, whereas Last and First Men was hard work. Yet the latter has stuck with me and I can see why it is so often cited as an influence.
Tiptree - ok
Russ- not familiar with
Lem - want to try some more of his


But the biggy, the one that everyone seems to rave about - M. John Harrison - I hate his stuff with a vengeance, though I admit to having given up now - I have 3 of his books and have read each of them twice trying to understand why he's so popular - I have failed miserably. Every time his writing just strikes me as w*nking by pen. Some pretty prose falls a long way short of being able to make up for an inability to tell a good story.

On the up side I do love short stories and have numerous collections, I like to trawl the secondhand book places. You find some real gems in the old pulp stuff. I always check the original publication dates before reading, tends to help with the 'dated' impact.

I can't be bothered to read that lot - is it a synopsis for your first novel, Mac?

 

[MacB]

I can't be bothered to read that lot - is it a synopsis for your first novel, Mac?

Yep, was thinking of writing a book about the quest to destroy the ultimate talisman of evil, a little gold ring. I was thinking of making some of the main characters 'little' people, do you know anyone I could model them on?

 

[WeeE]

What was the book that got you into reading science fiction?

For me - darkest Ross-shire, heatwave-hot, weary, very bored, and the nice man in a garage-shop taking one look at my grumpy ten-year-old face and spinning the book-carousel-thing, dusting one off, saying "Here's a good one for you".

Cyrano de Bergerac, States of the Moon. I opened it at the point where the protagonist is discovering these aliens on the moon who live by inhaling the SCENT of food.

Now, I chiefly remember the moon landings because I was allowed to stay up late and all the adults were listening to the radio (we had no telly) and although they were all excited it was boring, and my dad took me out in the back garden in my jammies and pointed up at the sky and tried to fool me into thinking there was a man up there in the moon - rubbish! A nursery story for babies! He didn't fool me one bit.

So here just a couple of years later, I'm just getting up to speed that the moon is indeed place rather than cheese, when this man hands me this book. As a literal child of the 60s, I did have a suitably 17th-century mentality; thought it was great. Must've been about five years before I realised de Bergerac died hundreds of years ago.

 

[wafflycat]

What was the book that got you into reading science fiction?

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. I was ten when I first read it.

 

[jimboalee]

The Bible.
I once found it in the sci-fi section of water stones. good read if you ask me. people walking on water, killing giants and being super strong due to there hair. Awesome!
*runs and hides*

Mine is "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It was a book about a first contact with an alien species that were extremely inventive but kept suffering civilisation crashes due to a too high birth rate. I read quite a few of Larry Niven's books in my youth. They had some decent science in them, but I often found them a bit too easy reading and rather fanciful. I only read one of Jerry Pournelle's books and I found that rather stodgy, as well as commiting the crime of using SF to write history rather than the future. Together they were a really good team though.

Have a read of Zachariah Sitchin. "The Earth Chronicles".

 

[jimboalee]

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Mention this at FMC and you get the sack.

 

[jimboalee]

What was the book that got you into reading science fiction?

Erich von Daniken. "Chariots of the Gods".

 

[jimboalee]

"Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou?
The life thou pursuest thou shalt not find.
When the gods created mankind,
Death for mankind they set aside,
Life in their own hands retaining.
Thou, Gilgamesh, let full be thy belly
Make thou merry by day and by night.
Of each day make thou a feast of rejoicing,
Day and night dance thou and play
Let thy garments be sparkling and fresh,
Thy head be washed, bathe thou in water.
Pay heed to the little one that holds thy hand,
Let thy spouse delight in thy bosom,
For this is the task of mankind. "

My fave' bit from the first ever SF story. "The tale of Gilgamesh".

 

[rich p]

Yep, was thinking of writing a book about the quest to destroy the ultimate talisman of evil, a little gold ring. I was thinking of making some of the main characters 'little' people, do you know anyone I could model them on?

Would they be 'small but strangely attractive in a certain light' little people?

 

[MacB]

Would they be 'small but strangely attractive in a certain light' little people?

I believe they could be, perhaps further enhanced by the way the light can glint on a crisp packet

 

[skmc1955]

I prefer Ian Banks

strangely enough so do I..just can,t seem to get to grips with his sci fi books

 

[marinyork]

strangely enough so do I..just can,t seem to get to grips with his sci fi books

+1+i

I thought the sci-fi ones were goodish. Never understood the obsession with Excession, thought Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games were better. There are several fairly strong non M ones.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I'm the opposite; I prefer his 'M' writing on the whole. It is just more exuberant and funny.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

How very humble of you

I read one once about a soldier in an intergalactic war where the plot involved time travel and going back to where the war started after it finished or something. Entertaining tripe and tosh, like most SF in my humble bla bla bla....

Thanks for your enlightening contribution.