Recommend me a book!
 

I want some book recommendations please.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy only please, I have a reputation to keep.

And Terry Pratchett is a [nono].

P.S. I like 'epics', like Heliconia trilogy, the Mars trilogy, the Ender series, LOTR (nearly forgot it!), Rama, Riftwar saga, Empire series, ...

I can highly recommend George R.R. Martin's "A song of Ice and Fire", or Robert Jordan's Wheel of time books. Both excellent series in my view.

[thumbsup] Excellent! As long as it's Sci-Fi or Fantasy and you liked it a lot I will read it!

Feel free to tell me about their writing style or general setting for the book/series, but please no plot lines, I like to be suprised. ;)

BTW, the Mars trilogy is amazing (Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars). It's by Kim Stanly Robinson and well worth it.

Also at the top of the list is the Helliconia trilogy by Brian Aldiss, an amazing trilogy.

well, I need not recommend D.A. to you.....

wtf is D.A.?

he he!!

...reading while waiting for the saves to pour in? ;)

I can really recommend the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons ( if you haven't already read it) Best sci-fi I ever read. Still a great fan of the author. He also wrote horror and thriller stories and they're magnificent too.

I read the Liveship Traders trilogy by Robinn Hobb last month, liked it very much too.

I loved the enders series!

Enders game, Enders shadow (following Beans point of view, Xenocide, Speaker... All really great.

And he has also done Alvin Maker which is also by Card and really good!

I can recomend the Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spy-Glass. Very inventive stuff, a real blend of fantasy/sci-fi. He 'explains' such things as parallel universe's and dark-matter within the narrative in an extremely creative way.

Hey - we have similar tastes. I agree about the Hyperion series. I've got everything that Orson Scott card has written! If youre into hardcore space opera I'd recommend the Reality/Dysfunction/Neutronium Alchemist/Naked God - the Nights dawn series.

I can second the Robert Jordan series, but there are currently 10 books in the series so far and its not yet finished...
At 1000+ per book that is more than a reading list, its a bloody calendar...

Books i have read recently and liked were The Game Players of Titan by phillip k dick or The Ringworld (there are a few sequels IIRC) by Larry Niven... Also Mote in Gods Eye by niven and pournelle...

Some damn good books...
Join a library..

Melifluous

[dance]

Thanks!! The Guys at work were extremely lame today, I got 1 suggestion...

I have recently read the Ender series, and followed with the first book in the Shadow series. I have 2 and 3 on order for tomorrow.

Does anyone else here like Iain M Banks? I have read all his Sci-Fi and The Player Of Games and Use Of Weapons are very good.

If anyone has any more come to mind please carry on posting them, I read a lot and I prefer to go on recommendation.

Mel: 10 books at 1000+ each? That's dedication! [book]

The player of games is just wonderful - read it three times. I've read all his Ian M stuff but dont care for his Ian stuff if you know what I mean.

I really enjoyed Altered Carbon recently. I can alaso recommend the Speed of Dark by elizabeth someone - what its like to be autistic!

I'm still waiting for a recommendation here I havent read. My house is just full of books ;)

As for science fiction, you definately have to read the Foundation series by Asimov. Best I've ever read. As for Fantasy, I recommend the Amber series, by Zelazny.
If you're not really into reading series, try some of the short stories by Heinlein. He has written some good books as well. 'Stranger in a strange land' is a classic!

(and although you wouldn't expect it from the title, 'Starship troopers' is also very brilliant. Unlike the movie, it is centered on how to conduct warfare in the future, and on a cadet who has to go to 'boot camp')

I find Heinlein a bit too right wing for my tastes - especially his later stuff though I did enjoy much of Time Enough for Love. One of the best future warfare books was The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

I like this bloke, "Have spacesuit, will travel is a very nice book...

I think we have the same book collection Col, I've just finished reading this one Col, absolutely fantastic!
Melifluous

Stranger in a strange land is one of my favourite books ever! Starship troopers is also very good, as is space cadets.

Heinlein is more of a libertarian nationalist than a right-winger isn't he? Although he has come out with many right-wing ideas, I do agree with some of his principals, or at least I agree with how I see soem of them in Stranger in a strange land. Starship troopers is too much for me, having to be in the forces to become a citizen and earn the right to vote.

Yeah, that's what they call a meritocracy. My history teacher claimed to be a meritocrat. imo meritocracy is some form of utopian fascism (sorry for threadjacking).

I'll look on my bookshelf this afternoon. Must be something there... I take it that you've read all dune novels?
As a fanatic Magic player, I used to buy the Inquest magazine before I got a fast internet connection (read: became student). There was a top 100 SF/fantasy list in an issue I own, still working on reading them all.

I doubt it - I have maybe 1000s - just SF and fantasy. At the moment most are in boxes filling a room. I've promised to get rid of 75% of them and just keep the really good ones... ;)

Some more

Neuromancer - the original cyberpunk novel.

The first three Dune books - I went off the later ones though the prequels written by Herbert's son are Ok. Frank Herbert wrote lots of other good stuff too.

Alfred Bester - the Demolished man. A classic

John Brunner - The Jagged Orbit
Stand on Zanzibar
The sheep luck up
The shockwave rider
Theses are SF at its finest and stunning in their prescience. Written in the sixties and seventies,I consider these to be among the finest SF books ever written.

Roger Zelazny - the Amber series
- My favourite of his - Lord of Light.

One author that I buy anything he's written is Robert Sheckley. The master of the short story. Witty and brilliant.

Then again, you had twice the time to collect and read them ;)

Exactly - I started buying seriously about 1972 when I went to uni. One of my friends was a budding SF writer. Another was a friend of Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker fame.

Ming - the mod on Poly is something of an authority too. We seem to have similar tastes in books. He knows Zelazny.

Hmmm, lots of good taste round here! I'll second Frank Herbert (although as Col says the later Dune stuff kind of loses it), John Brunner and Philip K.Dick are also both excellent choices.

some more Philip K.Dick recommendations:

The 3 stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep
A Scanner Darkly
The Man in the High Castle
The Divine Invasion
Flow my Tears the Policeman cried


I have another recomendation from an author you might be surprised by... Doris Lessing's 'Canopus In Argos:Archives' novel cycle. The style changes wildly between novels but I'd say 3/5 of them are absolute classics. The first one is 're:colonised planet 5, Shikasta' and is written as a series of documents by an interplanetry/interdimensional being over a period of 20,000 years. Highly recommended :D

anarres, when you eventually come visit the south coast I can lend you about half the books in this thread ;)

I eat books for a living Col, so I nearly have as many books as you and will never ever let any more go...

I got evicted from a house in 1996 and lost me entire book collection so I been buying and storing them since then...

Wanna read some nice trashy SF? How about the Lensman Series by E.E. "Doc" Smith. Trash, but absolute classics...
I love all that "When the going gets tough, the tough gets going (and the women make sandwiches or faint...)
Super! Cosmic!
Go get em Galactic Patrol!

Or for SF comedy its hard to beat Harry Harrison and his books about Bill the Galactic Hero or the Stainless Steel Rat...
Just the right blend of cheese, heroism and very very big dollops of sarcasm...

Melifluous

Hey - I lurve the lensman series - except for the last one - Masters of the Vortex. What was that all about. A bit of an addon if you ask me. I love the Skylark series too. I reall yenjoy space opera.

Harry harrison too of course. Slippery Jim McGris.

col: finally I saw someone mentioning Alfred Bester! He really writes up to his name!

Best new book a came about was Joan Slonczewski: Brain Plague. This book is everything what Greg Bears' Blood Music was not! It is hardcore SF and still has a very warm feeling and a social concern.

Anyone remember David I. Masson? There was a small collection of his time-travel stories, featuring 'The Two-Timer', about a 16th century man hijacking a time-machine and travelling into our time.

Also, Gregory Benford's Cosm comes to my mind.

And a love David Brin, despite the fact he often goes to excessive length, and despite the fact that the new Uplift book are rather unreadable, his 'Uplift War' is amazing.

(I'll have to browse my shelf to came up with more...)

Bester, that's that psicorps dude from babylon 5 right ;)

As to revive this thread, I finished "Olympos" by the aforementioned Dan Simmons while I was on holiday. It's the sequel to the brilliant "Ilium". It's bizarre, nice for those who enjoyed greek mythology.

[nitpick]Notice that the first title is the roman word for troy and the second title is the greek word for mount olympus[/nitpick]

Didnt find that one in the bookstores yet[aargh]. Still havent found Hard Freeze and Hard as Nails either, guess a major order at the local book store is in order now.

Zelazny gets a recommendation? On what grounds?

Ah fanstasy/sci fi books....

I've got a whole bookcase filled with that... [blush2]
Some fo my favourites:

-Robin Hobb (Farseer trilogy, Liveship traders trilogy, Tawny man trilogy)
-Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time)
-Tad Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, Otherland series, The War of the Flowers)
-Raymond Feist (All the novels/series playing on the world "Midkemia")
-David Eddings (the Belgariad, the Mallorean, the Elenium, the Tamuli)
-Julian May (The Exiles, The Galactic milieu, Intervention)
-Jane Welch (Runespell trilogy, Book of Ond trilogy)
-Jennifer Fallon (Second sons trilogy, Demon child trilogy)
-Roger Zelazny (Amber series)
-Frank Herbert/Brian Herbert (Dune and the prequels)
-Ian Irvine (The view from the mirror)

[heresy]The only series I have that was a huge disappointment to me was Tolkiens' The Lord of the Rings... [/heresy]

Darkness:
Jordan, Williams, Herbert, Irvine ??? Are you watching too much F1 ?

ooh, I really liked Illium, I'll be paying a trip to the bookshop tomorrow :)

(and having a late night finishing Iain M.Banks 'the algebraist' in readiness :D)

Lord of the Rings was a dissappointment to you??

I guess there's no sense recomending the Simarillion to you then...

Nah, I've got the Silmarillion (and the Hobbit, BTW) too. The Silmarillion is basically just a collection of descriptions from the past. Not my idea of a fun book.
The Hobbit is Tolkiens best book, IMHO...

Just finished The Algebraist on holiday - sipping a cocktail on the deck of the QM2 outside Cannes. Not one of Banks' best, methinks.

I couldnt get into Ilium. maybe I'll go back and give it another try.

I cant be arsed to read any sci fi these days. Last I can remember reading was "Dune" (called Sand in the Norwegian translation). I bet you ve read it already

Darkness you just quoted all of my favourite books.

You only missed out 2 though...

-David Eddings (Belgariad and Mallorean)
and
-Stephen Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)

I have to also add
-E. E. Doc Smith (Galactic Patrol, cheesy sci-fi at its best)
-Piers Anthony (His sci-fi and his cheesy pun-fest of Xanth)

and finally ANYTHING by ISAAC ASIMOV

the man was a genius.

Melifluous

What about the bible? http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/up..._hypocrite.gif