Science Fiction!

[Sarah]

Some of the Ender books are great.  Some of the Alvin Maker bookers ain't half bad, either.

I'm fond of Gibson and adored Snow Crash, which I picked off a library shelf knowing nothing about it or the author.  Thus began my love affair with Neal Stephenson.

If you're looking for horny old man undertones (and overtones and all the tones in between), Heinlein is your guy.

[dave from knoxville]

Anybody do Rudy Rucker? He's not note-worthy as a stylist, but he's got some funny ideas.

[orator]

People should check out The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe.

It's three novellas combined into one novel about a human-colonized planet whose supposedly extinct indigenous life is rumored to be able to shape shift. Ridiculously good book when taken as a whole, and almost feels like a puzzle. Here's an amazon review about what I'm too lazy to describe:

THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, Gene Wolfe's first book-length work of note, is a collection of three seemingly unrelated novellas that are, at the close of the third, shown to be cunningly interlinked. The first novella, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", was published in one of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies in 1974, while the latter two were written and published together to expand the themes and plot of the first. The setting of it all is Sainte Anne and Saint Croix, two sister planets revolving around a common center of gravity in a far-away solar system, colonized first by Frenchmen and later occupied (in a brutal fashion, it is hinted) by later waves of English-speaking colonists. Before men arrived, legend goes, Sainte Anne was inhabited by an indigenous race of shapeshifters, which humans wiped out. Or did the aboriginals wipe out the colonists, imitating them so faithfully that they forgot their own origins? The novellas touch upon many themes of post-colonial theory.

In the first novella, a young man grows up in a strangely sheltered environment on Saint Croix, discovering at last the secrets of his scientist father's work. Here, the aboriginal inhabitants of the sister planet are only briefly mentioned, but the plot has much more local concerns. The second novella "'A Story' by John V. Marsch" is inevitably confusing to first-time readers, and initially seems unrelated to the first. It is the story of an adolescent's initiation to manhood in a primitive society, a dreamquest that brings him across a bizarre landscape and introducing him to various tribes espousing peculiar religious beliefs. In the third novella, "V.R.T." a bureaucrat on Saint Croix goes over the diaries of an imprisoned anthropologist. Again, it seems a complete change of direction with little to link it to the first two, but by the end a story arc spanning the three novellas is revealed. THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS is an excellent example of Wolfe's love for mysteries, some revealed so casually the reader might easily miss it, and others so deeply buried that it may take several tries for the author to find the key. This all gives the book excellent re-read value. And here one can see the genesis of the techniques that Wolfe used in later works, such as his masterpiece The Book of the New Sun.

The narrative here is so ingeniously constructed that I would recommend THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS to any lover of literature, even those that are usually wary of anything called science-fiction. Wolfe's novel PEACE, published a year later, continues this strong writing and is also highly recommend, and its plot might be attractive to a more general audience.

http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Head-Cerberus-Three-Novellas/dp/0312890206/

 I've been meaning to reread it.

[Bryan]

I liked John Kessel's "Good News from Outer Space" (an apocalyptic picaresque) and "Corrupting Dr. Nice" (The Lady Eve re-imagined as a time-travel caper.) They're both quite funny.

edit: I may have used the word "picaresque" incorrectly. That's what I get for trying to sound smart.

[mcphee from the forum]

I love Gene Wolfe. Sometimes. His last book was awful, but the New Sun series is my favorite sci-fi series ever. I guess it's actually Science Fantasy but wtf ever.

[orator]

he's getting pretty up there in years, so it's not surprising

he's in his mid 70s I think

[Pride of Staten Island]

Ender's Game is great, but there are diminishing returns with everything that follows. Ender's Shadow is interesting, but Giant series that follows becomes a military fanatic's wet dream with Morman undertones. Be warned.

A while back I picked up Speaker for the Dead at Salvation Army for like a quarter.

Do I have to read Ender's Game first to understand it?

[Sarah]

Nah.  You might be a little confused at first, but you'll get over it.

[Spoony]

Nerd trivia: Orson Scott Card wanted to write Speaker for the Dead as the main story, and only wrote Ender's Game as a prequel to pave the way for the story he really wanted to get to.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Ditto a lot of the stuff so far on this thread.  The only Stephenson I've attempted was Necronomicon and it was a snooze, I barely made it 100 pages in and I finish everything.

For those who like PKD, LeGuin, and literary SF like Atwood, I would add:

Octavia E. Butler
Stanislaw Lem
Brian Aldiss
Samuel Delaney

[Denim Gremlin]

Nerd trivia: Orson Scott Card wanted to write Speaker for the Dead as the main story, and only wrote Ender's Game as a prequel to pave the way for the story he really wanted to get to.

decent human being trivia: orson scott card is a homophobic dickhead.

[Spoony]

Some of the best Hard Sci-Fi that I've read has come from this guy named Jules Verne. He really gets into the nitty-gritty of some real technical stuff, like the Moon and underwater.

[Sarah]

The only Stephenson I've attempted was NecroCryptonomicon and it was a snooze, I barely made it 100 pages in and I finish everything.

Isn't it funny how different people can be.  That book filled me with joy.  All Stephenson's books do, to greater or lesser extent.

[Bryan]

Can someone explain what people mean when they say "hard sci-fi"? Does it suggest an emphasis on the science part?

[Denim Gremlin]

Can someone explain what people mean when they say "hard sci-fi"? Does it suggest an emphasis on the science part?

hard sci fi?......you like sex movies...?