Recommend a Sci-fi novel

[Slacker]

I second (or third) Old Man's War and its sequels. While it is, technically, a trilogy, each of the books stands on its own, although obviously certain plot elements in the first and second books carry into the third.

[Karza]

The characters are memorable (Best is the Drone/Robot who's random personality was a bit too nasty for "Special circumstances" (Think Black ops in Spaaaace. In Utopia. Who play very dirty with the rest of the galaxy), Skeffen-Amitskaw).

What? First of all, it's Skaffen-Amtiskaw. Second, I think you're confusing it with the drone from The Player of Games (Mawhrin-Skel), because there wasn't anything wrong with Skaffen-Amtiskaw's personality, it just didn't like Zakalwe much.

SA was rather overly violent in that flashback where he's defending Sma though. He pulps several people, where he could have just knocked them out.

Well, yeah, but that was still well within SC parameters . Mawhrin-Skel on the other hand was such a bastard they thought it to be unfit for the job.

[Lord Pounder]

Star Wartz by Patrick Tilley. A guy from earth gets transported by nefarious means to the other side of the galaxy, to the civilisation that seeded earth with life. Not particularly hard sci-fi, but if you liked the British Red Dwarf you'll love this.

[andrewgpaul]

What? First of all, it's Skaffen-Amtiskaw. Second, I think you're confusing it with the drone from The Player of Games (Mawhrin-Skel), because there wasn't anything wrong with Skaffen-Amtiskaw's personality, it just didn't like Zakalwe much.

SA was rather overly violent in that flashback where he's defending Sma though. He pulps several people, where he could have just knocked them out.

Well, yeah, but that was still well within SC parameters . Mawhrin-Skel on the other hand was such a bastard they thought it to be unfit for the job.

Er, that's only what he told Gurgeh. Given the ending of the book, I'm highly disinclined to believe that.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Star Wartz by Patrick Tilley. A guy from earth gets transported by nefarious means to the other side of the galaxy, to the civilisation that seeded earth with life. Not particularly hard sci-fi, but if you liked the British Red Dwarf you'll love this.

The British Red Dwarf? A totally redundant distinction if ever I saw one. Did anyone feel the need to ask if anyone liked the American Star Wars, as opposed to the Turkish one?

My suggestion, other than every Culture novel ever made, is the one I'm currently reading: Pushing Ice. Think The Abyss, but with the deep-sea dilling crew replaced with a comet mining ship and the abyssal aliens with one of Saturn's moons going for a trip out of the solar system. Cue intrigue in surviving the mission and finding out what the moon of Janus was doing before it went walkabout.

[aerius]

Carnifex by Tom Kratman. This book would receive the Shep seal of approval since it involves killing & torturing lots of islamofacists, brown people and peaceniks, plus the islamofacists get nuked. How can you go wrong with that?

Ok, enough of that, time to be serious.


Check out Interstellar Patrol by Christopher Anvil. Where stranded scofflaws have to think and con their way out of trouble, often with completely unintended and hilarious consequences. Humans don't get a magic weapon to shoot their way out of trouble as they do in many sci-fi books, they gotta use their brains and think up all sorts of schemes to get themselves clear. Only the plans don't always work, or if they do work they still get whacked by Murphy's Law and end up getting into another heap of trouble, which they now have to fix.

[septesix]

I assume no one brings up DUNE because it's too obvious?

[Karza]

Er, that's only what he told Gurgeh. Given the ending of the book, I'm highly disinclined to believe that.

I was kind of trying to avoid spoilers in a book recommendation thread .

[Vendetta]

Star Wartz by Patrick Tilley. A guy from earth gets transported by nefarious means to the other side of the galaxy, to the civilisation that seeded earth with life. Not particularly hard sci-fi, but if you liked the British Red Dwarf you'll love this.

The British Red Dwarf? A totally redundant distinction if ever I saw one. Did anyone feel the need to ask if anyone liked the American Star Wars, as opposed to the Turkish one?

Well there were a few attempts at an American Red Dwarf.

The universe itself shudders at their memory.

[Lord Pounder]

Star Wartz by Patrick Tilley. A guy from earth gets transported by nefarious means to the other side of the galaxy, to the civilisation that seeded earth with life. Not particularly hard sci-fi, but if you liked the British Red Dwarf you'll love this.

The British Red Dwarf? A totally redundant distinction if ever I saw one. Did anyone feel the need to ask if anyone liked the American Star Wars, as opposed to the Turkish one?

Well there were a few attempts at an American Red Dwarf.

The universe itself shudders at their memory.

IIRC Ender is American so I specified the British Red Dwarf to save having to bring up the abomination that was the American Red Dwarf.

[Adrian Laguna]

The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke

It's a hard sci-fi story, mostly about the life a space ship captain, but toward the end dedicated to said captain and his crew using their ship to attempt to deflect an asteroid heading for Earth. I rather enjoyed it, especially the part where the main character runs a marathon on the moon.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The British Red Dwarf? A totally redundant distinction if ever I saw one. Did anyone feel the need to ask if anyone liked the American Star Wars, as opposed to the Turkish one?

Well there were a few attempts at an American Red Dwarf.

The universe itself shudders at their memory.

IIRC Ender is American so I specified the British Red Dwarf to save having to bring up the abomination that was the American Red Dwarf.

That does not exist. There is RD as made in the BBC studios. And that is where the story ends.

There are laws against mentioning anything else.

[Styphon]

That seems excessive, unless you're saying Grant Naylor typed up the novels in the studio.

[Eleas]

The only book you really need to read at this point is Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light.

[The Cooler King]

My personal favorite is Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired. It's one of the many proto-cyberpunk novels that came out in the eighties, but this one has loads of style and many examples of badassery (the cybersnake being a personal favorite). Orbital corporations rule Earth with an iron fist, dropping massive rocks on anyone that gives them too much shit. A cyber-enhanced hovertank driver and a badass merc chick end up involved in a plan to strike out against the corps. My description makes it sound a lot more generic than it really is... don't hold that against the book!

[Silver Jedi]

My favorite book is Torch of Honor by Rodger MacBride-Allen. It's A fun little space adventure about the captian of an exploration ship that gets dragged into the middle of the first interstellar war. It's not exactly hard sci-fi, but it has a refreshingly low level of technology for the type of story being told. There's no artificial gravity, ray guns or aliens, though they do have rocket ships with FTL engins.

It's not especially groundbreaking, but it doesn't really feel like every other SF book on the shelf.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

Worth expanding on.

It's a counterpoint to the generic mil-SF books which are all Dulce et decorum est. It treats war as a (somewhat) necessary evil, with relativity actually coming into play, and proper aliens. Tech advances, combat isn't at 20 paces, and society really changes.

The effects of relativity were actually the point of The Forever War. It was inspired by Haldeman's experience in Vietnam, where every time he and others returned from a tour of duty, the society at home that they had been told they were fighting for was more and more distant and unrecognisable, to the point that by the end of the war they simply didn't fit in to it at all any more.

In a similar vein, though totally non-military, is Return From the Stars by Stanislaw Lem, about astronauts returning from a 500 year relativistic journey to find a human society made unrecognizable both by advanced technology and by apparently irreversible political decisions in the past to attempt to tame human nature.

It is among the more beautiful and accessible of Lem's works, which tend to revolve around people being in unfathomable surroundings, though with hard(ish) science.

[hawkwind]

"Enemy stars" by Poul Anderson. This is fairly old book, but it havent aged a bit. The space as the sea which does not forgive a thing.


Jaro

[Lord of the Abyss]

My favorite book is Torch of Honor by Rodger MacBride-Allen. It's A fun little space adventure about the captian of an exploration ship that gets dragged into the middle of the first interstellar war. It's not exactly hard sci-fi, but it has a refreshingly low level of technology for the type of story being told. There's no artificial gravity, ray guns or aliens, though they do have rocket ships with FTL engins.

It's not especially groundbreaking, but it doesn't really feel like every other SF book on the shelf.

He's also the same guy who wrote my recommendation upthread, The Ring of Charon, if you like his stuff.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Depends, really, what you're after. How many of the books mentioned in the thread so far have been genuine classics, and how many throwaway froth and adventure-story fun?

Old Man's War, for instance, was entertaining, but if I only had one recomendation to make, it would be way down the list.


For sheer value, this is going back about three generations, Olaf W. Stapledon's The Star Maker. Exceptionally unlikely to be in print, but well worth looking out- it is essentially a grand tour of the universe and the cycle of universes.
Wells, pfeh. This is the foundation stone and cornerstone of so much later sense- of- wonder SF, so many later writers drew inspiration from Stapledon, that it is my one essential desert island book. With that and a thick pad of paper you could pretty much recapitulate half the modern SF genre.

Of course, it does have it's archaisms, and if the overtones don't suit, I'd have to go with Stanislaw Lem, probably The Cyberiad.

Yes, I know, ask for one recommendation, get three- but at least this one is on the internet, at the Baen Free Library- it's Keith Laumer's Retief omnibus. Cynically realistic as well as whimsically absurd- well, it is about interstellar diplomacy and behind the scenes double dealing.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Stapledon's The Star Makers was in print sometime recently; I spotted it at a Borders a couple years ago and was able to acquire one from a used book store only a few months ago.

An I find Retief to be an absolute classic, everything that science fiction satire should be.

[Jade Falcon]

A lot of Ben Bova's stuff is not too bad to read. There are a few series in his writing mainly the Voyagers saga, Moonrise/Moonwar, and the Orion trilogy. He does have a 'planets' series like Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Return to Mars, and while they're classed as a series you don't have to read them all. There's also a loose continuity throughout his books with various organisations and characters having cameos.

[Darth Hoth]

Carnifex by Tom Kratman. This book would receive the Shep seal of approval since it involves killing & torturing lots of islamofacists, brown people and peaceniks, plus the islamofacists get nuked. How can you go wrong with that?

Is that the book where they perform sex changes on the terrorists to humiliate them?