Most SF does not appeal to me (suggestions, please!)

[Caelus]

Note: I am not saying that the authors I am mentioning here are bad authors or anything like that, just that they do not really interest me, so please don't get offended, as I am sure that they were great influences on many people who are interested in astronomy.


I have tried to read a lot of the SF that is considered by many to be the best, such as Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Bova, etc., but I have a very hard time getting interested in what I am reading. I think the problem is that I am a younger person and a lot of the ideas brought forth in these books have already been talked about and thought of already, so for me the material is a little outdated. I would like to read more science fiction, but I can't seem to find any that I really like. I have been on an Alastair Reynolds binge for quite awhile now (just need to get Terminal World), and to me Al really knows how to conjure up incredible ideas and settings that immerse me completely in the story. So I was hoping that I could get some suggestions of authors who are like Reynolds, with ideas that are completely new and that are on a vast scale. Thanks.

[Jens]

I have tried to read a lot of the SF that is considered by many to be the best, such as Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Bova, etc., but I have a very hard time getting interested in what I am reading. I think the problem is that I am a younger person and a lot of the ideas brought forth in these books have already been talked about and thought of already, so for me the material is a little outdated.

This may be a bit heretical on this board, but actually I think one of the issues may be that frankly speaking, in my opinion, none of those authors, especially the first two, are particularly good writers. Though I read Asimov and Clarke when I was a teenager, I don't find them very interesting as writers, in terms of developing compelling stories. I've always preferred stories that are sort of science fictionish but recognized outside of the genre. For example, Kurt Vonnegut.

[LotusExcelle]

I would disagree that the material is, as a whole, outdated. In fact much of it is and will remain timely. The best sci-fi I think has compelling characters that inhabit the story, not just some whiz-bang cool ideas or trinkets. I'm unaware of an idea that is completely new. Especially in writing - its all been done before. The setting may be different but most are telling stories that have been told for thousands of years.

You may want to try some Orson Scott Card. Some of his works are... not on par... but his best stuff is right up there. Ender's Game is a great place to begin. If you find Niven inaccessible you may have issues with everyone else. Maybe try some of his younger-targeted stories like Intergral Trees.

[Frog march]

What about Doris Lessing's Shikasta?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikasta

I found it a bit different, from usual SF; In fact I didn't really like it, and I'm not sure that I even finished reading it.

But it was different, I thought.

[redshifter]

David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series might be worth reading. Great stuff IMO.

[Ara Pacis]

Did you try Heinlein?

[Ilya]

Did you try Heinlein?

Are you kidding? Caelus' problem with Golden Age science fiction is that it is dated. Heinlein is more dated than either Asimov or Clarke.

Note: I am not saying that the authors I am mentioning here are bad authors or anything like that, just that they do not really interest me, so please don't get offended, as I am sure that they were great influences on many people who are interested in astronomy.


I have tried to read a lot of the SF that is considered by many to be the best, such as Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Bova, etc., but I have a very hard time getting interested in what I am reading. I think the problem is that I am a younger person and a lot of the ideas brought forth in these books have already been talked about and thought of already, so for me the material is a little outdated.

When I read this far, flashbulb went off in my brain: "Reynolds!" Then I saw you already found him

I would like to read more science fiction, but I can't seem to find any that I really like. I have been on an Alastair Reynolds binge for quite awhile now (just need to get Terminal World), and to me Al really knows how to conjure up incredible ideas and settings that immerse me completely in the story. So I was hoping that I could get some suggestions of authors who are like Reynolds, with ideas that are completely new and that are on a vast scale. Thanks.

Peter Hamilton: "Pandora's Star" and its sequels.
Charles Stross: "Singularity Sky", "Iron Sunrise" and "Saturn's Children". But not Merchant Princes series. I mean it!
Peter Watts: "Blindsight", "Starfish" and its sequels - if you don't mind depressing. Available for free on the web.

[EDG]

I love Alastair Reynolds' work. Have you read his non-Inheritor stuff? e.g. Pushing Ice, or Zima Blue?

I can't believe nobody's mentioned Iain M Banks yet! His Culture books are fantastic. Technically they start with Consider Phlebas, but it's a hard one to read. The Player of Games is a good one to begin with. Excession is probably right up your street. If you want a stand-alone Iain M Banks book to get into then I heartily recommend The Algebraist!

Also, Stephen Baxter's Time and Space books are pretty enormously epic (dealing with matters such as the fate and creation of universes, and life within them). A lot of his books are pretty high concept too - Vacuum Diagrams is a good compliation of linked short stories that he's done.

The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction edited by Mike Ashley is a really good short story compliation full of stuff that pushes the limits of SF that you'll probably like too.

Charles Stross' Accelerando is full of big ideas. I haven't actually got around to reading the rest of his stuff yet, but that was a really fun read.

Greg Egan has done some good ones too - Permutation City a good one about virtual reality, and Diaspora (my favourite) has lots of really vast themes, including what I think is the only serious attempt at describing life in six-dimensional space . Schild's Ladder is similar large-scale (sharing some similarities with Baxter's aforementioned 'Time'), but didn't quite click with me.

Finally you could give Greg Bear a go (Forge of God and Anvil of Stars would probably appeal to you), and Gregory Benford's Galactic Centre tetralogy is really good too (Great Sky River, Across the Sea of Suns, Tides of Light, and Sailing Bright Eternity).

[Jens]

Are you kidding? Caelus' problem with Golden Age science fiction is that it is dated. Heinlein is more dated than either Asimov or Clarke.

Well, in fairness, Caelus said he/she "thinks" that the problem is that it's dated. He/she didn't seem to be 100% confident that this was the real reason.

[eburacum45]

EDG has suggested some very good writers. I'd add David Brin, Neal Asher, David Zindell, and Charles Pellegrino.

The relatively recent 'hard science fiction' wave is very interesting, and there are quite a few British authors in there, for some reason.

[NickW]

I love Alastair Reynolds' work.

I have read alot of his books and I have loved every one of them.

[clop]

Have you tried Star Trek?

Or anything by John Wyndham, e.g. Chocky.

clop

[Ara Pacis]

Are you kidding? Caelus' problem with Golden Age science fiction is that it is dated. Heinlein is more dated than either Asimov or Clarke.

Not all of Heinlein's work is dated. Some have social customs that seem odd now, although being unusual for the '50s and '60s, but some of his books are more timeless or reveal social customs that may not be so far gone as we might hope.

But, yeah, if the seeker wants stories with current/near future tech, then that is always going to be a moving target, and the increasing speed of technological change will only make that more difficult. In that case, I would recommend something post-modern and self-referential in its cynicism of humanity instead of other antiquated stories that reflect hope.

[EDG]

I could never get into Asimov myself... I read the Foundation trilogy and thought they were OK, but that's it really. Ditto for Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land was OK). In both cases, I wasn't really motivated to read anything else by them. Niven's Ringworld books were decent, but again, lacking something. The only "old" writer I like is Arthur C Clarke, I because think he's "harder" SF than his contemparies, and just a better writer in general - I've read 2001, 2010, Childhood's End, Songs of Distant Earth, and Rendezvous with Rama. The older Space Opera stuff by other authors is just terrible IMO. I'm definitely a hard SF fan - the more transhumanist or "high concept", the better.

Jack McDevitt does some good stuff now, it's got that 'golden age' feel to it but is much more readable I think. I've got a lot of his stuff.

One oddball book I've read recently is "Cusp", by Robert A Metzger. It's a rather odd story involving engines growing out of the Earth. But I thought it was a fun read.

I also forgot to mention Roger Macbride Allen's "Ring Of Charon" and "Shattered Sphere" books, which involve Earth getting kidnapped by a dyson sphere when an ancient wormhole-opening device is accidentally activated inside Earth's moon. Sounds a bit crazy, but it's a really fun story, with the action split between the people on Earth trying to survive in their new environment, and the people back in the solar system trying to get the Earth back to its rightful place. I really wish he'd finish the story, as it's left somewhat dangling in the second book.

[SkepticJ]

I recommend anything by Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Anathem are his most futuristic novels; the rest of them are historical fiction with SF threads woven in.

[redshifter]

I love Alastair Reynolds' work. Have you read his non-Inheritor stuff? e.g. Pushing Ice, or Zima Blue?

I just finished Reynolds' House of Suns. I liked it more than his Inhibitor books and Chasm City.

I've been reading a lot of Jack MacDevitt lately and I've enjoyed his 'Hutch' series. Also reading Allen Steele; his 'Coyote' series is good IMO.

In defense of the 'classic' SF authors, considering how much has changed in our society (socially and technologically), it's not surprising that a lot of it would come across as 'dated'. In 40 years, the stuff we're raving about now might seem dated as well.

[EDG]

Gah. I thought "Inheritor" looked wrong, I meant "Inhibitor"!

And yes, I did rather like House of Suns myself.

[grant hutchison]

... Gregory Benford's Galactic Centre tetralogy is really good too (Great Sky River, Across the Sea of Suns, Tides of Light, and Sailing Bright Eternity).

You're missing a couple: In The Ocean Of Night and Furious Gulf.

Grant Hutchison

[stutefish]

C.J. Cherryh's stuff is, in my opinion, as good as it gets. Compelling characters resolving powerfully moving conflicts against a richly detailed, deeply textured, and extensively-developed historical backdrop, set in a future where humanity has begun to colonize the stars.

[Tinaa]

Timothy Zahn, Eric Flint, and John Ringo are a few authors that may tickle your fancy. Try this link to see if you can find an author you like: http://www.baen.com/library/

[Paul Beardsley]

I've seen a lot of very good suggestions here. But what would be really useful is if Caelus could give some indication of what he looks for in SF.

For instance, when I first got reading SF in my teens, I did so because the real-world space programme was not producing the goods fast enough. Viking had landed on Mars, and we'd seen fly-by pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, but anything else meant a long, long wait. So I tried Arthur C. Clarke's The Sands of Mars while I was waiting, and was thoroughly engrossed. I went on to read nearly all of Clarke's work, much of which was concerned with space exploration. I went on to explore Bradbury, Burroughs (ERB - rather later than I should have done), Clark Ashton Smith and others, then I got more adventurous and got into Moorcock, Zelazny, Delany, Silverberg, LeGuin, Ellison and the like, by which point SF had become my main interest rather than something to keep me occupied while I waited for NASA to go places. Eventually I became interested in literature for its own sake, but lately I've become more fond of popular and academic science, and detective fiction, although I intend to spend some more time on the likes of Al Reynolds and Greg Egan. And I want to read Clarke's The City and the Stars again.

Others may have followed entirely different paths. Others may have been readers from childhood who discovered SF relatively late and discovered astronomy and real-life space exploration through their SF reading. Still others might be primarily Star Wars fans who began by reading Star Wars novelisations and accidentally stumbled upon "literary" SF. And so on.

Finding this out would probably be more useful than simply saying, "James Blish wrote some good books."

[Ilya]

You're missing a couple: In The Ocean Of Night and Furious Gulf.

Grant Hutchison

I wonder if EDG omitted them on purpose. In The Ocean Of Night and Across the Sea of Suns are first two books in the "Galactic Center" series (Great Sky River is actually third), but they are very different from the other four. And significantly more dated.

Oops. Second title corrected.

[grant hutchison]

I wonder if EDG omitted them on purpose. In The Ocean Of Night and Furious Gulf are first two books in the "Galactic Center" series (Great Sky River is actually third), but they are very different from the other four. And significantly more dated.

Across the Sea Of Suns was the second after In The Ocean Of Night. Furious Gulf was the fifth to be published, just the year before Sailing Bright Eternity.
The latter four (Great Sky River, Tides Of Light, Furious Gulf, and Sailing Bright Eternity) are often considered to be a tetralogy, different in style and content from the first two (In The Ocean Of Night and Across The Sea Of Suns). But EDG gave the titles of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th of the full sextet.

Grant Hutchison

[EDG]

I think I just got confused with the book titles (I don't have my copies here, they're several thousand miles away). I vaguely recall that there were four main books and two others set before them, and I meant to list the main four.

[HenrikOlsen]

Something that may be worth trying is the odder writers of the second golden age aka new wave, early Zelazny (his science fiction shorts), Bester, Blish and Ballard.
Their feel is completely different from the early hard sf authors.

[Ara Pacis]

I could never get into Asimov myself... I read the Foundation trilogy and thought they were OK, but that's it really. Ditto for Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land was OK). In both cases, I wasn't really motivated to read anything else by them.

I don't think Stranger in a strange Land is the best book of his to start with, due to its complexity. A better one might be Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, arguably his best.

[Certassar]

... So I was hoping that I could get some suggestions of authors who are like Reynolds, with ideas that are completely new and that are on a vast scale. Thanks.

You should try reading Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, or Dan Simmons' Hyperion "quadrilogy".

[Ilya]

Are you kidding? Caelus' problem with Golden Age science fiction is that it is dated. Heinlein is more dated than either Asimov or Clarke.

Apologies for resurrecting this thread.

I tried to think recently "WHY is Heinlein more dated?" I realize that "who is more dated than whom" is a subjective call, but still -- why to me at least does it seem that way? After considerable amount of time, I figured out the answer.

Most SF writers prior to 1970 or so concentrated on technological changes and did not even try to extrapolate social changes. Thus we have Asimov's "Foundation" where 100,000 (!) years in the future people still live in nuclear families with father working and mother raising kids, still have "tobacco growers" (and presumably field workers), and a tinpot dictator in a mutually hating political marriage to the daughter of Imperial Prefect. (Equally timeless subject of dictator's mistesses Asimov did not touch.) Today all of it seems quaint, but no worse than quaint. A modern reader realizes that's how world (or rather Western world) was at the time, and generally accepts it along with other anachronisms.

Problem with Heinlein is that he really tried to extrapolate how technological changes would influence the way humans act -- and almost invariably missed the boat so badly, the result comes across today as downright creepy. Strong, intelligent, independent women who not just want to have children, but want to have as many children as physically possible? And everyone (well, every positive character) sees it as normal and desirable? That's not quaint, that's just... bonkers.

[eburacum45]

If and when a new interstellar colony is established, it would be very useful if the birthrate were as high as possible, at least in the period between building the first habitats and reaching some kind of optimum population level. Not only might strong, intelligent, independent women choose to have as many children as physically possible, but the men might be expected to be surgically altered to do the same. It's all a matter of context.

[Ilya]

If this particular Heinlein trope were limited to new interstellar colonies -- and reasons for it made clear, -- I'd have no problem with that. It is not. In "Time Enough For Love" it seems taken as a given that Real Women always have as many children as possible, and colony worlds always get filled to capacity, and once that happens, Real Men and Women move on to next. Heinlein did not deny the problems (to put it mildly) of Malthusian explosion -- rather he seemed to take it for granted Malthusian explosion will happen, and the way to deal with it is to stay ahead of the wave. Why not avoid it, and spare untold suffering to those behind the wave, by not having so many kids?

Friday, who lives on already densely populated Earth, female protagonists in "Number of the Beast" (ditto), and Hazel Meade who lives on the Moon where there is no "empty land for taking" -- every new person means digging new caves out of the ground, -- feel the same way. Especially Hazel.