Recommend to me some decent Sci-Fi novels please..

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26 Jan 2007, 4:48 pm

"Ender's game" was good. If you like cyberpunk type stuff, anything William Gibson is good.



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30 Jan 2007, 2:53 am

my favorites:

Roger Zelazny "The Lord of Light", "Jack of the Shadows" and "prinses of Amber"
(a comprehensive website with quotes of the bookds http://zelazny.corrupt.net/ )

a French one, don't know whether it's translated

Bernard Werber"Les Thanatonautes" (his official website in english and french http://www.bernardwerber.com/)



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30 Jan 2007, 2:15 pm

I'm glad to see there are a lot of Card fans here. I liked all 7(?) books in the Ender's Game series. Got hooked all the way back in 5th grade and I still love them. Can't say the same for any other books from that age besides LOTR (of course!).

I would recommend everything I have read of Timothy Zahn particularly his 3 Star Wars Novels. He gets the characters and universe so much better than Lucas (may his name be cursed for all time :evil: ). The plot and character development are excellent, particularly the character of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn who makes for a truly fascinating villain (Count Dooku?! ! I mean COME ON! Sorry just a little bitter here :? ).


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31 Jan 2007, 9:11 am

subalternnavert wrote:
The Honor Harrington series by David Weber is good classic sci-fi. One alt-history I've enjoyed immensely is the 1632 series. Finally, Neuromancer by William Gibson


I'm following the first two, haven't read Gibson. You'd like John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy: http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Choice-Ti ... 0345457129

I've only read the first book. The second is on my stack, to be read next. The third hasn't been published yet.

Right now I'm reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. (Yes, there's no apostrophe in the title.) Vinge is my favorite author. He's a computer science professor at UCSD and libertarian in his world view. His books ring true on the future of computing and our interaction with that technology. Rainbows End takes place about 10-20 years in the future, when the thread of catastrophe by terrorism is commonplace and we we wear our computers. Laser contact lenses paint an artificial world onto our retinas to replace the "real" one around us, annotating our questions with realtime google notes at the slightest shrug.



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02 Feb 2007, 6:17 pm

Anything by Alan Moore (though he does graphic novels) or Ursela K. Leguin. You could also try the Night Watch series...the first book was recently translated from Russian to English. (It's what the film was based on.) Another good one is Idlewild by Nick Sagan. Its sequel is Edenborn.

By the way, you should give "American Gods" another try. It doesn't go downhill. If anything, it gets better as it goes along.

Oh, and I heard that the Wheel of Time series, the Hyperion series, and Shadow & Claw are great, but I haven't read them myself.



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02 Feb 2007, 6:46 pm

Dune by Frank Herbert is good. Just don't enter it with any preconceptions from the David Lynch film. It is as full of fictional cultural and historical background as Lord of the Rings, and has a better pace, too.


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03 Feb 2007, 1:48 am

Quatermass wrote:
Dune by Frank Herbert is good. Just don't enter it with any preconceptions from the David Lynch film. It is as full of fictional cultural and historical background as Lord of the Rings, and has a better pace, too.


Oh God! I watched the David Lynch Dune after reading the book and I wanted to beat my head against the wall until I forgot the whole experience. On the other hand the Dune miniseries was quite good. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ Of course the book is one of the best pieces of science fiction ever written. :wink:


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03 Feb 2007, 3:05 am

NeoPlatonist wrote:
Quatermass wrote:
Dune by Frank Herbert is good. Just don't enter it with any preconceptions from the David Lynch film. It is as full of fictional cultural and historical background as Lord of the Rings, and has a better pace, too.


Oh God! I watched the David Lynch Dune after reading the book and I wanted to beat my head against the wall until I forgot the whole experience. On the other hand the Dune miniseries was quite good. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ Of course the book is one of the best pieces of science fiction ever written. :wink:


David Lynch got the epic quality right, and it's good for a bit of a lark, but the miniseries is much more faithful to the book. It just looked a bit cheap in some areas. (You can spot several backdrops in desrt sequences, as the backgrounds look too flat, and the lighting can be crap)


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03 Feb 2007, 2:50 pm

I mentioned 'World War Z' on a previous AWM forum. "What book are you obsessed with?"



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03 Feb 2007, 4:21 pm

Quatermass wrote:
David Lynch got the epic quality right, and it's good for a bit of a lark, but the miniseries is much more faithful to the book. It just looked a bit cheap in some areas. (You can spot several backdrops in desrt sequences, as the backgrounds look too flat, and the lighting can be crap)


I'd much rather have a good story than expensive eye candy. And that goes for video games, too. I hate having to put up with sub-standard game play because all the effort went into getting the fanciest visual effects out of the latest graphics cards.



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03 Feb 2007, 5:56 pm

ScratchMonkey wrote:
Quatermass wrote:
David Lynch got the epic quality right, and it's good for a bit of a lark, but the miniseries is much more faithful to the book. It just looked a bit cheap in some areas. (You can spot several backdrops in desrt sequences, as the backgrounds look too flat, and the lighting can be crap)


I'd much rather have a good story than expensive eye candy. And that goes for video games, too. I hate having to put up with sub-standard game play because all the effort went into getting the fanciest visual effects out of the latest graphics cards.


Same here! My favorite video game was made for Super Nintendo in all its low-res glory. It is the Secret of Evermore and has the most fun and intuitive gameplay I have ever experienced.


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04 Feb 2007, 2:39 pm

Oh, and I second World War Z. Not something I'd think of as sci-fi at first, but now that I think of it, yes, it is...



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05 Feb 2007, 4:07 pm

I really liked "Night Life" I can't remember the author, but the sequel is coming out next month. It sort of has an Underworld kind of feel to it if you liked that movie.



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05 Feb 2007, 5:07 pm

I really liked Hyperion and its sequels, although it is a really chaotic series... you don't understand a word of what you've read until you finish the second book... but it's worth the effort :P The last one is a bit lame for my taste, but no one is perfect, I guess...

And I totally second Dune, and all the sequels, EXCEPT FOR the new saga of the Butlerian Jihad. It is total rubbish.


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07 Feb 2007, 6:01 am

What about the greatest sci fi book of all time - Douglas Adams's trilogy "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"????????



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07 Feb 2007, 6:22 am

Lo wrote:
What about the greatest sci fi book of all time - Douglas Adams's trilogy "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"????????


I totally forgot about that one :lol: I have only seen the film (which is SO GREAT), but I've been told the book is much better. Gotta find it and read it 8)


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