Well, I've reached the bottom and I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet so:
Mother of Storms by John Barnes.
Mother of Storms by John Barnes.
What modern Sci-Fi should I read?
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Thanks! I added it to my reading list and moved the whole list to the first post so it's easier to see right away what's already been mentioned.
People have already mentioned your local library. Also, if you like to read on a tablet, you can see if they have a digital loaning service like Overdrive.
Julie Czerneda. I particularly like her Species Imperative trilogy. She does aliens and science very well and I like her quirky characters.
She has recently moved to Fantasy with "A Turn of Light"
She has recently moved to Fantasy with "A Turn of Light"
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You may try David Brin (if no one else has suggested it). His Uplift books are a bit older now, but they're good. I don't like his more recent stuff as well, but that's personal taste.
Oh, and CJ Cherryh. She started writing in the 70s, and is still writing today. For some reason, she seems to get left off a lot of lists, but some credit her with pioneering a more "modern" approach to pov and world building in SF.
Connie Willis and Kage Baker if you like time travel stories.
Kim Stanley Robinson. Lois McMaster Bujold. John Scalzi.
A good approach may be to comb the Hugo and Nebula an Campbell and Clarke award lists for the past 20 years or so and look for the titles that were nominated and chosen. Of course, there will be fantasy titles there too, but it should give you an idea who's been writing cutting-edge stuff in recent decades.
Oh, and CJ Cherryh. She started writing in the 70s, and is still writing today. For some reason, she seems to get left off a lot of lists, but some credit her with pioneering a more "modern" approach to pov and world building in SF.
Connie Willis and Kage Baker if you like time travel stories.
Kim Stanley Robinson. Lois McMaster Bujold. John Scalzi.
A good approach may be to comb the Hugo and Nebula an Campbell and Clarke award lists for the past 20 years or so and look for the titles that were nominated and chosen. Of course, there will be fantasy titles there too, but it should give you an idea who's been writing cutting-edge stuff in recent decades.
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If part of the point of reading is comparing older sci-fi and modern sci-fi an interesting read is H. Beam Piper's 'Little Fuzzy', published 1962, and then (or either order) read John Scalzi's 'Fuzzy Nation', published 2011.
'Fuzzy Nation' is a reboot of 'Little Fuzzy' that has the same plot, and the same characters but is a modern, updated story.
Don't read them expecting two completely different stories. However, it is interesting to read them and note what is changed, because many of those differences transcend these specific books and relate more to sci-fi in general as it's changed.
'Fuzzy Nation' is a reboot of 'Little Fuzzy' that has the same plot, and the same characters but is a modern, updated story.
Don't read them expecting two completely different stories. However, it is interesting to read them and note what is changed, because many of those differences transcend these specific books and relate more to sci-fi in general as it's changed.
An interesting idea, and it would introduce one to H. Beam Piper's inferior work, which might encourage one to read his Paratime stories.
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Connie Willis is very, very, very good. Very. But she's not much into the hard science SF.
Her time travel books are really good (though I didn't like Blackout/All Clear as well as the others). Passage has to do with a researcher of near death experiences. Bellwether, one of my favorites, is more of a comedy of scientific research and funding. Lincoln's Dreams is .... interesting.
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes books are completely, utterly, odd balls and I mean that in a GOOD way. I love them.
Brin's Uplift books are about--after humans started uplifting chimps and dolphins to sentience, we encounter an entire galaxy of intelligences that have been uplifting each other for millennia. The politics of sponsor and client races, dealing with a brand new race that already has two clients it uplifted all by itself, conservation of species, hunt-and-chase. Good stuff.
I don't think Cherryh has ever written a dud.
You really have your work cut out for you! I'd love to know later what you did and didn't like.
Her time travel books are really good (though I didn't like Blackout/All Clear as well as the others). Passage has to do with a researcher of near death experiences. Bellwether, one of my favorites, is more of a comedy of scientific research and funding. Lincoln's Dreams is .... interesting.
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes books are completely, utterly, odd balls and I mean that in a GOOD way. I love them.
Brin's Uplift books are about--after humans started uplifting chimps and dolphins to sentience, we encounter an entire galaxy of intelligences that have been uplifting each other for millennia. The politics of sponsor and client races, dealing with a brand new race that already has two clients it uplifted all by itself, conservation of species, hunt-and-chase. Good stuff.
I don't think Cherryh has ever written a dud.
You really have your work cut out for you! I'd love to know later what you did and didn't like.
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I have to recommend Red Rising and Golden Son by Pierce Brown. It isn't hard science fiction, but they sucked my in like few books have recently.
List updated.
I was laid up with the flu a couple years ago, and my wife brought me home KSR's "2312" from the library. I had never read anything by him before.
So I started in, and I remember thinking after a while "This is the worst thing I've ever read." But for some reason I could NOT put it down -- finished the thing in one marathon session, only stopping to sleep. Worst book ever. But I couldn't stop thinking about it for months afterwards, it was so jam-packed with ideas.
I am going to do this. Thx!
We're gonna need a bigger wagon.
I was laid up with the flu a couple years ago, and my wife brought me home KSR's "2312" from the library. I had never read anything by him before.
So I started in, and I remember thinking after a while "This is the worst thing I've ever read." But for some reason I could NOT put it down -- finished the thing in one marathon session, only stopping to sleep. Worst book ever. But I couldn't stop thinking about it for months afterwards, it was so jam-packed with ideas.
I am going to do this. Thx!
We're gonna need a bigger wagon.
Thanks for the info, ULTRAGOTHA. Definitely an epic task to tackle this whole list. I started with Ted Cross' "The Immortality Game", 1/3rd through and really enjoying it.
It's funny, before I posted this, I had intended to read something called "The Three Body Problem" by a Chinese writer whose name escapes me; had seen some good reviews for it. But nobody mentioned it here. So... sent to the back of a very long line.
I'll have to check out some of these things to see if I like 'em. About the most recent thing I've enjoyed (because while I'll read most things, I mainly enjoy hard SF) is Einstein's Bridge by John Cramer. Yes, he's the same one who wrote "The Alternate View" non-fiction column in Analog for however-many years or decades.
I keep hearing "write the book you want to read" which keeps pushing me to write some hard SF...
http://ben-bradley.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-and-where-i-buyget-books.html
I keep hearing "write the book you want to read" which keeps pushing me to write some hard SF...
Don't read this. I'm just sayin'.
http://ben-bradley.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-and-where-i-buyget-books.html
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Welp... back to the front, as Metallica would say.
I'll take the liberty of adding it to the list.
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I have The Three Body Problem on my 'to read' list as well. I just tend to wait for books to come down in price before I buy them, so I'm always a couple years behind the most up-to-the-minute stuff.
Thank you so much for reading my book. It's tough to get readers these days!
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You know, I never read that one. I was thinking of his Mars books specifically.
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I can't believe no one has mentioned The Expanse series yet, which for me is the most fun I've had reading sci-fi in ages. The first three are Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, and Abaddon's Gate, by James S.A. Corey.
I second The Expanse (at least the first three books).
As for Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep is a terrific book, but A Deepness in the Sky is even better, and the science is "harder" - it's interstellar travel *without* faster-than-light drives. It also has some chilling predictions about technology and personal freedom...in fact, that's sort of the central theme. A strong, strong recommend.
Of Brin's Uplift War series, Sundiver and Startide Rising are the best. Start with those.
On the negative side, while I love Pratchett, Adams, and other British oddballs, I find Jasper Fforde exhausting. Read him if you like meta-narrative and English Lit jokes. Otherwise...
As for Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep is a terrific book, but A Deepness in the Sky is even better, and the science is "harder" - it's interstellar travel *without* faster-than-light drives. It also has some chilling predictions about technology and personal freedom...in fact, that's sort of the central theme. A strong, strong recommend.
Of Brin's Uplift War series, Sundiver and Startide Rising are the best. Start with those.
On the negative side, while I love Pratchett, Adams, and other British oddballs, I find Jasper Fforde exhausting. Read him if you like meta-narrative and English Lit jokes. Otherwise...
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After reading (the first two) Mars books, I get the feeling that he was given free rein with 2312 to just turn himself loose. Fascinating book. But free rein.
Adding Vinge and Corey, thanks for these rec's!
It's perhaps worth nothing that A Deepness In the Sky is technically a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, albeit much earlier in time. You could, for all intents and purposes, read them as disconnected novels. Save for one character and a few world-building tidbits, they really have little in common, except for both being excellent.
If you read and like AFUtD, there is also a direct sequel titled Children of the Sky. It gets weaker reviews than the other two, but I personally enjoyed it. (I think some of the reviewers were perhaps disappointed in the shift in narrative from a galaxy-spanning End Times war, to a smaller conflict on a single world. I was quite happy to see a return to the Tines world & culture from AFUtD, though.)
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The aforementioned Neal Asher, Ian M Banks, and Richard Morgan, can be said to belong to the New Wave of Space Opera (indeed, some think Banks kick-started it), and other big names in this wonderful movement include Greg Egan (Schild's Ladder), Vernor Vinge (A Fire Upon the Deep), Ken Macleod (Cosmonaut Keep), Stephen Baxter (Raft), Peter F Hamilton (The Abyss Beyond Dreams), and, perhaps most importantly, Alastair Reynolds (House of Suns).
For decades fantasy and sci-fi has been, no offense, costumed soap opera. They have long since stopped taking the reader on a fantastic journey of the imagination, but instead provide repetitive bloated serials which sooth the nerves as surely as another episode of Dallas (at least for those whose nerves are thusly soothed). Scheming barons, love-struck princesses, noble apprentices, geeky 'magic systems' on one side, on the other--relentless recycling of galactic marines whose recruits discover the value of comrades under fire, of plucky earthmen outwitting technologically superior invaders, of feudal empires re-inacted in space...
It's like for most sci-fi writers the genre peaked circa 1954 and the only thing left to do is to produce endless variations. And I don't want to talk about most fantasy writers. Moorcock was an aberration, not a herald of new genre vistas about to open up.
It's up to all us new writers to re-introduce the old feeling of awe and wonder into fantasy and sci-fi, but until that happens--The New Wave of Space Opera is where epic really resides today. This is where the reader goes on a fantastic journey and returns enriched by the experience, not simply having lost some more time via banal love triangles and evil wizards and ancient swords and saddled dragons and alien barons--if a book is the equivalent of a TV serial, not better, not different, then why bother...
Thanks for the attention, barely intelligible and not really fair rant over.
Also, Dan Simmons, who is mostly known to some as a horror or a crime noir writer, has a splendid contribution to epic space opera through Hyperion.
For decades fantasy and sci-fi has been, no offense, costumed soap opera. They have long since stopped taking the reader on a fantastic journey of the imagination, but instead provide repetitive bloated serials which sooth the nerves as surely as another episode of Dallas (at least for those whose nerves are thusly soothed). Scheming barons, love-struck princesses, noble apprentices, geeky 'magic systems' on one side, on the other--relentless recycling of galactic marines whose recruits discover the value of comrades under fire, of plucky earthmen outwitting technologically superior invaders, of feudal empires re-inacted in space...
It's like for most sci-fi writers the genre peaked circa 1954 and the only thing left to do is to produce endless variations. And I don't want to talk about most fantasy writers. Moorcock was an aberration, not a herald of new genre vistas about to open up.
It's up to all us new writers to re-introduce the old feeling of awe and wonder into fantasy and sci-fi, but until that happens--The New Wave of Space Opera is where epic really resides today. This is where the reader goes on a fantastic journey and returns enriched by the experience, not simply having lost some more time via banal love triangles and evil wizards and ancient swords and saddled dragons and alien barons--if a book is the equivalent of a TV serial, not better, not different, then why bother...
Thanks for the attention, barely intelligible and not really fair rant over.
Also, Dan Simmons, who is mostly known to some as a horror or a crime noir writer, has a splendid contribution to epic space opera through Hyperion.
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I was going to say Cherryh but I've been reading her for 30 years so wasn't sure if it counted as modern Her style I think influenced many -- she really pushed the very limited deep third in a lot of books (Maybe why I did not get on with Downside Station was it?) But she is fab at really getting into heads. For some different perspectives, Merchanter's Luck, Cuckoo's Egg, Pride of Chanur and...crap...40,000 to (somewhere Gerhanna?). The last in particular partially takes the viewpoint of a clone who has been brainwashed. But I wouldn't call any of them modern. However, the Foreigner series (which I have yet to start) is ongoing.
Really delving into a different perspectives is her greatest strength imo (and her SF masquerading as fantasy, Chronicles of Morgaine, is why I took up writing. I wanted to do to other people what she did to me. The second of those books I thought I hated. Then I realised that she'd shown the world so well it was the crapsack world I hated, not the book)
Her style I think influenced many -- she really pushed the very limited deep third in a lot of books (Maybe why I did not get on with Downside Station was it?) But she is fab at really getting into heads. For some different perspectives, Merchanter's Luck, Cuckoo's Egg, Pride of Chanur and...crap...40,000 to (somewhere Gerhanna?). The last in particular partially takes the viewpoint of a clone who has been brainwashed. But I wouldn't call any of them modern. However, the Foreigner series (which I have yet to start) is ongoing. Really delving into a different perspectives is her greatest strength imo (and her SF masquerading as fantasy, Chronicles of Morgaine, is why I took up writing. I wanted to do to other people what she did to me. The second of those books I thought I hated. Then I realised that she'd shown the world so well it was the crapsack world I hated, not the book)
I love an overview like this that puts everything into perspective! Thanks for the rant