What book are you reading...

[Steampunk]

What are your stand out recommendations then?

To get you started, in no particular order:

Peter F Hamilton - Greg Mandel trilogy (Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder, The Nano Flower)
Richard Morgan - Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies)
Jack McDevitt - A Talent For War (first of the Alex Bendict books, of which there are currently six sequels)
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space series (there are six titles starting with Revelation Space)
Neal Asher - Spatterjay trilogy (The Skinner, Voyage Of The Sable Keech, Orbus)
Neal Asher - Agent Cormac (there's at least five books starting with Gridlinked)
Larry Niven - Ringworld (there's also three sequels)
Iain M Banks - Culture books (starting with Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games)
Frank Herbert - Dune (and the first two sequels Dune Messiah and Children Of Dune)
Michael Marshall Smith - Only Forward
Lucius Shepherd - Life During Wartime, The Golden
Charles Stross - Laundry Files (starting with Atrocity Archives)
Charles Stross - Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise
Charles Stross - Accelerando
Dennis E Taylor - Bobiverse trilogy
John Varley - Steel Beach
Vernor Vinge - Realtime (The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime)
Vernor Vinge - Queng Ho (Fire Upon The Deep)
Peter Watts - Firefall (Blindsight & Echopraxia)
Andy Weir - The Martian
Walter Jon Williams - Hardwired, Metropolitan, City On Fire
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War

Obviously these authors have some very big bodies of work, and in several different universes, but I've tried to stick to some of their most accessible work that will get you hooked. Some books (like Hamilton's 3000+ pages of Night's Dawn) could put you off because they are so dense. If you like the genre and author, you can get back to those.

 

[gezod]

Ready Player One - enjoyed the film thought I'd read the book

 

[No1newts]

Big + to Iain M Banks and Frank Herbert which I somehow forgot

 

[opethdisciple]

To get you started, in no particular order:

Richard Morgan - Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies)

I wasn't going to bring this up in this thread as I didn't want to derail it but... as you brought it up... Do people agree that TV ruins the reading experience?

I.e it's much better to have read the book before watching the TV show as after the TV show... I cant bring my self to read the book.

Case in Point Altered Carbon. Which incidently I am finding a bit average. Maybe 6/10.

And now I know how epic GOT is, what a shame that I never got round to reading the books before watching the show!

 

[Steampunk]

I wasn't going to bring this up in this thread as I didn't want to derail it but... as you brought it up... Do people agree that TV ruins the reading experience?

I.e it's much better to have read the book before watching the TV show as after the TV show... I cant bring my self to read the book.

Case in Point Altered Carbon. Which incidently I am finding a bit average. Maybe 6/10.

And now I know how epic GOT is, what a shame that I never got round to reading the books before watching the show!

Books are nearly always better than the TV/movie adaptation. A two hour movie, or even a ten hour mini-series rarely has enough time to cover the plot of book(s) properly. Especially if changes and dumbing down has been done for fear a TV/film audience won't catch the depth of a written story.

WRT Altered Carbon, read the book. It's a different enough experience that you'll get enjoyment out of it. Another good example would be the Dune book, David Lynch's Dune film, and the two Sci-Fi Channel mini-series. The book was the baseline source for the story, and the other adaptations brought interesting things to the mix. They weren't as good or complete as the book (obviously), but still enjoyable in their own way. You could point at Lynch's Weirding Modules and say that was an interesting addition that isn't from the book. Or get enjoyment from the performances by the various serious actors bringing their roles to life on the screen. I think you have to consider them to be adaptations of the original works, and expect them to be something different to the original, because you won't get a direct scene-by-scene conversion of any book.

Just like Tony Stark in the movies is one version of Iron Man, he's just another variation of the many Tony Starks/Iron Mans that have been in the comics for years. You just have to put the MCU version on the pile with all the other versions that have existed over the years, and try to enjoy them for what they are, such as what Robert Downey Jr brings to his interpretation of the character.

 

[Meridian]

What are your stand out recommendations then?

From the last time I posted this:

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead.
Iain M Banks - Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons.
James Blish - Cities in Flight series, A Case of Conscience
Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle
James E Gunn - The Listeners
Robert A Heinlein - Starship Troopers (ignore the film)
Ursula K LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed.
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic, Hard to be a God
Frederik Pohl - Man Plus, Gateway
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside, Lord Valentine's Castle
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon
Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake
Connie Willis - Doomsday Book
Sherri S Tepper - Raising the Stones
Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun (actually four books), The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
John Wyndom - The Crysalids
John Christopher - The Death of Grass
Walter M Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
Algis Budris - Rogue Moon
Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End (Rama is better known now, but this is the classic Clarke)
John Sladek - Roderik
Philip Jose Farmer - The Riverworld series. Read the first at least.
Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron
Harlan Ellison - Deathbird Stories (a collection - Ellison doesn't write novels)
Bob Shaw - Other Days, Other Eyes (that's one book, not two), Orbitsville
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Clifford Simak - Way Station
Ward More - Bring the Jubilee
C J Cherryh - Downbelow Station
Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop, Hothouse
Christopher Priest - Inverted World (which has the best opening line in SF)

I may add others at some point.

 

[No1newts]

I wasn't going to bring this up in this thread as I didn't want to derail it but... as you brought it up... Do people agree that TV ruins the reading experience?

I.e it's much better to have read the book before watching the TV show as after the TV show... I cant bring my self to read the book.

Case in Point Altered Carbon. Which incidently I am finding a bit average. Maybe 6/10.

And now I know how epic GOT is, what a shame that I never got round to reading the books before watching the show!

Read the Altered Carbon book, they dumbed it down enough that you will lose nothing reading the book.

 

[checjb]

"Nightmare from World's End" by Robert J Stava. What an odd book. I got it via Kindle Unlimited and read it all but I'm not sure how I feel about it. There are two sea monsters (a tylosaur (an extinct marine reptile - think Liopleurodon from 'Walking with dinosaurs') & a tentacled beastie), aliens, a psychic detective, Native Americans and way too many characters. The timeline is also mixed randomly - like it is in Nolan's 'Dunkirk' - but only at times. The rest of the times it is perfectly linear. It's almost like one of those stories written by multiple authors where each person got to write only one chapter. No attempt to explain how two prehistoric monsters came to be alive today, loads of back-referencing to other books by the same author (which I've not read and thus didn't care about), multiple missing words (easy to work out in context but annoying and easy to sort with a proof reader) and a final, totally needless death that doesn't serve the plot and just felt like the author was killing a character based on someone he didn't like (e.g. an ex-wife).

My advice: Don't waste your time.

 

[hood1971]

Just finished Beartown by Fredrik Backman. Astonishing good, one moment breath taken away by sorrow and pain and next you are laughing. While it is based around ice hockey it is about the people and how they strive to fit in, even when it diminishes them.

 

[nicktay2605]

I'm currently reading 'The House of Silk' by Anthony Horowitz. It's one of two Sherlock Holmes novels he's done. So far it's pretty good, he's captured some of the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

[manic111]

What are your stand out recommendations then?

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky - the best SF book I've read in a long time.

 

[opethdisciple]

I've just purchased The Demolished Man and Necromancer. (Neuromancer)

I am half way through The Malazan book of the fallen too. 5/10 books.

 

[x-st]

Necromancer.

Searching for The Demolished Man leads to the author quite easily, but you're going to have to be a bit more specific with that one...are you referring to the Graeme Ing book?

 

[opethdisciple]

Searching for The Demolished Man leads to the author quite easily, but you're going to have to be a bit more specific with that one...are you referring to the Graeme Ing book?

William Gibson

Oops! That should be Neuromancer!

 

[FortuitousFluke]

Was on holiday recently, finally managed to read Ready Player One, it was actually significantly better than I was expecting it to be.

I'm currently halfway through City of Stairs which is also very good so far, and I'm also half way through Neuromancer and, being a big fan of the Shadowrun video games from the nineties and the newer Hairbrained Schemes titles, i have to say that William Gibson must be owed some royalties!

Next on the list is New York 2140, I've been wanting to read this for a few months but a cursory flick through suggests it might be a bit of a slog.

 

[x-st]

William Gibson

Oops! That should be Neuromancer!

That makes a hell of a lot more sense!

 

[SixTwoSix]

Anyone here read The Expanse books after watching the series?

I'm really impatient and want to know what happens after S3 but as a completionist will need to start the books from the start, wondering how my views will be skewed either positively or negatively after watching the show.

 

[strumpusplunket]

After reading sci-fi for most of this year, I'm now reading Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. It's a work of genius - funny, poignant, incisive, moving.

 

[IvanDobskey]

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky - the best SF book I've read in a long time.

This is a great book, thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[Flinkman]

Anyone here read The Expanse books after watching the series?

I'm really impatient and want to know what happens after S3 but as a completionist will need to start the books from the start, wondering how my views will be skewed either positively or negatively after watching the show.

The Expanse books are excellent, as with everything, so much better than the tv series. Holden and the gang get up to more exciting things in the book, whereas the TV series skips or fluff's a few things due to budget i'm guessing.