Recommend me some sci-fi and fantasy reading

PolarityMan

Im nearly finished teh three body problem book by Cixin Liu  after a reccomendation from someone on here which are really interesting. The originals were in chinese and they have been translated but the influence of chines culture makes them very different from most sci-fi I have read. The third book I think isnt as good as the first 2 but still definitely worth a read. 

Snap

My all time favourite fantasy series, if not full stop , is the Malazan Book of The Fallen series by Steven Erikson. IMO, the absolute top of the game. The accompanying series by his pal Ian C Esslemont is good too. Not as good, but good enough, and they get better as he moves through them. There are 10 books in the core series, with 9 by Esslemont plus a couple of novellas. 

Start with Gardens of The Moon - you are dropped into the story without any exposition, but stick with it, simply brilliant. I've read the whole lot, including Esslemont's, twice, and I am considering a third read, but this time in chronological order. Very rich characters. 

Another fantasy series that IMO comes close is the Prince Of Nothing by R Scott Bakker. It's a trilogy followed by a quadrilogy The Aspect Emperor series. Fantastic stuff. Very gritty and lots of twists. 

Thomas Covenant books - I grew up reading these and I loved them. However I was really disappointed by the Last Chronicles. The first of these, Runes of the Earth, is painfully dull. The subsequent ones are OK, but they feel like they needed better editing, they tend to go on a lot. The finale of the series left me feeling really disappointed too, rushed and not satisfying. I felt like I'd been done tbh.

Another cracking fantasy series, which heavily influenced the Malazan books is The Chronicles of the Black Company, by Glen Cook. Really good stuff.

Sci fi - I've recently finished the Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F Hamilton, and I enjoyed that. Now I'm about half way through the Void trilogy which is a follow on, set 1500 years later. Not bad at all. Contains some inventive concepts. I'll follow this with his Salvation books. They look good.

Peter Newman's trilogy that starts with The Vagrant is worth a read- it's a blend of sci fi and fantasy and the central character is great. I enjoyed these.

I read a brilliant book that was free on Kindle - Infernal, by Mark de Jaeger.  Fantasy. The main character wakes up, has no idea who he is, what he is, etc etc, and he goes on a voyage of discovery, finding out who/what he is, along the way. And he's a bit of a handful. Lots of stuff about conflicting morality and all that. 

I second the Gap series by Donaldson and the Expanse series by James A Corey (the final book is out this October).

stratology

Snap said:

Sci fi - I've recently finished the Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F Hamilton, and I enjoyed that. Now I'm about half way through the Void trilogy which is a follow on, set 1500 years later. Not bad at all. Contains some inventive concepts. I'll follow this with his Salvation books. They look good.

I've read most of Hamilton's books, currently reading the 3rd part of the Salvations trilogy. If you like his other books, you'll like this one.

Hamilton's books often have long winded, extremely imaginative world building, alternating with fast paced, dramatic action sequences. Some of the best ideas about what a 'far future' society would look like.


The animated short 'Sonnie's Edge' in the Netflix series 'Love, Death + Robots' is an adaptation of a Peter F. Hamilton short story. I much prefer the original written story, but it would be quite interesting to see an adaptation of one of his longer works.

Simonh

Some good suggestions in here, definitely going to add some of them to the reading list.

Shrews

Asimov Foundation trilogy is excellent, but I personally enjoyed 'Prelude to Foundation' more, its one of my favourite books. Less mind boggling in its timespan, and with only the one main character, its a great adventure across future worlds, with a superb unexpected ending. 

Pabcrane

There are some fantastic recommendations already. I didn't see the following (apologies if I missed them)

Robert E. Howard - Conan series (old school sword and sorcery pulp)

George R. R. Martin - A Song Of Ice and Fire (the Game of Thrones series)

Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow, Thorn (coming of age fantasy series)

Jetsam1

I see that Steven Erikson has been mentioned. I was going through the thread waiting for him to come up. Yep, ended fantasy for me. He is an anthropolgist and archaeologist and it shines through indeed. As stated above you are dropped straight into it and the backstory is developed with hints and bits and peices of information and what you think was the story arc turns out not to be! Wonderfully brutal and very well written with serious depth to it.

Very strong characters and is as good as anything I heve read at acknowladging complexity and flaws. Wit is there too!

Snap

Couple of others I've thought of, all by Dan Simmons:

Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion - collectively known as the Hyperion Cantos. Very good. Sci Fi, wrapped around John Keats. Clever and enjoyable. Due a re read 

Ilium and Olympos - a re interpretation of Greek mythology into sci fi. Better than it sounds too.

He's written some guff, but these are all good, especially Hyperion stuff.

boogieman

Pabcrane said:

There are some fantastic recommendations already. I didn't see the following (apologies if I missed them)

Robert E. Howard - Conan series (old school sword and sorcery pulp)

George R. R. Martin - A Song Of Ice and Fire (the Game of Thrones series)

Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow, Thorn (coming of age fantasy series)

I did mention Tad Williams in the original post. I did like those, but thought they were a bit too similar to the David Eddings stuff. 

We’ve got the full set of Game of Thrones books so far. My wife was really into them. But then I’ve watched the tv series and am wondering if they’re still worth reading, now I know a lot of what happens? Maybe they’re different enough to make it worthwhile? 

Philly_Q

Pabcrane said:

There are some fantastic recommendations already. I didn't see the following (apologies if I missed them)

Robert E. Howard - Conan series (old school sword and sorcery pulp)

I've got a "complete works" of Robert E Howard which was dead cheap for Kindle.  I already had loads of his books - he had a big resurgence in popularity when I was a kid in the late '70s.

The Kindle book includes all the Conan stories (but not the ones written/completed by L Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter et al), plus Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, the Middle East adventure stuff, boxing stories, horror, westerns, etc.

There are some typos (OCR errors) and some of the material is uncomfortably racist and sexist by today's standards - although I don't think Howard ever set out to offend, he was reflecting the language and attitudes of his time.  That apart, it's all good stuff, a bit corny perhaps but he had a real way with words.

LuttiS

Good bit of Conan is always fun, being mostly short storys I used them as almost a pallet cleanser after a heavy read  

Yes. Conan is a lemon sorbet. 

TheMadMick

I plunder the freebies on Amazon, read on the free Kindle app on my tablet. But I go through books like there's no tomorrow.

PolarityMan

Snap said:

Couple of others I've thought of, all by Dan Simmons:

Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion - collectively known as the Hyperion Cantos. Very good. Sci Fi, wrapped around John Keats. Clever and enjoyable. Due a re read 

Ilium and Olympos - a re interpretation of Greek mythology into sci fi. Better than it sounds too.

He's written some guff, but these are all good, especially Hyperion stuff.

I thought Dan Simmons  was mostly great but he does have a tendency to try to beat you over the head with how well read he is 

Cols

boogieman said:

We’ve got the full set of Game of Thrones books so far. My wife was really into them. But then I’ve watched the tv series and am wondering if they’re still worth reading, now I know a lot of what happens? Maybe they’re different enough to make it worthwhile? 

The first three books are much better than the TV series and very worthwhile reads.  After that, GRRM kind of went off the boil.  Without giving too much away, the TV series also diverged from the books, so there’ll still be some surprises in there.

Philly_Q

PolarityMan said:

Snap said:

Couple of others I've thought of, all by Dan Simmons:

Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion - collectively known as the Hyperion Cantos. Very good. Sci Fi, wrapped around John Keats. Clever and enjoyable. Due a re read 

Ilium and Olympos - a re interpretation of Greek mythology into sci fi. Better than it sounds too.

He's written some guff, but these are all good, especially Hyperion stuff.

I thought Dan Simmons  was mostly great but he does have a tendency to try to beat you over the head with how well read he is 

I've been reading his book Drood (historical fiction featuring Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins) since before the start of lockdown last year.  Nothing wrong with it, but my commute was my reading time and now I hardly ever commute...

Snags

Chucking them in as they occur to me:

A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet (Becky Chambers)

Has an old-school feel in a modern style. The sequel (A Close and Common Orbit) is pretty good too. Not read the third one.

Nitefly

A writer I haven't seen mentioned yet in here is A. A. Attanasio.  I've read three of his books, all published between 1988 and 1997.

"Wyvern" is fantasy, the story of a half-Dutch/half-native child born on Borneo in 1609 who is abandoned by his mother and raised by a shaman in the jungle, and who eventually becomes a pirate.

"Solis" is SF - a cryogenically-frozen brain resuscitated 1000 years in the future, into a world it's owner didn't expect to find.

And "Centuries", again SF, covering the entire third millennium during which humans develop techniques to extend life by decades and then centuries.

In all three I found the writing really enjoyable, and I learnt lots of new words 

Snap

PolarityMan said:

Snap said:

Couple of others I've thought of, all by Dan Simmons:

Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion - collectively known as the Hyperion Cantos. Very good. Sci Fi, wrapped around John Keats. Clever and enjoyable. Due a re read 

Ilium and Olympos - a re interpretation of Greek mythology into sci fi. Better than it sounds too.

He's written some guff, but these are all good, especially Hyperion stuff.

I thought Dan Simmons  was mostly great but he does have a tendency to try to beat you over the head with how well read he is 

Yes he does, you are right there. He's also written some poor books too. Black Hills - god that's bad. I enjoyed The Terror and Song of Kali too.

Snap

boogieman said:

We’ve got the full set of Game of Thrones books so far. My wife was really into them. But then I’ve watched the tv series and am wondering if they’re still worth reading, now I know a lot of what happens? Maybe they’re different enough to make it worthwhile? 

I read the books after the TV show and enjoyed them. Worth the effort IMO, quite different in many ways really.

Myranda

Thanks to Audible I have now managed the warhammer 30k series The Horus Heresy 54 novels (and 2 novellas) ... well sort of. The Horus Heresy just details the lead up to the assault on Terra. So there's a 8 novel plus some novella series which is only up to book 4 so far, and the Primarchs series which is up to 13 novels and not done, and the Horus Heresy Character series which is only at 2 novels with no clue as to how big it will be.

The not-ending-soon nature aside (I mean by the time normal people get through 54 novels most of it could be out now anyway) it's quite good - you'd expect it to be a series of battles with stuff justifying the next battles in between... but it's really not for the most part - in a sci fi where humanity is spread across most of the galaxy, with armies of millions of normal men or hundreds of thousands of super humans it's mostly about individuals, dealing with, or trying to prevent, or orchestrating events. The schtick of alternating authors between books from a pool of about 8 writers means that novels often have a very different feel, whilst the shared universe and characters keep them grounded together. 

I'm now currently on The Expanse series which also alternates authors (per chapter rather than per book) so it seems I have a preference for literary gimmicks