SF author advice please.

Depends what you want. There are the Arthur C Clarke / Carl Sagan serious types, or at the other end the more fantasy sci-fi stuff. I think Iain Banks gets the balance exactly right myself (have you read Feersum Endjinn or The Player Of Games yet? If not, you must).
You should try Asimov, if only to cross him off your list, because he'll keep popping up otherwise.

Philip K Dick gets my vote.

I'm not a huge reader of SF but I found his books to be excellent and often very thought provoking.

I read Phillip Dick's 'A Scanner Darkly' but frankly it was an effort. Curiously I've read two of his non-SF books and liked those better!

Bruce

I'm enjoying Neal Asher at the moment. Not the equal of Banks by any means - but a very good read all the same. I started with "The Skinner".

I'd also vote for Dick (I'm a nihilist) and Alfred Bester - possibly Bob Shaw.

There are some who write cowboys in space and others who are actually thought provoking. Asimov is good on science but tends to re-write The Fall of the Roman Empire in space.

Frank Herbert - the Dune books. If you can enjoy the first - the sequels are surprisingly good.

I am a big fan of J.G. Ballard - but wouldn't think he'll suit all tastes.
Try "High Rise" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Rise for a taste of his world. Later - you may like to take on Crash, which is hardly SF but interesting.

The earlier works are worth a look - Drowned World probably better than some. His short stories can be good.

Dickhead and proud of it.

Bruce,

Try anything by the late great Kurt Vonnegut - Timequake and Sirens of Titan are both good fun. Not all of his writing is directly SF though, my favourite Kurt Vonnegut novel is Breakfast of Champions.

Philip K. Dick is worth a try too. He wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (amongst plenty of others) which was adapted for Blade Runner.

I don't read much SF and these two authors are about the only ones I've read, both very good though.

Rich

Nobody really writes dark SF like Banks. CJ Cherryh can write dark stuff, but her output's a bit patchy IMHO. Likewise the Nights Dawn series by Peter F. Hamilton has its grimmer moments. Lighter, but with wide scope, the excellent Uplift series by David Brin.

Lucifer's Hammer?
Footfall?
The Legacy of Heorot?

No, really, Banks is kind of on his own.

I won't waste space on Iain M Banks except to say he is a great guy unlike most other authors I have had the pleasure of dealing with. But don't discount his Iain Banks books, they are beautifully crafted and although they do not feature the Culture are well worth reading.

A quick run through of Iain (M) Banks books worth a look:

Consider Phlebas
Excession
Inversions
The Algebraist
Whit (not s/f)
A Song of Stone (not s/f)
The Business (not s/f)

Sticking to intelligent s/f. Ignoring the authors suggested above.
You should dig out anything by Adam Roberts I would probably start with "Stone".

Stephen Donaldson - The Gap Series is an astonishing series of 5 novels. Long, nasty and brutish. It really does not hit its stride until book 2. See here for the series. This one should go out with a "parental warning" though - it made a friend of mine sick! Excellent stuff though that will make you think. Donaldson also does fantasy well. You might like to have a look at The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever now published in two volumes see Amazon.

Also try Ken Macleod - The Stone Canal. Very good plotting, good ideas and not to "sci-fi" (if you know what I mean).

I could not finish without pushing Robert Rankin. A very different vein of stuff but not bad for that. I would probably start with The Antipope his first book and read the Brentford Trilogy series (more than 3 books!) first. "Wit and Imagination" would fit Rankin perfectly. Right that's me done I'm off down "The Flying Swan".

Regards
Steve

quote:

I won't waste space on Iain M Banks except to say he is a great guy unlike most other authors I have had the pleasure of dealing with. But don't discount his Iain Banks books, they are beautifully crafted and although they do not feature the Culture are well worth reading.

Steve and others; thanks a lot.

I've actually got all Ian M Banks books both SF and 'without the M'. The Crow Road is a real favourite of the latter and I think The wasp Factory is a deliciously twisted gem.

I was aware of the Donaldson Thomas Covenant books, I think I may have read one of them once actually but I'm not a great fantasy lover, perhaps his SF writing will be a bit more to my taste.

I had not realised the late (and delightfully barking) Kurt Vonengut wrote SF, I was only aware of Slaughterhouse 5.

I intend an Amazon book splurge this weekend so thanks all once again.

Bruce

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I am not a huge SF fan but I read a friend's copy of "The Mote in God's Eye" and thoroughly enjoyed it.

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
I had not realised the late (and delightfully barking) Kurt Vonengut wrote SF, I was only aware of Slaughterhouse 5.
Bruce

Now now Bruce, don't get me started! I did a whole Uni term on Vonnegut (although not his Vogon cousin Vonengut - did he write poetry )

1945 for our Kurt

1945 February 13. Dresden, Germany bombed killing 135,000 citizens. Vonnegut and fellow Allied POWs take shelter in an underground meatlocker, the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five.
April. Soviet troops occupy Dresden.
May 22. Vonnegut released to return to the U.S. Awarded the Purple Heart.
August 6. U.S. bombs Hiroshima with the planet's first display of atomic weapons killing 71,379 people.
September 1. Marries high school classmate Jane Marie Cox whom he first met in kindergarten.

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

For another British author, try John Brunner:
Stand on Zanzibar
Jagged Orbit
The Sheep Look Up
Shockwave Rider

Steve

His various obits (I'm a great obit reader) were very entertaining. A real original. And so it goes.

And we have not even mentioned Kilgore Trout and his masterpieces

The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank
The Pan-Galactic Straw Boss
The Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass

and


"Venus on the Half-Shell asked the same existential questions and featured several of the same plot devices as the far more successful Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (including the annihilation of all life on the planet Earth and the hero's exodus to other planets). However, [the] book was published four years before Douglas Adams's first Hitchhiker's play was aired on BBC Radio in 1978."

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster anyone?

Steve

A lot of good recommendations there, unfortunately for me, most written about 20 years ago.

I'd recommend taking a look at:

Alastair Reynolds,
Richard Morgan,
Jack McDevitt

all of whom have in fact written some books in the last few years and are slightly more modern in their outlook.

Roy.

Sorry I should have put some dates into this as I would hate for the sci-fi not to be modern enough

Adam Roberts
Salt (London: Victor Gollancz 2000)
On (Gollancz 2001)
Stone (Gollancz 2002)
Polystom (Gollancz 2003)
The Snow (Gollancz 2004)
Gradisil (Gollancz 2006)
Land of the Headless (Gollancz 2007)
Splinter (Solaris 2007)

Stephen Donaldson
The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story (1991)
The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge (1991)
The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises (1993
The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (1994)
The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die (1996)

Ken MacLeod
Series
Fall Revolution
1. The Star Fraction (1995)
2. The Stone Canal (1996)
3. The Cassini Division (1997)
4. The Sky Road (1999)

Engines of Light
1. Cosmonaut Keep (2000)
2. Dark Light (2001)
3. Engine City (2002)

Novels
The Human Front (2001)
Newton's Wake (2004)
Learning the World (2005)
The Execution Channel (2007)
The Night Sessions (2008)

I'm afraid dear old Kurt is a bit old fashioned:

* Player Piano (1952)
* Sirens of Titan, the (1959)
* Mother Night (1962)
* Cat's Cradle (1963)
* God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
* Slaughterhouse-Five (1966)
* Breakfast of Champions (1973)
* Slapstick (1976)
* Jailbird (1979)
* Deadeye Dick (1982)
* Galapagos (1985)
* Bluebeard (1987)
* Hocus Pocus (1990)
* Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
* Timequake (1997)
* Man Without a Counry, a (2005)

But I guess being dead is as good a reason as any

Without wishing to or intending to have a "pop" at Roy, he did get me thinking about Sci-Fi and it's age.

So here is (maybe) a list of books that people should avoid at all costs:

Cyrano de Bergerac - Voyage to the Moon (1657)
H G Wells - The Time Machine (1895)
H G Wells - The War of the Worlds (1897)
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (1916)
Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
Jules Verne - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
Hugo Gernsback - Ralph 124C41+ (1911) considered the first pure science fiction novel.
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (1932)
Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers (1959)
George Orwell - 1984 (1949)
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 (1954)
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids (1951)
Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast Trilogy (1946-59)
Stanilas Lem - Solaris (1960)

steve

Was about to say I'm surprised no one's mentioned Stanislav Lem, until I saw Steve's post. If you're looking for intelligent - nay cerebral - sci=fi, he's hard to beat.

Likewise, Olaf Stapledon, author of the *exceptionally* weird,"Last and Fist Men" and "Star Maker".

I also like the 60s new wave of British Sci-Fi writers - Ballard, Moorcock (especially the Cornelius Chronicles), John Sladek, and so forth.

ahem, "Last and *First* Men"

William Gibson is a writer I would recommend, I was just about to say a modern / recent writer until I realized just how long ago I started reading his books

Virtual Light, Neuromance, The Difference Engine (in collaboration with Bruce Sterling), Idoru, Burning Chrome, Count Zero & Mona Lisa Overdrive.

As my reading of his books stops towards the end of the last millennium I am at a loss to recommend any of his later works but looking back I see that some of the science fiction has become science, a sign of a good writer and futurologist?

Many moons ago I also worked my way through the the output of Philip Jose Farmer from The Image of the Beast, Blown: or Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind (SF meets Porn) through The River World and World of Tiers block buster sized collections - pulp I know but filled a need at the time.

quote:

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

One of whom invented the ring world concept used to good effect in Consider Phlebas and the original Halo game. Could be a tad right wing for Banks fans though?

I rate Larry Niven's solo work too, again it's hard sci-fi but the story isn't the technology it's the consequences of the technology.

There's a legit Niven & Pournelle download over at The Baen Free Library

C

I've only recently (shamefully) got round to reading anything by Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle, which I think is exceptionally fine. And while I suppose it's sci-fi, it doesn't really feel it, much more wide ranging than that. The part set on the island, for example, is terribly Evelyn Waugh. One of the things I like most (in a genre where some writers do tend to go on a little) is how concise it is (and yet still managing to have a go at religion, politics, science and just about anything else along the way).

I also very much enjoy Asimov and am particularly fond of I, Robot. A collection of short stories in which he explores his 3 laws of robotics, some of them are delightfully clever (though some may possibly appeal to people who have a love of mathematics - for example the one which is basically all about loci).

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) has a lot going for it. It tells the story of the colonisation of the red planet. The best bits are superb but in between them I find it drags terribly.

Douglas Adams is well worth reading. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (and all 5 books can be had in one cheap volume) are mostly excellent and very, very funny (though the first two volumes of the radio version are perhaps the series at its very finest).

I'm afraid I found Stapledon's 'Last and First Men' pretty dire. It's a good idea, just that he doesn't really execute it very well. And little things really bug me - I don't find the flying civilisation the first men become terribly convincing and even less so the fact that it takes so many millennia to discover space travel. And, for the most part, I don't find the way he write engaging.

The only Sagan I've read is Contact, which I found desperately dull.

regards, Tam

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
I read Phillip Dick's 'A Scanner Darkly' but frankly it was an effort. Curiously I've read two of his non-SF books and liked those better!

Bruce

Bruce,

I was/am a huge Dick fan (no sniggering at the back), but the latter day novels lost me to a large extent. His earlier novels often carry a nicely sardonic sense of humour as well as being well-imagined page-turners. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (loosely Blade Runner), Counter Clock World Ubik are all brilliant. If you do get into earlier Dick, one of the recurring themes is about Mental Health, which sort of leads into the drakness of the last few books.

A second for Bob Shaw, the early novels of J G Ballard as well as John Brunner.

A particular second for Alastair Reynolds though. Apart from Banks, I've found modern "hard" science fiction that I like as much as the golden era of the 50s and 60s hard to come by. However, I was badgered into reading a Reynolds novel - the first of his connected series, Revelation Space.

My first reaction was that I almost put it down. Rather like Frank Herbert, Reynolds doesn't pussyfoot around setting scenes and backgrounds in nice digestible chunks - he just leaps in with highly complex technical and political situations, complete with their own terminologies. I found this befuddling, confusing and a bit irrotating, but after a couple of chapters it all pretty much clicked into place and I was away.

His worlds are beautifully assembled, totally believable and highly atmospheric. The plots, if sometimes a little slow and dark, are very good and the characters good if not quite up to the best of Banks's.

If you don't fancy launching into the Revelation Space marathon, then I suggest Century Rain, which is a sort of who-done-it set in the far future and at the same time 1950s Paris.

Link to Reynolds' site

On the lighter side of Sci-Fi I'd recommend Jack Vance who started out writing 40s and 50s pulp but developed a wry style that, married to a magical set of aliens (who never walk, they bound and leap), make for great light reading. They're all short so if you don't like them and decide to chuck them across the room they won't do much damage. Don't expect great characterisation and deep meaning. Start with the Demon Princes series.

See also Robert Sheckley.

Phillip Jose Farmer is also a favourite of mine on the lighter side, however, his strength is his imagination and not in his writing skill, and although there are stand-out efforts many of his series (and he loved series) ran out of steam after brilliant beginnings (see Riverworld where everyone who's ever lived gets re-incarnated giving him great scope).

Oh, and he wrote that book by "Kilgore Trout" pictured earlier. Which is very funny as well as mildly pornographic (Farmer wrote a series of highly porno sci-fi), but was released under a cloud of controversy. He was a huge Vonnegut fan and wrote to him, asking permission to write a Kilgore Trout book, which was granted. He wrote the book then Vonnegut threw a snit and withdrew his approval. All very messy.

And for what it's worth I didn't like any Voinneguts after Breakfast Of Champions, which was about the time his fame took off, he started being studied on degree courses and in my opinion got far too clever for himself.. Still, there's no doubting that Slaughterhouse 5 et al. are classics. Good sense of humour and the sense of absurd too.

I've missed out a shedload and dribbled on too much as it is. Sorry.

One last dribble. A second for Tam's Robinson recommendation.