Sci-fi books you must read....

Reading this thread is like leafing through my book collection :D

A plus for 'Childhood's End' ......... Seeing as they're about to mess with it by airing a miniseries of the story ...... We shall see ......

Currently working my way through Markus Heitz' 'Dwarves' books ........... But fighting off the urge to drag out Zelazny's 'Creatures of Light and Darkness' after seeing a copy on fleabay .......
 
A lot of what has been mentioned is well, useless. Sci fi seems to be dead unless you go online and delve into certain aspects of literature that sadly have passed on.

The greatest flurry of writing in th elast 20 years was anthro fiction. But that's basically dead online. Just a lot of ghost server websites left and a few mirror websites that have dead links to some of the greatest writing in the last 30 years.
 
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The great classic nobody read: David Zindell, Neverness...
I've never been called nobody before. Neverness was good, but his Magnum Opus was the Requiem for Homo Sapiens trilogy that followed Neverness.

I always wanted him to go back and write Kalinda's story. Instead he wrote the Lord of Light series, which essentially took the same characters (with different names) from Requiem and dropped them into a fantasy setting.

Tim Akers "The Horns of Ruin" is remarkably good in the steam punk genre. The main character is the last Paladin of a dead god.
The cover is one of the best I've seen on a book.
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"Dune" by Frank Herbert is essential reading as well.

"Red Thunder" and it's sequels are excellent Sci-Fi, kind of a modern Skylark of space kind of series, but more grounded in reality.
Echoes the "home built spaceship with a unique and incredibly powerful power source" theme.

I'll add more as I think of them.
 
The house on the borderland, William Hope Hodgeson is what I'm on at the mo. I was listening to 4 extra driving to work this week and caught this really spooky science fiction/horror story. Turns out it's free on Kindle :)

Pretty much all the stuff that's been mentioned, I love culture and big space stuff.
I'll second the Hamilton stuff, I like great north road. And the void series.
Margaret Atwoods day of the flood. And the follow up.
Russel Hobans Ridley Walker - if you can get of over the language (it's a bit marmite) - I loved.
 
Brian Aldiss and his Helliconia series-the planets the star of the books, with the characters well fleshed out but, ultimately, only part of the huge cycles of history!
 
...this thread has reminded me of so many great reads; a stand-out for me though and ones that I re-read every now and again is Arthur C Clarke's Rama series (Rendevouz with Rama, Rama II, The Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed). The latter books are written in collaboration with Gentry Lee a previous Chief Engineer at NASA. The books were in some sense prophetic especially with regard to climate change but most of all give rise to a sense of wonder and awe.
 
...this thread has reminded me of so many great reads; a stand-out for me though and ones that I re-read every now and again is Arthur C Clarke's Rama series (Rendevouz with Rama, Rama II, The Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed). The latter books are written in collaboration with Gentry Lee a previous Chief Engineer at NASA. The books were in some sense prophetic especially with regard to climate change but most of all give rise to a sense of wonder and awe.

+1 on the Rama series. Fantastic writing and I revisit often. I'm also a fan of Cradle (also with Gentry Lee) and Songs of Distant Earth.

Modern Sci-Fi is going through somewhat of a renaissance. I heartily recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Aurora' and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Both are long but very rewarding.

I listened to both in an audiobook format, otherwise I'd lend to anybody interested.
 
I got quite into Sci-Fi books many years ago, not so much now, one author I have not seen mentioned who I can recommend is Orson Scott Card. If you are not into reading then watch Enders Game the film, and then maybe read the book.

The same can be said of many other Sci-Fi films made from novels, but as a relatively recent film it may pique someones interest. If only one person reads this post and has seen or is encouraged to watch the film and is then then encouraged to read a book by an author as good as Orson Scott Card, then I will be happy that someone has benefitted from my advice.
 
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