My friend Zahid just finished Orson Scott Card’s classic sci fi novel Ender’s Game, and after we talked about it, Z asked me for a couple more sci fi book recommendations. I sent him the following list:
1. My favorite current author is Richard K. Morgan. The Altered Carbon trilogy is probably the best sci fi that’s been published in the last decade. Also, Z, you’d like Market Forces.http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=altered+carbon&sprefix=altered+carbon
2. David Brin is probably most famous for writing The Postman. I really liked Kiln People, which is a detective story set amidst an exploration of modern labor markets.
3. We talked about Robert Heinlein. He wrote Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Puppet Masters. I recommend them in that order, followed by Friday.
4. Ben Bova is another famous sci fi author with a strong background in actual science. I liked Jupiter and Venus. There are bunches more that are worth reading.
5. You can’t really put a list like this together without including Isaac Asimov. Foundation is wonderful. After that first book, I think the series kind of falls apart, though.
My “one to grow on” is the Codex Alera series from Jim Butcher, my favorite fantasy writer. Butcher is more famous for his urban fantasy series The Dresden Files (which was briefly a TV series on the Sci Fi channel), but Z, I think you’d enjoy the Codex Alera a bit more.
And that’s my list. Enjoy.
3 comments:
I like your list . . . but I think you definitely need to include some Philip K. Dick stuff in there (A Scanner Darkly maybe).
Got a question for you too.
When you come up with stories, what's your process? Do you like to outline your plots, or just start writing and then try to make sense of it later.
Ever think of submitting something to the Amazon Breakout Novel contest (comes up in Jan. I think).
Thanks guys. Y'know, I actually thought about including Philip K. Dick, but I've not read much of his stuff. Maybe I'll read Scanner Darkly over the winter.
For the second part... For whatever reason, I sort of lost my writing mojo after my father died. I've not written much of anything since then. I don't know why; God knows, my father was no fan of my writing. But that's the way it is.
If I somehow were to write something new that I really, really liked, I would almost certainly self-publish it using Amazon and B&N's digital service, and I might run a short print run using a print-on-demand service.
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