What are you reading??

ErichPryde

@ghce you should add Have Spacesuit, Will Travel to your Heinlein reading list (although I have a sneaking suspicion you've read it before). It's still a fan favorite of mine.


I loved the "idea" of the Foundation series as well. haven't read them in at least 20 years, but I do remember thinking that Foundation and Empire was the best of the four I read (probably because of the Mule). Good luck reading through those!

ErichPryde

As someone who grew up reading (as far as I can tell from our conversations) and loving essentially the same authors and books that you did, I'd love to offer some modern sci-fi recommendations that have seriously held up. I do think we went through a Fantasy phase and I do think we are currently in a "Romantasy" phase in American literature but there is some spectacular and thought-provoking science fiction that has been written over the last decade.

ErichPryde

Have you read Ancillary Justice? It's about a ship's AI that has been "murdered." All that remains of it is tucked into a single remaining clone body that was a soldier-drone, and it's sort of investigating its own murder while... coping with suddenly being small and human and no longer a "Ship." The book follows two time frames, it's interesting and won the Hugo in 2014. The sequels are also good and worth reading (as are some of the other books within the world built by Ann Leckie). No spoilers- this is all from the back of the book!

How about All Systems Red? (The Murderbot diaries, Martha Wells) Hugo Winner, 2018. About 170 pages- it follows SecUnit, a heavily armed security cyborg that has hacked its own governor module and wants to be left alone to watch its favorite serial show (The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon) but must pretend to still follow orders so the governor module hack isn't discovered. Of course, everything on the mission goes wrong, and SecUnit is forced to "disobey" what should be its programming to save the crew it is with. Fast-paced, a blast, the first four books in the series were all nominated for Hugos but Wells turned them down after the first one.

What I really like about Murderbot is the pacing- it's fast, snappy, and short. lots of witty internal dialogue, it's not 1940s/1950s Heinlein but in terms of pacing and dialogue I can't help but be reminded of the shorter page turners from that era. I just read another book in the series last night and couldn't put it down, they've made it into my all-time favorites list.

I've got some other recommendations I could make, but these two are good recent favorites of mine!

ghce

Please do suggest some, fresh ideas has always been my love for Sci-Fi and not the rehash that many contemporary authors do, rather like jumping on a gravy train to get rich.

lindo

Science fiction is one of my favourite genres, obviously shared by others on this thread. I particularly loved the James S.A. Corey 'The Expanse' series, starting with Leviathan Awakes. Most of the books were also made into a series streamed on Amazon Prime, but as is often the case, the books are much more immersive. I am not a fan of run of the mill space opera novels, but SF novels that introduce exciting ideas and are well written will always ring my bells.

And to the many who have already mentioned Cormac McCarthy's books I add my hearty endorsement - he was an electrifying author.