Comment by peckrob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peckrob | Hacker News Reader

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I read a lot of Science Fiction for fun. These are a few of my favorites that I've given to other people:

1. Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter. When I think of epic hard science fiction, the Xeelee Sequence books spring to mind. With a story line that spans millions of years (and a few dozen books), this collection of short stories is a good introduction to one of the best and most underrated sci-fi series out there. Baxter's Manifold trilogy (Manifold: Space, Manifold: Time and Manifold: Origin) are also fantastic.

2. Foundation by Isaac Asimov. The whole Foundation series is wonderful, but this book is a landmark of sci-fi that should be on any fan's bookcase.

3. The Martian by Andy Weir. This book is what I've been giving the last couple years to people who don't think they like sci-fi. Everyone I've given it to has loved it.

4. Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Another hard sci-fi staple. The rest of the Rama books he "co-wrote" with Gentry Lee are decent but become more space opera than hard sci-fi. I enjoyed them but many sci-fi fans find them polarizing.

5. Silver Tower by Dale Brown. More of a military thriller than sci-fi (Flight of the Old Dog is another favorite of mine by him) and terribly dated by modern standards (it was written when the Soviet Union was still a thing). But it's the first "adult" sci-fi book I ever read as a kid, so it'll always have a special place for me.

EDIT: Another one:

6. Coyote by Allen Steele. I love stories like this one: primitive, longshot interstellar exploration and primitive, first generation colonization. Especially for desperate reasons. The first two Coyote books were good, but I just can't get into any of the subsequent ones.

+1 to Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. It is absolutely phenomenal "hard sci-fi" with coherent science and a very cool story.

They were going to make a film adaptation of this book, with Morgan Freeman as a main actor and everything. The scope of the scenes in the story however were so large that even with Intel Corp with technology onboard, they couldn't make them. Maybe nowadays it would be easier to make.

http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/morgan-freeman-discuss...

On (6) Coyote: I read it a while back (4-5 years), and don't remember much, but I really enjoyed the first two books as well. "The Madwoman of Shuttlefield", a chapter from the first book in the series which was published independently in Asimov's is one of my all time favorite short stories of all time.

Foundation is a great story, but am I the only one who thought the prose to be absolutely awful?

By the standards of the pulpy SF magazines Foundation was published in, Asimov was a pretty brilliant prose stylist. He's a little clunky by literary standards, but that's a pretty high bar. The man could tell a story, though. And he had more ideas than ten other SF authors put together.

I was learning English with this series, and as a kid and I really appreciated the simple and clear language of Asimov.

Those are all great. I've also given Dune, the Forever War, and The Stars my Destination.

I used to give Dune to my teenage relatives and it usually turned them into avid readers; they would thank me later. I noticed that it doesn't hold the interests of the recent teenagers in the family; it is hard to get them to start and even harder to get them to finish. I think competition from the internet, youtube and cellphone is just too strong. That is horrible because developing a passion for reading helps lot in highschool/college/life. I've offered to pay them $100 and they still won't read it!

I read a lot when I was a young teenager (pre-internet, and didn't have a TV, so I went through around a book a day). Much of it was SciFi.

I never found Dune all that great.

Dune is very close to a revenge fantasy. I read it for the first time a year or two ago and was not particularly impressed.

I read most of the Dune books back when I was a teenager, and despite being a usually voracious reader I found them very hard to get into. Worth the effort, mind you, but it's definitely a series which requires some investment.

This is very close to how I feel about Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. I read them because many of my friends who were also sci-fi readers raved about them.

I enjoyed Red Mars but I really had to slog through Green Mars and Blue Mars. Red Mars was fun and interesting, but I could have done without a few hundred pages of Sax Russell talking about plants in Green Mars.

I think worldbuilding books take a certain level of investment, even among voracious readers.

I recently read Dune (again). In my opinion, it hasn't held up well with the times.

I enjoyed the first Dune book, solely on the amount of world building in the book. But I never read any of the others other than the 3rd one, as Herbert seemed to get a bit long in the tooth with all the grandiose plans involving the god emperor after a bit.

+1 for The Martian - fantastic book!

The Martian is a great gateway for casual readers into sci-fi. One person I gave The Martian to loved it so much the next week they asked me for another recommendation. I recommended John Scalzi's Old Man's War.

He's now reading the Foundation series.

I loved it so much that I still haven't seen the film. I don't want the book spoilt. :(

(and I'm a life long sci-fi reader!)

Yeah, after reading the book, I didn't like the movie.

I, robot would probably be easier to get into than foundation :)

also "stranger in a strange land" by Heinlein makes for a great gift

Time Enough For Love was my favorite Heinlein book.

...and then of course you end up with To Sail Beyond The Sunset.

Heinlein, both during his early sane and latter mad years, was an utter genius story-teller.

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