What Is Your Favorite Sifi Book?

[runt2]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've read some but not a lot of SciFi and am excited to again delve into this genre. i had a difficult time choosing but picked 5 of your suggestions to start with:
Old Man's War
I Will Fear No Evil
Lucifer's Hammer
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Mortal Engines

I recently read One Second After and really enjoyed it (world post EMP detonation)

 

[BilgeRat]

Runt2, if you enjoyed One Second After, you might also look at R.E.McDermott's Under A Telltale Sky. It's the first of three in his Disruption series; the second book is due out any time now. It involves the aftermath of a coronal mass ejection that hits earth, and the chaos afterward.

 

[runt2]

Runt2, if you enjoyed One Second After, you might also look at R.E.McDermott's Under A Telltale Sky. It's the first of three in his Disruption series; the second book is due out any time now. It involves the aftermath of a coronal mass ejection that hits earth, and the chaos afterward.

Thanks! I'll definitely check this one out.

 

[BilgeRat]

It's on sale for Kindle today only for $1.99.

 

[runt2]

It's on sale for Kindle today only for $1.99.

Sweet! Just purchased it. Thanks!!!!!

 

[BilgeRat]

Hope you like it. There's a scene in it involving a cottonmouth... If you don't come close to having an accident laughing at it, you might not be human... :-)

 

[larryboy]

I have found few SF books that held my interest in the past few years. Probably a result of being a lot older than the average SF fan. I do look at some SF every now and again and I found a couple that were real page turners. Time And Time Again by Ben Elton. A very well written time travel book. Kept my interest and had a great plot twist on the last dozen pages. There were a few things that I questioned. Taking a lap top and a couple of Glock pistols back to 1914 for example.
I also liked Conquistador by S.M. Stirling. Discovering a "door" into a North America that has not been discovered by Europeans. What kind of society would you establish and how would you settle the land? Stirling's characters do not pick the most politically correct solution but that did not keep me from enjoying the book. Either of these would make a fine weekend read.

 

[WilliamH]

For fun reading you might want to try:
These would all fall under the Oldies but Goodies class.
H Beam Piper's .... Paratime stories

And while not really part of the Paratime stories ... Lord Kalvin of Otherwhen
And a totally different theme .... Lone Star Planet​

There is also E. E. "Doc" Smith's .... Lensman stories
Keith Laumer's .... Retief series
Walt & Leigh Richmond .... The Lost Millennium

note: Some of these may be tough to find.

 

[Muzhik]

One book that I just re-discovered (as my original copy disappeared some time ago) is "Inferno" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. First published in 1976, it's a re-imagining of Dante's "Inferno" -- kind of a "Dante Meets C.S. Lewis".

The story opens with Allen Carpentier, a SF writer, accidentally falls out of an 8th-story window while playing a drinking game at WorldCon. He wakes up (so to speak) next to a large vaguely-familiar man named "Benny" who claims to have poured Allen out of a vase laying next to him. Benny tells Allen he is in the Outer Circle of Hell as described by Dante Alighieri, and that there is a way out by crossing all the inner circles to a hole in the center. Allen, of course, rejects this, since that would mean there IS a God and Allen has been wrong all along.

The novel covers to a satisfying end, with all the explanations that Allen has come up with falling by the wayside with just one explanation remaining: that Allen really is in Hell. Along the way we find some very old sins that people have thought "abandoned" (such as simony) being very much alive.