Recommend A Good Sci-Fi novel to me.

[noretoc]

Rocheworld
Greg bear's - Eon
N-space - larry niven - bunch of cool short stories
enders game is awesome. I never liked the sequels
Clarkes 20XX series. Good reads.

 

[Steel_Wind]

China Miéville's Perdido Street Station or The Scar are stand alone-ish. They have a more steampunk feel, but are good books.

I just picked up Perdido Street Station today on the strength of Erik Mona's glowing recommendation in the latest Dragon.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

Completely awesome sci-fi: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Hugo award winner for Best Novel in 1993, totally standalone, very cool.

If you dig it, you'd probably like the follow-up (but not a sequel, sort-of a prequel but mostly just the same universe), A Deepness in the Sky, which also won the Hugo for best novel, this time in 2000.

I very much liked the latter, but cannot stress enough how truly great the former is.

And see, I couldn't get into that book. No matter how hard I tried, and I tried for about 5 years!

But, if you can find them, I would recommened the Bill Baldwin Helmsman novels.

 

[JEL]

Cordwainer Smith's stuff is excellent. It's really hard to describe his style (though it has a lot in common with the style you see in a lot of Chinese stories), but he tells great stories. There's a complete collection of his short works, but honestly I'd recommend one of the older, best-of type anthologies if you're just getting into him. He only wrote one SF novel, Norstrillia that is also quite good.

 

[Sidekick]

Brin: Sundiver, Startide Rising or The Uplift War (they form a trilogy, but you don't have to read them all, and can read them in any order).

I agree with David Brin. He’d my favourite Sci-Fi author. However if you are going to read these then I’d suggest reading Sundiver first. It helps to introduce the nature and political setting of the Uplift Universe.

Startide Rising is probably one of my favourite books ever…

 

[qstor]

Here are some recommendations:

Niven: Ringworld

Niven and Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye

Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama

I'd 2nd the recommendations for these. They are all top classic novels like the Dune series.

Mike

 

[Sir Elton]

The Gods Themselves is my favorite Asimov novel.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I second the nominations for Brin & Forward.

I third these nominations. Add in Flight of the Dragonfly by Forward . He has a knack for creating interesting aliens such as the cheela on dragons egg and the flouwen on rocheworld