CCamfield said:
Justin, have you read Simmons' Ilium and Olympos? I haven't read Olympos yet, but I thought Ilium was just fantastic.
I read
Ilium when it first came out and wasn't very impressed with it. When
Olympos came out, I started rereading
Ilium and just couldn't get through it. It had some interesting concepts, but I felt the characters were one-dimensional and that Mr. Simmons was trying too hard to recapture what he had with
Hyperion. Plus the sex and violence were a major turnoff. And my tastes have changed as well. H and FoH were very military/political, while E and RoE were very religio-political.
If you could articulate what you don't like about military in fiction, or what it is that you do or don't like, it might help people suggest books. Unfortunately I'm more of a fantasy reader, so it's hard for me to come up with suggestions.
I don't want this to devolve into a political thread, so suffice it to say that I'm not a big fan of the military and government and military fiction (well, most sci fi and fantasy) tends to glorify military and strong central governments. If you wish to comment on this opinion but can't do so civilly, feel free to PM me rather than PO the moderators.
As to science fiction versus fantasy, while I have generally preferred sf I'm not averse to fantasy. It's just that, in my experience and opinion, fantasy is usually poorly executed, cliche, and very contrived (fetch/destroy some object before the BBEG destroys the world). Science fiction in general isn't much better, though since my preference is mainly for hard sci fi, e.g. some of Alastair Reynolds, Greg Egan, and some early Greg Bear. And
Dune. And
Neuromancer (but
Pattern Recognition was a waste of time).
Well, hang on. Have you ever read anything by Alison Sinclair? A Canadian SF writer who's written 3 or 4 books (I think the last was fantasy; haven't read it) I thought her book "Blueheart" was really great. Basically it's the story of a political crisis on a waterworld between adapted and unadapted humans. No sex that I recall, and practically no violence.
Again, I'm not really interested in deeply political stories, either. On the other hand, the handful of more libertarian/ancap fiction I've read were abyssmal:
The Probability Broach,
Atlas Shrugged and
Unintended Consequences come to mind.
Here are some things I want in fiction: intelligent characters (good and bad), hazy morality (not black & white like most are), ethical dilemmas and lating consequences to characters' actions, epic scope, high magic (fantasy), hard science (sci fi).
Here are some other things I don't like: modern fantasy, historical fiction and alternate history, anything strongly based on Earth cultures (esp British/Victorian like
The Diamond Age), time travel (never done well, though the first two Dragonlance trilogies, Chronicles and Legends, had potential if they weren't written for children), horror, romance and/or sex (I'm not prudish, I just don't care for those in my fiction).