Who's your favourite science fiction author (if you like sci-fi)?

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Permalink Reply by Kamboja Tan on January 22, 2011 at 6:55am

Robert Anson Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land was great, as was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." - Beyond This Horizon

"I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. 
If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!"

Ahem. Fuck Roosevelt! :)

Permalink Reply by Rev. Mathew G. Thompson on February 11, 2011 at 8:20pm

Occasionally I read sci-fi, or what passes for close to it. I recently read 'The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester, whom some consider a god-father to the genre. It was originally released as 'Tiger, Tiger'. Also enjoy the classics, like Asimov, but also like Richard Matheson and some of Vonnegut's science-fictiony (?)

writing.

 

I've got Amazon on hold while I look at other's suggestions.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Noah Petersen on March 21, 2011 at 7:49am

Currently I'm reading a book called Virtual Girl by an author named Amy Thompson. It's pretty good. One of the drawbacks to many of Asimov's books was that he focused a lot on the people and how robots in their society affected human's, but did not focus on how the robots themselves felt about their role in society.

I like many authors in sci-fi with many varying points of view, but I think the big generes that I focus on are Robots and Dystopian futures.

Permalink Reply by Carolyn R on November 3, 2011 at 9:53pm

I agree with that view of Asimov, one of my little quibbles. I'm not actually very fond of his characters in general, I like his ideas & plots, but his characters and style are not my favorite. I enjoy his essays sometimes more than his fiction.

 

If you want to read a very different style than Asimov, Ruddy Rucker goes into quite a bit of detail about how the created characters feel and think about themselves and their lives - he focuses quite a lot on on both mechanical and biological artificial life forms. I'm not crazy about his human characters, but his style is crudely energetic cyber punk that can be fun; you might like it if you like Amy Thompson, since they are both considered to be "cyberpunk" for what that's worth. 

Permalink Reply by Carolyn R on November 3, 2011 at 10:23pm

Also for the points of view of non-human or trans-human characters I enjoy Jeff Noon - author of Vurt & Nymphomation. His style is quirky and cyber-punkish, I guess, way more artsy & poetic than old school writers like Asimov, which is neither good nor bad to me, just an observation.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Brunson on August 8, 2011 at 10:47pm

Stephen Baxter is my favorite.  The Manifold series is good.  His newer unnamed disaster series is also really good including Flood and Ark.  I also like Heinlein.

Permalink Reply by Nichelle Wrenn on September 21, 2011 at 1:19am

Garth Nix.  Phillip Pullman (I first read him without really realizing that he was anti-theist and before I was out of middle school.) I started off in such a freethinking home that I had no idea how dangerous theology can be...

Permalink Reply by Terri Harshman on October 4, 2011 at 11:53am

As I do not generally read anything but non-fiction, when I do get the urge to read sci-fi, I usually go straight to Ben Bova.  I have read almost all of his books so far and really like his style of fact based fiction.  Sci-fi drama confuses me, probably due to a lack of imagination...i guess, but Bova's books are written with mounds a factual, researched details, which makes them much easier for me to read.

Permalink Reply by Smiley Courtney on October 25, 2011 at 7:28am

George R. R. Martin; Octavia Butler; Katherine Kurtz

Permalink Reply by Carolyn R on November 3, 2011 at 10:12pm

Fritz Leiber is generally considered to be an fantasy rather than sci-fi author, but I like his stuff both for being well crafted, humanistic with amusing characters and commentary on the human condition, and it's sometimes called "crudely vulgar and anti-Christian" which are not bad things in my book. 

http://www.conceptualfiction.com/fritz_leiber.html

 

I'm also a huge fan of Stanislaw Lem - to me he reads like Vonnegut in that he seems to have a profound grasp of human nature at it best and worst, but with a bit more hard science elements in the mix. I also love both authors for their humor, and their willingness to be all kinds of funny - silly, goofy, surreal, bizarre, darkly funny / gallows humor, sly, childish, but then by turns crushingly tragic and heartrending. 

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