What's your favorite sci fi novel?

The Something Awful Forums > Main > BYOB: BYOB BYOB BOYB BBOY YOBB YBOB BBYO?? > What's your favorite sci fi novel?

joke_explainer

I would like to know what your favorite sci-fi novel is. I would accept a novel series if you can not narrow it down to one book. I am a big fan of what some term trash genre fiction. Thank you.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 09:59

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 5, 2024 16:35

Ace of Baes

I robot by Asimov

# ? Jan 7, 2017 11:07

Rushi: by Smythe

coheed and cambria albums

----------------
This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

# ? Jan 7, 2017 11:59

FactsAreUseless

He didn't do novels, but dig up some Cordwainer Smith short stories, he's fantastic and should be way more famous than he is.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 14:41

alnilam

2001 or possibly childhoods end

If we're allowing short story collections, ma boi Philip K Dick enters the picture

# ? Jan 7, 2017 15:06

alnilam

What's yours joke explainer?

# ? Jan 7, 2017 16:41

Piso Mojado

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:11

Pot Smoke Phoenix: Smoke 'em if you gottem!

Dune, the first book because of the introduction of the world and the concept of the Benne Gesserits and their Kwizatz Haderach 10,000 year breeding program and the Butlerian Jihad and the need for Mentats to counter "thinking machines" and s p i c e. It was an incredible foray into a distant future of an empire of planets colonized by humanity because of spacing guild navigators who could fold space and make travelling great distances far faster than brute-force rocketry ever could.

https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4
_{_{Sig elements by Manifisto and Heather Papps}}
Sig File protected by SigLock. do NOT steal this sig!

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:40

vanisher

I came here to post

alnilam posted:

2001

But saw someone post

Splatmaster posted:

Dune

(and then)

Piso Mojado posted:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Both of which are excellent.

It was 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke that got me into reading almost everything I could find when I was in High School/College, although I've read Dune (the first book) at least a dozen times.

_{Sig images courtesy of the talented Luvcow, Dumb Sex-Parrot, & Death Sext}

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:44

Manifisto

wow, it's hard for me to answer these kinds of questions with a single pick. very young me would probably have said the tripod trilogy by john christopher, although most of the christopher books were fantastic, I mentally thank my grandmother to this day for getting me into them. young but older me would have said various books at various times, including rendezvous with rama, dune, stranger in a strange land, a clockwork orange, maybe the mote in god's eye by niven and pournelle.

if I read sf these day's it's most likely short story collections, but I'd say the series I've read in recent years that sticks with me is the book of the new sun by gene wolfe.

whole other story if you're counting short fiction/novellas

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:53

Pot Smoke Phoenix: Smoke 'em if you gottem!

Bill the Galactic Hero was a fun read by Harry Harrison, he also did the Stainless Steel Rat series which was a lot of fun. Nowadays I've read a lot of Larry Correa's "Monster Hunters, International" which has a few books in the series as well as a spinoff or two. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Harry Dresden series but they both more qualify as fantasy than sci fi.

It's very hard to pick a favorite book, I picked Dune because I read the series when I was 19 and it totally stuck with me and prompted me to pursue many other books in the genre (I read the Hobbit at the age of 8 and Fantasy became my reading material of choice until I read Dune).

https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4
_{_{Sig elements by Manifisto and Heather Papps}}
Sig File protected by SigLock. do NOT steal this sig!

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:55

Pot Smoke Phoenix: Smoke 'em if you gottem!

Manifisto posted:

wow, it's hard for me to answer these kinds of questions with a single pick. very young me would probably have said the tripod trilogy by john christopher, although most of the christopher books were fantastic, I mentally thank my grandmother to this day for getting me into them. young but older me would have said various books at various times, including rendezvous with rama, dune, stranger in a strange land, a clockwork orange, maybe the mote in god's eye by niven and pournelle.

if I read sf these day's it's most likely short story collections, but I'd say the series I've read in recent years that sticks with me is the book of the new sun by gene wolfe.

whole other story if you're counting short fiction/novellas

Zelazny's Amber series was kickass too

https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4
_{_{Sig elements by Manifisto and Heather Papps}}
Sig File protected by SigLock. do NOT steal this sig!

# ? Jan 7, 2017 17:56

vanisher

The Sunstorm series was also good

_{Sig images courtesy of the talented Luvcow, Dumb Sex-Parrot, & Death Sext}

# ? Jan 7, 2017 18:00

Manifisto

Splatmaster posted:

Zelazny's Amber series was kickass too

oh absolutely, I left fantasy out of the list because that would have introduced too many additional choices. in the sf genre, "he who shapes" is definitely a favorite. I guess he turned it into a book? never read it, just the original novella.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 18:01

Android Blues

i'm gonna cheat and say the city and the city by china mieville. it counts, it's like, social science-fi. it's like phil-fi. and it's really really good!

# ? Jan 7, 2017 18:42

Android Blues

i actually can't think of a more standard grade sci-fi novel i like except for that i read the novelisations to a new hope/empire/jedi a lot when i was very small, but i don't think that counts

# ? Jan 7, 2017 18:49

alnilam

I'm sure people itt won't disagree but i gotta say it, I think it's totally wrong to call it a trash genre though there is certainly plenty of trash (albeit fun trash) within it

Like, star wars tales of bounty hunters, fun read but yeah it's trash

Clarke, Bradbury, Dick, Heinlein, this is some real h*ckin literature

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:04

Android Blues

I think scepticism of genre in general is usually just snobbery. like, yes, there's lots of awful genre out there, but there's also very legitimately skilfully written genre that's dismissed out of hand because it's by a certain writer, or because it features one too many magic crystals. meanwhile, there is a fair amount of litfic that is not in any way remarkable, but that is considered respectable and canonical because it's about soviet family life during WW2, or an adult first world man feeling alienated by society, or one of the "safe" topics that imparts canonicity on anyone who's willing to write about something boring poe-facedly for 400 pages.

i'm all for the idea of a canon but it needs to both rigorous and open to constant re-examination. people using shorthands and signifiers for what's valuable and what's not is just the same complaint they have about genre mirrored back on them, i.e. that the thematic content and stylistic skill are all secondary to the strict denotational nature of the content.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:18

Macnult

Android Blues posted:

I think scepticism of genre in general is usually just snobbery. like, yes, there's lots of awful genre out there, but there's also very legitimately skilfully written genre that's dismissed out of hand because it's by a certain writer, or because it features one too many magic crystals. meanwhile, there is a fair amount of litfic that is not in any way remarkable, but that is considered respectable and canonical because it's about soviet family life during WW2, or an adult first world man feeling alienated by society, or one of the "safe" topics that imparts canonicity on anyone who's willing to write about something boring poe-facedly for 400 pages.

i'm all for the idea of a canon but it needs to both rigorous and open to constant re-examination. people using shorthands and signifiers for what's valuable and what's not is just the same complaint they have about genre mirrored back on them, i.e. that the thematic content and stylistic skill are all secondary to the strict denotational nature of the content.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:19

Android Blues

it's also interesting that genre novels which move up to canonical / socially important status are then stripped of their genre-ness almost ritually, which really says something about how the literary community treats genre as a sort of caste mark rather than to convey useful meaning.

I once had a friend of mine who's an ex-English prof argue with me for like two hours about whether or not nineteen eighty-four was a sci fi novel, because in his head there was just something like, "no, that's good, it's socially important, and it's by Orwell, Orwell's not a sc-fi author!"

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:21

Luvcow: One day nearer spring

Android Blues posted:

it's also interesting that genre novels which move up to canonical / socially important status are then stripped of their genre-ness almost ritually, which really says something about how the literary community treats genre as a sort of caste mark rather than to convey useful meaning.

I once had a friend of mine who's an ex-English prof argue with me for like two hours about whether or not nineteen eighty-four was a sci fi novel, because in his head there was just something like, "no, that's good, it's socially important, and it's by Orwell, Orwell's not a sc-fi author!"

lol

isn't all sci fi essentially social commentary?

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:28

Manifisto

Android Blues posted:

it's also interesting that genre novels which move up to canonical / socially important status are then stripped of their genre-ness almost ritually, which really says something about how the literary community treats genre as a sort of caste mark rather than to convey useful meaning.

I once had a friend of mine who's an ex-English prof argue with me for like two hours about whether or not nineteen eighty-four was a sci fi novel, because in his head there was just something like, "no, that's good, it's socially important, and it's by Orwell, Orwell's not a sc-fi author!"

Luvcow posted:

lol

the novel itself (well, by a certain definition of "novel") was once considered genre fiction, and pretty disreputable

romantic trash for ladies--well, women, anyway

# ? Jan 7, 2017 19:40

alnilam

Luvcow posted:

lol

isn't all sci fi essentially social commentary?

All the good ones at least

# ? Jan 7, 2017 20:20

Android Blues

Manifisto posted:

the novel itself (well, by a certain definition of "novel") was once considered genre fiction, and pretty disreputable

romantic trash for ladies--well, women, anyway

there was a time when writing original fiction instead of reinterpreting classical poetry was considered "genre". like literally, making stuff up or inventing characters, settings and plots was considered low and common and the domain of mountebanks. properly educated writers only wrote AU fan poems of the works of ovid and virgil!

literary snobbery is wild and we should never mistake the trend of the time for genuine erudition

# ? Jan 7, 2017 20:45

Manifisto

next time your ex-english prof friend says he liked a book, ask him whether it was written in english or latin

when he says english, kind of roll your eyes and say "how vulgar"

# ? Jan 7, 2017 21:01

Android Blues

one of the things that bugs me most about the arbitrary literary / genre divide is that it often isn't assessed on a per book basis but on a per author basis.

I personally think that, say, Misery by Stephen King is a strong enough meditation on the act of writing and being a novelist that it could arguably deserve a spot in the canon, but because he's also the guy who wrote Cujo and Pet Sematary, that's just entirely off the table for most academics. like, Cujo and Pet Sematary are both definitely what King would call "salami books", but that shouldn't automatically detract from the assumed validity of his other work.

on the other side of the coin, literary authors who dabble in genre get the nineteen eighty-four treatment, like how everything Margaret Atwood writes, no matter which genre it's in, isn't even considered genre because We All Know Margaret Atwood Is a Literary Writer.

like, the oryx and crake trilogy is one of the greatest modern sci fi series, and it's mostly not mentioned in the same breath as sci-fi by most academics, because it doesn't have laser guns and the person who wrote it also wrote Cat's Eye and The Edible Woman.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 21:20

Android Blues

one of the great things about this thread is that i now remember a lot more sci-fi novels i liked and, everyone, you should read Oryx and Crake + The Year of the Flood + MaddAddam, they're very really very good

# ? Jan 7, 2017 21:25

lmbo calrissian: i'm into fashion
men are my passion

childhood's end

# ? Jan 7, 2017 21:41

treasure bear

[quadruple backflips into room] the bible

# ? Jan 7, 2017 21:48

alnilam

treasure bear posted:

[quadruple backflips into room] the bible

# ? Jan 7, 2017 22:04

Fredflonston

Snow Crash is cool. (Stephenson is great)

Also Ringworld.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 22:52

fuck. marry. t-rex

Neuromancer

# ? Jan 7, 2017 23:01

Twerkteam Pizza

Anthology: Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison

Novel: A Canticle For Leibowitz by Arthur Miller Jr

Novel Series: Ursula K LeGuin's Hainish Cycle

# ? Jan 7, 2017 23:06

Twerkteam Pizza

Manifisto posted:

next time your ex-english prof friend says he liked a book, ask him whether it was written in english or latin

when he says english, kind of roll your eyes and say "how vulgar"

Lol if your whole library isn't in the TRUE English language before the Norman Conquest ruined it for everyone

# ? Jan 7, 2017 23:09

alnilam

Twerkteam Pizza posted:

Novel: A Canticle For Leibowitz by Arthur Miller Jr

Oh hell yeah this is a close contender

# ? Jan 7, 2017 23:13

joke_explainer

Yeah, I agree re: elitism in literature. I just was trying to head it off at the pass.

alnilam posted:

What's yours joke explainer?

Excession by Iain M. Banks. Use of Weapons by Iain Banks is a close contender. As is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. And Greg Egan's Diaspora. Very tough question, I'm sorry if I put some of you on the spot.

We could even do categories if it helps. Best Libertarian Manifesto Masquerading as a Novel: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein. Best Neutron Star Physics Textbook Masquerading As A Novel: Dragon's Egg, by Robert Forward.

I certainly love Dune, A Canticle for Leibowitz, I, Robot, Neuromancer, Zelanzy's Amber series, Ringworld, Adams, LeGuin, etc, all amazing books. Now I have a few new suggestions too! Gotta read some Cordwainer Smith, looks very interesting. I recently read all of Neil Asher's books: Very pulpy space opera that you can kind of watch him progress as an author from 'Gridlinked' being this weird, james-bond action hero sendup that is not really very good to his latest books being a lot better. I would not put any of them on my 'best sci fi' lists though, but if you are looking for something to read, not too bad. Just now finishing up 'Poisedon's Wake', third book by Reynolds in the series, pretty good.

# ? Jan 7, 2017 23:42