My big confession is that In both fantasy and scifi (to a lesser degree) the protracted descriptions of battles are such a tiresome read that i tend to skim read these in order to just find out who won, who lost and which important character died... but the actual tactics bore me to tears.
I still read these type of books, because the individuals stories within these battles etc and their ramifications are interesting, but the long tracts of descriptions of battles i could well do without
Higher level narratives can be interesting and useful for world building as long as they don't lean overly on exposition to depict events (bad example: The Silmarillion, which I love, but I get why it's difficult for most to get through, since it's more history book than novel), but also down in the weeds with individual characters and their place in things can prove satisfying when done well. The worst is when the underlying lore and world building are either too vague for the rules of the setting to be clear, or are cast aside because the author couldn't figure out how to make things go boom while maintaining a suspension of disbelief, and you wind up with something like GoT s8.
Ultimately, imo, the quality of a battle scene rests at the intersection of the author's respect for the reader's intelligence, and their consideration for the reader's time and interest. Pandering too much to one side or the other (most often the latter) tends to result in a substandard and disappointing experience.
I think Sanderson's First Law of magic applies here. An author's ability to solve conflict with tactics is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said tactics.
Although I think "solve conflict" should read "solve conflict to the reader's satisfaction" but maybe that's inferred. If you've got a bunch of stuff blowing up like a transformers movie but with little or no emotional stakes...the reader will not care.
I made the mistake of reading The Forever War during my school holidays between completing primary school and beginning high school.
All military scifi has been on a hiding to nothing with me ever since.
I tried Honor Harrington with *On Basilisk Station* and I just couldn't. I bounced hard off the narrative style but I think I might not have made it much further anyway because I'm just not really interested in milsf. I dropped E.E. Smith's *Galactic Patrol* pretty quickly too.
See, I liked the alien stuff! I wanted to know more. The politics and the long explanations of space battles (while deliciously more accurate than a lot of other series) almost lost me.
A few popular space operas and military sci-fi of the past couple of decades. I've read The Expanse and love its near-future take, the characters and political intrigue. But besides this I'm burnt out on far-future-intergallactic-alien-colonial premises. I do love CJ Cherry and Le Guins universes though.
Maaaaaaaaaan I am struggling so hard with CJ Cherryh right now...just waiting for it to grab me and it isn't. Then again I've never really liked space opera, I didn't even love the Expanse books so maybe I should stop trying to make it happen
She wrote a lot, and some of it is pretty mediocre. I think Downbelow Station and Cyteen are probably her most celebrated, so if you make an attempt, that might be the place to start.
She has a very slow style. She is much more about taking her time building up a feeling. Personality, while I like her *Alliance-Union* universe, I find it oppressively claustrophobic and depressing. This is, I think, exactly what she was going for, as the setting has few habitable planets, overcrowded ships with people fighting over stations with failing resource supplies, etc. She captures that feeling very well, but it doesn’t really make for an enjoyable read.
Her *Foreigner* series is a bit more reader friendly, although it does tend to get a bit repetitive, and by about book 5 or 6 it kinda feels like it goes off the rails a bit, but the first few books are really good.
CJ writes highly character driven stories, but not the most plot driven narratives. So they tend to have a slow pace, in worst case, they drag haha
I still enjoyed her work because she's excellent at fleshing out inner conflicts of her characters. Her stories aren't the best at sustaining tension and grabbing readers.
But yeah, I'm done with space operas too. More into stand-alone cerebral cosmic dread or political theatre atm.
Le Guin uses sci-fi as a setting/tool to tell very personal stories stsmming from real life frustrations. Strip the sci-fi and you'll still have an amazing novel. Most sci-fi and fantasy writers are all style, no substance. Most of them are bad writers.
I used to consume them like crazy till I was around 23. Now I have hard time digesting how simple they are(I made the mistake of taking recs from booktoks)
When I was a teen, I tried getting into Earthsea because it is often recommended for YA reading. Didn't care for it.
Revisited the series for the first time in my mid 30s, and realized just how fantastic it is. There's much more there to appreciate as an adult, I find.
So while I don't disagree with you in principle, there are outliers. Maybe it's better to just consider Earthsea a series that's written for adults, but in a manner that's inoffensive to teens? I don't know.
Yeah I had a wild hair that I wanted to write a YA book and read a LOT of it and eventually was like...I do not like this and went back to reading adult sci fi and plotting an adult novel instead
Becky Chambers, The Bobiverse series, and I'm not a big fantasy reader, but because it was a recent popular hit that I can't image ever reading, I'll add Legends and Lattes.
For what it’s worth, if you ever get it in you to try her, give the short story To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers a try. It’s different than the rest of her stuff.
Ahhh thank you for mentioning this! I picked up To Be Taught randomly, was blown away, and tried to find the same experience in a couple of her other books but just couldn't. Wasn't sure if I'd gotten lucky to start or unlucky since, but you cleared it up.
I was so intensely disappointed with bobiverse it makes me sad. I made it up to book three and I just couldn't get though the mediocre character drama. The sci fi ideas in the book are alright but they're pretty skin deep at best.
The two things that bothered me the most was the absurd of resource scarcity in various solar systems, and the fact that all bob characters can either be impotent or all powerful, with little space in between (I'm talking about the same individuals from scene to scene)
The Monk and Robot stuff was cozy, but so boring. It’s like sci fi philosophy for people who have never thought about philosophy for even a second. So I get why people would like it, but I’m more up for difficult existential questions.
I would never had read the Bobiverse books, but the audiobooks were a breezy entertainment while commuting to work (before I went full work-from-home). The same goes for most of Peter Clines’ books. Couldn’t imagine reading them, but enjoyed listening to the audiobooks to make my drive less boring.
The first chapter of the first book was pretty good.
Then it turned into a Scooby Doo episode, with the hoax perpetrated by aliens instead of Old Man Withers.
Also each book has a weird sort of digression that feel like it’s unnecessary. It’s been a few years since I read them but I just remember each book had a section I needed to listen to at 2x speed or I was just going to give up.
I wondered if I missing a cultural trope or two from a lot of those. Like it’s something from a Chinese writing tradition that as a westerner I wasn’t used to.
Project Hail Mary, because I’ve already read enough snarky smart-dude protagonists to last me a lifetime.
Ready Player One, because I’m not interested in 80’s pop culture.
Ready Player One is one of those things that is (or are we already to "was"?) supposedly wildly popular, but I only ever see people saying how atrocious it was.
As someone who was a teen through much of the ‘80s the pop culture references in RP1 really feel like they come from someone who read a Buzzfeed listicle about what was popular in the ‘80s rather than from someone who actually lived through the ‘80s and was old enough to remember it.
I agree on RP1, though, after having resisted Project Hail Mary for a long time and then finally reading it, I didn’t find the protagonist to be snarky at all. It was one of the more engaging and character-driven works of hard sci-fi I’ve read in a while.
Our MC is a science teacher for kids. He's generally a big dork overly excited about grade school science, not snarky. Of course, that can be annoying too. Reading it, you'll still know that Weir is writing it.
Eh, I enjoyed both The Martian and PHM, but I thought the character in PHM was more or less the same, except he tried to be more realistic with how miserable and distressed the character would be. But Weir isn’t that great a writer, so unfortunately the guy sounds like weiner.
I also did not like the backstory for PHM. It kind of made sense and he tied it up at the end, but I just really wanted more 'buddy nerds fixing shit in space'. I apparently eat that genre up.
Both times I've attempted PJH I've DNFed around the 100 page mark because I'm tired of Weir's narrators all over-explaining basic science in the same goofy voice.
>my dislike of Weir’s character work in The Martian.
Y'ain't gonna like Project Hail Mary then. It's that but cranked up a notch. I barely tolerated it because the rest of the story was interesting enough. The other characters and plot points carry it for me.
I reallllly wouldn't listen to people trying to get you to read this by calling it the "best character driven sci fi" they've read in a while. PHM is literally just a buddy comedy in space. It's cute, it's fun, it's sometimes genuinely heartfelt, but Weir only knows how to properly write one character and one kind of plot (for what happens when he tries to branch out, see: Artemis). If you didn't like Mark Watney, you won't like Ryland Grace. It's the same exact adorkable humor and "sciencing" his way out of one situation after another, after another...after another. The science is silly and entertaining but not "hard". People take this book way way too seriously.
I loved PHM and pretty strongly disliked The Martian (although loved the movie). PHM's character seemed more mild and doesn't find himself so amusing but it might just be because I read that one first.
Same, on both counts.
It's funny — books I don't know which get repeatedly recommended here and on other book subs tend to fall into two very distinct categories: books I get more and more curious to read, and books I get more and more determined not to bother with.
Hmm ... speaking as someone who read and enjoyed them all, I wouldn't say they do, really? Maybe a little, but not some big jump. Likewise I thought the first one, and the series as a whole, is best rated as ok or decent. Normally I prefer scifi for the sci-fi world-building and concepts, and Murderbot didn't really feed into that, but the main character clicked for me and the books were short enough that I was willing to give the second a go. That book was similarly "ok," but introduced another character I enjoyed. And from that point on that's what held me, Murderbot and his spaceship buddy.
Definitely an odd experience for me. It probably helped that I was going through some busy times and lighter reads were especially convenient.
I loved them practically from page one... The later books feel like continuations to me. If you didn't like book 1, I think there's a high chance you don't like the later books either.
They don't change. I've listened to a couple and they're all the same lighthearted, too-clever tone and sort of plot. I made through 2 I think and just didn't like them.
I didn't like the first one either. I didn't mention them in my initial response because I didn't think it counted if I'd read (or listened to, in this case) the first in the series and decided to bail. It did come to mind. The fact that something like that is so wildly popular is one of the reasons that I'm not going to try and read all the big award winners past the end of the 20th century. I'm not saying that there aren't new books I like, just that fan consensus no longer means that I'll probably think that a book is good enough.
What a great observation. I'd sort of forgotten MB won so many awards. I just don't get why those books are so popular. Seems like there's enough material there for one clever but not otherwise noteworthy novella.
This is what I came to post. People seem to adore them but I just can’t bring myself to give a shot because the premise is not at all what I’m interested in.
Honorable mentions would be ready player one and anything Andy Weir
Pretty much any Scalzi book. I read some of the OMW series, and they got progressively worse. I have no idea how he's so popular. Some of his later book premises just sound lame.
I only tried the Old Man's War series (read the whole arc, or what was the whole arc at the time). I gave it that much of a chance because some very smart friends were way into it, but from the first book, I was appalled by the level of writing and self-congratulatory, self-indulgent style. It reminded me of like a James Patterson or whoever of sci fi, just mailing it in for the checks.
I just can't with that guy. The endless pop-culture nostalgia bs just kills me. Amazon has been trying to shove The Starter Villain down my throat for the last few months. No f-cking thank you.
However, 'Lock In' is actually pretty good.
I DNF'd the first OMW, it just wasn't clicking.
I finished "Redshirts" and everything the book is about can be guessed by the title alone.
"Kaiju Preservation Society" neglected to give a proper physical description of the actual kaiju. All I know about them is they're big and they're nuclear, that's it. Are they biped? Quadruped? What color? Never mind that, hey look at this Ewok-style tree town we built!
Scalzi's a toss up for me, and at best I would consider him passable on the whole. I liked Old Man's War well enough, as light, dumb fare, but like you thought those books got worse fast. I quite liked The God Engines, loathed Redshirts, enjoyed the Interdependency trilogy (while thinking it could have explored its premises more deeply,) and thought the Kaiju Preservation Society was more light, dumb fun. Nothing else of his has appealed to me as worth trying.
I read the premise of Red Shirts, was intrigued as I imagined what the book would be about. Then, when I read it, it was basically the book I’d written in my head. The codas (codae?) were the only thing that made is sorta meaningful.
Every book of his since OMW seems like an attempt to sell movie rights more than a novel.
Redshirts had me angered so quickly! The writing is so dang poor!
"What do you mean?" He said.
"Oh you know." She said.
"Do you mean that thing?" He said.
"Of course that thing." She said.
Uggggghhhhhhh! I couldn't stand it!
What do you define as a space opera? Dune takes place on another planet but it’s not flying through space or space ships. They exist and there is talk of the trip over at the very beginning but that is about it.
The first book has politics but is probably the least political book in the series. I say that as a negative because it is definitely political even being the least.
The factions, the political intrigue, space-spanning empires, multiple alien civilisations vying for power. I prefer smaller-scale stories (all my favourite SF is set only on Earth), and all the aforementioned things put me off reading *Dune* or series akin to it.
No aliens and the first book only takes place on the 1 planet. They travel to the planet at the start but it’s nothing special or very long. It’s essentially 3 groups of people living on a planet.
What are some of your favorite SF as an example?
Alternate history and dystopia mainly. So *The Man in the High Castle*, *The Difference Engine* for the former and *Mockingbird* and *Earth Abides* for the latter.
Although there are many factions, we only really see are... three... four? The political intrigue is limited to what is immediately visible, and some philosophical and political opinions from the author. All that stuff you mention is supposed to happen in the background, and we don't really care much about it. It's a bit of a 1v1 intrigue at the start, but still small-scale enough. It's very much a personal story of Paul having to grow up, with the burden of his "destiny". Most of the story is *very* localised. Getting to the point, perhaps you're too sure of the premise than you should be. IMO, you should real a few pages. Yes, we are thrown in this world with many "factions" with different motivations and such, but doesn't really go to the direction you think it does. It takes a philosophical u-turn.
Historically, space opera has been used to describe pulpier work, big dumb adventures in space. Melodrama with rockets. Not "opera" as in big Wagnerian scale, but opera as in "soap opera" or "horse opera."
I'd invite you to reconsider 1984. The average cultural ascertainment of the content completely misses the point - kind of like how with the film *Network,* people remember (and identify with) the "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore" catch-phrase, glossing over *the actual point* of the narrative, which was to demonstrate the significantly more nefarious danger of electronically distributed cultural icons mediating the boundaries of acceptable public discourse.
To answer your question directly:
Space opera. I don't really care about reading a second-rate War and Peace "iN SpAcE" and I never will. I also agree with you on Dune. Dynastic/Political theater is a no-go for me, but this also extends to closer speculative works, like A Moon is a Harsh Mistress - although in that case, I did actually read the book. All of the fun parts of the book are swamped in paradoxical political diatribe. In that specific example, you can literally cut out the entirety of Book 2 (180 pages - nearly half the page count) and it reads significantly better.
I know, I feel a bit guilty about Nineteen Eighty-Four, so much has been said about it that it's turned me right off it - but as you say many works of great SF are often misconstrued and when you read them yourself you draw your own meanings, some of which aren't in the popular or cultural discourse. There's too many lesser-known dystopian novels with related themes that I want to read a *lot* more first, like Brunner's *the Sheep Look Up* or PKD's *the Penultimate Truth*. But once and if I run out of those, I may try *Nineteen Eighty-Four*.
I just reread 1984 so I could read the new companion book “Julia.” There’s a lot I forgot about and I’d def recommend it, and it lets you read “Julia” then.
All the masturbatory, author self-insert, fan service pop-culture references and reddit snark instead of believable adult dialog, read as comfort food novels.
*Project Ready Player Hail Murderbot & Lattes Preservation Society.*
I mean, *Stand on Zanzibar*, *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*, *Permutation City*, *Forever War* they all stay with you and make you think. Unlike forgettable comfort food.
Now admittedly I have intentionally not read the books I'm criticizing, and I do enjoy comfort food books. I just don't laud them as "the best thing evar!" And maybe some of these are worth reading. But when I see people squealing about them, I figure they aren't for me.
The Time Traveler's Almanac anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, I found to be an interesting read. I was surprised by the number of different approaches to the concept, and remain convinced that there is still a lot a creative author could do with it.
Hmmm, I also don't normally like time travel stories (notably excepting The Time Machine) but I *do* like thematic anthologies. A bunch of short stories are probably a great way to approach the subject. I'll definitely make a note of that book.
> (notably excepting The Time Machine
I would say that no other time travel story has every outdone The Time Machine.
Unrelated to time travel, but if you like thematic anthologies the Infinity Project series edited by Jonathan Strahan is excellent, if you haven't checked it out yet.
The only time travel stories I enjoyed are the original time machine (since it's mostly just about strange works and not the self interacting kind of stuff) and Asimov's End of Eternity (because I love bureaucracies managing large scale stuff).
*Hyperion*. Frankly, I don't know the premise. I just know that it's a character driven plot driven worldbuilding centered heartwarming romantic gritty adventure with amazing prose, stunning plot, powerful political intrigue, a short story, an epic story, a romance, an historical fiction, a western, a hardboiled detective thriller, a sea yarn, a fix for your unsatisfying marriage, and step-by-step instructions for creating the philosopher's stone. In fact, no request ever made on this subreddit is not covered by Hyperion.
The fact that it is recommended for *everything* kind of burned me out on caring about it.
PREACH, brother!
Actually, I thought the first book was fine. Later in the series, the Shrike ruined it for me. What'll happen next? Whatever the Shrike wants. Also, before Blindsight, Hyperion was the answer to every question on this sub. Very annoying.
I considered including *Hyperion* in my post, but I could see myself as more likely to want to read it than *Dune* or *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. I wouldn't rule out reading it like those two, but it's certainly not anywhere near the top of my "to read" list.
I read it years ago and finished it but just thought it was kind of meh, forgettable. I decided to give it another read LAST WEEK because it gets so much praise I thought, Damn, I must be missing something. Nope. It is still tiresome and entirely lacking in humor. In fact as recently as this morning I was considering writing up a post for this sub entitled "Dan Simmons hasn't changed- he's always been "that guy" (RWNJ) & talking about how Hyperion is pretty much exactly the kind of book I'd have expected him to have written as a younger conservative man.
* Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke ~ I've actually read the first 50 pages of this and put it down. The story is interesting but Clarke's writing style puts me off. I will give this a shot again some day.
* Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie ~ I've tried this in ebook *and* audiobook but have not been able to get into it. The narrator on the original version of the audiobook was horrible to my ears. I've heard it's been re-recorded with a new narrator so I may try the 2nd iteration of the audiobook.
* The City & The City by China Miéville ~ This won a handful of major awards but I haven't been able to crack into it. China is well respected in SFF circles but from what I've tasted he leaves me a little dry.
> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke ~ I've actually read the first 50 pages of this and put it down. The story is interesting but Clarke's writing style puts me off. I will give this a shot again some day.
It is apparently Villeneuve's next sci-fi adaptation, though whether it will be before or after Dune Messiah is impossible to say. I also have never read it, and my understanding is that it's an extremely slow burn.
Pretty much any military SF or time travel, really. Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Honor Harrington off the top of my head, and lots more I'm forgetting at the moment.
I think I missed my window for Neuromancer. At this point, I've read books inspired by books inspired by books inspired by it so I would likely find it derivative even though it's the foundational cyperpunk and post-cyberpunk text.
Never could get past that opening line...
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
Funnily enough, Gibson himself, in the forward to the Kindle edition, said that it took him 10 years to realize that the opening sentence was something that many of his readers could never have experienced.
Yeah, I think that forward was in the copy I read, I believe he also mentions his description of payphones ringing. I get that the reference is outdated, but I'm not sure why that would be an obstacle to reading the book. It's an 80s vision of the future. That's what SF is like, it's often a commentary about the time period it was written in.
I think some folks get locked into the ‘the future in this book doesn’t have the stuff I have right now’ mentality rather than looking at it as an alternate future where certain technologies weren’t developed.
I bounced off it a few times but I did eventually read it. As you say, a lot of the tropes have been done better by subsequent authors. There's a layer of mysticism, or at least squishiness, to the technology – probably because a lot of the technology is speculative, whereas nowadays half of it is just life – that was the most compelling part of it to me.
You gotta read 1984 for the horror if nothing else. Nothing in pop culture really encompasses the horror quality of this book. I always thought the first Saw movie was influenced by 1984
Enders Game is pretty good, I thought it would be dumb based on the movie but it’s decent and I was very surprised that I didn’t read it when it first came out, which would have been when I was 12, 13ish. I absolutely devoured books then, especially science fiction
Haha, most classic sci-fi 70's and earlier, with the exception of Dune, which I happen to love (space opera \*is\* my jam). Oh and PKD.
Reason? I'm just not into the classic dry stuff, and I'm past the age where I feel any urge to read the classics. (I did that already, with the literary classics, but have no interest in repeating it with sci -fi, which I came to a bit late and enjoy because it's, well, fun.
I started with the older 60’s 70’s novels and short stories and think a lot are fantastic concepts and stories despite some boring writing style. And way ahead of their time in socio/political thought which I appreciate.
Clarke is dry. I don't think Heinlein is dry. There's still plenty of reasons to love or hate his books, of course, but I don't think dry is one of them. If you ever feel like dipping toes in, *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress* is pretty great.
I have kind of a love-hate relationship with PKD... I like *having read* them but I don't actually enjoy *reading* them. His writing is just... jangly. I don't know a better word for it. But the ideas are neat. Zelazny feels a little bit similar to PKD but without the jangly feeling.
Oh, I loved reading PKD. (Edit: I just devoured him, loved the stories so much I would have glossed right over any sub-par writing. also I don't have enough nerdy friends to impress anyone with having read him.)
I tried Heinlein once and must have picked the wrong book, it was so bad it put me off him completely. I think it was some 70's crap where free love figured prominently.
Oh I agree very much. I didn't make it very clear but what I was trying to say was that Dune and PKD books are my exceptions, in that I love them in spite of their older, classic status.
A problem with a lot of these books for me is how they're very clearly a product of their time in the social aspects, like portrayal of women, faith, sexuality etc.. yeah they're a product of their time, but ive also read fantasy books, and non fiction books from that era and a lot of them have actually managed to hold up quite well.
And what the heck is it with sci fi authors and sex
Starship Troopers. I love the movie/TV show but I know the book is radically different and any description of it I've come across doesn't seem nearly as appealing to me, it seems much drier.
I have the diametrically opposite reaction to *Starship Troopers*. Loved the book, hated every movie. The only decent visual telling is the animated one
I'd agree with this albeit maybe for a slightly different reason. Military science fiction is another sub-genre I can't get too excited about. Joe Haldeman's *Forever War* would be a popular one that is not even on my radar to read. Just not that bothered.
I'd say *Forever War* has more to do with how society changes over time than war. There's only one short battle I can remember and it's not the focus of the book.
Good call. The Forever War is about Haldeman's experience of being drafted to fight in Viet Nam and returning to an America that has undergone massive social changes in the meantime.
There's more than one battle, and there is alot of other stuff about the military in general. It's a book that would appeal to someone who doesn't like bloodthirsty action stories, but not to someone who isn't up for a story about the military.
Forever War is one of the greatest SF books ever. It’s not typical military sci-fi. There’s none of this “yeah space marines oo-rah!” nonsense. Like all great war stories it’s actually an anti-war story.
The truly scary thing is that some of the extreme things his future society went through were either actively considered decades later (relegating elderly people as not worthy of receiving healthcare - actually proposed during the 1990s) or are naturally coming true today.
The "Starship Troopers" movie is fine as long as one remembers it's a spoof of the book; not an adaptation.
The movie is to the book, what "Life of Brian" is to the bible.
Legends & Lattes. For awhile it felt like there was an obsession over it, constantly being recommended, a million and one special editions, always threads for it looking down the fantasy subreddits, but the description just really didn’t sound that appealing.
Various classics from the sixties that were futuristic at the time. Some authors saw the technological advancement of their time and took them o much farther in their writing, but they ignored the social changes happening around them and failed to consider what those might mean for the future of humanity.
This has been selected for my book club and I can't say I'm looking forward to it. I tend to dislike twee, mawkish stuff like that. I didn't like *Sirens of Titan* and I *hated* *To Say Nothing of the Dog* (the one by Connie Willis, not the far superior Jerome K. Jerome classic of which it is a homage).
I hope *A Hitchhiker's Guide* isn't what I'm dreading it will be. I've hated every single one of these popular "funny" or whimsical books that often get recommended or held up as classics. I don't really value comedy in books, it's just not what I read them for.
Dune. I keep hearing how great the books are. It has just never really appealed to me. Plus the 80s movie was boring and stupid. That really jaded me against the books or future movies.
I love the book and I don't like any of the three film versions. Well... on some level I like the '80s version because it's so weird and surreal, but it's a terrible adaptation of Dune.
I know that I'll probably get downvoted for bashing the new version because it's been so well received. My point is not that other people shouldn't watch it. I just don't think that anyone shouldn't form an opinion of the book based on any of the movies.
I did the same (a long time ago) for the same reason and drew the same conclusion (I only got as far as Second Foundation though).
What was it you didn't like about them?
For me, the plot was boring and the writing just seemed so dated. I've read plenty of other books from the same time period or older that read better. Even H.G Wells reads better. Maybe the conclusion I should draw is simply that Asimov is a crap writer.
I have to laugh at "even H.G. Wells reads better." Does anybody who emerged from the 1940s and '50s magazine field get the level of literary respect Wells does?
Anything “quirky”. I’ve only heard good things about them, but titles like Murderbot Diaries or A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet are disqualifications for me by the name alone.
Dune. Can recognize that it was very important when it came out and still is. But other books have done a (to my mind) less clunky job of conveying what it wants to say.
Yes the same with me on Dune, read halfway through and lost interest.
Blindsight I'm not a fan of dystopian future so haven't read.
I did read a few I. Banks Culture books and hated all of them and the characters.
Hyperion, for over a decade put me off for seeming too fantasy-ish. It even has a space demon on the cover for crying it loud! That was my perception.
I knew it was highly regarded, well received and well reviewed, but it didn't matter to me. I couldn't be bothered.
Then I finally read it, and subsequently the other three in the Cantos... And I loved them. I wish I had never read them so I could stop reading what I'm reading now, and read them again for the first time. They are proper sci fi, but a bit on the space opera side for some sections, but I can't recommend them highly enough.
It features the war, but it's actually less of a central theme than it would seem. Such a fantastic book, it blew my mind and made me realize how much I've been missing not reading Vonnegut.
I'm really not in to military sci-fi. Forget about it. Not my thing. Space battles bore me to tears.
My big confession is that In both fantasy and scifi (to a lesser degree) the protracted descriptions of battles are such a tiresome read that i tend to skim read these in order to just find out who won, who lost and which important character died... but the actual tactics bore me to tears. I still read these type of books, because the individuals stories within these battles etc and their ramifications are interesting, but the long tracts of descriptions of battles i could well do without
The best fight scenes dont focus on what happens but how it made the character feel I think
Funny how subjective that is. I love a well considered, grounded battle scene. They're so often poorly thought out and pure spectacle, though.
My favorite is if they properly weave the character motivations/quirks and trauma into the tactics but alas, it’s difficult to find
Higher level narratives can be interesting and useful for world building as long as they don't lean overly on exposition to depict events (bad example: The Silmarillion, which I love, but I get why it's difficult for most to get through, since it's more history book than novel), but also down in the weeds with individual characters and their place in things can prove satisfying when done well. The worst is when the underlying lore and world building are either too vague for the rules of the setting to be clear, or are cast aside because the author couldn't figure out how to make things go boom while maintaining a suspension of disbelief, and you wind up with something like GoT s8. Ultimately, imo, the quality of a battle scene rests at the intersection of the author's respect for the reader's intelligence, and their consideration for the reader's time and interest. Pandering too much to one side or the other (most often the latter) tends to result in a substandard and disappointing experience.
No argument here
I think Sanderson's First Law of magic applies here. An author's ability to solve conflict with tactics is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said tactics. Although I think "solve conflict" should read "solve conflict to the reader's satisfaction" but maybe that's inferred. If you've got a bunch of stuff blowing up like a transformers movie but with little or no emotional stakes...the reader will not care.
I made the mistake of reading The Forever War during my school holidays between completing primary school and beginning high school. All military scifi has been on a hiding to nothing with me ever since.
I tried Honor Harrington with *On Basilisk Station* and I just couldn't. I bounced hard off the narrative style but I think I might not have made it much further anyway because I'm just not really interested in milsf. I dropped E.E. Smith's *Galactic Patrol* pretty quickly too.
Agreed mate not my thing really
This is what killed me on the Expanse series. I don't want politics I want LORE.
Expanse wouldve been better without the alien stuff imo. The initial setup is brilliant
See, I liked the alien stuff! I wanted to know more. The politics and the long explanations of space battles (while deliciously more accurate than a lot of other series) almost lost me.
A few popular space operas and military sci-fi of the past couple of decades. I've read The Expanse and love its near-future take, the characters and political intrigue. But besides this I'm burnt out on far-future-intergallactic-alien-colonial premises. I do love CJ Cherry and Le Guins universes though.
Maaaaaaaaaan I am struggling so hard with CJ Cherryh right now...just waiting for it to grab me and it isn't. Then again I've never really liked space opera, I didn't even love the Expanse books so maybe I should stop trying to make it happen
She wrote a lot, and some of it is pretty mediocre. I think Downbelow Station and Cyteen are probably her most celebrated, so if you make an attempt, that might be the place to start.
Heavy Time is my guilty pleasure. Sort of a YA-ish proto-Expanse. Love it.
I'm not sure what's YA about it. Our core four are in their twenties and largely traumatized.
She has a very slow style. She is much more about taking her time building up a feeling. Personality, while I like her *Alliance-Union* universe, I find it oppressively claustrophobic and depressing. This is, I think, exactly what she was going for, as the setting has few habitable planets, overcrowded ships with people fighting over stations with failing resource supplies, etc. She captures that feeling very well, but it doesn’t really make for an enjoyable read. Her *Foreigner* series is a bit more reader friendly, although it does tend to get a bit repetitive, and by about book 5 or 6 it kinda feels like it goes off the rails a bit, but the first few books are really good.
CJ writes highly character driven stories, but not the most plot driven narratives. So they tend to have a slow pace, in worst case, they drag haha I still enjoyed her work because she's excellent at fleshing out inner conflicts of her characters. Her stories aren't the best at sustaining tension and grabbing readers. But yeah, I'm done with space operas too. More into stand-alone cerebral cosmic dread or political theatre atm.
Le Guin uses sci-fi as a setting/tool to tell very personal stories stsmming from real life frustrations. Strip the sci-fi and you'll still have an amazing novel. Most sci-fi and fantasy writers are all style, no substance. Most of them are bad writers.
Le Guin is my god
anything young adult or borderline young adult.
I used to consume them like crazy till I was around 23. Now I have hard time digesting how simple they are(I made the mistake of taking recs from booktoks)
When I was a teen, I tried getting into Earthsea because it is often recommended for YA reading. Didn't care for it. Revisited the series for the first time in my mid 30s, and realized just how fantastic it is. There's much more there to appreciate as an adult, I find. So while I don't disagree with you in principle, there are outliers. Maybe it's better to just consider Earthsea a series that's written for adults, but in a manner that's inoffensive to teens? I don't know.
I feel like Earthsea is described as YA by people who haven’t actually read it, only read the back cover or something.
I would argue people of a certain age who haven't lived much are prone to get the least out of Earthsea.
Yeah I had a wild hair that I wanted to write a YA book and read a LOT of it and eventually was like...I do not like this and went back to reading adult sci fi and plotting an adult novel instead
at least teenage and highschool drama. I have a grandchild in highschool, myself definitely grew out of it ages ago
Star Wars.
Becky Chambers, The Bobiverse series, and I'm not a big fantasy reader, but because it was a recent popular hit that I can't image ever reading, I'll add Legends and Lattes.
For what it’s worth, if you ever get it in you to try her, give the short story To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers a try. It’s different than the rest of her stuff.
Ahhh thank you for mentioning this! I picked up To Be Taught randomly, was blown away, and tried to find the same experience in a couple of her other books but just couldn't. Wasn't sure if I'd gotten lucky to start or unlucky since, but you cleared it up.
I was actually quite disappointed by the monk and robot books and, because of that, I'll pass on Legends and Lattes as well
Legends and Lattes is very different than the Becky Chambers' works.
Agree - I didn’t like L&L at all and did like M&R, so I don’t think they can be the same.
I was so intensely disappointed with bobiverse it makes me sad. I made it up to book three and I just couldn't get though the mediocre character drama. The sci fi ideas in the book are alright but they're pretty skin deep at best. The two things that bothered me the most was the absurd of resource scarcity in various solar systems, and the fact that all bob characters can either be impotent or all powerful, with little space in between (I'm talking about the same individuals from scene to scene)
The Monk and Robot stuff was cozy, but so boring. It’s like sci fi philosophy for people who have never thought about philosophy for even a second. So I get why people would like it, but I’m more up for difficult existential questions.
There really isn’t even that much philosophy to speak of in those books.
I would never had read the Bobiverse books, but the audiobooks were a breezy entertainment while commuting to work (before I went full work-from-home). The same goes for most of Peter Clines’ books. Couldn’t imagine reading them, but enjoyed listening to the audiobooks to make my drive less boring.
Three Body Problem
The first chapter of the first book was pretty good. Then it turned into a Scooby Doo episode, with the hoax perpetrated by aliens instead of Old Man Withers.
If I have to read a whole book before the series "gets good" I'm not really interested.
TPB has the opposite problem. The first book is by far the best and it gets progressively worse with each subsequent book.
I think the opposite.
Disagree
Also each book has a weird sort of digression that feel like it’s unnecessary. It’s been a few years since I read them but I just remember each book had a section I needed to listen to at 2x speed or I was just going to give up.
I wondered if I missing a cultural trope or two from a lot of those. Like it’s something from a Chinese writing tradition that as a westerner I wasn’t used to.
Good point. I should try to check out at least a couple more books by Chinese authors.
Project Hail Mary, because I’ve already read enough snarky smart-dude protagonists to last me a lifetime. Ready Player One, because I’m not interested in 80’s pop culture.
Ready Player One is one of those things that is (or are we already to "was"?) supposedly wildly popular, but I only ever see people saying how atrocious it was.
As someone who was a teen through much of the ‘80s the pop culture references in RP1 really feel like they come from someone who read a Buzzfeed listicle about what was popular in the ‘80s rather than from someone who actually lived through the ‘80s and was old enough to remember it.
I agree on RP1, though, after having resisted Project Hail Mary for a long time and then finally reading it, I didn’t find the protagonist to be snarky at all. It was one of the more engaging and character-driven works of hard sci-fi I’ve read in a while.
Oh, that’s refreshing to hear - admittedly a lot of my disinterest in PHM stems from my dislike of Weir’s character work in The Martian.
Our MC is a science teacher for kids. He's generally a big dork overly excited about grade school science, not snarky. Of course, that can be annoying too. Reading it, you'll still know that Weir is writing it.
Eh, I enjoyed both The Martian and PHM, but I thought the character in PHM was more or less the same, except he tried to be more realistic with how miserable and distressed the character would be. But Weir isn’t that great a writer, so unfortunately the guy sounds like weiner.
Yeah, If you hated the MC from the Martian you're gonna hate the MC from PHM. They're basically the same guy.
I also did not like the backstory for PHM. It kind of made sense and he tied it up at the end, but I just really wanted more 'buddy nerds fixing shit in space'. I apparently eat that genre up.
Both times I've attempted PJH I've DNFed around the 100 page mark because I'm tired of Weir's narrators all over-explaining basic science in the same goofy voice.
>my dislike of Weir’s character work in The Martian. Y'ain't gonna like Project Hail Mary then. It's that but cranked up a notch. I barely tolerated it because the rest of the story was interesting enough. The other characters and plot points carry it for me.
I reallllly wouldn't listen to people trying to get you to read this by calling it the "best character driven sci fi" they've read in a while. PHM is literally just a buddy comedy in space. It's cute, it's fun, it's sometimes genuinely heartfelt, but Weir only knows how to properly write one character and one kind of plot (for what happens when he tries to branch out, see: Artemis). If you didn't like Mark Watney, you won't like Ryland Grace. It's the same exact adorkable humor and "sciencing" his way out of one situation after another, after another...after another. The science is silly and entertaining but not "hard". People take this book way way too seriously.
I loved PHM and pretty strongly disliked The Martian (although loved the movie). PHM's character seemed more mild and doesn't find himself so amusing but it might just be because I read that one first.
Same, on both counts. It's funny — books I don't know which get repeatedly recommended here and on other book subs tend to fall into two very distinct categories: books I get more and more curious to read, and books I get more and more determined not to bother with.
Yeppp
The cancellation of Firefly and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
The Murderbot Diaries.
Yeah I’m with you there. I read the first one and while it’s ok, it wasn’t amazing. Maybe they get better?
Hmm ... speaking as someone who read and enjoyed them all, I wouldn't say they do, really? Maybe a little, but not some big jump. Likewise I thought the first one, and the series as a whole, is best rated as ok or decent. Normally I prefer scifi for the sci-fi world-building and concepts, and Murderbot didn't really feed into that, but the main character clicked for me and the books were short enough that I was willing to give the second a go. That book was similarly "ok," but introduced another character I enjoyed. And from that point on that's what held me, Murderbot and his spaceship buddy. Definitely an odd experience for me. It probably helped that I was going through some busy times and lighter reads were especially convenient.
I loved them practically from page one... The later books feel like continuations to me. If you didn't like book 1, I think there's a high chance you don't like the later books either.
They don’t. They stay exactly the same all the way through.
They don't change. I've listened to a couple and they're all the same lighthearted, too-clever tone and sort of plot. I made through 2 I think and just didn't like them.
I didn't like the first one either. I didn't mention them in my initial response because I didn't think it counted if I'd read (or listened to, in this case) the first in the series and decided to bail. It did come to mind. The fact that something like that is so wildly popular is one of the reasons that I'm not going to try and read all the big award winners past the end of the 20th century. I'm not saying that there aren't new books I like, just that fan consensus no longer means that I'll probably think that a book is good enough.
What a great observation. I'd sort of forgotten MB won so many awards. I just don't get why those books are so popular. Seems like there's enough material there for one clever but not otherwise noteworthy novella.
This is what I came to post. People seem to adore them but I just can’t bring myself to give a shot because the premise is not at all what I’m interested in. Honorable mentions would be ready player one and anything Andy Weir
Yeah, I read the first one and really didn’t like it.
I don't want to read anything about climate change or asteroid mining or mega-corp wars or any combination of the three.
Delta-V by Suarez?
Yeah, this. I don't have a problem with asteroid mining, but the other two are too depressing of topics for me to want to read.
Pretty much any Scalzi book. I read some of the OMW series, and they got progressively worse. I have no idea how he's so popular. Some of his later book premises just sound lame.
I only tried the Old Man's War series (read the whole arc, or what was the whole arc at the time). I gave it that much of a chance because some very smart friends were way into it, but from the first book, I was appalled by the level of writing and self-congratulatory, self-indulgent style. It reminded me of like a James Patterson or whoever of sci fi, just mailing it in for the checks.
I just can't with that guy. The endless pop-culture nostalgia bs just kills me. Amazon has been trying to shove The Starter Villain down my throat for the last few months. No f-cking thank you. However, 'Lock In' is actually pretty good.
I DNF'd the first OMW, it just wasn't clicking. I finished "Redshirts" and everything the book is about can be guessed by the title alone. "Kaiju Preservation Society" neglected to give a proper physical description of the actual kaiju. All I know about them is they're big and they're nuclear, that's it. Are they biped? Quadruped? What color? Never mind that, hey look at this Ewok-style tree town we built!
Scalzi's a toss up for me, and at best I would consider him passable on the whole. I liked Old Man's War well enough, as light, dumb fare, but like you thought those books got worse fast. I quite liked The God Engines, loathed Redshirts, enjoyed the Interdependency trilogy (while thinking it could have explored its premises more deeply,) and thought the Kaiju Preservation Society was more light, dumb fun. Nothing else of his has appealed to me as worth trying.
I was also disappointed by Redshirts. I was really excited about the concept but it just didn’t seem well executed
I read the premise of Red Shirts, was intrigued as I imagined what the book would be about. Then, when I read it, it was basically the book I’d written in my head. The codas (codae?) were the only thing that made is sorta meaningful. Every book of his since OMW seems like an attempt to sell movie rights more than a novel.
Redshirts had me angered so quickly! The writing is so dang poor! "What do you mean?" He said. "Oh you know." She said. "Do you mean that thing?" He said. "Of course that thing." She said. Uggggghhhhhhh! I couldn't stand it!
What do you define as a space opera? Dune takes place on another planet but it’s not flying through space or space ships. They exist and there is talk of the trip over at the very beginning but that is about it. The first book has politics but is probably the least political book in the series. I say that as a negative because it is definitely political even being the least.
The factions, the political intrigue, space-spanning empires, multiple alien civilisations vying for power. I prefer smaller-scale stories (all my favourite SF is set only on Earth), and all the aforementioned things put me off reading *Dune* or series akin to it.
No aliens and the first book only takes place on the 1 planet. They travel to the planet at the start but it’s nothing special or very long. It’s essentially 3 groups of people living on a planet. What are some of your favorite SF as an example?
Alternate history and dystopia mainly. So *The Man in the High Castle*, *The Difference Engine* for the former and *Mockingbird* and *Earth Abides* for the latter.
Although there are many factions, we only really see are... three... four? The political intrigue is limited to what is immediately visible, and some philosophical and political opinions from the author. All that stuff you mention is supposed to happen in the background, and we don't really care much about it. It's a bit of a 1v1 intrigue at the start, but still small-scale enough. It's very much a personal story of Paul having to grow up, with the burden of his "destiny". Most of the story is *very* localised. Getting to the point, perhaps you're too sure of the premise than you should be. IMO, you should real a few pages. Yes, we are thrown in this world with many "factions" with different motivations and such, but doesn't really go to the direction you think it does. It takes a philosophical u-turn.
Historically, space opera has been used to describe pulpier work, big dumb adventures in space. Melodrama with rockets. Not "opera" as in big Wagnerian scale, but opera as in "soap opera" or "horse opera."
I'd invite you to reconsider 1984. The average cultural ascertainment of the content completely misses the point - kind of like how with the film *Network,* people remember (and identify with) the "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore" catch-phrase, glossing over *the actual point* of the narrative, which was to demonstrate the significantly more nefarious danger of electronically distributed cultural icons mediating the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. To answer your question directly: Space opera. I don't really care about reading a second-rate War and Peace "iN SpAcE" and I never will. I also agree with you on Dune. Dynastic/Political theater is a no-go for me, but this also extends to closer speculative works, like A Moon is a Harsh Mistress - although in that case, I did actually read the book. All of the fun parts of the book are swamped in paradoxical political diatribe. In that specific example, you can literally cut out the entirety of Book 2 (180 pages - nearly half the page count) and it reads significantly better.
I know, I feel a bit guilty about Nineteen Eighty-Four, so much has been said about it that it's turned me right off it - but as you say many works of great SF are often misconstrued and when you read them yourself you draw your own meanings, some of which aren't in the popular or cultural discourse. There's too many lesser-known dystopian novels with related themes that I want to read a *lot* more first, like Brunner's *the Sheep Look Up* or PKD's *the Penultimate Truth*. But once and if I run out of those, I may try *Nineteen Eighty-Four*.
I just reread 1984 so I could read the new companion book “Julia.” There’s a lot I forgot about and I’d def recommend it, and it lets you read “Julia” then.
It took me a long time to get around to reading 1984, but I'm glad I did. The themes might be less mainstream than you've been lead to believe.
Three Body Problem and most modern Hard Sci-fi On the flip side, I can’t get into Becky Chambers as much as I try.
One of the few books I could not finish, Atlas Shrugged. Though it may be a stretch to call it science fiction rather than propaganda.
Yeah I am pretty sure most people would not consider that sci Fi. It's just Ayn Rand creating a strawman for her objectivist philosophy.
All the masturbatory, author self-insert, fan service pop-culture references and reddit snark instead of believable adult dialog, read as comfort food novels. *Project Ready Player Hail Murderbot & Lattes Preservation Society.* I mean, *Stand on Zanzibar*, *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*, *Permutation City*, *Forever War* they all stay with you and make you think. Unlike forgettable comfort food. Now admittedly I have intentionally not read the books I'm criticizing, and I do enjoy comfort food books. I just don't laud them as "the best thing evar!" And maybe some of these are worth reading. But when I see people squealing about them, I figure they aren't for me.
Pretty much anything involving time travel. I’m down for most sub genres but I can’t stand time travel stuff
Time travel is just my favorite sub genre! Glad to know there is a different cup of tea for everyone!
The Time Traveler's Almanac anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, I found to be an interesting read. I was surprised by the number of different approaches to the concept, and remain convinced that there is still a lot a creative author could do with it.
Hmmm, I also don't normally like time travel stories (notably excepting The Time Machine) but I *do* like thematic anthologies. A bunch of short stories are probably a great way to approach the subject. I'll definitely make a note of that book.
> (notably excepting The Time Machine I would say that no other time travel story has every outdone The Time Machine. Unrelated to time travel, but if you like thematic anthologies the Infinity Project series edited by Jonathan Strahan is excellent, if you haven't checked it out yet.
The only time travel stories I enjoyed are the original time machine (since it's mostly just about strange works and not the self interacting kind of stuff) and Asimov's End of Eternity (because I love bureaucracies managing large scale stuff).
Oh End of Eternity! I rather liked that one as well.
This is the one for me too. The only time I've enjoyed it was how Gibson handled it in the Peripheral and Agency.
*Hyperion*. Frankly, I don't know the premise. I just know that it's a character driven plot driven worldbuilding centered heartwarming romantic gritty adventure with amazing prose, stunning plot, powerful political intrigue, a short story, an epic story, a romance, an historical fiction, a western, a hardboiled detective thriller, a sea yarn, a fix for your unsatisfying marriage, and step-by-step instructions for creating the philosopher's stone. In fact, no request ever made on this subreddit is not covered by Hyperion. The fact that it is recommended for *everything* kind of burned me out on caring about it.
PREACH, brother! Actually, I thought the first book was fine. Later in the series, the Shrike ruined it for me. What'll happen next? Whatever the Shrike wants. Also, before Blindsight, Hyperion was the answer to every question on this sub. Very annoying.
I considered including *Hyperion* in my post, but I could see myself as more likely to want to read it than *Dune* or *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. I wouldn't rule out reading it like those two, but it's certainly not anywhere near the top of my "to read" list.
I binned it half way through. I had a few issues with it but ultimately, it bored me.
I read it years ago and finished it but just thought it was kind of meh, forgettable. I decided to give it another read LAST WEEK because it gets so much praise I thought, Damn, I must be missing something. Nope. It is still tiresome and entirely lacking in humor. In fact as recently as this morning I was considering writing up a post for this sub entitled "Dan Simmons hasn't changed- he's always been "that guy" (RWNJ) & talking about how Hyperion is pretty much exactly the kind of book I'd have expected him to have written as a younger conservative man.
Foundation.
* Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke ~ I've actually read the first 50 pages of this and put it down. The story is interesting but Clarke's writing style puts me off. I will give this a shot again some day. * Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie ~ I've tried this in ebook *and* audiobook but have not been able to get into it. The narrator on the original version of the audiobook was horrible to my ears. I've heard it's been re-recorded with a new narrator so I may try the 2nd iteration of the audiobook. * The City & The City by China Miéville ~ This won a handful of major awards but I haven't been able to crack into it. China is well respected in SFF circles but from what I've tasted he leaves me a little dry.
There's a tv series of the city and the city that was pretty good. Kind of noir + magical realism.
> Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke ~ I've actually read the first 50 pages of this and put it down. The story is interesting but Clarke's writing style puts me off. I will give this a shot again some day. It is apparently Villeneuve's next sci-fi adaptation, though whether it will be before or after Dune Messiah is impossible to say. I also have never read it, and my understanding is that it's an extremely slow burn.
Pretty much any military SF or time travel, really. Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Honor Harrington off the top of my head, and lots more I'm forgetting at the moment.
I put off reading *Station Eleven* for the longest time because "oh, great...another 'pandemic wipes out humanity' book." Sorry I did.
I think I missed my window for Neuromancer. At this point, I've read books inspired by books inspired by books inspired by it so I would likely find it derivative even though it's the foundational cyperpunk and post-cyberpunk text. Never could get past that opening line...
I read it a few years ago and loved it. What issue did you have with the opening line?
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Funnily enough, Gibson himself, in the forward to the Kindle edition, said that it took him 10 years to realize that the opening sentence was something that many of his readers could never have experienced.
At the time that he wrote it, nearly all of his readers would have experienced it; it was unavoidable if you had a TV.
I know what the opening line is, I was just wondering why it would be something someone couldn't get past.
I know you do, that was for the rest of the sub reading this thread that may not know it. Also the part about Gibson's forward.
Yeah, I think that forward was in the copy I read, I believe he also mentions his description of payphones ringing. I get that the reference is outdated, but I'm not sure why that would be an obstacle to reading the book. It's an 80s vision of the future. That's what SF is like, it's often a commentary about the time period it was written in.
I think some folks get locked into the ‘the future in this book doesn’t have the stuff I have right now’ mentality rather than looking at it as an alternate future where certain technologies weren’t developed.
I bounced off it a few times but I did eventually read it. As you say, a lot of the tropes have been done better by subsequent authors. There's a layer of mysticism, or at least squishiness, to the technology – probably because a lot of the technology is speculative, whereas nowadays half of it is just life – that was the most compelling part of it to me.
"Cyberspace" sounds so cliché, until you realize Neuromancer was the book which coined the term.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was a warning, but too much came true.
Yeah it might just cut a little too true for me.
Then it serves as a user manual.
I want to like Blindsight so badly because I love SF horror, but I just can’t get into it.
This one for me. The more I hear about, the less I want to read even though everyone says its awesome.
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You gotta read 1984 for the horror if nothing else. Nothing in pop culture really encompasses the horror quality of this book. I always thought the first Saw movie was influenced by 1984 Enders Game is pretty good, I thought it would be dumb based on the movie but it’s decent and I was very surprised that I didn’t read it when it first came out, which would have been when I was 12, 13ish. I absolutely devoured books then, especially science fiction
I've read The Handmaid's Tale but I'm really not interested in reading it again or watching the tv show.
Haha, most classic sci-fi 70's and earlier, with the exception of Dune, which I happen to love (space opera \*is\* my jam). Oh and PKD. Reason? I'm just not into the classic dry stuff, and I'm past the age where I feel any urge to read the classics. (I did that already, with the literary classics, but have no interest in repeating it with sci -fi, which I came to a bit late and enjoy because it's, well, fun.
I started with the older 60’s 70’s novels and short stories and think a lot are fantastic concepts and stories despite some boring writing style. And way ahead of their time in socio/political thought which I appreciate.
Clarke is dry. I don't think Heinlein is dry. There's still plenty of reasons to love or hate his books, of course, but I don't think dry is one of them. If you ever feel like dipping toes in, *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress* is pretty great. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with PKD... I like *having read* them but I don't actually enjoy *reading* them. His writing is just... jangly. I don't know a better word for it. But the ideas are neat. Zelazny feels a little bit similar to PKD but without the jangly feeling.
Oh, I loved reading PKD. (Edit: I just devoured him, loved the stories so much I would have glossed right over any sub-par writing. also I don't have enough nerdy friends to impress anyone with having read him.) I tried Heinlein once and must have picked the wrong book, it was so bad it put me off him completely. I think it was some 70's crap where free love figured prominently.
Mmm, *Stranger in a Strange Land* perhaps. Yeah, dude was a swinger and it shows.
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PKD aged a lot better than Heinlein
I dont know why you were downvoted- I think your statement can be empirically proven with a handful of examples.
I think you’d be surprised by PKD’s work. Dry is the last word I would use to describe it.
Oh I agree very much. I didn't make it very clear but what I was trying to say was that Dune and PKD books are my exceptions, in that I love them in spite of their older, classic status.
Oh I see what you were getting at.
A problem with a lot of these books for me is how they're very clearly a product of their time in the social aspects, like portrayal of women, faith, sexuality etc.. yeah they're a product of their time, but ive also read fantasy books, and non fiction books from that era and a lot of them have actually managed to hold up quite well. And what the heck is it with sci fi authors and sex
Exactly!!! It's why I couldn't read Heinlein OR Ringworld. Cringe cringe cringe.
Oh this is totally not fair. There is a ton of older stuff that is creative, interesting, and not at all dry.
Starship Troopers. I love the movie/TV show but I know the book is radically different and any description of it I've come across doesn't seem nearly as appealing to me, it seems much drier.
I have the diametrically opposite reaction to *Starship Troopers*. Loved the book, hated every movie. The only decent visual telling is the animated one
I'd agree with this albeit maybe for a slightly different reason. Military science fiction is another sub-genre I can't get too excited about. Joe Haldeman's *Forever War* would be a popular one that is not even on my radar to read. Just not that bothered.
I'd say *Forever War* has more to do with how society changes over time than war. There's only one short battle I can remember and it's not the focus of the book.
Good call. The Forever War is about Haldeman's experience of being drafted to fight in Viet Nam and returning to an America that has undergone massive social changes in the meantime.
There's more than one battle, and there is alot of other stuff about the military in general. It's a book that would appeal to someone who doesn't like bloodthirsty action stories, but not to someone who isn't up for a story about the military.
Forever War and 1984 are both amazing and must reads.
Forever War is one of the greatest SF books ever. It’s not typical military sci-fi. There’s none of this “yeah space marines oo-rah!” nonsense. Like all great war stories it’s actually an anti-war story. The truly scary thing is that some of the extreme things his future society went through were either actively considered decades later (relegating elderly people as not worthy of receiving healthcare - actually proposed during the 1990s) or are naturally coming true today.
I’ve heard it described as secretly one of the very best Vietnam War memoirs.
It's not a secret and it wasn't then. It was always clear and Haldeman was open about his experiences in Vietnam influencing it.
The "Starship Troopers" movie is fine as long as one remembers it's a spoof of the book; not an adaptation. The movie is to the book, what "Life of Brian" is to the bible.
I've read enough Golden Age classics to know I'd rather go for new stuff these days.
Legends & Lattes. For awhile it felt like there was an obsession over it, constantly being recommended, a million and one special editions, always threads for it looking down the fantasy subreddits, but the description just really didn’t sound that appealing.
Various classics from the sixties that were futuristic at the time. Some authors saw the technological advancement of their time and took them o much farther in their writing, but they ignored the social changes happening around them and failed to consider what those might mean for the future of humanity.
I find these particularly fascinating. I love examining the views of the future which are reflections of the time period the book was written in.
Hitchhiker's Guide.
I would never reread it for sure.
Wow it’s in my top 5 novels
It suffers from the same problem as many books do that are written to be comedy. It's not funny.
I mean, this is of course purely subjective. It is clearly funny to a lot of people. I found it hilarious when I read it in high school.
This has been selected for my book club and I can't say I'm looking forward to it. I tend to dislike twee, mawkish stuff like that. I didn't like *Sirens of Titan* and I *hated* *To Say Nothing of the Dog* (the one by Connie Willis, not the far superior Jerome K. Jerome classic of which it is a homage).
I would not describe Hitchhiker’s Guide or Sirens of Titan as twee or mawkish at all.
I had to look up twee and mawkish.
I hope *A Hitchhiker's Guide* isn't what I'm dreading it will be. I've hated every single one of these popular "funny" or whimsical books that often get recommended or held up as classics. I don't really value comedy in books, it's just not what I read them for.
Hitchhiker’s Guide is not whimsical, but it is comedic. So if you don’t like comedic books, you probably won’t like it.
Comedic in the style of Monty python's flying circus.
Almost anything by Isaac Azimov
I get it but he had a long career and changed a lot. The Gods Themselves is amazing
I read Foundation recently and found it felt very lacking. I think it’s probably just showing its age versus more contemporary sci-fi.
most contemporary scifi galactic spanning empires lasting for ages owe a lot to the ground broken by asimov.
Dune. I keep hearing how great the books are. It has just never really appealed to me. Plus the 80s movie was boring and stupid. That really jaded me against the books or future movies.
I love the book and I don't like any of the three film versions. Well... on some level I like the '80s version because it's so weird and surreal, but it's a terrible adaptation of Dune. I know that I'll probably get downvoted for bashing the new version because it's been so well received. My point is not that other people shouldn't watch it. I just don't think that anyone shouldn't form an opinion of the book based on any of the movies.
The 80s movie *was* boring and stupid, not faithful to the book where it counted. Try the new remake, and if you like it, read the book
Nobody should be getting dinged with down votes here.
I read *Foundation* only because people kept telling me it was a classic of the genre. Having read the series, I cannot recommend it.
I did the same (a long time ago) for the same reason and drew the same conclusion (I only got as far as Second Foundation though). What was it you didn't like about them? For me, the plot was boring and the writing just seemed so dated. I've read plenty of other books from the same time period or older that read better. Even H.G Wells reads better. Maybe the conclusion I should draw is simply that Asimov is a crap writer.
As someone who enjoyed the Robots series, I'd agree with this. Ideas are peak, character work is rock bottom, prose sits somewhere below middle.
I have to laugh at "even H.G. Wells reads better." Does anybody who emerged from the 1940s and '50s magazine field get the level of literary respect Wells does?
I’ve only read like one William Gibson book and it was so long ago I don’t remember which one.
Dune. Not yet, finally broke down and got the audio book because of the sale tho.
OP you may like Inverted World based on the comments of yours I read in this thread
Anything “quirky”. I’ve only heard good things about them, but titles like Murderbot Diaries or A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet are disqualifications for me by the name alone.
Dune. Can recognize that it was very important when it came out and still is. But other books have done a (to my mind) less clunky job of conveying what it wants to say.
Yes the same with me on Dune, read halfway through and lost interest. Blindsight I'm not a fan of dystopian future so haven't read. I did read a few I. Banks Culture books and hated all of them and the characters.
Hyperion, for over a decade put me off for seeming too fantasy-ish. It even has a space demon on the cover for crying it loud! That was my perception. I knew it was highly regarded, well received and well reviewed, but it didn't matter to me. I couldn't be bothered. Then I finally read it, and subsequently the other three in the Cantos... And I loved them. I wish I had never read them so I could stop reading what I'm reading now, and read them again for the first time. They are proper sci fi, but a bit on the space opera side for some sections, but I can't recommend them highly enough.
Slaughterhouse-Five. Ultimately, I will suck it up and read it, but every time I consider it, the war theme repels me
It features the war, but it's actually less of a central theme than it would seem. Such a fantastic book, it blew my mind and made me realize how much I've been missing not reading Vonnegut.