What series SF books are your favorites?

Originally posted by toreishi
books
series

wow too many to mention, but off the top of my head i'd say

dragons of pern by mercedes lackey

Uhh, that would be the Dragonriders of Pern and that would be Anne McCaffrey

hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by doug adams

Yes, Douglas Adams has been a favorite of mine as well.

I'm a highly omnivorous reader of SF myself. I really can't pick an sort of favorite series really. I sorta lean towards Genres myself. Typically Hard SF and believe it or not the old SF from the 30s - 40s. Those old stories while lacking in Science Accuracy however have a sorta can-do attitude that I love. First contact stories are a favorite of mine as well.

well im reading frederick pohl right now. but here are my favorites from memory:


Icarus Hunt by: Timothy Zahn

*Hunter's Run by: several authors whom i forgot the name

*Manifold Space by: stephen baxter

**Final Blackout by: L. Ron Hubbard

Times Eye by: arthur c clarke i think

A Very Strange Trip by: several authors again


"*" means extra good books

these are just a few from the top of my head, i have a ton of other favorites as well

The Halo series. Geah!
No but seriously, I usually read fantasy novels and series unless you count I Am Legend as science fiction.

[edit on 23-10-2008 by MegaBears]

Ditto the 'Nights Dawn' trilogy

Also the 'Gap Sequence' by Stephen Donaldson, along with his 'Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'

Anything by Sheri S. Tepper

The Dune series has held my attention for years.

Any of the Pern books.

The Chronicles of Amber.

No ones mentioned Terry Pratchetts discworld series!?!Some of those books are hilarious and make a great parody of most everything.

Well, I am a nerd:
1) A song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. He's pissing me off by not writing the rest of the series (gave up checking a few months ago), but the four books he did write are the greatest fantasy books ever written...IMHO

2) Battletech/Mechwarrior Series. I fell in love with this universe way back in elementary school when I read the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy and then Natural Selection by Mike Stackpole. If you can handle shared universes, this is easily the best of all of them.

3) Honor Harrington Series by David Weber. Straight up Military Sci-fi, although the good guys are a little too invincible in the early books, still great.

4) DUNE series. Seriously, how can anyone NOT love these books?

5) Ciaphis Cain Series by Sandy Mitchell. (Warhammer 40k) Another shared universe, total escapist fiction, but a lot of fun. Very humorous as well.

6) Nights Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Actually, anything by this man is solid gold.

Check some of these out if you haven't read them. Not for everybody, but they are good.

Anything by Robert A Heinlein, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
I enjoyed most of Greg Bear's books.
I also liked Julian May's Saga of The Exiles and the subsequent Galactic Mileu Series.

Orson Scott Card and David Gemmell are enjoyable and for pure escapism I actually like reading both Raymond E Feist and David Eddings.

I have even read and re-read both The First and Second Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson.

I have read literally hundreds of Sci - Fi / Fantasy novels and will give any author/ess at least one read.
Unfortunately I think both genres are becoming very much predictable and stereotyped.

The Master will always be Tolkein.

David R. Palmer has added a comment on Amazon.com about his novel Emergence, which was always a favorite of mine. His sequel to Emergence has been written and was serialized in Analog science fiction magazine starting in the summer of 2008. That new novel is called Tracking. Mr. Palmer says that he is in negotiations with Wormhole Press to both reprint Emergence and print Tracking, both as paperbacks.

As previously noted...

Dan Simmons' Hyperion series - what a marriage of SF and high art! The AI avatar, Councillor Albedo - what a villain.

Iain M. Banks' Culture novels - just finished Matter which I did like but wasn't for me quite up with Use of Weapons - one of the most tragic, elegiac pieces of SF I've ever read - and Excession - a wonderful romp among the Ship Minds.

Peter F. Hamilton... well, I absolutely adored The Night's Dawn trilogy until the lame, all-too-literally deus ex machina ending. HUGELY disappointed. Such a great beginning leading to such a letdown... but the last couple of books were great and the new follow-up looks awesome. Best of all, there's another one to come, making it another trilogy, and still set, at least partially, in the Commonwealth, with many of the same characters percolating through from the two-volume Commonwealth saga.

Orson Scott Card's Ender novels are really fun, too.

Frank Herbert - those first Dune books I came to having had them much hyped to me... and they didn't disappoint. However, I've been ploughing through the prequels as a duty, really, and don't find them possessed of the brio or panache of the originals. Which brings us to

Kevin J. Anderson - The Saga of Seven Suns is rubbish, really, but wonderful rubbish, like eating something sweet and sticky that makes you feel slightly ill afterwards... and then a while later you crave more.

Bruce Sterling, for me, is one of the most wonderful SF authors currently around, and his Shaper/Mechanist saga is extraordinary. This guy can really write where others just move the plot along, and the ideas and depth he brings are amazing. Kind of like Harlan Ellison reborn.

Greg Bear has written some amazing books. The Eon series is truly innovative in its scope, and the Forge of God series, while short, is nonetheless poignant. Almost all of his books have, at some point, moved me to tears. For me, though, his masterpiece is /Slant, in which he effortlessly marries different writing styles in a stunning view of a society not too far into the future that is at once familiar and unsettlingly alien.

I note from his Wiki entry that he's also written in the Foundation, Star Wars, Star Trek and Human-Kzin wars subgenres. Cool.

Harry Harrison's stainless Steel Rat series marry SF with Swiftian satire and are well worth checking out.

William Gibson - I mean, come on! Has no-one read the Sprawl books, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive? These are genre classics, people. I also liked his books based around the mutated, settled Golden Gate Bridge.

Robert Anton Wilson (RIP!) and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy was not only entertaining, it quite literally changed the way I think. And it was only when I got to the final appendices, and it told me it was changing the way I think about things, that I realised this was indeed the case. RAW was a wonderful, entertaining soul, and his allegedly non-fiction books like Quantum Psychology deserve the widest possible audience.

Richard Morgan's novels about Takeshi Kovacs are great. Ultimately, one of the things I want to escape into is a really cool universe. This one works on that level, and many others.

And finally, Neal Stephenson has a habit of writing things that start out as historical novels and then take an amazing SF twist. As a standalone, I'd recommend The Cryptonomicon but his Quicksilver trilogy, while apparently just a historical novel, is more like an SF novel than you could possibly imagine without its actually being one. Weird and definitely worth a look.


[edit on 17-2-2009 by rich23]

Hi all,

I'm a major sci-fi and fantasy reader, and over the years I've read a lot of the books mentioned by all of you. I like horror as well, just about anything really.

As far as sci-fi goes, I have a tendency to lump sci-fi/fantasy together, I prefer soft sci-fi, not hard core, although I read some of the Battletech/Mechwars books years ago, because my son was into them and we enjoyed discussing the books we read with each other.

As far as favorites go, I would have to say of course, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series, which I first read in high school, and of course several times after that. I have read a lot of older sci-fi, by A. Merritt, Marilyn Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series.

I also like:

Dune series

Deathland series - by James Axler, lots of books in this series, kind of a post
apocalyptic story line, books can be read in any order

Island in the Sea of Time
Against the Tide of Years
On the Oceans of Eternity- all by S. M. Stirling
Dies the Fire (related to the above three and part of a trilogy, also Stirling)

Deathgate series - 7 book series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffery (also her Crystal Singers series is good)

Drowning Towers - by George Martin, Arthur C. Clark winner

(I read this book in the 80's, but it is a really current book to read now with all the talk about global warming, read the review below, it's scary how well the premise of this book fits in with today's fears)

Drowning Towers review

Apprentice Adept series - Piers Anthony

This 7 book series has been compared to the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, and the plot switches from a sci-fi world to a fantasy world.

And possibly my two favorite books, although more fantasy than sci-fi:

The Stand - by Stephen King

SwanSong - by Robert R. McCammon
SwanSong

(also a good Horror/Vampire book by Robert R. McCammon, They Thirst
this one scared the cr*p out of me the first time I read it!)

Hope I've given you some good ones to check out and read!
Happy reading!!!

Originally posted by CeltAngel
Love the "Revelation Space" trilogy by Alastair Reynolds (although that may dip too far into the fantasy/ space opera genre for some.

Certainly the best sci-fi series for many years IMO. Absolutely outstanding read and a great example of an extremely well thought out "universe" not dominating the storylines but rather providing a superb backdrop. Chasm City must be some vacation destination!

It's cliche, but I also love the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.

More classic than cliche surely. The Oldies survive the test of time well - just snuggle down with EE Doc Smiths "Lensman" series if you don't believe me

Moorcock has already been mentioned, as has Tolkien, Heinlein, Pratchett and the irritating but strangely fascinating Thomas Covenant. Actually Donaldson wrote a great space opera called the Gap series as well - lost its way a little bit towards the end but the early books were great.

Too many to post but my 2 all time favs would be.

1) Wheel of time series by Robert Jordan. btw fans of the series would be interested in knowing that they are making a movie!

2) Rift war trilogy by I believe Fiest.

Shanarra (sp) books were good. David Eddings wrote some good stuff.

reply to post by Uphill


When I was a kid, my favorite Sci-Fi series was the Hardy Boys.

Now as I've grown up, I prefer to read "WILBUR SMITH" books. This man writes incredible books about all kinds of things happening in this world, and the detail that he puts into his books are absolutely unbelievable, thats probably why they are so long. I'd swear that he had to be there in those places doing the stuff that takes place in his books because the detail is unbelievably correct at all times.

If you want to read some fantastic tales that are extremely realistic by the #1 International Author then pick one of his many fascinating books that can transport you from your home to some war or adventure like you are there taking part in it.

If you like Indiana Jones movies or the Harry Potter movies, then as a grown up you will enjoy the Wilbur Smith books. By the way, the Indiana Jones and the Harry Potter book series are excellent also.

Tolkien - he's a genius (LOTR Trilogy and the Hobbit)

C.S. Lewis - The Narnia series

Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan (I highly recommend this series)

I'm more into the fantasy than sci fi per se... I have tried reading some sci fi but haven't really found one to my taste so I decided to write my own. Maybe one day you will add me to your list of fav's.

MW31


[edit on 11-3-2009 by misswanderer31]

Originally posted by Trinityman

Originally posted by CeltAngel

It's cliche, but I also love the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.

More classic than cliche surely. The Oldies survive the test of time well - just snuggle down with EE Doc Smiths "Lensman" series if you don't believe me

Oh yeah, no one can do a gigantic sized fleet space battle like Doc Smith!! I would say that my Favorite Authors of that Genre would be "Doc Smith", Edmond Hamilton, and John W. Campbell (Writing as Don A Stuart)

Great stuff when you just want to get away from it all.

It's hard for me to pick just one as I have so many favorites that I re-read a lot so I'll just list them.

The Hobbit/LOTR series ( including Silmarillion ) - J.R.R Tolkien

A Wizard of Earthsea Trilogy ( WORST TV MOVIE EVER ) - Ursula K LeGuin

Enders Game series and Shadow of the Hegemon series - Orson Scott Card

Homecoming series ( great books although the last one in the series is way off the rest of the books) - Orson Scott Card

A lot of the Warcraft book ( too many to name but the Well of Eternity series is particularly good)

Dragonriders of Pern books ( which i hear they are making a movie of) Anne M'Caffery

And a host of others I don't recall the names off the top of my head, some of the Star Wars books, some Halo or pretty much anything that grabs my attention, my neighbor owns a used book store so I have access to tons of books.

I am always looking for suggestions for new stuff as well.