Science Fiction

I was recently asked to recommend some Science Fiction authors/books. I wasn't sure what to recommend, I've read so many over the years and my memory has never been that great. Usually I would stand in front of my book shelf and use my books to trigger my neural synapses, but most of my SF books are still in boxes in storage. I suppose I'll just wing it and assume I forget something really good.

I suppose I'll stick to just SF for now and not delve into any fantasy authors.

Neal Stephenson has written several good books but my two favorites are Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.

Snow Crash is set in the near future and is sort of cyberpunk without the hard noir edge that is usually has.
A quote from Snow Crash that I really like:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

Cryptonomicon, now that I think about it, isn't even SF, I don't think. Maybe it is. It's set in pretty much the present day and during WWII and involves all kind of crap. The Amazon links give pretty good synopses of the books.

Iain M. Banks has written a handful of books set in the very far future in his 'Culture' series. These are sprawling space epics with technology at a very high level. I really like these books. A list of some of them can be found here. He also writes non-SF novels as Iain Banks.


Dan Simmons writes SF and horror and probably other stuff I don't know about. I've read most of his horror and SciFi except some of his newer stuff. His Hyperion Cantos series of 4 books are pretty good (at least the first two are, I don't believe I even knew he had two more until just now). They are also set in a far future and are pretty odd. Well written though and very enjoyable.

David Brin's Uplift Series is also a fun read. Pretty straightforward SF storytelling. Nothing too wierd about these books. I also really liked the novel he wrote with Gregory Benford called Heart of the Comet. Heart of the Comet is what is called Hard SF, meaning that the science has a basis in reality, but that is not suprising since both Brin and Benford are physicists. Benford could get his own entry here, he's written some good novels also.

That's enough for tonight.

Science Fiction

I was recently asked to recommend some Science Fiction authors/books. I wasn't sure what to recommend, I've read so many over the years and my memory has never been that great. Usually I would stand in front of my book shelf and use my books to trigger my neural synapses, but most of my SF books are still in boxes in storage. I suppose I'll just wing it and assume I forget something really good.

I suppose I'll stick to just SF for now and not delve into any fantasy authors.

Neal Stephenson has written several good books but my two favorites are Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.

Snow Crash is set in the near future and is sort of cyberpunk without the hard noir edge that is usually has.
A quote from Snow Crash that I really like:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

Cryptonomicon, now that I think about it, isn't even SF, I don't think. Maybe it is. It's set in pretty much the present day and during WWII and involves all kind of crap. The Amazon links give pretty good synopses of the books.

Iain M. Banks has written a handful of books set in the very far future in his 'Culture' series. These are sprawling space epics with technology at a very high level. I really like these books. A list of some of them can be found here. He also writes non-SF novels as Iain Banks.


Dan Simmons writes SF and horror and probably other stuff I don't know about. I've read most of his horror and SciFi except some of his newer stuff. His Hyperion Cantos series of 4 books are pretty good (at least the first two are, I don't believe I even knew he had two more until just now). They are also set in a far future and are pretty odd. Well written though and very enjoyable.

David Brin's Uplift Series is also a fun read. Pretty straightforward SF storytelling. Nothing too wierd about these books. I also really liked the novel he wrote with Gregory Benford called Heart of the Comet. Heart of the Comet is what is called Hard SF, meaning that the science has a basis in reality, but that is not suprising since both Brin and Benford are physicists. Benford could get his own entry here, he's written some good novels also.

That's enough for tonight.