Good sci fi recommendations

[Cerveza mas fina]

Havent read a whole book in like two years but I think its time to jump back in again. Last time i asked here it was for some low fantasy and I got rewarded with Joe Abercrombie books which i thought were fantastic.

Now I feel like some sci fi though, exploring bold new worlds, but not 1000 page books and 13 book series please, some self contained stories or short series. No need to have millions of aliens either, exploration is cool too.

Any good stuff out there?

[archnemesis]

Have you read the classics? Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Dune by Frank Herbert, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card are all great. I also really liked The Forever War by Joe Haldeman that Vizzy recommended to me.

[Vizzys]

Blindsight by Peter Watts
it has aliens, but its more about human consciousness
i will always post this book in scifi threads

i hear revenger by alastair reynolds is good but I havent read it yet
im only mentioning it cause amazing author

[VomKriege]

You're probably safe with anything by the Strugatsky brothers (who wrote Stalker).

[Great Rumbler]

I'll echo archnemesis' recommendations, those are some really great books. To them I'll add:

-Hyperion series by Dan Simmons
-Neuromancer by William Gibson
-Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
-The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Oh, and if you decided to read Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, definitely don't read the sequels that he got some other dude to write. They're straight trash.

[Madrun Badrun]

Culture series - most the books are independent stories set in the same universe. 

[Phoenix Dark]

Blindsight by Peter Watts
it has aliens, but its more about human consciousness
i will always post this book in scifi threads

i hear revenger by alastair reynolds is good but I havent read it yet
im only mentioning it cause amazing author

this

whewww

[fistfulofmetal]

Leviathan Wakes is a good first book in the Expanse series. You can read it and be done or continue if you're into it. It's not too heady.

Aurora is a book by Kim Stanley Robinson about a ship en-route to Tau Ceti to for colonization. It's the opposite, standalone but super hard scifi. Gets into a lot of complex concepts of growing up on a space ship and dealing with it's society, extraplanetery colonization, oribtal trajectories and what it means to be an AI. I really loved it but I can understand if it isn't for everyone.

[CatsCatsCats]

Posting to co-sign on Blindsight and Rendevouz with Rama

[Cerveza mas fina]

Im looking into the recommendations right now, isnt hard sci fi a bit tough?

[VomKriege]

As far as my own advice go, I'm not sure I'd call the Strugatsky brothers hard to read. I think they play with rather dense and exciting concepts but as far as I can tell the stories are rather concise and they don't delve into real or fictional minutiae. It's more abstract SF than most of the other examples. There's also some humor and soviet absurdity to their writings.

I don't think anyone mentioned K.Dick yet ? He wrote a lot of good SF stories, including simpler ones than his most famous mindbending stuff : Vulcan's Hammer, Time Out of Joint and a lot of other titles who escape me. Maybe look for a good anthology.
I mean Ubik, Do androids dreams of electric sheeps and all that is good and all but I can see how they could be intimidating.

[Great Rumbler]

This is kind of a weird recommendation, but I really liked The Ecologic Envoy by L. E. Modesitt Jr. It's about a space bureaucrat who is also a space James Bond, quick read and not really all that substantive but still fun. There are some other books with the same guy, but I haven't read them. They're probably pretty good, though.

[Kara]

People say Dune is science fiction, but a book about an entrenched and unaccountable political class trying to harness the power of desert dwelling religious fanatics and quibbling amongst themselves over exclusive control of an organic material key to transportation while various bureaucracies run around trying to hold the hot mess together as a civilization spanning catastrophe of humanity's own creation looms on the horizon sounds like a succinct description of the present day.

[Great Rumbler]

Eh, it's scifi in the same way that War of the Worlds is scifi: an allegory for real-world problems but with aliens.

[Madrun Badrun]

oh, like The Grapes of Wrath.

[Joe Molotov]

And that problem is Alien mothers refusing to vaccinate their children.

[VomKriege]

Eh, it's scifi in the same way that War of the Worlds is scifi: an allegory for real-world problems but with aliens.

Aren't all fictions really ?
Granted maybe not to the point of having the hero being Muad Dib / Mahdi

[Kara]

Eh, it's scifi in the same way that War of the Worlds is scifi: an allegory for real-world problems but with aliens.

I was trying to make a funny, but I do think nerds don't consider that certain works are more metaphor for reality (because that's easier to swallow / sell) than science fiction per se.

[Great Rumbler]

The Shrike

[Cerveza mas fina]

Ive tried reading LEM in Polish during high school but that was meh, read some Dick, didnt like Neuromancer, read The Reality Dysfunction which was cool but then got stuck on book two (or did I even finish the Dysfunction?)

Think my most succesful reads were Dick, Warhammer and Halo books

[Dennis]

-Hyperion series by Dan Simmons

I think the first book (Hyperion) in that series is one of the greatest sci-fi books ever written.

The sequel (The Fall of Hyperion) is great too. The later two books are not as strong I feel.

[Great Rumbler]

Warhammer and Halo books

[PlayDat]

Flowers for Algernon is one of my favorites. It might not be the kind of book you're looking for, but it is technically sci-fi.

[tiesto]

Snow Crash is probably my favorite sci-fi book ever.

[chronovore]

 If you're staying away from hard science fiction, are you looking more for space opera stuff? Military space fiction? Star Wars?

 I like just about everything John Scalzi he has written, as it is clearly science fiction but less about physics and chemistry and more about the nature of man.

[I'm a Puppy!]

People say Dune is science fiction, but a book about an entrenched and unaccountable political class trying to harness the power of desert dwelling religious fanatics and quibbling amongst themselves over exclusive control of an organic material key to transportation while various bureaucracies run around trying to hold the hot mess together as a civilization spanning catastrophe of humanity's own creation looms on the horizon sounds like a succinct description of the present day.

This should be on a t shirt

Oh and my recommendation is the ringworld books they can get dry and technical, but they bring up some interesting ideas

[Cerveza mas fina]

I got a John Scalzi book, as it seems light compared to some others. But I'm definately intruiged by a few recommendations here. Also just went to the Hugo Awards site to see whats hot now.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Finished Old Mans War. Good fun light read, kind of makes me want to pick up the second one but the story has an arc that doesnt make it compulsory, which I like. Good recommendation 

[recursivelyenumerable]

IIRC the first two Hyperion books are basically one story, the first book ends inconclusively, stuff gets resolved in book two with no obvious need for a third book.

[chronovore]

Finished Old Mans War. Good fun light read, kind of makes me want to pick up the second one but the story has an arc that doesnt make it compulsory, which I like. Good recommendation 

Yeah, Old Man's War is good; it's the fun and exciting parts of Starship Troopers without all that pesky fascism.

[Boogie]

Also gotta co-sign on Hyperion. The first book is a GOAT contender.

I read Hyperion a couple years ago and loved it.   Gotta get around to the second one soon, don't know how it keeps slipping my mind to do so.

[Kurisu]

Seconding most of the suggestions here, especially the Foundations series, and Arthur C. Clarke's stuff. Maybe I missed the Heinlein recommendations: Starship Troopers is a safe start (very different from the movie), then move on to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and finally, what I consider to be his best work: Stranger in a Strange Land which is just an amazing book to grok.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Ive read Stranger in a strange land a few years back, it was pretty good.

Now i ordered Hyperion based on your recommendations guys, hope its good

[Dickie Dee]

I actually thought the Rise of Endymion (4th and last book) was the second best of the series, trailing the first but not by much. 2 and 3 were good but neither had a strong plot IIRC, they were just doing a lot of placesetting.

[Dickie Dee]

I'd also definitely recommend Spin It's not overlly long but is one of the best self-contained scifi books I've read.

Do skip the sequel, it was unnecessary and bad.

[chronovore]

I'd also definitely recommend Spin It's not overlly long but is one of the best self-contained scifi books I've read.

Do skip the sequel, it was unnecessary and bad.

I've had Spin on my book backlog (booklog?) forever. Glad to hear it's a winner.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Hyperion

Halfway through it now and really digging it, some of these stories about the Shrike...fucked up! Thinking of Kassad especially. Also the Weintraub story.