/lit/ - Literature

>>10685936
why don't you like asimov tho

That's where you're wrong, kid.

>>10685936
Lem's Fiasco is one of the greatest novels ever written.

Return from the stars

umm, try again sweetie

>>10685946
BNW was a literal utopia, primarily since it's society allowed for dissenting groups from the mainstream (the sociologists & the reservations) and huxley was too much of a anglophile to accept it

>>10685942
kinda boring tbqh

>>10685936
>Book of the New Sun
>Most of the Culture books by Iain M Banks
>Voyage to Arcturus
>The Island of Dr Moreau
>A Scanner Darkly, UBIK, Three Stigmata of Peter Eldritch...

>>10685942
Asimov is a bad example desu. Influential, yes. Important, yes. Conceptually interesting, of course. But the prose isn't that great and the charactersation is sterile.

>>10685972
>Book of the New Sun
>from start to finish
>notoriously boring as fuck first 75 pages

There's one

A Scanner Darkly

>>10685976
>notoriously boring as fuck first 75 pages
You can't be serious.

Just had a flick through of my copy. The first 75 pages has the entire sequence with the Borges insert (Ultan) and the infinitely large library, the picture-cleaner scene, the Conversationlist, not to mention that first chapter which is so quotable

"We believe that we invent symbols. In truth they invent us..."

>everyone falling for this bait
it's just another recommendation thread

>>10686007

>>10685988
PKD is the final boss of /lit/ and we just haven't realized it yet

>>10686274
shaking with anger

>>10685962
This is barely sci fi.

>>10685942
I love Asimov but he gets so goddamn weird with his phrasing sometimes. His writing feels unnatural sometimes. Stoked to start on the Foundation series.

Annihilation is worth a read, the rest of the trilogy gets worse and worse tho.

>>10686326
>This is barely sci fi.

to be fair you could say that about 'a scanner darkly'

Thank me later.

>>10685946
Definitely not good from start to finish.
The fact the narrative would jump from one character to the other was extremely awkward and some parts of the book were a chore to get through. Overall not bad but definitely not flawless.

>>10685936
>Hasn't read any Jules Verne

>>10686340

>>10686340
I unironically enjoyed it, but let's be real here; it is mostly nostalgia wank.

I'll take the bait, Alfred Bester's Stars are my destination is a great action novel from start to end, and also aged pretty well. (The hungarian cover from the 90's is the coolest of all, you cannot prove me wrong.)
It's a shame that the rights for the movie adaptation were wasted on a shitty popcorn-movie and there's no way to get a decent film out of it because of that...

I swear no-ones read City by Clifford. D. Simak. Such a bittersweet vibe of the gradual decline of the human race as they all leave to become immortal beings on Jupiter and how Humanities inventions live without their masters

Neuromancer was pretty good all the way through tbqh.

>>10686340
>a book you can only enjoy with a 12 yo mentality and a 40 yo pop culture repertoire

>>10685936
>OP hasn't read pic related
what the fuck are you doing with your life?

>>10686696
The enjoyment/page ratio on that is worse than a Tad Williams novel.

>>10686302
This, basically
He managed to integrate the entire exoteric and esoteric traditions while retaining his individual rationality and imagination

>>10686274

>>10687061
you're an absolute retard if you think that person is chinese/east asian

>>10686251
Ender's Game

bring it psueds

>>10685936
Arthur C Clarke is fucking incredible, try Rendezvous with Rama, it's great (but remember that there weren't any sequels and you'll go far).
Also, if you're looking for a bit less sci fi, but still with the atmosphere, try Micheal Moorcock (start with the first Corum trilogy).

>>10687210
>Rendezvous with Rama
except for that part where he's mystified by zero-g boobs

this was great

>>10687210
>Rendezvous with Rama
i think i would've enjoyed that a lot more if i knew it was empty from the outset

i just wish they knew how to write women decently. i've never read a fantasy or sci-fi book with a good female character.

>>10687228
You take that back, you filthy whore. His critique of jiggle physics was DECADES ahead of its time, and definitely needed a page and a half of writing describing it.

>>10686274
genuinely mad

>>10685946

>>10686465
>>10686469

Great pick anons. Some
of my favorites.

>>10685988
Ubik was great.

>>10685936
Against a Dark Background.

>>10685972
The Coulter novels are great, his endings can be a tad weak though I find unfortunately.

>>10686340
I can appreciate a good nostalgia wankfest, but when the person writing the wankfest, is obviously nowhere near as familiar with the subject as he lets on, it becomes embarrassing Big Bang Theory tier shite.

>>10686340

>>10685936
island of dr moreau

>>10687249
came here to post this

>>10687527
>thousands of internet points and a golden star for admitting that you’re a manchild

>>10687527
I sure hope he grew up in fucking Nigeria.

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
the prose may not blow you away, but pretty well written throughout and tells a compelling story.

> "Cixin Liu"
> 0 results.

> No Three Body Series
Fellas....

The Invention of Morel, if that counts, is super engaging and is also barely one hundred pages long.

>>10687105
it's good up until le twist ending
I wanted to punch the administrators, Ender, and the author for that fucking shitshow
it's like someone took a fucking sitcom misunderstanding and predicated an entire harrowing near-future sci-fi book on it
and then he does something similar with book 2 or 3 and the obsessive aristocratic girl, not to mention casually tossing in a underage girl that lets a guard fuck her (because of course the guard's a pedophile) just to be near said spoiled brat
the Ender books are "let's turn up the arbitrary misery some more" the series
even when everything works out at the end of it all it doesn't feel finished or satisfying

>>10687527
I'll say the same I said about Harry Potter and Twilight and other things: if it gets people into books, I don't care how bad it is
>>10687543
I saw a lot of people like this growing up
American public schools nigga

>>10687583

Ehhhhh.... The nuclear grenades and unexplained trisolarian cults were a little damaging to the Three Body Problem's narrative elements.

Still 100% worth reading, but I won't pretend the story itself is anything magical.

>>10686696

I knew people in real life who swore this was a good book. The Avengers ripped off the ending.

City! Sci-fi about dogs and humans and space and it's godlike. Nobody that I've talked to dislikes it even remotely

>>10687061

>doesn't want to learn new words

>Literally speaks greek as well as English

>>10687078
You're an absolute retard if you think I am not chinese

>>10686340

I'd rather read the back of a fucking shampoo bottle.

>>10687261
Usurper of the sun

>>10686007
Much of TSOTT is boring but only on the first read, on the second read those boring parts became some of my favorites.

>>10687642
>American public schools nigga
>tfw people in my High School were drooling over 13 Reasons Why
>"I don't even like reading but I love this book!"

An anti-rec if I've ever heard one

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

roadside picnic, you retards

>>10687210
Clarke has some of the most dreary ass boring prose in the English language though.

>no mention of Solaris
blyat

Starship Troopers
Dune
The Foundation
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Or are you going to contrarian meme at me and say these aren't good?

No-one has mentioned this yet.. Solaris is top-notch sci-fi.

>>10688710
>Dune
Oh no I love 60 pages of rambling before the story even attempts to start.

>>10685936
Childhood's End.

>>10688710
>Dune
Becomes shit after Leto dies.

>>10685968
this, i would have loved it were the island better described

>>10686340
You might as well just read a wikipedia article about movies released in the 80s. The way the author breaks the flow of a sentence or paragraph constantly naming shit makes me think that's literally what he did when he wrote it.

>>10688751
>t. brainlet
Comic books might be more your speed, pal
>>10688868
>Leto dying
>Bad thing
Man it must be idiot hour or something

>>10688708
>blyat

surely you mean kurwa

>>10687552
Yes, I can't agree enough with this.

>>10686821
>PKD
>rational
Dude was batshit insane whacked outta his gourd. "Valis" was based on a real life belief he held where he thought an invisible alien satellite orbiting the earth was beaming instructions into his brain.
The invisible alien satellite also told him to get his son to a hospital and have his brain checked. They found a tumor that was close to becoming fatal, and that they would never have found without looking for it.

>>10687061
> literal Greek name
> anon thinks it's asian

I suppose it's you who's the actual retard

>>10687527
I can be smug about this now but when I first started to get into reading independently, I wasn't reading things much better than Harry Potter and YA. I know it's shit now but I can't complain much if something easily accessible manages to get somebody interested in reading. After that point though it's up to them if they want to pursue material outside of their comfort zone/the classics or if they want to continue with YA.

>>10689884
I mean, clearly PKD was loco later in life, but you have to admit, finding the tumour in his son's brain after receiving a supposed alien message is pretty weird. I know correlation doesn't mean causality but you can't help having some wild thoughts about it.

>>10685962
Calling Infinite Jest science fiction is like calling your mom a pig.

>>10690104
>mom

>>10685962
>postmodern
>science fiction
Nope.
Seems like OP is right afterall.

bruh

Mr. Nobody
And it doesn't have any pew-pew-pew lazer beems and ayliums in it.
>novel
Oh, you really are an uncultured pleb.

Dune, Wheel of Time, Feed

>>10688708
>>10688716
it's interesting but it's very dry, and I don't just mean the lack of "action"
it's contemplative and atmospheric, but most of that contemplation and atmosphere never builds to anything
you find out the main character's girlfriend killed herself, you figure out one or both of the other characters also have some dark secrets but you never find out what they are, you figure out the planet is alive and probably sentient but no communication happens with it and no deeper understanding is reached, no one even tells the outside world this shit is going on
finally, the whole thing doesn't really seem to have a point-- which isn't necessary, but in something as feelsy as this could be a saving grace
I don't regret reading it (partly because my dad gave it to me and one of the few connections I have to him) but it's not something I can easily apply to my life, not even reading other books

>>10685936
HG Wells, faggot

>>10688716
I cannot stand the encyclopedia parts
You need a good editor Stanislaw, you're smarter than you should be.

>>10692731
I liked them but they didn't fit and they weren't very engaging
I actually had to look back more than once to figure out how long I'd been reading descriptions of encyclopedia entries and if I was still reading them or if I was back on the actual plot

What's the best PKD novel?

>>10693359
Martian Time Slip Dr Blood Money Galactic Pot Healer

>>10693359
Ubik and Do Androids Dream. Any other recommendation is contrarian shite

>>10690267
>nic
i guess painful, awkward libertarian preaching is "good" to some people

>>10687105
> random teenagers post political articles and change the world
embarrassing premise today

>>10688698
correct answer, this book is flawless