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/lit/ - Literature

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674232 No.674232 [Reply] [Original]

I've read all the Clarke I've been told is good, and a bunch that I found out halfway through is not. Who is another author that has similar ideas and a similar style to Clarke that reads as quickly and is just as engaging? I know Clarke won all sorts of awards and was basically above every one of us when it comes to brains (though his characters all blow, big time, except for HAL and he's a fucking computer), but I'm in the mood for some good hard SF recommendations. I finished 3001 a few months ago and have been craving Clarke's trademark utopian future that looks back on us as the Dark Ages because we still have religion and eat red meat.

Also, mostly unrelated, but I'm mostly a SF person who wants to get into the classics of regular genre fiction. I work in a book store so I'm surrounded by book people but I don't quite know who to listen to. I like Vonnegut and Palahniuk, and a few of the classics (took a Modern American literature course recently and liked the books though I HATED the style they were all written in.) I've read the science-fictiony classics like 1984, Brave New World, and A Clockwork Orange (as well as plenty of Vonnegut), but I'd like to read something that people won't immediately look down upon simply because it's shelved under science fiction.

The problem is that I have a hard time getting emotionally engaged in stories about regular imperfect douchebags who drink too much and that's most of what I read for my literature courses in college. I much prefer to hop in a rocket ship and fly to Alpha Centauri and play Moon Stick Ball. I'd much prefer to have my imagination engaged than my mind engaged.

tl;dr Authors like ACC?

tl;dr Part 2: Good classics for people who have a hard time giving a shit about classics?

>> No.674849

bump

>> No.674890

Hello fellow sci-fi fag

1) Stephen Baxter. Perhaps not as super optomististic, maybe even the opposite, but i got the same feel as when i was reading ACC. Also Isaac Asimov, read the first 3 Foundation books and then stop. His stand alone novels are excellent. If that doesn't do it, or even if it does, then I'd say go with Ben Bova, in fact he might be the best fit in terms of what you're looking for. Check out the Grand Tour novels.

2) I really, really, really loved Count of Monte Cristo. It'll be hard not to become engrossed if you give it a fair shot. Another entertaining one is the Scarlet Pimpernel.

tl;dr 1) Stephen Baxter, Ben Bova, Asimov
tl;dr 2) Count of Monte Cristo

>> No.674908

>>674890
Thank you friend. You really put Asimov and Clarke in the same category? I find that interesting, since I put them in totally different places in my mind. Just the basic look and feel of things depending on the author. Clarke's spaceships and planetside visuals to me look like the movie Contact at their most futuristic with just blackness in any space scene, while in Asimov they fly around in pod shaped cars with ten mile tall sky scrapers and egg shaped starships surrounded by colorful spacescapes. Thank you for the recommendations though! I will definitely have to check out Bova and Baxter. Any specific recommendations from either author?

Also, if you have read any of Kim Stanley's books, how are they? I have a copy of Red Mars waiting to be read.

>> No.674909

Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy. Best series ever.

>> No.674925

Hard SF? The Revelation Space trilogy is great. It's pretty slow, however. I eventually stopped 3/4 way through the 2nd book and picked up The Dark Tower.

>> No.674927

>>674925
Who be the author, says I?!

>> No.674965

>>674908

Well ok, I agree with you about Asimov in that case, at least as far as spaceships and stuff. But give Nemesis a try anyway if you haven't. That seems less science-fantasy if you know what I mean.

Let's see, specific books:
Ben Bova: I'd start with Empire Builders and work up from that series, or maybe start with Mars. Most of his books are pretty-stand alone

Baxter i'd probably go with the Manifold series or his Xeelee series. If you're looking for a stand alone, get Titan.

The Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson, what can I say about it... the first one is pretty good, lots of character development and such. But don't expect things to happen fast. His approach is to do things gradually with lots of explinations of the scenery and stuff. His book Years of Rice and Salt is a pretty good alternate history as well.

>> No.674979

Niven is good as far as hard scifi goes. You need to move a planet into a new orbit? hey, no probs! No one comes close to his engineering stuff. Lots of believeable interstellar travel, just don't expect his chars to shine quite so bright.

That said, A World Out of Time is great on all fronts, and very Niven.

Lit stuff, try Gene Wolfe's The Book of The New Sun. both sci and fantasy, but utterly incomparable in both fields.

>> No.674981

The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks.

>> No.674990

Frank Herbert

The Herbs is the shit,

also read Clarke's "Beyond the Fall of Night"

>> No.674994

>>674979 here and I second >>674890