Science Fiction/Fantasy books

[vulturesrow]

Wow, cant believe Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber hasnt been mentioned yet. IMO one of the greatest fantasy series ever.

[Georgia Avenue]

I'm not a huge fantasy fan anymore...most of the series mentioned reveal themselves to be mostly plot extenders, especially Jordan and Eddings.

Anyway, why read scifi OR fantasy when you could read both, in the greatest trilogy of either genre (including lotr):: Gene Wolfes' Book of the New Sun

(Yes I'm a zealot.)

Also, some great short stories in this thread...

[4_2_it]

Herbert's first 4 Dune books are excellent. I have not read a series, except maybe LOTR, that comes close to Dune.

Asimov's Foundation and Robot series are good, but Asimov's writing style is a little on the basic side for me. I loved all his books when I was 15, but now they are merely quick airplane reads.

[ChipWrecked]

Nothing more to add to any of the above, I just wanted to put in a vote against WoT.

I hope to run into Robert Jordan in Hell.

[TehVader]

Dune was the first thing that came to mind, fantastic series. I like all of them, but I think the first one is my favorite sci-fi book ever.

If you haven't gotten hooked by wot yet I would stay away, there's not much worse things than reading the first 6 books and be so exited only to be shot down by the rest of the series.

Also Terry Pratchett is excellent, especially his earliest discworld books imo, although as someone said it's the humour not the fantasy aspect that sticks with you after reading his books.

[indczn]

I'll have to agree with the Relevation space trilogy, but disagree with baxter which seems to lack substance.

[Benholio]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll have to agree with the Relevation space trilogy, but disagree with baxter which seems to lack substance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the reply. I've only read 1 of Baxter's so far (Manifold: Time), and I thought it was okay, but not on the same level as the Reynolds books.

Can you recommend anything similar to the Revelation Space books?

[diebitter]

To be the umpteenth one to say makes it no less true.

Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
Good Emperor of Dune

is the set to read.

[Knuckles]

I would second David Brin's Uplift Trilogy and add Dan Simmon's Hyperion series.

[DavidC]

John Christopher is one of my favourites. I used to read his stuff when I was young.

The "Tripods" series (3 books)
* miscellaneous juvenile novels:
* The Guardians
* Wild Jack
* The Lotus Caves
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Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry

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Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan...

etc.. etc...

This genre is just too unbelievably awesome to ignore.

The guy that wrote Sphere/Jurassic Park is pretty damn good too.

--Dave.