Fantasy / Science Fiction book series

[LeapFrog]

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If you like your cyberpunk dark, have you read any Michael Marshall Smith? Much of his stuff is sort of a cross between horror and cyberpunk (his short story More Tomorrow, while not strictly cyberpunk, is one of the two stories I've ever read that have creeped me out). Spares is probably the most cyberpunky of his novels.


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Haven't read any of his work, took a quick peek at amazon and I think I will have to give him a try. Thank you for the suggestion.

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Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind? His short story Video Star, from Facets, is about as dark as cyberpunk gets.


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Read Hardwired, pretty decent though not A material imo. As for Voice of the Whirlwind, this is really weird:

After reading Hardwired I was trying to get a copy of VOTW off of amazon. Apparently now they have a July 2007 reprinting, but I think it was out of print when I was looking. I have some very very vague memory of ordering it from a seller, getting the book (remember the cover), but I don't remember reading it.

Things like this do not normally happen to me, very strange. Not sure if I should pull on this thread, it may all come apart! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Anyway I will have to check it out.

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Of the more recent crew, Richard Morgan seems the grimmest, though I think he's also the one who, umm, follows the archetypes most closely.


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Read all the Kovacs novels and enjoyed them. I briefly mentioned them upthread.

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Got any recommendations?


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I will try to think of some and get back to you. I'm guessing you are far more well read in the subgenre then I am though (and probably sf in general).

[AceLuby]

Dan Simmons

I love this author for sci fi and horror. Steven King has said he is the best sci-fi/horror writer he's ever read.

Good books I've read by him are:

Carrion Comfort
Invisible Man
Hyperion series

I love the way this guy writes.

[LeapFrog]

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Dan Simmons

I love this author for sci fi and horror. Steven King has said he is the best sci-fi/horror writer he's ever read.



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I read the Hyperion series back in the day but haven't read anything else by Simmons. I was checking out some of his other works on Amazon when I saw the synopsis quoted below. LOL, I can see why King likes him [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Summer of Night
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Night-Aspec...1593&sr=8-5
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A monstrous, timeless entity is devouring children. Adults either refuse to understand what is happening, or are themselves agents for the monster. A group of young boys, in uneasy partnership with an outcast girl, realize they must kill the creature before it devours them all


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[Duke]

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Dan Simmons

I love this author for sci fi and horror. Steven King has said he is the best sci-fi/horror writer he's ever read.



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I read the Hyperion series back in the day but haven't read anything else by Simmons. I was checking out some of his other works on Amazon when I saw the synopsis quoted below. LOL, I can see why King likes him [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Summer of Night
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Night-Aspec...1593&sr=8-5
[ QUOTE ]

A monstrous, timeless entity is devouring children. Adults either refuse to understand what is happening, or are themselves agents for the monster. A group of young boys, in uneasy partnership with an outcast girl, realize they must kill the creature before it devours them all


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beep beep richie

[Glo]

Fine, I'm gonna add Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weiss with the Chronicles Trilogy (and then some). Dragon Lance, reads ALOT like LOTR but with not as much darkness.

More a fun, almost comical read.

I fell in love with the characters.

[AceLuby]

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Fine, I'm gonna add Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weiss with the Chronicles Trilogy (and then some). Dragon Lance, reads ALOT like LOTR but with not as much darkness.

More a fun, almost comical read.

I fell in love with the characters.

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First fantasy books I read. Very good, but the writing is defenitely geared towards younger readers.

[sharkbitten]

Any love out there for "Harry Potter"? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I haven't read any of them, but I have heard they are really quite good, even for adults.
My college aged nieces love them, and my sister, who just turned 50, loves them too.

My sister has turned me on to so many fantasy books over the years, including David Eddings, Mary Stewart, Tolkien, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[bogey1]

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Any love out there for "Harry Potter"? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Yes and no. As it stands, this thread will eventually contain every series ever written simply because someone liked it once. Hell, the first Gor book really wasn't all that bad.

For purposes of a thread like this though, I try to distinguish between just good vs downright incredible though.

There are several "guilty pleasure" series I've read in the past. Light brain candy. Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books are like that. But good writing? Naw, average. The Harry Potter books, IMO, really aren't very good writing at all. It's immature, stilted in places, and progresses in fits and starts. It's a COOL story though overall and that's enough for me to have read most of them.

That's one reason RR. Martin and Gemmel stand out for me as their writing is just so sharp. I feel more like I'm involved than just reading, where-as something like Harry Potter I feel a disconnect from the content even though the content is interesting.

That all probably just sounds snobbish though. Trying to put to words the difference between being captivated by a book vs just enjoying a read.

It also partly depends on what you like in a book. I love deep characters and consequently my favorite book authors are very heavy on character: RR. Martin, Gemmel, McCaffrey, Butcher, Julian May, etc.

Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a great book...supposedly, but I had to drag myself through it. Good writing, excellent, but it was more about the concept and less about the characters and so I never was fully engaged. Asimov does that to me as well. His Foundation books are great, but characters are often means to plot advancement rather than the plot revolving around deep characters.

[Glo]

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Fine, I'm gonna add Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weiss with the Chronicles Trilogy (and then some). Dragon Lance, reads ALOT like LOTR but with not as much darkness.

More a fun, almost comical read.

I fell in love with the characters.

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First fantasy books I read. Very good, but the writing is defenitely geared towards younger readers.

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So true, I read these when I was a teenager and absolutely fell in love with it. What's hilarious is that they've gone and redid the books for young readers, which is completely unnessisary.

[Ser William]

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A perhaps lesser known series is Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Probably the best fantasy I've read in later years.

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I'm currently reading "Memories of Ice" from this series and I'd like to say that it is a very well written, elaborately detailed series. However, for those who have read the books, I have a major problem with it right now. Basically all the characters in the book so far are amped way up on the power level scale. There are no "normal" people. Everyone is an uber sorcerer, or a god, or ascending, or undead, or ridiculously powerful. I'm finding it hard to relate on any level because I almost never feel like the protaganists are ever in real danger. "Oh, a horde of demons descends upon them, good thing the army of 1000 undead 3 million year old warriors are here to save the day." In George RR Martin's world you feel that the next page could be the last for any character you like. In Erikson's books I'm just reading for the sheer majesty of the prose and the world he has created right now.