Fantasy / Science Fiction book series

[Zurvan]

I was absolutely crushed when I saw that Jordan died. I've been reading the Wheel of Time almost yearly since I was 14. For all its flaws, I've never loved a story that much.

As far as other fantasy goes, Malazan book of the Fallen is fantastic, as is Song of Ice & Fire.

I did not really enjoy the Fionavar Tapestry. Something about it didn't really click with me.

For one I haven't seen mentioned, Tad Williams series Memory, Sorrow & Thorn is pretty good. Otherland was a disappointment for me. Great concept, and a writer I enjoy, but it dragged a lot at the end.

[sharkbitten]

The Sword of Shannara and The Heritage of Shannara series of books by Terry Brooks are some of my favorites after Lord of the Rings. The first book, "The Sword of Shannara" came out in about 1977 and is very good, although there are a large number of parallels to LOTR. The 2 sequels, "The Elfstones of Shannara" and "The Wishsong of Shannara" take place hundresds of years after Sword and are almost stand alone books. The Heritage series (4 books) are more of a traditional series and must be read in order.
All of them are very good. Brooks has a easy style to read and is very good at character development and tells a good yarn.
Brooks has a couple of other series connected to Shannara which I haven't read yet. He also has a prequel out to "The Sword of Shannara" which is pretty good.

Now if only they'd make some movies covering one of the Shannara series, I'd die a happy man. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

David Eddings, who has been mentioned earlier, has a few series out that are quite good.

Another good series is Mary Stewart's "The Crystal Cave" series about Merlin and King Arthur. There's 4 books in the series. The first 3 are excellent(especially the second one, The Hollow Hills), the fourth is meh.
It is told from the first person from the view point of Merlin. It starts from when Merlin was a boy, long before Arthur was born and goes until Arthur is killed by his bastard son in the fourth book of the series.
[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MattS]

Some series that I like and which are still not listed here are

P. J. Farmer -- The World of tiers
P. J. Farmer -- Riverworld
J. V. Jones -- Sword of shadows
J. Vance -- Durdane

[maltaille]

That OOT thread seared my eyeballs. Despite reading at least one sci-fi or fantasy book a week, I must be fundamentally different in some way to most readers of the genre. I think Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, and the like are justifiably the reason fantasy gets a bad rap. Their characters are cliches who would be lucky if they caught a glimpse of an emotional journey in the distance, their plots are clumsy, they have no idea how to use tone or rhythm, and their attempts to wring feeling from the rock of their prose are excruciating to watch. They are why no sci fi author could even get considered for a Pulitzer, despite at least one or two writing just as well as any winner ever has, why publishers are desperate to get their magical realist authors placed in the literary section, and why people are afraid to be seen reading anything with a spaceship on the cover on the bus. But then, I'm the sort of person who can use a phrase like "wring feeling from the rock of their prose" with a straight face.

On the other hand, the same people who appreciate this [censored] also appreciate things that I think are fantastically well done, like The Song of Ice and Fire, and The Black Company.

So, with the caveat that I'm apparently not the true audience for this sort of stuff, but also that I've been reading it for 25 years and have been through a hell of a lot of it, here's a few that I'm either compelled to mention, or haven't received the love they deserve:

Glen Cook, The Black Company: This is really good stuff, though I think it goes downhill towards the end of the series. Cook can write, his characters are believable, they change, they avoid cliches, and you can feel their pain. It's about a mercenary company in a fantasy world who slowly comes to realise that they're working for the bad guys, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. Most of his other old stuff is great too, though I'm not as big a fan of his comic fantasy detective series with the metallic names, and I think his current stuff wouldn't be fit to put in an appendix of the original Black Company books.

George R R Martin, Song of Ice and Fire: This guy is weird. He goes along for 20 years writing very average fantasy, with all the normal problems that plague genre writers, and then he ups and writes what I think is the finest epic fantasy ever produced. Yup, it's better than Tolkien. It's deeper, yet more accessible. It has real characters - most of whom die, fair warning - it's sophisticated in its storytelling techniques (unreliable narrators, multiple points of view, multi-book subplots, conscious use of derivative symbolism, incredible attention to detail without letting it overwhelm the story), and while the pacing is pretty poor, especially in the fourth book, the storytelling is fantastic. My favourite part: by the third book, the character you thought was the bad guy, boasting several qualities you couldn't ever imagine yourself forgiving someone for, is now a quite sympathetic protagonist, without ever having denied any of those things that made you hate him early on. There's a story going round that Martin has said he started this series because he saw what Robert Jordan was writing, and was so disgusted with what the genre had come to. Second fair warning: Martin is an unlikeable person, and he's likely to take six or seven years to finish the series.

Joel Rosenberg, Guardians of the Flame: Also currently a shadow of it's original four books, Rosenberg has described this as his paean to the industrial revolution. It's about a bunch of people from our world (bear with me, this was one of the original series to use what's now an overworked cliche) who set out to eradicate slavery in a fantasy world by making it uneconomic. The series goes over generations, and diverges to make minor characters protagonists in spin offs, but it really starts to lose what made it great when it leaves the original characters. He's also done a few other series that are very readable. I'd never say he's a good writer, but he's a pretty enjoyable one.

Iain M Banks, The Culture: Not really a series, but a bunch of books set in the same universe, in the far, far future when technology has rendered everything from age to governments obsolete, mile-wide sentient computers are the smartest things around, and figuring out what to do with your life is the hardest thing most people will ever do. Great plotting, good characters here and there, and one or two of the sharpest bits of observation you'll find in the genre (no surprise, he also writes literary fiction under the name Iain Banks, most of which is pretty good too). My favourite is Use of Weapons, mostly because of the ending.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash: When people ask me my favourite book, this is one of the three I usually mumble about. It's got at least two of the best characters you will find in any sci-fi novel, observations so trenchant that they hurt, and lines that you will have to read twice to believe how good they are ("... and after that it was just a chase scene."). I have multiple copies of this book just so I can give them to people who want something to read. I love it so much I'm going to force a paragraph from the opening scene on you (chosen because it has no spoilers):

"The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, [censored] happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like bad day, stops on a peseta."

It's a fast-paced enjoyable read with a 20-page scene in the middle discussing Sumerian mythology and how linguistics determine thinking patterns that doesn't slow it down at all. It's a satire on modern consumer culture from someone who is enthusiastic about that culture. It has at least four ultra-cool scenes, without the rest of it being an excuse to set up those scenes. Unfortunately, it also has a pretty poor ending (a common fault for Stephenson), and an unfulfilled demand for a sequel following one of the subsidiary villains. Objectively, I can't give it more than a 8.5 out of 10, but I love it anyway.

Even worse, no matter how much I love Snow Crash, I can't even finish anything Stephenson has written in the last five years. His Baroque cycle, set in a period of history I'm particularly interested in, is turgid, devoid of believable or sympathetic characters, downright stupid in its plotting, and would lose a footrace to the tortoise. His other books range from quite readable (Cryptonomicon) to forgettable (Interface). Breaks my heart to see all that potential go to waste. I'm not sure I actually want a sequel to Snow Crash now.

There's a hundred other authors that deserve a mention, but this is already way too long. Good to hear Loungers appreciating Jack Vance and Steven Erikson and David Gemmel (that's a guilty pleasure) and Guy Gavriel Kay and Richard Morgan and Mary Stewart. No love for Steven Brust, Theodore Sturgeon, Michael Marshall Smith, Robert J Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, or John Steakley? Think I'll go order some Greg Bear short stories now.

[Enrique]

I love the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The original trilogy. I also enjoyed the two prequels. I did not enjoy the two sequels that much (I disliked "Foundation and Earth" and just liked "Foundations Edge")

I would also recommend the complete book of short stories by Asimov. It has a lot of really nice stuff.

I also like Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. It is a sequel to "Ender's Game", but both books are very different. Both very good, but I like "Speaker" more (I think I am in the minority on that though).

Another one not mentioned so far is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. A very funny book.

My favorite science fiction book is Dune by Frank Herbert. I have read the first four Dune books and 1,3 and 4 are great. I think 4 ("God Emperor of Dune") is as good as the first or better.

[DoubleDealDecker]

Two more thumbs up for 'Hitchhiker's Guide' and 'Dune'.

[bogey1]

[ QUOTE ]
Another one not mentioned so far is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. A very funny book.


[/ QUOTE ]

Much as I love his works, I just don't think of them as sci-fi. They're comedy books and the sci-fi setting just happens to work well for the absurd humor. It'd be like calling the Police Academy movies "cop films".

[LeapFrog]

[ QUOTE ]

No love for Steven Brust, Theodore Sturgeon, Michael Marshall Smith, Robert J Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, or John Steakley?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice post.

I am reading Armor (Steakley) now and unfortunately am not too excited about it.

Vinge certainly deserves mention in this thread. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are both excellent. Also, his short story True Names was visionary.

I am not a big Stephenson fan though. Snow Crash, for me, was too flippant at times (see your excerpt). I am more of a dark cyberpunk kind of guy.

[maltaille]

Steer clear of Vampire$ then - most of the bad things about Armor are worse in it. Armor (and Vampire$, to a lesser extent) is one of those books that felt to me like it should be great, but just wasn't quite. It's a pity he never got to do more books, and work out the kinks.

I don't know why Vinge doesn't get more recognition though. Fire and Deepness are classics, and True Names predates Neuromancer or any of Bethke's stuff by at least 2 years (it's now online at http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename.html). Can't say I cared a lot for his most recent novel though, Rainbow's End. Liked the novella when it was Fast Times at Fairmont High, but the change of plot in the transition to novel lost a lot of the charm.

I can't argue when it comes to Snow Crash and flippancy, and I know it bugs a lot of people. I love the way he shifts effortlessly from action to philosophical discussion and back again though, and the flippancy helps to stop it becoming self-important. The way he ends an action scene by dismissing action scenes as so common they're irrelevant is up there with Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman in Raiders for me.

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

Got any recommendations?

[Huckle]

I'll chime in with a couple of series that I don't think get enough credit. Both still being written as well, which might be a bad thing since you'll have to wait for the end.

David Farland - the Runelords
Very well written books, with an idea that I really like where people can give away one attribute like strength to create one fighter with the strength of two (or a thousand). This also leads to a fighter-caste that has to take care of the people since they no longer have the strength to defend themselves. There's also magic based around the four elements that use different kind of spells.
The characters are very well thought out and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Generally great books even if they're a bit predictable like most fantasy.

Eric Van Lustbader - the Pearl saga
Kind of a mix of fantasy and scifi where a technologically advanced alien race takes over a fantasy-like world with magic. Not so much a fight between heroes as it is a book based upon intrigues and cunning. Also very good characters even if the aliens are quite hard to figure out.
The books also kinda bother me when I'm reading them just because the alien language allows for 3 of the same letter in a row and I always think "that's wrong".

I also really like the Hobb series about the Farseers and the Fool, the liveships not so much. And the first four books about the Sword of truth are still among the best I've read, too bad the series became so long.