Cool, let us know what you think.
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I mainly just lurk this thread, but it's genuinely one of my favorites. Keep up the great work in here.
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Just looked up the author. Interesting guy. Going to take a look at this one. Thanks.
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Nice! So what do you think of Wolfe? Urth could get a little "out there" at times but I ended up liking it as much as NS.
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I very much like Wolfe, will look for more of his to read going forward. I liked Urth. I wasn't as carried by it as I was by NS but I didn't feel like I was supposed to be. It felt like what it was: a follow up to the main story. Part of it got a little nebulous for me ( no pun intended) but it was good stuff. I'm happy you recommended it.
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Always happy to recommend Wolfe. I think he's one of those authors everyone should try at least once. Fifth Head of Cerberus is good short read. The rest of the Solar Cycle is great, too. Soldier of the Mist and its sequels are also great. Follows a Roman mercenary fighting for the Persians. He suffers a head injury and has major problems with memory loss. He may or may not be able to communicate with the Greek gods.

I'm still dual reading Musashi by Endo and Mason & Dixon by Pynchon. Haven't been able to read as much as I hoped so far this summer. Back to Malazan when I'm done with those.
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Yikes :-)
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It's popcorn scifi. Not too deep but a pretty good read for what it is.
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Here are some that have not already been mentioned

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester - considered by many to be the finest SF book ever written. Ostensibly about teleportation, it also touches on such minor topics as revenge, betrayal, love, hate, class warfare, and transcendence.

Rite Of Passage by Alexi Panshin - Nebula award winning novel. A fast, enjoyable read.

Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg - First in a trilogy. The other two books, The Majipoor Chronicles and Valentine Pontifex, are also good, if not quite up to the quality of the first book.

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson - an intriguing time-travel story.

The Man In The Tree by Damon Knight - the story of a pituitary giant who has other talents besides sheer size. Knight's novella "Natural State" is also worth a read.

Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney - the plot itself is just OK, but the characters that populate the book are what makes it special.

Voyage From Yesteryear by James Hogan - a story about Earth's first colony in the Alpha Centauri system.


Fun books

The Practice Effect by David Brin - explores what happens when one of the fundamental laws of physics works differently.

The Flying Sorcerers by Larry Niven and David Gerrod - the title might make you think fantasy, but this one is SF.

Dimension Of Miracles by Robert Scheckley - something like Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide, but better.

Glory Road by Robert Heinlein - swords and sorcery in the hands of an SF grandmaster.


Other authors I didn't see mentioned

Keith Laumer: The Retief books/collections are outstanding. Mostly short stories, but Retief's War and Retief's Ransom are two novel-length books I return to every now and then. If you like the Retief stuff you might also like Poul Anderson's stories about Ensign Flandry.

Gordon Dickson: The Alien Way - a well-constructed first-contact story. Dickson wrote a lot of good military-themed short stories, as well.
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:-) The guy is a little nuts but I love him. Mason & Dixon feels a little more accessible than some of his other work, too. Once you get used to the old timey language, anyway.
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You're a better/more persistent reader than I am.
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It's not all that frequent that I come across more than a word or two with which I am not familiar while reading but boy does Wolfe change all that.

I'm back in Malazaan now. Gonna' finish 'em off now. I think.
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Still slowly making my way through the massive 13 volume Theodore Sturgeon collection. I've read 4 volumes so far.


Vol. 03:
"Memorial" is ok at best.
"KILLDOZER!" is an awsome title, but I didn't dig the story.

Vol. 07:
"A Saucer of Loneliness" is good.

Vol. 10:
"The Man Who Lost the Sea" is great.
"The Graveyard Reader" is good. Not SF.
"The Man Who Figured Everything" would have made a good 50s western. Not SF.
"Like Young" is pretty good.
"How to Kill Aunty" is ok. Not SF.


Vol. 12:

"Slow Sculpture" is good but the SF element seems superflous.
"The Girl Who Knew What They Meant" is good. Not SF.
"Crate" is ok. Ending a bit predictable.



I also read The Cauldron by Jean Rabe and Gene DeWeese. Not good. DeWeese wrote a pretty good Star Trek book called Engines of Destiny back in 05 and I was curious about his other stuff.

Started Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay but quickly grew bored with it.

I also read:

Country of the Kind by Damon Knight
That Only a Mother by Judith Merril
Garden of Time by J.G. Ballard
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Reading this now:




It's the story of an astronaut who starves to death while waiting for his idiot friend to figure out how shovels work.

Not really.


Actually it's sort of a sci-fi procedural. Think CSI: The Moon. Astronauts find a human skeleton on the moon. A 50,000 year old skeleton. The book is basically scientists sciencing the hell out of the corpse to unravel the mystery.
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I am slowly making my way through a collection of Hugo award nominated short stories. Some are good, most are not.


The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester and Cassandra by C. J. Cherryh are two pretty good stories that I had never read before.
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