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What's the best science fiction book you've ever read?

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DrLazy

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I just finished Enders Game. Pretty good. My favorite is still 1984. I'm looking for a new book if anybody has reccomendations
 
Gaborn said:
Stranger in a Strange Land. You will grok in fullness and drink deeply in it's wisdom.
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i came here to post this. it's the best.

though 2001 rubs my scientific bones in ways that few books can.
 
Speaker for the Dead, probably. Dune is...decent, but I find it a bit overrated.

Star Maker is....something else. Its poorly paced, sometimes difficult to follow, doesn't really have any characterization or more then a vague plot....but its wholly unique, and incredibly ambitious.
 
Probably Dune, shame Herbert never wrote another good book in his life.

Asimov never had a book as brilliant but his work on the whole is vastly superior, I highly recommend checking out pretty much everything he did.
 
I'm a fan of Carl Sagan's "Contact". As is often the case, it is waaaay better than the movie that has a cheezy-illogical shoe-horned in love story.
 
I'm not sure if I would call it the best, but Starship Troopers followed up by reading the Forever War is a probably a real good point/counter point sequence of Science Fiction works and both are masterpieces in their own rights (though one feels really dated now)...
 
Tobor said:
The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov.

Closely followed by Dune.
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Technically it's a quintilogy plus a prequel, or are you one of those people for whom the other books don't exist?
 
Hmmmm....
Dune (just the first)
Childhood's End
Hyperion
Foundation

Not sure of the order. Dune I guess as a single book - Hyperion (1) has some imagery that is still stuck in my head. Childhood's end....just the way it unfurls. Foundation...it is a real other world.
 
Do androids dream of electric sheep
1984
Foundation
I also read Ender's game and I liked it a lot. Read the follow-up. It's different but I enjoyed it.
Dune
Forever War ( Read like Nam in sapce lol )
 
speculawyer said:
I'm a fan of Carl Sagan's "Contact". As is often the case, it is waaaay better than the movie that has a cheezy-illogical shoe-horned in love story.
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you should nab the audiobook read by jodie foster. it's superb.
 
The best science fiction book I have read is probably The Book of the New Sun. I tend to read a lot more from the fantasy side of the science fiction / fantasy continuum, though.
 
foundation.jpg
 
Sharp said:
They aren't really that bad. Nothing like what Douglas Adams did to the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Or what Herbert did to Dune for that matter.
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They're not good, and the story already had a great ending. Better to read the three and move on.
 
God Emperor of Dune
200px-GodEmperorofDune.jpg


Dune
dune_frank_herbert.jpg


Forever War
ForeverWarcover.jpg


The Stars my Destination (aka Tiger Tiger)
starsmydestination.jpg


Enders game was also pretty good.
 
DrLazy said:
I just finished Enders Game. Pretty good.
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Stop there. I just finished reading Children of the Mind a few days ago. Each Ender sequel is worse than the book before it.
 
B.K. said:
Stop there. I just finished reading Children of the Mind a few days ago. Each Ender sequel is worse than the book before it.
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This too. Science fiction authors need to learn restraint.
 
icarus-daedelus said:
Sure, why not.

Better than Ender's Game, at the very least!
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Disagreed. I honestly think it was one of Le Guin's weakest books, and that's including the later Earthsea novels.
 
i_am_ben said:
Just finished reading this. Thought it was awful in almost every way.
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I liked it's purity and focus. It was interesting and fast paced.
The others I listed are more deep thinking marvels though I agree.
 
Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy* (Foundation, Foundation & Empire, Second Foundation).

Man, what an awesome story. At the time, I was in college and I still remember that I was so captivated by the story that everyday I was until 5:00am reading, repeating to myself "Ok, last chapter, I need to sleep to be able to wake up at 7:00am" yet I failed again and again cause every damn chapter was even more fantastic than the previous one. You can bet I didn't pay too much attention in class during those days LOL.

* No, I'm not among those who think the other books don't belong to the story or some bs like that, in fact, I consider them great too, but none of them (except for Prelude to Foundation) are at the same level of fabulantastic quality, IMO.
 
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