what's your favourite fantasy/scifi book?

[klar]

I like to ignore the real world occasionally and am looking for suggestions because it's difficult to find the gems among the crap. I enjoy the slightly darker, quirkier stuff set in "modern" worlds, (eg American Gods and other Neil Gaiman books) but don't mind a nice medieval-ish magic/dragons/whatever story either. Not usually a fan of the super long fantasy series with 10+ books, often enjoy the first couple, then most seem to get kind of meh. I grew up on Narnia, His Dark Materials and Lord of the Rings type stuff and am anxiously awaiting the next installment of Song of Ice and Fire. Haven't found a ton of science fiction I enjoyed but willing to try.

books of that sort I recently enjoyed:

Enders' game & sequels & others by Orson Scott Card
Necromancer, william gibson
Wild Cards (anthology edited by george rr martin of Ice and Fire fame, have only managed to find 2 of the books)
Neil Gaiman novels & short stories
Tigana and others by Guy Gavriel Kay
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, Susanna Clarke

ideas?

[Buster Highmen]

Fantasy: most anything by James Branch Cabell. Pretty thick wordplay and philology and there's a ton of interrelated ones:
Figures Of Earth
The Silver Stallion
Jurgen (banned in U.S. 1919) (online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CABELL/contents.htm)
The Cream of the Jest
Something About Eve
Beyond Life (1919) S1, B1. Essentially a non-fiction essay on life and fiction-writing.
The Witch-Woman (1948) B4. Consists of three related books: The Music From Behind the Moon (1926; S4*, B45), The Way of Ecben (1929; S18*, B48), and The White Robe (1928; S18*, B47), plus a new introduction. Not in the Storisende Edition.
Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship (1913 as The Soul of Melicent; revised and retitled 1920) S4*, B5.
Chivalry (1909, revised 1921) S5, B6. The 1909 edition had no references to Manuel.
The Line of Love (1905, revised 1921) S7, B8.
The High Place (1923) S8, B9.
Gallantry (1907, revised 1922) S9, B10. The 1907 edition had no references to Manuel or Jurgen.
The Certain Hour (1916) S11, B12.
The Cords of Vanity (1909, revised 1920) S12, B13.
From the Hidden Way (1916, revised 1924; 1928 as Ballads from the Hidden Way) S13*, B14 (verse).
The Jewel Merchants (1921) S13*, B15 (play).
The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck (1915) S14, B16.
The Eagle's Shadow (1904, revised 1923) S15, B17.
The Cream of the Jest (1917, revised 1922) S16*, B18.
The Lineage of Lichfield, (1922) S16*, B19. A fantastic genealogy of the Biography.
Straws and Prayer-Books (1924) S17, B20. Essays, plus two fantasy stories.
Townsend of Lichfield (1930) S18*, B 21. Essays, published since 1920.
Taboo, (1921) S18*, B44. A thinly veiled fantasy-style recounting of the Jurgen obscenity trial.
Sonnets from Antan (1929) S18*, B49

Not a favorite, but made an impression: Gormengast series by Mervyn Peake; not too cheery.

Anothe edgy one: H.P. Lovecraft; not good bedtime reading.

There's a ton of the South American fantasy genre like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and one of my favorite authors, Jorge Juis Borges.
Then there's cheaper stuff like Castenedas "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", "A Separate Reality"; and "Journey to Ixtlan", again not a favorite, but entertaining.

A Voyage To Arcturus - David Lindsay a classic

Ursula LeGuin's EarthSea Trilogy?

Roald Dahl?

The 13 1/2 LIves of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers is pretty funny.

James Tiptree, Jr was the pseudonym of a Alice Sheldon who wrote a number of good books. Try 'Up the Walls of the World'.

[rideit]

The Bible.
It's EPIC!

[doughboyshredder]

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Over 10,000 pages of epicness.

[klar]

merci beaucoup buster, interesting suggestions, never heard of Cabell. will do some digging.

I've liked some of the shorter books by Marquez, found 100 years of solitude somewhat unwieldy in every language I've tried reading it. something about everyone having the same name? could have been user error too. liked what little borges I've read.


thanks dbs, have come across that but never got round to checking it out. why is the cover "art" on lots of these more standard issue fantasy books so atrocious btw?

[Buster Highmen]

merci beaucoup buster, interesting suggestions, never heard of Cabell. will do some digging.

Cabell was wildly popular in his time and buddies with the literary giants of the time such as H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis. It's a mystery he's fallen from note. Too much electronica oblongata.

I've liked some of the shorter books by Marquez, found 100 years of solitude somewhat unwieldy in every language I've tried reading it. something about everyone having the same name? could have been user error too. liked what little borges I've read.

Get any of the Borges collections like Ficciones or Labyrinths. Amazing.

[Elkhound Odin]

no love for Asimov or Niven? Foundation and Ringworld? no? Herbert with Dune? How about L Ron Hubbard and his epic Mission Earth? Although Dianetics is probably more to Rideit's liking.

[Buster Highmen]

yeah, yeah there's the old warhorses like Heinline, AC Clarke, Jerry Pournelle not to mentoin H.G. Wells. But those guys are the Mozarts. Who're the Telemann and Stravinskys?

[Fuzz]

Sci-fi:
Asimov (especially Foundation)
AC Clarke
Ender's Game
Fallen Dragon - Peter Hamilton (most of his books actually -- huge galaxy-spanning settings)
Joe Haldeman
John Scalzi

Fantasy:
John Connolly (VERY entertaining)
Carlos Ruiz Zafon (fantastic writing)
Paolo Bacigalupi
Kingkiller Chronicles
Simon Green (mainly the Nightside series -- humorous tongue-in-cheek fantasy)

[YoungManofTheMountain]

the dark tower series

[schindlerpiste]

Someone needs to mention Ray Bradbury, and The Martian Chronicles.

[rideit]

How very Thetan of you, Odin.

[XtrPickels]

I'll throw in the "wheel of time" series by Robert Jordan and "Time enough for love" by Robert Heinlan.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using TGR Forums

[rideit]

I'll just eat some windowpane and listen to 2112.

[summit]

Enders Game
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Sent from my TI-89

[JayPowHound]

no love for Asimov or Niven? Foundation and Ringworld? no? Herbert with Dune? How about L Ron Hubbard and his epic Mission Earth? Although Dianetics is probably more to Rideit's liking.

Hubbard is exactly what I thought of when I saw this thread, having read a bunch if his stuff back when I was in high school. I started with Battlefield Earth (the Travolta movie was just insulting) and then worked my way through the Mission Earth series, although at 10 books it may be a bit beyond the OP's limits..

The guy created a whole religion, so clearly the imagination and drive are there... the books I mentioned aren't really all that preachy, and were definitely entertaining reads back when I read them.

[klar]

thanks for the suggestions everyone, looking forward to doing some book shopping. regarding the long series, I like the idea, just haven't found one where book 8 is as interesting as 1 and 2. definitely need to educate myself in the foundation, dune etc area, I know I've been ignoring some classics.

imo preachy books are fine as long as it doesn't interfere too much with the story. the later Ender books (Children of the mind, xenocide) get more and more preachy but are but still entertaining. Thankfully I read Narnia before I ever saw a bible.

Any discworld fans here? I never quite got the appeal.

I recently read something called Malazan Book of the Fallen and skimmed through a few of the many sequels because it's on lots of Best Of Fantasy lists. 200 page long, back to back descriptions of yet another epic battle between the primal forces of good and evil and detailed explanations of what they are wearing does not make a good story

[Ripzalot]

i love the hyperion series by dan simmons. just insanely creative imaginative and epic like LOTR or Dune but much cooler (imho). otherwise, i love David Niven's work. Ringworld, Tales of Known Space. etc. i'm not much into fantasy but i did read this series once and loved it.

Considering how Hubbard fucked up thousands if not millions of people with Scientology, I wouldn't waste a penny on his novels. All the proceeds go to that bogus religion. In fact, I wouldn't read his shit if it were free.

[Fuzz]

For fantasy, the Belgariad trilogy is another good one. Hyperion is fantastic too, but I haven't completed the full series.

The main problem I have with really long fantasy series (e.g. Wheels of Time, Terry Goodkind's stuff) is that they just keep going on and on and on without resolution. At the beginning of each book the characters start out: "If only we had this object X or completed this task Y then we could finally defeat the bad guy forever"; so they do that throughout the book but at the end it turns out that wasn't the case; they need to find yet another thing or complete another task to do it, and on and on we go. Each book/task/quest is built up as THE one that will be the key to winning, only to end otherwise.

[Tippster]

I recently read something called Malazan Book of the Fallen and skimmed through a few of the many sequels because it's on lots of Best Of Fantasy lists. 200 page long, back to back descriptions of yet another epic battle between the primal forces of good and evil and detailed explanations of what they are wearing does not make a good story

Boo. I'm a huge fan. "Gardens of the Moon" is the first book of the "series," so if you read a different one then the author is assuming a prior knowledge of the world and its characters. Ah well, can't please everyone, I guess.

Here are some recommendations:

The Wind-up Girl- Paolo Bacigalupi
Perdido Street Station - China Miéville
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch

Series: The Belgariad and the Malloreon - David Eddings
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - Stephen R. Donaldson

[klar]

The main problem I have with really long fantasy series (e.g. Wheels of Time, Terry Goodkind's stuff) is that they just keep going on and on and on without resolution. At the beginning of each book the characters start out: "If only we had this object X or completed this task Y then we could finally defeat the bad guy forever"; so they do that throughout the book but at the end it turns out that wasn't the case; they need to find yet another thing or complete another task to do it, and on and on we go. Each book/task/quest is built up as THE one that will be the key to winning, only to end otherwise.

I agree. At some point it usually gets repetitive. The few series that avoid this are often very good, but you get more cliffhangers between books.

Boo. I'm a huge fan. "Gardens of the Moon" is the first book of the "series," so if you read a different one then the author is assuming a prior knowledge of the world and its characters. Ah well, can't please everyone, I guess.

Interesting, what makes it special for you? Pretty sure I did read the first book first and liked it enough to check out some of the others. It's obviously a huge, impressive feat of imagination to come up with such a detailed, complicated world, I just never really came to care about the characters very much for some reason and had a hard time keeping up with what seemed like millions of weird subplots. I would have preferred some more detail about the most important parts of the story and a focus on fewer characters instead. And I do think it's kind of heavy on the battlescenes.

To me it seems like Game of Thrones and sequels are the current gold standard to measure this kind of complex, multi character epic fantasy against...

[Tippster]

He invented the world with a friend of his for a role-playing game, so there is lotsa war and battles in all the books... if that's what bothered you then stay away. By now (I still have 2 books to go) I'm so invested in the series' world(s) and characters that I really enjoy the longish flights into thought processes that he spends time on. It's not a linear series by any means.

Besides which, Quick Ben and Kalam Mekhar may be two of the baddest ass characters I've ever encountered.

Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is my favorite as well, followed by the Malazan Book of the Fallen and Jordan's The Wheel of Time.

[systemoverblow'd]

These lists are going to keep me busy for a while!

[PNWbrit]

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

end of thread.

[spindrift]

Not sure how to pick a favorite. Lots of good ones above (and some I need to look at). A few lesser discussed ones:

Silverlock
The Truth Machine
Beggars in Spain

All are a cut above.