Reddit mentions: The best science fiction books

I take it from Harry Potter and Divergent he likes strong, morally-white protagonists on journeys to save the world. I don't know his exact reading level or interests, so I will make the following suggestions by category. I ranked books in each category by difficulty.

 

Teen Fantasy:

 

Dealing with Dragons: Funny, easy to read, dragons, magic, and sarcasm.

The Lioness Series, Immortal Series, or The Magic Circle Series: Strong female leads and interesting to read with great stories (Think Mulan). My brother loved them.

Artemis Fowl: Strong, morally ambiguous but ultimately altruistic, sarcastic, and smart protagonist against the world.

User Unfriendly: Dudes get sucked into a video/rpg and try to get out without dying. Like Tron, but less sci-fi and more fantasy.

Halo: One of my brothers who HATES reading -- or at least is incredibly picky actually stayed up all night to finish four of Halo books. He also really likes the games. I don't know which one is the first or the best but this one had the best reviews. I dunno if it is dark either -- I haven't read it :'(.

The Dark Elf Trilogy: Darker than anything else I have on here (or can be) hero vs world type fantasy. Drizzit = my brothers' hero growing up. Kinda WOW-esque? Having played both, I understand how much of WOW is inspired by DnD. I personally didn't like this.

Redwall: Harder to read, talking animals save the world from other talking animals. I personally hated this series, but my brothers read every single book in the series at the time.

 


Adult Fantasy:

 

Magician: Magic, totally badass protagonist, BORING first couple chapters, but ultimately the most OP hero I have ever read. Amazing, truly amazing. I think it is two-three books in the first series.

Harper Hall: Dragons, music, strong, but lost protagonist. Deals with sexism and gender biased. The other books in the cycle range from sci-fi to political fantasy.

Dragonbone Chair: Strong, badass hero vs a dragon. What happens? He becomes more badass. It is a lighter verison of LOTR/Sword of Shanara (which is probably too much politics/genetics/enviromental commentary -- generally boring-- for him right now) --

An even lighter alternative, more teen book is Eragon. That being said, I absolutely DETESTED these books. I don't care if he was 16, he didn't coming up with any of his own material. But -- a lot of people really like it, so your brother might!

 

Sci-fi:

 

Ender's game: Amazing ending, especially if he likes videogames. I haven't seen the movie, but my Dad said it was "loosely inspired" from the book. All I know is the book was world-changing. It has some legitimately dark points (like gouging out a giants eye or drowning puppies).

Johnny Maxwell Trilogy: This dude is cool. I didn't know until I linked it that it is hard to get a copy >.<.

Dune: This, like LOTR, is VERY political and can be very easily boring. It might also be too adult or hard for him. There is mental illness and just crazy people in the later books.

 

Mature Humor:

 

He should be ready for some British humor, which is a little more mature than American humor (sorry) and much more sarcastic. You also have to be in the mood for it, especially if you aren't expecting it.

Sourcery: Really, really funny.

Hitchhiker's Guide: Also funny.

Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold: American. Funny take on fantasy books.

 

I kept away from darker books where the protagonist is morally grey (Artemis fowl and Drizzit being exceptions -- though they are both still definitely heros), sex, questionable themes, or general mental derangement.

I also stayed away from more modern books, which I have read a lot of if you would like recommendations for those instead. I read a lot in general, so if you have a questions about a book in particular, I can try to help.

Edit: Links

Well my favorite author of all time is Isaac Asimov. He tends to write in a very direct way without flowery language, which I appreciate. Anything he writes is fantastic, but some specific starting points:
The Foundation Series is probably his best work.
I, Robot is probably his most famous work because of the film which has LITERALLY NOTHING in common with the book. It is very good and a great way to see Asimov's approach to robotics (a term he coined, by the way; he is credited with first usage of the word 'robotics', which is now a fricken major at most universities)
Nightfall is an amazing short-story-turned-novel. Read the short story version, it is better.
He also wrote [The Galactic Empire series] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Empire_(series)) and the Robot series which tie in to the same universe as the Foundation series, they're all good as well, but I'd probably focus on the Foundation series first and see if you like how that goes

Other great authors of golden age sci-fi include Robert A. Heinlein, and from him I recommend The Past Through Tomorrow a collection of his short stories. Fun fact: the secret service raided Heinlein's apartment and interrogated him on how he has written such an accurate description of multi-stage rockets, as those were currently not public knowledge and highly classified. They were convinced he was a spy or was being fed information from a spy. He was really just a very good writer. He is most famous for Starship Troopers because of the movie of the same name. The thing with Heinlein is that later in life he became a dirty old man, and his writing reflects that. Evidence is Stranger in a Strange Land which is a very good novel, but there is a lot of describing the female form in it, and quite a bit about humanity's attitude toward sex. A very good book and I recommend it, but he was clearly becoming a bit of a lecherous old fart.

Leaving the golden age for a moment, we enter the 'New Wave science fiction' where I'd have to recommend the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. And later Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (a fantastic book despite controversy surrounding the author). Currently I'm reading the Spinward Fringe series by Randolph Lalonde which is recent enough it doesn't have a wikipedia entry, and is not yet finished.

For a brief overview of the author's comparative styles; Asimov is very cerebral, his books don't contain much, if any, action and are mostly about exploring interesting concepts in a brilliant way. Heinlein was focused on the near-er or alternate versions of the future and had a little more action than Asimov tended to include. Larry Niven is renowned for being a very technically accurate writer and some physics professors have actually used his science fiction books to teach in class (he explores the concept of the dyson sphere and applies it in a real-world situation). Card is a mixture of action and psychology, a very deep book with a decent amount of action. Lalonde's series is very action oriented, but he creates a complex galactic community and small innovative details that make the series interesting. There are so many more I want to recommend, but I think I'll leave you with just the 6 paragraphs, lest I get too wordy -_-

Fellow fan of series here! Let me see...

Young Adult
Percy Jackson series is fun (and finished, too, I think).
Artemis Fowl series isn't quite as good as Percy Jackson IMHO, but it's got a following.

Fantasy
Harry Dresden series This is one of my favorites. Harry is Chicago's only professional wizard. There are a ton of these books and they are still going strong.
Game of Thrones These are great...but unfinished. If you watch the show, reading the books does help you get even more out of the story, I think.
Wheel of Time Another good series. There is a LOT of this series and it's finished. (Thank you, Brandon Sanderson!)
Mistborn Speaking of Brandon Sanderson... This one is very good. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn books before trying the Stormlight Archive, but only because as good as Mistborn is, Stormlight Archive is even better.
Stormlight Archive Amazing. Man, these are good. The series isn't finished, but the two books that are available are some of my favorites ever.
Kingkiller Chronicles I loved the first book. I could not freakin' believe I enjoyed the second one even more. The third one is still pending.
Temeraire Dragons in Napoleonic times. Super cool premise! This one is not finished (I don't think, anyway).
Gentlemen Bastards Con men in a fantasy realm. It's pretty light on the fantasy elements. Very light, I'd say. I'd also say that it has some of the very best swearing that I've ever come across. :D

Scifi
Old Man's War I'm almost finished this one--it's amazing!

Horror/Thriller
Passage Trilogy I've heard these described as vampire books...maybe zombie books... It's apocalyptic for sure. Great books!

Mysteries
Amelia Peabody Egyptology + murder mysteries. Super fun, but trust me...go with the audiobooks for these. They are best when they are performed.
Stephanie Plum Total popcorn reads. If that's your thing, shut off your brain and just enjoy.
Walt Longmire These get particularly good as it goes along. The main character is a sheriff in modern day Wyoming. (Side note: The TV show is also great--just don't expect them to stick to the books.)

Graphic Novels (Everything recommended can be gotten in a "book" format instead of only in comic form, in case that matters. I've gotten most of these from my local library.)
Locke & Key Eerie as crap. Love the art! This one is on-going.
Y: The Last Man All the men on the planet drop dead in a day...except for Yorrick. REALLY good. This is the series that got me reading graphic novels. Plus, it's finished!
Walking Dead I am not a zombie fan...but I like these. They're not done, but I've read up through volume 22 and am still enjoying them.

Other
OutlanderI have no idea how to categorize these or even give a description that does them justice. I refused to pick it up for AGES because it sounded like a bodice-ripper romance and that's not my bag. But these are good!

I hope there's something in there that'll do for you. Have fun and read on!

Edit: Apparently, I need to practice formatting. :/
Edit 2: I forgot to add the Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards #1).

Aw! <3

Like, what books I'd recommend, or just....stuff to do underway that would be in the self-improvement area? The big two that jump out as underway activities are always "save money, and work out."

What platform are you floating on?

So the first thing I do with all my proteges is I hand them the grading sheet for Sailor of the Year/Quarter and a blank evaluation, and I ask them to grade themselves. Not everyone wants to be, or needs to be, Sailor of the Year or a 5.0 sailor, but if that's the standard the Navy has set as "the best," then at least we have a guideline of what we should be working toward, right?

One thing that was pretty big at my last command was the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. Instruction here. One thing that is a really easy way to gain community service hours while underway is to make blankets for the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society's "Budgeting For Baby" class. You can crochet (that's incredibly easy, I promise) or you can google one of the thousand DIY no-sew blanket tutorials. If you belong to a Bluejacket Association or Enlisted Association or whatever, you may be able to get them to fund the cost of buying the material...or even ask the FCPOA if they'll give $50 to the cause. You can head over to Jo-Ann's or Fabric.com and check out their discount sections too. NMCRS offers 30 hours per blanket. Taking an hour out of your Holiday Routine for the entire float.....most of the DIY no-sew blankets only take an hour or two to make, sooooo. Collect those hours. Add in a COMREL or two, and there's no reason you can't end a float with over a hundred hours of community service. This is particularly great if you have a friend or two to make blankets with you....snag one of the TVs on the messdecks and watch a movie while you crochet. You can also contact a local homeless shelter and see if they need hats and crochet hats for them. Obviously not a good suggestion if you're stuck underway on a submarine with no space, but if you're surface side--good to go.

Books I'd suggest, well, hm, this could get out of control pretty fast, but off the top of my head:

• Personality Plus by Florence Littauer or her work specific version
  
  
• Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
  
  
• It's Your Ship by Capt Abrashoff
  
  
• Starship Troopers
  
  
• Ender's Game (Ender and Starship are obviously straight scifi but there are some really awesome leadership principles/concepts/ideas that are worth mulling over. They've both been on past CNO's recommended reading lists too....and they're just fun to read.)
  
  
• For money, while, like, 99% of his stuff is "Duh!" I can't discount the practical steps he outlines, so Dave Ramsey's books, particularly Financial Peace is worth reading. His whole book is basically the wiki in r/personalfinance, but if you're wondering how to get your finances straight I recommend picking up this book. Just, in general. Good basic information and a starting point. Not saying you need it, but "saving money" just happens underway by virtue being trapped out on the ocean =)
  
  
• Leaders Eat Last

I loved to read. I started reading the BoxCar Children on the bus every day. Then I found the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and some other obscure mystery books in the basement of the same caliber (e.g. bad). I kept reading everything I could find, until Highschool.

I too went to a "demanding" school. I stopped reading for fun, and would occasionally skip books for english class, too. Luckily, only one of my teachers in 4 years was a very pro-feminist (she was actually bi) , and then off to college... I pretty much stopped reading entirely, but unlike you I wasn't dissuaded by feminist nazi's.

Then I got a concussion. Let me tell you about concussions: They manage to turn the most basic thing like telling time into a chore, while other more complex things like driving remain unaffected. Anyway, I got a concussion, and the mental effort to read an hour for class would send me to bed exhausted.

The best books would take me a week or more to read through, and this is without school or work to slow me down.

What I found worked for me was to find something simple that I remember liking, and I would try to get through that. My goal was to re-teach my brain how to read.

• Pick up something on an elementary school reading level
  
• Find something you remember liking (so you'll be re-reading it)
  
• Try to find something short
  
  Your goal is to sit down and enjoy it in 1, maybe 2 settings. Find a free weekend, ask your girlfriend not to disturb you, and start reading. When I tried to start reading again, my routine included an energy drink to keep me awake and focused.
  
  Your goals are 3-fold:
  
  
• Re-experience the joy of discovering a story. TV feeds the story to you, re-learn how exciting it is when you become that character
  
• Make it easy: Think psychologically, you don't want to re-enforce your behavior (reading) by making it difficult, that'll never work.
  
• Instant gratification. By finishing the book in 1-2 sittings, you receive instant gratification for starting to read, as opposed to starting it and waiting a month or more to receive the gratification of finishing it.
  
  If you can read a news article about your favorite video game, you can read, and this is probably more mental than anything else. If that's the case, remember it can take up to 3 months to break a habit because it takes 3 months for your brain to "re-arrange itself" (lets not get into neuroscience right now!). Likewise, even if you start reading now, it may take 3 months before you notice any change, because it'll take your brain that long to "re-arrange itself" to enjoy reading. So try to read a book a week, for 3 months, until you can get somewhere.
  
  Also, it doesn't matter if you miss a sentence, or even an entire paragraph. You're not trying to read everything, you just want to have fun!
  
  It's back to school season. Go into your local Barnes & Noble, and ask for someone that works in the kids department. They can recommend good books, or just see what the local schools have for required reading. Generally, there's some good books on their lists (Gary Paulsen, Louis Sachar, etc)
  
  Lastly, some good books I would look at reading, in order of difficulty:
  
  
• Invitation to The Game
  
• The Transall Saga
  
• Hatchet
  
• Holes
  
• The Boxcar Children or Hardy Boys
  
• Sabriel (female protagonist, but one of my favorite books of all time)
  
• Enders game
  

I've just finished The Windup Girl, which I had been putting off for some time. It was, quite simply, the most astounding and breath-taking science fiction book I've ever read. I loved it.

However, my problem is that I buy books compulsively. Mostly hard copies, but recently I bought a Kindle and buy the odd e-book or two. I have literally hundreds of books on my "to read" list.

One near the top is A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. I recently read her phenomenal Wolf Hall and was blown away by her skills as a story teller. I'm a bit of an armchair historian, and I'm particularly interested in the French Revolution (amongst other things), so I'm very excited by the prospects this book holds. If it's anything like Wolf Hall then I'm in for a very particular treat.

Also near the top lies Quantum - Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar's much lauded recent history of the emergence of quantum mechanics. I very much enjoyed other tangentially related books on this topic, including the wonderful The Making of the Atomic Bomb and The Fly in the Cathedral, so this should be good fun and educational to boot.

Having read and loved Everitt's biography of Cicero, I'm very much looking forward to his biographies of Augustus and Hadrian.

I'm listening to an audio-book version of The Count of Monte Cristo on my iPod, which I find rather enjoyable. I've only got through the first half dozen chapters and it's already taken a few hours, so this looks to be a nice, long-term and periodic treat for when I have time alone in the car.

Cronin's The Passage keeps piquing my interest, but I was foolish enough to buy it in that lamentable format, the much cursed "trade paperback", so the thing is a behemoth. The size puts me off. I wish I had waited for a regular paper-back edition. As it is, it sits there on my bookshelf, flanked by the collected works of Alan Furst (what a wonderfully evocative writer of WWII espionage!!) and a bunch of much recommended, but as yet unread, fantasy including The Darkness that Comes Before by Bakker, The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss and Physiognomy by Ford.

Books I have ordered and am eagerly awaiting, and which shall go straight to the top of the TBR list (no doubt to be replaced by next month's purchases) include Orlando Figes's highly regarded history of The Crimean War, Rosen's history of steam The Most Powerful Idea in the World and Stacy Schiff's contentious biography of Cleopatra.

A bit of a mixed bunch, all up, I'd say.

Can I give you a list? Imma give you a list with a little from each category. I LOVE books and posts like this!

Non-fiction or Books About Things:

The Lost City of Z: In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century. Cumberbatch will play him in the movie version of this.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: Hilariously gross and just super interesting. Her writing is like a non-fiction Terry Pratchett. Everything she's written is great, but this one is my favorite.

Devil in the White City: All about HH Holmes and his murder hotel during the Chicago World's Fair. Incredibly well-written and interesting.

The Outlaw Trail: Written in 1920 by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park (aka, the area around Robber's Roost). He went around interviewing the guys who were still alive from the original Wild Bunch, plus some of the other outlaws that were active during that time. Never read anything else with actual interviews from these guys and it's a little slice of life from the end of the Wild West.

Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi:

Here I'm only going to give you the less known stuff. You can find Sanderson (light epic fantasy), Pratchett (humor / satire fantasy), Adams (humor fantasy), etc easily in any bookstore. They are fantastic and should be read, but they are easy to find. I suggest:

The Cloud Roads: Martha Wells is an anthropologist and it shows in her world building in every series. She creates societies instead of landscapes. These are very character-driven and sometimes emotional.

The Lion of Senet: Jennifer Fallon starts a great political thriller series with this book. If you like shows like House of Cards or things where there's a lot of political plotting, sudden twists, and a dash of science v. religion, then you'll love these.

The Book of Joby: Do you want to cry? This book will make you cry. Mix arthurian legend with some God & Devil archetypes and it's just this very powerful story. Even though it deals with religious themes and icons, I wouldn't say it's a religious book. Reads more like mythology.

On Basilisk Station: Awesome military space opera. Really good sci-fi.

Grimspace: Pulpy space opera. Brain bubble gum instead of serious reading. But that's fun sometimes too!

xD ok this will be a long message bear with me.

1. Is there a synopsis of each story available?
   
   Yes! Every serial I write has a home page, and every home page has:
   
   

• Links to every part that is released
  
  
• A brief 'blurb' for the series, normally what I'd put on the back of the hardcopy :)
  
  
• Links to any artwork I've been sent or purchased of the series
  
  
• Links to any other media, like audio files or videos
  
  For my serials, the home pages are as follows:
  
  Flameweaver Saga
  
  Halfway to Home
  
  
  

2. I want to read other stuff
   
   From a quick browse-through of your comments I didn't see you crossing paths with any other serial authors - If you haven't read any of his stuff, I highly, highly recommend /u/Hydrael's work, over at /r/Hydrael_Writes! His Dragon's Scion and Small Worlds projects are exceptional! Small worlds is also published on Amazon!
   
   
3. I want to read traditional novels
   
   I can help with that! Some quick recommendations that I personally love - these are loosely ranked in order of how I'd recommend them, but the fact that they're here at all means they've got my support :)
   
   Fantasy novels:
   
   The October Daye series:
   
   

• Urban fantasy
  
  
• Awesome worldbuilding
  
  
• Is where I learned how to write twists, and where I picked up my penchant for chekov's guns
  
  Trickster's Choice/Trickster's Queen
  
  
• Traditional fantasy
  
  
• Wonderful politics and intrigue
  
  
• Influenced how gods are handled in Flameweaver
  
  
• Both written easily enough for young readers to understand, and complex enough for adults to enjoy
  
  Graceling
  
  
• Traditional fantasy
  
  
• A bit more well-known, but a surprisingly solid upper-YA read. Kind of a guilty pleasure book of mine haha
  
  Scifi Novels:
  
  Agent to the Stars and Old Man's War
  
  
• John Scalzi is the author I modeled my own writing style after. So if you like my style, you might like his too.
  
  
• Darkly humerous. Realistic and gritty, without being overpoweringly grim.
  
  
• Wickedly sarcastic
  
  The Ender Quartet
  
  
• A bit wordier/harder to read, after Ender's Game. The last book (Children of the Mind) is probably one of the most challenging books I've ever read. But rewarding.
  
  
• Long-running, intricate plotline
  
  The Ship Series
  
  
• Indie series I happened across a few years ago
  
  
• Upper YA. Younger characters, but dark content
  
  
• Well-written, relatable characters

I think the best way is to suggest a few that got me into reading. One or two are YA, but well-written enough that I find it as worthwhile a read at 28 as it did at 14.

Ender's Game - Earth Has made contact with an alien species, and... It didn't go well. A program is started to teach a new generation of soldiers how to fight this alien threat. Children are not allowed to be children for long when the future of mankind is on the line. Also, it's being adapted into what is shaping up to be a pretty badass movie.

Snow Crash - Written in the 90's, but it essentially pioneered the concept of the online avatar, and predicted the rise of the MMO. Also, pizza-delivering ninjas. Trust me on this. It's good stuff.

Neuromancer Classic cyber-punk. Most sci-fi is like you see in star trek. Clean and sterile. Cyberpunk is the dirtier side of sci-fi. Organized crime, computer hacking, and a heist on a space station. And Molly. This book is the reason I have a thing for dangerous redheads.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Considered by most to be the very best in sci-fi humor. Lighthearted, hilarious, and I find I can read it in the course of about two days. It is absolutely, completely, and utterly amazing.

American Gods - What happens to the old gods when we start worshiping the new ones? Can the likes of Odin or Anubis compete with our new objects of worship. like television or internet? Remember, Gods only exist as long as folks believe in them. The old Gods aren't going down without a fight, though...

Hope some of these strike your fancy. It's admittedly more sci-fi than anything, but it's all soft sci-fi (Where the science isn't as important as the fiction, so story comes first), and nothing too out there. Please let me know if you decide to try any of these, and especially let me know if you enjoy them. I always like to hear if I help someone find a book they love.

I'll add some of my favorites that you didn't mention. They are mostly Superhero, because that's what got me into self published authors that are frequently on KU.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. Great sci fi with plenty of humor and nerdy pop culture references, but also a fare share of danger and adventure. KU has all 3 books in the Bobiverse.

Sensation: A Superhero Novel by Kevin Hardman. This is a YA Super Hero novel, and is the first of 7 along with a couple spinoffs and short stories. The author also has a sci fi series and a fantasy series, but I haven't read them yet. I'm pretty sure all of his books are on KU.

Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce. This is the Mage Errant series. The 3rd book just came out, and there is a post here by the author. This is a book centered on a magical school, and it has a very good and detailed hard magic system.

Fid's Crusade by David Reiss. This is a Super Villain novel, and is darker than a lot of superhero books out there. There are currently 3 books in the Chronicles of Fid. I've only read the first one but I really liked it, and I even bought it when it was on sale so I could go back and read it again sometime instead of relying on it being on KU forever.

Arsenal by Jeffery H. Haskell. Another Super Hero novel, this one is probably in between the other two I mentioned in terms of tone, being darker than Kid Sensasion, but lighter than Fid. The protagonist is disabled and in a wheel chair, but made an awesome suit of armor to become a hero. There are 8 books in the series, and there is another series set in the same world with the 4th book coming at the end of the month. All of them are on KU.

Thanks for the in-depth answers! Mine are surprisingly similar to yours.

>Who is your favorite author?

I love Tolkien, and George R R Martin, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Cormac McCarthy, Larry Niven, Patrick Rothfuss, Douglas Adams, Diana Wynne Jones and probably a bunch I'm missing at the moment. My favorite genre is sci-fi, both space opera and hard.

I haven't been on WP long enough to have many favorite authors but I do enjoy your stuff, lalalobsters, luna_lovewell, written4reddit, and a few more.

>What is your favorite book?

My Dad introduced me to Tolkien and the sci-fi giants like Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke when I was probably 9 or 10 (I am about to be 34,) so all of their seminal works are very dear to me. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I freaking love dinosaurs and Jurassic Park is my favorite movie and because of that I have probably read JP the novel more than anything else.

I just finished reading [We are Legion (We are Bob)] (https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1485632176&sr=1-1&keywords=we+are+legion+we+are+bob) and found it highly enjoyable.

>And, most importantly, describe your level of love for cheese.

Cheese is a staple food group for me and variety is the spice of life so I am always eating new cheeses. Staples include: extra sharp cheddar, havarti, and bleu cheese. If it's stinky, it's probably delicious, too. And, my favorite snack is english muffin halves slathered in cream cheese and covered with jalepenos. I also could eat a bucket of cottage cheese plain, or my favorite, mixed with mango chutney.

And now I'm hungry.

For (currently) free Kindle books, David Weber's On Basilisk Station is the first book in the space-opera Honor Harrington series. The second book The Honor of the Queen, is one of my favorites in the entire series. Eric Flint's 1632 turned into a massive and awesome alternate-history series. If you'd like to delve into Alaskan-based murder mysteries, give Dana Stabenow's A Cold Day For Murder a try as the first in the some eighteen book Kate Shugak series.

For paid Kindle books, there's Hugh Howey's Wool Omnibus is the beginning of the dystopian Silo series; the followup Shift Omnibus is actually a prequel trilogy that I haven't gotten yet but is very readable. Naomi Novik's first novel in the alt-history Temeraire series, His Majesty's Dragon, is currently $.99.

In print, Elizabeth Moon's military fantasy The Deed of Paksenarrion is available used for a very affordable price and is an epic series. The Cage was my introduction to a fantasy universe written by SM Stirling, Shirley Meier, and Karen Wehrstein. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander is a sort of alternate history/light romance series set in Scotland that I've thoroughly enjoyed. Brent Weeks' assassin-based (excuse me, wetboy) fantasy Night Angel Trilogy was recently released as an omnibus edition. Empire from the Ashes collects Weber's Dahak sci-fi trilogy into an omnibus edition. Weber and John Ringo co-wrote March Upcountry and the other three novels in the sci-fi Prince Roger quadrilogy. If you haven't tried Harry Turtledove's alt-history sci-fi WW2 'Worldwar' series, In the Balance starts off a little slow plot-wise but picks up good speed. EE Knight's sci-fi/futuristic fantasy Vampire Earth starts off with Way of the Wolf. Mercedes Lackey wrote the modern-fantasy Born to Run with Larry Dixon, and the rest of the SERRAted Edge books with various other authors. Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk and slightly dystopian Snow Crash is hilarious and awesome. Maggie Furey's Aurian is the first of a fantasy quadrilogy that I enjoyed many years ago.

If you're at all familiar with the Warhammer 40k universe, the Eisenhorn Omnibus is Dan Abnett's wonderful look into the life of an Imperial Inquisitor. He's also written a popular series about the Tanith First-and-Only Imperial Guard regiment starting with The Founding Omnibus. He also wrote the first book in the Horus Heresy series, Horus Rising (I highly recommend reading the first three novels together as a trilogy and then cherry-picking the rest).

... and if you've read all that already, I'll be impressed.

Edit: Why yes, I do read a lot. Why do you ask?

OH BOY! THIS MEANS I HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO SHILL/BITCH ABOUT GUNDAM RELATED CONTENT THAT ISN'T ANIME, MANGA, OR VIDEO GAME RELATED!

Anyway, the fist piece of literature I want to recommend to everyone is the original Mobile Suit Gundam novels written by Yoshiyuki Tomino at the same time he was directing/writing/creating the original Mobile Suit Gundam series (and by extension the franchise as a whole).

To keep myself from 100% geeking out and just giving a synopsis of the whole book, I'll try to keep it brief and list some points as to why you may want to check this out as a book on it's own merits.

1. This book takes the concept of the original Gundam series and strips all of the elements that were added to make it marketable to children. That means no goofy mechs designed to sell toys, no mustache twirling villains, and the mechs that have remained have been mostly retooled or quickly done away with to be replaced with mechs that are less special and are just another piece of military hardware. Minor spoilers for the novel, but early on the original [Gundam from the OG series with it's bright and vibrant colors] (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/2/23/78-2.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130426115800) is destroyed and replaced with different model known as the [G3 that features a dark grey color scheme to look like a more believable color scheme that an actual military might employ] (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/1/13/78-3.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130426115825).
   
   
2. You might have noticed that I mention the original Gundam being destroyed early on, and there's a reason for that. This was before Tomino had a plan for the series fully laid out, so the novels and the anime completely differ outside of the opening moments of the book and series. The novels are much darker (for Gundam fans, I would say it's around Zeta levels of dark), serious, and feature way less campier moments. The might as well be two different series as the only similarities they have are sharing character names, and even then those characters are sometimes 100% different than their anime counterparts. These changes also include different fates for major characters on both sides of the conflict. Characters who died in the anime end up living in this and vice versa.
   
   
3. As this is based on the original series and was one of the first pieces of Gundam content created, you can just jump right in to this with no prior knowledge of the franchise and enjoy it as a cool stand alone sci-fi war novel even without any attachment to the franchise.
   
   For those of you interested in checking this out, there's been a few different versions of this novelization released in english, but the newest version with an updated translation was released a few years ago and is known as Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation and can be found on Amazon.
   
   Here's the link to its Amazon page for those of you interested.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Suit-Gundam-Escalation-Confrontation/dp/1611720052
   
   It's not perfect by any means as it can be a little dry in some areas when compared to most other Gundam anime as there is very little comedy to ever lighten the mood. I suspect a lot of the more comedic elements of the original Gundam series were things probably added due to influence by members of the creation team like the character designer, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko as Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's own manga adaption of the OG Gundam story called Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin from the 2000s is downright hilarious at times.
   
   Comedy is something Yoshiyuki Tomino would pick up and add on his own to later works and spawn his own brand of weird "Tomino" comedy to accompany his own weird brand of "Tomino" writing and characterization.
   
   But if you want a solid 8/10 sci-fi war story then I highly recommend it. It's great for newcomers just getting into the franchise, and it's great for longtime fans who may want a radically different take on a story they are probably already very familiar with.

Most of the time I am "in the mood" for a certain genre or type of book. I will recommend some of my favorites that are easy to read and enjoyable. With a super short summary to see if it sparks your interest.

Fantasy:

• Name of the Wind : Great fantasy novel which follows a single character, Kvothe, who is an old innkeeper with a mysterious and illustrious past telling the story of how he became a legend. It is very well written and highly entertaining, the book is all about Kvothe as a teenager just trying to survive and becoming an arcanist. Highly recommended.
  
  
• Mistborn Trilogy : I've only read the first one. A dystopian world where ash falls from the sky every day with a centuries old tyrannical ruler. The story follows a young girl who is just trying to survive on the streets any way she can but gets caught up with revolutionists. Very enjoyable, and a unique magic system.
  
  Scifi:
  
  
• Ender's Game: This an Dune are always recommended for anyone looking to get into scifi...as well as Foundation series (which I haven't read :/). Earth has been attacked by an alien species of bugs...twice. We barely survived last time, so in order for us to prepare if it happens again Earth has started training military geniuses. Ender is one of the children chosen for training, and he is the best of the best. The story focuses on him and his story about rising through the ranks to try and save earth.
  
  
• Dune: If you want to experience a sand world with giant worms, extreme political tension, plot twists, feints within feints. I could say more, but simply saying that it is in my Top 3 favorite books says enough.
  
  
• Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy: Probably one of the funniest books I've ever read. It is highly regarded among this community and geeks as a whole. Do not judge it by the movie, this is a must-read book if you want a laugh.
  
  

I used to date a girl who was totally dismissive of sci-fi - "it's all that ridiculous pew-pew lasers Star Wars rubbish" was the way she'd characterise it.

I overcame this with the first book of Michael Moorcock's The Dancers At The End of Time series, which she loved, but I also managed to ruin it by buying all three books in a big collection. She overdosed on them within about 3 or 5 days, about 100 pages from the end of the last one, never to touch sci-fi again.

The Dancers At The End of Time is very atypical sci-fi, rather the way The Hitchhikers' Guide is - I consider it a Shakespearean farce in novel form - but I believe it underlines the fact that sci-fi can be anything we want it to be.

It seems like this edition is all three of the novels, and I'm surprised it's only 600 pages long - the edition I bought for my gf weighed about 1/2 a kilo. I suggest starting your wife on this edition, which I believe quite slim and easy to get through.

I recommended Morgan's Altered Carbon to an acquaintance recently. He's a bit of a boy, and loves the Terminator trilogy the same way I do, but his gf is disinterested - however I believe that she too read and enjoyed Altered Carbon, lured in by the promise of its one or two steamy sex scenes. The novel is a crime thriller and the protagonist, Kovacs, is a lone hero much like the Jack Reacher character of Lee Child's novels. If she likes Jack Reacher, she'll certainly like Altered Carbon, it's just the same - well, actually, better - but with a slight William Gibson flavour.

I second the suggestion of The Time Traveller's Wife, but with reservations - there's nothing else within the genre that's written so sensitively. Sci-fi is about exploring possibilities and TTTW does that, but it's kinda a love story first, and sci-fi second. Actually, I kinda think all sci-fi should be as good, or wish that all sci-fi made you appreciate the characters as much.

Fear cuts deeper than swords - it really, really does. :)

1.) Not just grey but Earl Grey.

2.) A rain cover.

3.) Ginger chews?

4.) Ninja throwing knifes for my wee son - because I'm a craptastic parent!

5.) A classic, Ender's Game because why haven't you already read this??

6.) An item that is less than a dollar, including shipping... that is not jewelry, nail polish, and or hair related! Sorry! Nothing physical. $1.55 is the closest.

7.) Hello Kitty!

8.) I think compasses are beautiful.

9.) Princess Bride - but no on my WL. <3

10.) Gerber 22-41131 Profile Guthook Fixed Blade Knife -- It's self explanatory really.

11.) I love to cook and I need to cook healthy food but my current knives (and I use the term loosely) leave me beaten and bloody. So these

12.) Happy crayons

13.) A surfboard. Because they are BADD ASS!

14.) A gun safe could hold a lot of bread!

15.) Pretty lupus friend earrings!

16.) Blood orange and bergamot candle!

17.) Doctor Who K-9 bobble head!

18.) Pencils. I freaking LOVE pencils.

19.) A gift card, so I can gift more people. :)

20.) I love this beautiful buddha.

MADE IN OREGON! Bob's Red Mill flours. Look it up!

I love silly contests like this - I know others have done better, but I had fun looking. <3

She probably has all of the books you've mentioned if she really likes them, bookish people usually do... A special edition might be an idea, but I won't be able to help you with that, I go for cheap paperbacks due to money ;)

I'm tempted to recommend "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, it's not sci-fi classic per se, but it's a dystopian classic, she would probably like it if she likes Brave New World, but again, she might already have it. Still I'm sure she'd be thrilled to get a thoughtful thank you gift from you, even if she's read it before or even has a copy... Here's a link to that book on amazon, if you want to have a look: amazon link

If she does like classic sci-fi, here are some old-school, hard sci-fi (but it's not all just spaceships and aliens) that she might enjoy and possibly even not have, since a couple of the authors aren't from English speaking countries:

• Stanislaw Lem "Solaris" amazon link
  
• Arkady and Boris Strugatsky "Roadside Picnic" amazon link
  
• Artur C. Clarke "Childhood's End" amazon link
  
• Walter M. Miller Jr. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" amazon link

Among Others by Jo Walton

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I think the Dark Tower series is a must read. It starts off with The Gunslinger and continues. I think it is the best series I have ever read.

If you want to look other than fantasy/sci-fi...

Lamb by Christopher Moore is very funny, makes you think, and breaks your heart. I love it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favorite books ever written. Everyone that I have given this book to has read it and bought it for someone else to read.

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins is Tom Robbins at his best. It's also one of the most polarizing books I have suggested to friends and people online. You will either love it and buy the rest of Tom Robbins's books or you will hate it and never listen to me again. I hope it's the first reaction.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an amazing book about life in high school. I haven't seen the movie yet because I enjoy this book so much that I don't want to get pissed off at a director ruining one of my favorite books.

Good Omens by Pratchett/Gaiman is certainly a pretty rockin book.

Hopefully this helps you find some new authors to enjoy!

Edited for: I will never forgive myself if I don't put in what I consider one of the best fantasy coming of age stories ever. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is the first of the series. Read it. Do it!

The best "Standard" deal is the
Platinum Annual
24 Credits/Yr.
You pay $9.57 per credit
$229.50 per year

That's always available and offers the most credits at the cheapest price per credit.

If you follow the Audible sub then you'll find signup deals on there from time to time. The last I took advantage of was the
Discount Gold Annual
12 Credits/Yr.
~$8.29 per credit
$99.50 a year

You could sign up for that one until April 5th. Sometimes if you call and ask you can still sign up for one of these deals, but I haven't done/tried that so I can't say much about it. I don't know of any sign-up deals going on right now, they usually happen around holidays.

Depending on the genres you enjoy, your best bang for your buck might be a Kindle Unlimited subscription and then picking up some cheap audiobooks through whispersync. You can pick up a KU subscription for $0.99 for two months (https://www.techbargains.com/deals/amazon-kindle-unlimited-membership) and if you hunt around you can find a bunch of good books for $1.99. It's mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but as a few examples:
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MFGX5GI/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SLWQGUM/
https://www.amazon.com/Thru-Hiking-Will-Break-Your-Heart-ebook/dp/B00W4RICAM

Those aren't endorsements, just examples (I've only read the first one, which I would endorse if you like Sci-Fi)

Beyond that if you like classics you can usually find some of those cheap:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Siddhartha-Audiobook/B07HK6JZSC

On occasion, if you go to cancel your subscription you'll be offered a deal to keep it. I haven't signed up for any of those, and don't know what those deals are, but it's an option.

Last but not least, you can just buy more credits. If you've run out of credits (or if you contact Audible Support) you can usually buy 3 credits for $36 ( I think that's the correct amount). I generally wouldn't recommend this option, it's a bit more expensive to buy the Gold Plan, but you get a year's membership with that. Whereas buying credits straight out still leaves you paying a monthly subscription as well.

I know this post is 2 days old, which puts it in some sort of reddit graveyard, but I'll add my thoughts.

First, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is the definitive "modern" cyberpunk novel so check that out for sure.

Also, for more of a "5 minutes into the future" cyberpunk, check out the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam. The third book in the trilogy won the Philip K. Dick Award if that means anything to you.

Another series I liked, which has a great dark humor to it, is the Avery Cates series by Jeff Somers. Seriously, just read the 'About the Author' section at the bottom of that page to get an idea of the humor.

Have you read William Gibson's The Peripheral? It's a neat update on Gibson's cyberpunk vision now that the world has changed.

Someone else recommended Cory Doctorow. I actually think Little Brother is his best work, though it's young adult so prepare yourself for that.

Finally, I feel weird recommending this, but if you were a child of the 80s, have you read Ready Player One? It's pretty polarizing in this sub since you either love it or you hate it, but it is a popular modern cyberpunk novel.

Ender's Game is seriously so much better than the movie. It's amazing what people will do to ensure the safety of the human race, without fully seeing the whole picture.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski. I was hesitant at first, always seeing it, but never checking it out at the library. It wound up being one of my favorite books to read, it was that good. Story of a mute boy raised on a farm breeding dogs. He can sign, and has pretty good life, as far as things go, until his father dies. He tries to prove his uncle had a hand in the death, but the plan backfires. Hated the ending - not because it was bad, but it was so damn sad.

If you're willing to poke at a series, try Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards series, the first book is The Lies of Locke Lamora. The series centers around Locke and his shenanigans as a Gentleman Bastard - a notorious gang of thieves. They pull off some pretty intense schemes, some with great success, some with spectacular failures. It's a great series, and another set of favorites that I recommend to everyone that'd ask.

Congratulations on the new job, hope it works out well for you! Also, I love that you had such a great turn out for your book drive. My kids know how important it is to read - I actually push my daughter to read a little bit above her grade level. She keeps a reading log for homework, so her teachers are pretty impressed. She did amazingly well on her latest state reading/math test, and her teacher believes it's because of all the reading she does. If you do another drive, I hope it goes just as well.

Okay I know the giveaway is over but you asked for obscure and so you have to read this fanfiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's so amazing it has its own fanbase, inspired a new genre of fiction, has its own website, wikipedia article, and a few news sites have even reviewed it.

It's even got a podcast reading if you prefer.

It's like... if Harry Potter was smart and rational and also a huge sci-fi/science geek. It's basically a bit like Ender's Game if you've ever read it (which is another one you should definitely read).

Links:
HPMOR website
Podcast's site (also has readings of other works of rationalist fiction inspired by HPMOR)
Podcast on iTunes
HPMOR on Fanfiction.net
HPMOR Full PDF
HPMOR PDF but separated into separate books: 1 2 3 4 5 6
HPMOR MOBI
HPMOR EPUB

I can honestly say that this fanfiction is without a doubt the best thing I have ever read in my life. I can't speak well enough of it. I recommend paying attention when you read because the things you learn are useful later in the book for solving the plot. The plot is so well crafted that you can trust anything that happens has an explanation behind it. If you find yourself asking "why is it like this?" there is a reason! This is a game you can only play once, so please enjoy it while it lasts. Ahhhh! I'm talking too much, enjooooooooooy~!

I ran a pretty successful six-month long campaign. Actually got to finish the story arc, unlike most campaigns I've run. We found the system...workable. The character options were pretty interesting, though the psyker felt OP to the players and the psionic manifestation effects were often game changing, usually in an amusing way, but sometimes they proved distracting from the main story just because some of their effects are so life-altering.

We all love the setting and were willing to put up with the idiosyncrasies of the system mechanics. I'd highly recommend reading Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn omnibus - it will really give you a good feel for the whole Inquisitor/Acolyte feel. Abnett's a really fun read all around.

I'm sure the Imperium could accommodate a submerged city like Rapture, even its Randian philosophy (though if it deviated from worship of the emperor, it's heresy - perfect fodder for an inquisitor and his/her team). Though I'm curious to know what else you have planned for the character.

EDIT: incorrectly called Rapture a "subterranean" city.

Is there anything in particular you're leaning to?

Author Cherie Priest has a couple excellent books.

• Boneshaker, first book in her Clockwork Century series. It's a steampunk setting with zombies and all sorts of wonderful stuff. This book is actually on sale through the end of the month for $2.99.
  
• Bloodshot, first book in her Cheshire Red Reports series. It's about a vampire gal who is a thief-for-hire.
  
  The Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher, is a wonderful series. It's about a wizard-for-hire in the modern world, and delves into the wonderful magic environment that Jim has created. Jim likes to put his characters through trouble and turmoil, and it's good for character development! The series starts off with Storm Front.
  
  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is another great series. It's a post-apocalyptic/oppressed setting, centering around something called 'The Hunger Games' - an annual battle that captivates the capitol and all twelve remaining districts. There is a movie releasing next year, as well.
  
  The Name of the Wind is a terrific book by Patrick Rothfuss, the first entry into his series The Kingkiller Chronicles. It's a fantasy setting, and is about a character named Kvothe recounting his life. The writing style has an absolutely artistic writing style that is captivating to read, and such interesting and progressing events that make you eagerly turn the page. I have not yet read the sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, but I'm told it's even better in every way.
  
  Terry Pratchett is an amazing and renowned author. He has been knighted, an event for which he created his own sword for by hand, battles against Alzheimer's in a most respectable and commendable way, and has created such an interesting and provoking world that provides a lot of laughs and curious perspectives on matters. Where you start is a more difficult choice. A couple choice options might be as follows (I haven't read others yet, so I can't attest to others, but there are many!).
  
  
• Guards! Guards! which is the first installment to the City Watch sequence.
  
• The Reaper Man trails after Death, after he has been fired from his job.
  
  I haven't started this book yet, nor looked into it, but I have heard terrific reviews. The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch, is his first book in his Gentleman Bastard Sequence series.
  
  And of course, if you haven't entered George RR Martin's world of Westeros, the series A Song of Ice and Fire could be a wonderful read. It's very complex and very long and not yet complete (five books so far). It starts off with Game of Thrones, which is what the recently-aired HBO series was based upon.
  
  In the science fiction sphere, I would recommend Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It's the first in his Ender's series, and there are quite a few books set in the world. I have only read the first one, and it was an excellent read, insightful and thought-provoking.
  
  ...anyway, that should be a few to peek at!

Any of these three series I recommend as modern-day Lord of the Rings classics

Eisenhorn, books 1-3 of a 9 book series are simply the best books I've ever read - the series is currently on book 7. I recommend Eisenhorn to anyone that just likes to read. Books 4-6 are just as good, called Ravenor, with the 7th book in the series now out, called Pariah.

Another amazing series of books I love are the Old Man's War books, effectively a series of 6 books with some short stories in between and the last book being broken up into thirteen short stories (such was the demand for the books while they were being written). Fantastic, fantastic series - I recommend them to anyone.

I also love and recommend The Dark Tower series, 7 books. They're the only thing written by King that I've liked.

• We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is a hilarious trilogy that is a bit cheaper to buy the kindle and then add on audio narration. Ray Porter, the narrator, makes his series amazing.
  
  
  
• Off to Be the Wizard is a great series with good humor and can be less expensive if you buy the kindle and then add on the audio narration. I liked books 1-3, with 4 and 5 being not as great. The first books is well worth the purchase though!
  
  
  
• Super Powereds Year 1. This is one of my favorite series. Kyle McCarley does an amazing job narrating this saga (4 in the main story and 1 side story that could stand alone). Probably the worst covers and really made me not want to read the series, but Drew Hayes has become my favorite author. Every series he does is pure gold.
  
  
  
• Expeditionary Force: Columbus Day. RC Bray, sci-fi and lots of hilarious dialog when Skippy shows up (about halfway through the book). The series is great, and book 6 is coming out next week. Great starter price 0.99+7.49 for the kindle and audiobook.
  
  
  There are so many more options like this, but I don’t want to overwhelm you! These may not all be your cup of tea. But they are some of my favorites for a somewhat reasonable price.

I'll skip over the classics (Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick) as they've already been covered.

• Peter F Hamilton is incredibly good, I'd suggest starting with the Confederation Universe series. Very long, and can get a little heavy, but in my opinion, absolutely superb hard sci fi. The universe is similar in size and scope to that of Tolkien's, the science is detailed and well constructed, the space combat is awesome, and I found the characters believable and easy to empathize with. Judging from your criteria, I have a feeling that this series may be just what you're looking for.
  
  
• As others have suggested, Alastair Reynolds is an absolute stand-out in today's sci fi line-up. His Revelation Space universe is complex, engaging and has some of the best science theory I've read. He also includes a lot of biotechnology / biological themes in his work - which is a refreshing change from the nanomachines / cyborg / tech-heavy staples that seem to dominate a lot of modern sci-fi. There's an incredible sense of tension that is maintained for the entire series, more-so than any other modern anthology I've read.
  
  
• Richard Morgan is another of my personal favorites. If you want action-heavy, quality sci fi, look no further. I'd recommend starting with the Kovacs series, (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies) they're equal parts Noir / Drama / Action / Sci-Fi / Awesome. Not much space combat, but the ground combat is really, really good.
  
  
• If you haven't read Robert Heinlen's original Starship Troopers (Don't judge it by the movie; seriously) I'd highly recommend it. Not much you can say about it, except that the movie cut entirely too much of the thought provoking content out.
  
  
• John Steakley's Armor is superficially similar to Starship Troopers, but it's far more weighted on the psychological trauma of war; the action is almost ancillary - in fact, where Starship Troopers tends to glorify war a touch, Armor tends to question the validity and purpose of war in an advanced society.
  
  Finally:
  
  
• I'm not going to say anything other than: "Do yourself a favor and read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash."
  
  Seriously. No space combat, but without doubt one of the most entertaining fiction I've read in any genre, and a superb example of dystopian sci-fi. For god sakes, the hero - Hiro Protagonist (I know, right?!) - is a Hacker / Samurai that works for the mafia. Delivering pizzas. Trust me on this: Go with it, you won't be sorry.
  
  Hope that helps and wasn't a Great Wall of Boring Text :-)

In March, I read some novels for a change!

Famous Men Who Never Lived, a (I think debut) novel by K Chess. It's a sci-fi novel about being an interdimensional refugee. It was slight, but good while it lasted, and thoughtful. Some guy at a mexican restaurant wanted to know if it was about, like Robin Hood. Don't judge a book by its cover.

The City In The Middle Of The Night, by Charlie Jane Anders. This is a follow-two-people-and-meet-in-the-middle science fiction book set on a planet that doesn't rotate and people are forced to live right on the terminator line. It's got some good horror elements and puts some interesting thought into its setting. The story doesn't go where you think it's going, but you'll like where it goes (probably.)

Roadside Picnic, a classic piece of Russian science fiction, which people are probably more familiar with from the things it inspired, like Tarkovsky's film Stalker, and then the STALKER video games that came from that. Aliens visited our planet, but they didn't notice us. They left their trash behind. Bleak in a very Russian way. Excellent.

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denosovich, the book that shocked the USSR by not being samizdat. It's a slim little thing but says a lot.

Hostage by Guy Delisle. This is the "unusual one" for Delisle, whose books are little sketches of life - it's a telling of someone else's story. This dude was kidnapped by Chechens and held hostage for about three months in 1997, until he escaped. An excellent and baffling story, with excellent artwork.

More to come, that in my opinion will be better from myself.

However, I can recommend some stuff I like.

Don't need to know anything about Mass Effect for, Transcendent Humanity. and Mass Effect end of Days. Both very HFY and Free!


---

Some other stuff I like but not quite as free, so do your research!

Seven Eves - A little depressing and somewhat long winded, characters act a little too stupidly at times in my opinion but interesting none the less.

House of Suns - An exploration of Deep Time and the segmentation / division of minds and consciousness like what I was exploring with Arik and will be a large focus of my future writing. So fun to play with the concept of 'me'.

The Bobiverse - Von Nuemann eat your heart out. This one explores similar themes of consciousness and thought with regards to AI.
Spinward Fringe - It's long if you want something that doesn't leave you hanging, and the first one is free! Jumps around and suffers from what I call the 'LitRPG' syndrome without being in the genre itself, IE characters quickly gaining power and handling it almost perfectly. This only happens once so I can tolerate the lack of exposition.

hmm, that's about all I can recommend off the top of my head. Sorry for leaving you hanging on this. I do want to come back to it, but the serial format was doing my head in. Plots were unwraveling and I was writing into corners.

I mostly read speculative fiction, which is typically divided between the subgenres of fantasy, sci-fi, and alternate history. Alternate history is technically considered a subgenre of Sci-Fi, but I read enough of it to make it worth counting as a separate group. Within each of those subgenres, there is a wide variety of styles and some people might find themselves not a fan of one style but a fan of another. If you are not well read in these genres, then you will want to try a few different styles of story before dismissing it. I also sometimes read novelizations of historical events which have their own sort of enjoyment to them that fictional stories lack. Then there are books that are set from an animals point of view, which range from attempts to be as accurate as possible to being practically fantasy stories.

As far as individual books, I will try to give you a few of the best to pick from without being overwhelming. Some are stand alone stories while others are parts of series.

Fantasy single books:

After the Downfall

Fantasy series:

The Dresden Files

A Song of Ice and Fire aka Game of Thrones

Sci-Fi single books:

Slow Train to Arcturus

Mother of Demons

Sci-Fi series:

The Thrawn Trilogy There are a great many Star Wars books worth the read, but this is definitely the place to start.

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow

Alternate History single books:

The Guns of the South

1824: The Arkansas War Technically this is a sequel to an earlier book, but this one is leagues better and you don't need to read the first book to understand what is going on.

Alternate History series:

How Few Remain

1632

Worldwar

Non-Fiction:

Band of Brothers

War Made New This one isn't even really a novelization, just an analysis of the changes to military technology, tactics, and training over the last 500 years. Regardless, it is very well written and a great read.

Animal POV books:

Watership Down

Wilderness Champion

The Call of the Wild and White Fang These two books are by the same author and go in pretty much opposite directions. Among literature fanatics, there is no consensus over which one is better and I don't think I can decide for myself so I am recommending both.

Edit: I forgot to mention, the first book in the 1632 series is available online for free. This is not a pirated version, but something the author put up himself as a part of an effort to move publishing into the modern day with technology and make books more accessible to readers.

If you're looking for a good series, I highly, highly recommend Bobiverse. It's a trilogy: We Are Legion (We Are Bob), For We Are Many, and All These Worlds.

It's not giving anything away to tell you that it's about a guy who's a software developer, who's kind of nerdy, but hilariously self-deprecating. He definitely doesn't take anything too seriously.

The story opens with him buying a contract with a company where, upon his death, will preserve him until he can essentially be reborn.

The company upholds its end of the bargain, but the future world doesn't quite turn out the way anyone would have expected. Robert wakes up to something, well, a bit different than he was expecting too; i.e., a sentient A.I. program that manages to maintain his personality, memories, and his smart-ass demeanor. This is how the story begins.

The series is lol-hilarious and totally relevant to the times in which we live.

If you're into audiobooks you can also get it really cheap through Amazon and Audible. It's actually even more entertaining as an audio book. Never have I ever had as much fun listening to anything as I have the Bobiverse.

Right now Amazon is also having a special with Kindle Unlimited for 99 cents - three months. If you do that, you can rent the entire series for free and then add the audio books for $1.99 each.

It's totally worth it.

So if you do the Kindle Unlimited thing, when you go to rent the book on Amazon, just scroll down and look under the "buy it now button" and select the "Add Audible book to your purchase for just $1.99." Then scroll back up and click the read for free button.

After you cancel the Unlimited plan you still get to keep the audio book. I do that all the time to get audio books for dirt cheap.

Here's a link for the Kindle Unlimited deal:

https://www.techbargains.com/jump/deal/433133?page_location=EC_NormalDeal&link_type=Buy+button&link_text=see+deal

And here's the link to the first book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LWAESYQ/ref=series_dp_aw_ca_1

The series is just so damn amazing. Written well and narrated perfectly.

What kind of books do you generally go for?

Let's start with the premise of your question: there's only one conflict in your story, and this single conflict is the only source of suspense to keep the reader interested. Fortunately, suspense is not the same as conflict, and using that difference effectively will help your reader power through the "info dumps."


Conflict = things like man vs man, man vs society, man vs nature, etc. In a novel, there may be one or multiple conflicts, but it's usually a finite number of important conflicts. Interesting conflicts generally span the whole novel. Conflicts can take a lot of time to fully establish, can evolve over time, and the resolution of a conflict is a big deal.


Suspense = things that keep the reader interested. When done well, suspense is what causes readers to keep turning pages long after they promised themselves they would stop reading and go to bed. Suspense is not a genre, but something that every well-written work of fiction has in abundance. Suspense can be created in a single sentence and resolved in the next one. Suspense can also relate to the main story arc and function as a long term "hook." If you want a really good example of how to create many sources of suspense in just a few paragraphs, look up Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. When reading carefully, you'll notice that Card juggles multiple sources of suspense at any one time. For instance, the main character might react to something but the reader doesn't get to see what they're reacting to until the next paragraph (short term suspense that makes you keep reading to find out what they saw). The thing that they are looking at might relate to the next roadblock in their overall story arc (medium and long term suspense). This is a "can't put it down" kind of book, and there's no reason you can't borrow some of those tricks to keep the pace moving even in the very beginning of yours.


I highly recommend this Dictionary of Narratology. It will inform your writing by showing you choices you didn't know exist.


(Disclaimer 1: I'm not saying that Orson Scott Card is an amazing author that everyone should emulate. He has some limitations that I get frustrated with, such as sexism and nondescript settings. However, suspense is something he excels at creating in abundance, so he's a good model for learning new ways of creating suspense and increasing pace.


Disclaimer 2: Suspense for the sake of suspense is not a good idea. Connect the suspense to things that matter, like character development and the story, for maximum effect.)


I hope this helps.

I liked the thrawn trilogy. Zahn does a good job of putting some of the sci-fi genres people like into star wars. There is a hacker character and militarism and of course you get to see tiny tidbits of the clone wars and everything that people were dying to learn about at the time (the books came out before the prequel movies).

I sort of enjoy star wars that isn't the epic star wars. That is, a lot of the west end games short stories and other stuff that came out that let people explore the universe but without the galaxy ending ramifications most star wars stuff was about. You can find these stories in the Star Wars Journals. I think some of these ended up in the Tales books. Tales of the Bounty is probably the collection everyone likes the best.

Another book I liked was the novelization of the Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight video game. It's a trilogy of books that came out with the game. I wouldn't say they are the best and maybe I only like them because of nolstalgia for the game but who knows, maybe you will like them.

I also really liked the Boba Fett trilogy, The Bounty Hunter Wars. I'm not really a huge Boba Fett fan like some people but these books were fun because they get away from whatever mischief luke and company are up to this week. You get to see parts of the galaxy you don't see elsewhere.

Also, the X-Wing books by Michael A. Stackpole were very good. I never read the books by Aaron Allston, although I met him at a convention once.

I didn't like the New Jedi Order series. It felt too. . .prepared I guess. I don't know how else to describe it. It was fun when I was reading it as a teenager but I sort of lost interest at some point and I think it's because NJO spends so much time giving you everything and not letting you use your imagination. That was always the best part about Star Wars for me. Imagining who I would be or what I would do and all that.

It might be helpful if you give us a list of any books you've read that you did enjoy or genres you think you might like.

I have never met a person who didn't love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but it may not be your thing if you don't like wacked-out sci-fi so some general idea of your interests could help a ton with suggestions.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a solid non-fiction

Robot Dreams is a great set of sci-fi short stories

Ender's Game gets a ton of hate but is a pretty great sci-fi

On A Pale Horse is an older series that I'd consider fantasy but with sci-fi elements

Where the Red Fern Grows is well loved fiction

A Zoo in My Luggage is non-fic but about animal collecting trips for a zoo and is hilarious.

What I had to do was find a reading spot/time. I only read comfortably laying in bed before I go to sleep. It's become a habit now and thats the way I like to read. No distractions, read until I'm tired and then go to sleep. My wife can read anytime/anywhere, and I'm jealous of that, but it doesn't work for me.

Also find some books that you really like, that are easy. When you don't want to stop reading it helps a lot. Eventually you get to the point that you really can read anything because it doesnt have to hold your interest for every single sentence.

Try some Young Adult or easy reads right off the bat. a few suggestions, things I enjoy that are easy reads:

Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

Dean Koonz

Orson Scott Card - Enders Game

Find a Genre you're interested in and something with good reviews, then find your time/place and make it a habit.

Hmm....I'm going to interpret that question as '10 Books in No Particular Order that Weren't Massive Bestsellers that I Loved*'

• The Good Women of China An amazing book about the struggles of women in China from 1950s-1980s.
  
  
• Ode to Kirihito The book that got me hooked on Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy)'s classic manga.
  
  
• Shades of Milk and Honey A Regency Romance with a touch of fantasy, and the writing is a pleasure.
  
  
• Ender's Game Hardly indie anymore, but I found this near the bottom of a pile of books in middle school, thus launching my love of SF/F
  
  
• A Man with No Talents An anonymous account of a man who dropped out of the Salaryman life and became free to live his life as he wanted.
  
  
• The Dancing girls of Lahore A brutal, honest account of the underworld of courtesans in Pakistan.
  
  
• The Legend of Eli Monpress Escapist fantasy with amazing characters and a plot that keeps the reader up well past bedtime.
  
  
• Off to Be the Wizard Probably the closest to 'indie' on here, hardly a deep book but a hilarious geeky romp.
  
  
• Live Free or Die This one surprised me a bit, but my Libertarian SF-loving self just fell head-over-heels for this series.
  
  
• Boneshaker Because dammit, this is the one that sent me down the Steampunk rabbit hole.
  
  /* Ebooksgirl reserves the right at any time to change, amend, add or delete this list.

-a hammock because the outdoors is awesome

-this sharpie is amazing

-these pens, although a little pricey, are AMAZING. Additionally, you can get refills for them on Amazon and those are inexpensive

-best coloring pencils imho

-Some really awesome book series one, two, three and four

-for math, here's some sodoku

-Some movies: Overboard, When Harry Met Sally, Burlesque

-Telescope

-Picnic basket

-Spirituality book

-some incense and an awesome fairy burner to go with them

I'll try and add some more later :)

Thanks for the contest

I really really want it! ( $5 and $10

Ethical Concern: The GMO corn is trademarked by <insert well known chemical company here> and the seed is sold to farmers who invest in it. Corn propagates by wind, neighbor farmer did not buy in but now his seed stock is infiltrated and the trademark owners sue him for stealing seed stock or some other violation of copyright. Local farmer caves to relentless legal pressure, soon all food stock is owned by corporations. This could get really wild (The Windup Girl), but so far that's still sci-fi, right?

Environmental Concern: Most GMO crops are created by chemical companies who in turn make products effective on plants that were not created by them. Rather than taking time to work with the environment these companies amass petrochemical sprays (a further economical cost to the farmer as well) and bombard regions so their plant survives. This chemical mixture goes into the soil and water where it in turn effects us; you do know that ALL drinking water is recycled I hope.


So you might be right, there might not be concerns on the healthy diet level (though we all know how wonderful the American diet is for us all). But there are larger socioeconomic issues here as well. To lock this only on a healthy for diet issue is absurd. I highly recommend Botany of Desire (book or PBS) as the potato chapter is enlightening on this measure (from an economic standpoint). Basically; organic food is far more economic in terms of space, maintenance, and profit per square foot.

Swan Song - Robert McCammon Of the books I read last year this was my favorite.

Old Man's War - John Scazi - It's a pretty fun Military Sci-fi series

Leviathan Wakes - S. A. Corey - Near space, space opera.

Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson - Epic Fantasy with an interesting magic system, good place to start with a popular author

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie - "Grimm Dark" fantasy, he does an interesting thing by playing with a LotR style quest.

The Black Prism - Brent Weeks - Interesting Magic system, one of my favorite ongoing fantasy series. Much better than his first trilogy IMHO

Midnight Riot - Ben Aaronovitch - Funny urban fantasy series that takes place in London

His Majesty's Dragon - Namoi Novik - Napoleonic* war + dragon's, fun quick reads.

Sevenes - Neal Stephenson - Stand Alone sci-fi novel about human's trying to survive in space as the world ends.

I can suggest more if you want, and I assume you've probably read at least some of these. Hope you enjoy some of them at least though.

One of my favorite series is Super Powereds by Drew Hayes. It's about Supers if you couldn't guess. The last book isn't in KU, but it is available to read free on Drew Hayes's website.

I just finished the Bobiverse series by Dennis Taylor and was enthralled! It's sci-fi/space exploration.

Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron is about a magic, spirits, and a nice dragon thrown into trouble by his viperous family.

Silvertongue by Casey White was fantastic (and it came from a reddit writing prompt!), but the series is not finished yet, if that matters to you.

Scott Meyer writes many hilarious books, nearly all in KU.

Lindsay Buroker writes sci-fi/fantasy, and she has a decent amount of KU books (and frequently has 1st book/boxsets for free for series not in KU).

K. M. Shea if you like fairy-tale retellings.

Cassandra or Elizabeth Gannon (sisters) for kind of odd, over-the-top, funny romance adventures (both write explicit sex scenes, fyi). Also while bad/crude language can be found in both sisters' books, Elizabeth has some absolutely magnificent crude expressions in hers. Like, if I ever want to be fired with extreme prejudice, I know how to go out with style now.

And that seems like a decently long list of possibilities to leave you with, so I'll stop here.

MHI is part of Baen's free library. There's a large number of book 1's for various Baen series that remain free permanently on Amazon and other places.

----

The last time this was brought up here's what I said:

So Baen is heavier on SciFi than Fantasy/Urban Fantasy...and their authors tend to display their Conservative/Libertarian philosophies a bit more. But they do tell some fun stories if you lean towards their politics or can roll your eyes at that.

There's some others out there that I can't think of, but these are favorites of mine other than MHI...

John Ringo has a fantasy series I haven't gotten to yet and the weakest of his SciFi series up for free. I wish they had Live Free or Die or Through the Looking Glass, which are much much better series, but alas:

http://www.amazon.com/Hymn-Before-Battle-Legacy-Aldenata-ebook/dp/B00BEQP50Y/ref=la_B000APPSXE_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456879886&sr=1-1&refinements=p_82%3AB000APPSXE

http://www.amazon.com/There-Will-Dragons-Council-Wars-ebook/dp/B00BER04VI/ref=la_B000APPSXE_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456879886&sr=1-2&refinements=p_82%3AB000APPSXE

David Weber does great space navy battles in his Honor Harrington series.

http://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Station-Honor-Harrington-Book-ebook/dp/B00ARPJBS0/ref=la_B000APBAFE_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456879923&sr=1-1&refinements=p_82%3AB000APBAFE

Williamsons Freehold is a Libertarian's utopian heaven, but it's a favorite popcorn read of mine - the latter half is heavy military SF.

http://www.amazon.com/Freehold-Book-Michael-Z-Williamson-ebook/dp/B00BEQLTZY/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1456879862&sr=8-1&keywords=freehold

The Ring of Fire series is about a 1990's era West Virginia coal mining town that gets thrown back into the year 1632 in Europe.

http://www.amazon.com/1632-Ring-Fire-Eric-Flint-ebook/dp/B00BEQLQNE/ref=sr_1_4_twi_kin_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1456882709&sr=8-4&keywords=1632

There are a few places you could start: The Afterman, the Year of the Black Rainbow novel, or the Amory Wars Second Stage comics.

I'd recommend starting with the Amory Wars Second Stage comics. Keep in mind, you'll want The Amory Wars comics, since they tell the complete story for Second Stage and In Keeping Secrets so far. There's also The Bag.On.Line comics, which were only a couple of issues before they were scrapped. If you decide to pursue them for a collection, expect to pay a bit of money for them.

Following that, you can continue the Amory Wars into In Keeping Secrets.. That's the latest album that's been adapted for those comics, but Claudio is currently writing the Amory Wars versions of Good Apollo 1 and 2.

If you feel like getting a very brief and confusing telling of Good Apollo 1, there's an old graphic novel that was released for it. Again, though, it will run you a bit of money, and while the art style's cool, it doesn't convey the story well and is quite short. For the time being, you'll have better luck finding bits and pieces of the Good Apollo story clued together across the internet and interviews.

You can then go back to the Year of the Black Rainbow novel, which tells the story of Coheed and Cambria's creation. It's pretty self-contained, though it does have a few references that will stick out if you're familiar with the later story.

The Afterman is only loosely connected to the Amory Wars, as it takes place long before Year of the Black Rainbow and expands on some of the unexplained concepts of the universe. Deluxe editions of the album contained artwork and brief explanations of the songs by Claudio, and u/TheElitist921 scanned and uploaded the explanations on the sub. Here's his post for Ascension, and here's the link to Descension.

Happy reading!

Edit: Bonus! u/DefiantLion also gave a synopsis/interpretation of the story to My Brother's Blood Machine over at r/TheFence.

Yeah I read a lot of Fantasy and Sci-fi. Umm, if he likes more Military Scifi I would recommend:

• Dauntless It's the first in a really cool space/naval series about a fleet of spaceships far from home and fighting through enemy territory to get home. All the while the Fleet Commander is acclimating to being 100 years in his own future (without "timetravel")
  
  
• Starship Troopers Is a classic scifi by Heinlein and has very little to do with the movies. Similar war ideas, giant bugs, but totally different feel. No cheesyness.
  
  
• Ender's Game of course is a classic Scifi book. Young boy growing up in a Battle School where they train kids to be soldiers. Very deep, very perspective changing.
  
  
• Stranger in a Strange Land Is another Heinlein book. A human boy grows up being raised by an alien Martian race on Mars. Brought back to Earth as an adult human, but again raised and taught everything by Martians. Has no concept of earth, our beliefs, our morals, our actions, anything. An amazing story that gives a great perspective for a WASP like me to see what it's like to integrate into a society where nobody is like you, and you understand nothing.
  
  If he likes "high fantasy" (elves, wizards, knights, etc) then let me know and I throw out a few of those too.
  
  EDIT: Also I'll plug Audbile.com here because these all also have great Audiobooks with GREAT narrators and I love listening to my books on my Android phone all the time. And of course Amazon owns Audible! discounts for buying the audiobook and the kindle book (often cheaper than outright buying the audiobook!)

1. My favorite book (beginning of a trilogy, plus more after that, yaaay!) is Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn. It is set in the Star Wars universe, about five years after the battle of Endor. It is written so well, you can practically hear the background music. Plus, he introduces my favorite character of all time in that book.
   
   
2. I don't even remember the name of my least favorite book. I refuse to give that thing room in my brain. It was billed as a murder mystery, but the murder was only a mystery to the main character, who actually heard it go down while she was hiding, but spent the next several chapters oblivious. Then it took her over 2/3 of the book to figure out that the murder victim just might be the girl who had been renting a room in her house and who had been coincidentally missing since the night of the murder. Oh, and the author was simply awful at giving her characters normal human reactions to things. Then at the end, it turned into a "you should go to church and become a 'Christ-centered' Christian" book. I don't even...
   
   
3. Harry Potter. The books are charming. But the movies took what she wrote, embellished, and made a rich world of depth and wonder.
   
   
4. Jumper. It's a very good Young Adult fiction book, easily enjoyable by adults as well. The movie took the slightest hint of a main theme, wasn't even true to the mechanics of that, and threw out everything that made the book good. As Hollywood does.
   
   
5. I enjoyed the Battlestar Galactica book that was based on the original TV series. I'm pretty sure that the only reason was that I was young and loved the series.
   
   
6. Jedi Search: Star Wars (The Jedi Academy): Volume 1 of the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson. I'm so sorry to say this about an author, but after reading Zahn's work, it was like going from art at the Louvre to a child's crayon scrawlings. Then he booted my favorite character off to the periphery and failed to justify her reason for taking off and randomly showing up merely for exposition, then disappearing again. To add insult to injury, he repeatedly brought up that she had "tried to kill" Luke Skywalker. Ahem, no. Had she actually tried, he would be dead. The entire point had been that she was fighting to not kill the guy. And she succeeded. In not killing him. Dude, if you are going to play (write) in somebody else's universe, you need to do your research.
   
   I would be happy with any of the e-books on my list that are in your price range. But here are five:
   
   Sara, Book 1
   
   Ender's Game
   
   Wyrd Sisters
   
   Witches Abroad
   
   Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume 2
   
   Have fun with your first gift giving! And thanks for the contest. :)

Reading this from my inbox I thought you wanted to get into Europe. Awkward.

In chronological order (and I'd very much recommend reading them in this order, it can be rather confusing trying to understand events and relationships you've never heard of). Please note these are all Post Endor; there are also many good books prior to the events covered in these, and there are certainly excellent books that have slipped my notice. I'd suggest going to your local library and searching there if you want even more.

• Anyway, I'd highly recommend Heir to the Empire to start off, since it very much popularized the EU. There's three others to the series, all of which I'd recommend.
  
  
• My other favorite is The X-Wing series, beginning at "Rogue Squadron" The series is great, but its pretty long at around 9 books. I think the most interesting aspect is how multiple authors contribute to the series, so there is a variety of style.
  
  
• And I'd say the longest, largest, most comprehensive, and best series is the Yuuzhan Vong Series (actual name is New Jedi Order I think). Starting at Vector Prime (written by R.A. Salvatore, whose other works I'd also recommend), it details a galaxy-wide war against a strange extra-galactic race intent on total domination.
  
  
• If all of that still wasn't enough for you, "The Legacy of the Force" series, beginning at "Betrayal" carries the story on. Personally I'd recommend against reading these. I found them kinda depressing in how the story progresses. That and I don't particularly like the authors' writing style. Still, if you must have more, then this is next in chronological order.
  
  I apologize if that was too comprehensive.

Ahh shit, I did not really see the part about you wanting longer audio. Book length is pretty short for litrpg so this is really tough.

The best I can do for that criteria is recommend good long audiobooks but they wont be litrpg.

Ready Player One is a self explanatory recommendation. 16 hours

Super Powereds super hero book. Super long at 26hours per book and 4 books total in series

Wool followed by Shift followed by Dust. Its an international bestseller post-apocalyptic drama. I dont really like drama but this one is amazing

Three body problem followed by Dark Forest followed by Deaths end . Its a three part ultra hard core science fiction. There are moments when it gets boring only to turn around and fuck your mind so hard you wont know what hit you. Written by a Chinese author which introduces an interesting perspective on things you dont see with American authors. 14/23/25 hours

Dresden Files is a great long running series with avg 16h per book

You've got some great suggestions so far- I'd also suggest Old Man's War ...it's fun.

Legacy of Heorot is also a good, fun read.

Connie Willis writes great short stories, and The Doomsday Book is one of the better time travel books that I've read (especially if you have any interest in history).

One of my favourite things to do is to pick up short story anthologies at the library, which usually gives me a good idea of which authors I'd be interested in reading.

Start here: https://www.amazon.com/Francisco-Street-Secrets-David-Eames/dp/0935182756. It's a history of SF from the view of it's citizens that have had our streets named after them. It's a fascinating book!

The "bad" sections of town are the Tenderloin and Bay View/Hunter's Point 'hoods. They're "bad" because they house poor residents and the area are prone to drug and human trafficking, as well as violence.

The "Muni Metro" subway is nice, but it's starting to show its age. Each station has different colored walls and floors to distinguish one from the other. They've finished boring out the main tunnel for the new "Central Subway" under Stockton Street, and how they're (block by block) ripping up the street and inserting the infrastructure around the tunnel.

It almost never snows in SF. I've lived here 20 years and I've seen it once (it evaporated before it touched the ground at Haight Street and Market Street, and this was at night!) and a friend "out in the Avenues" had a sleet / snow storm that laid out a couple of inches a few years ago. Other than those "freak" occurrences the Winter months are (WERE!) usually raining and overcast. However with the ongoing drought in California our Winter's have been pretty dry lately.

The "High Class" 'hoods are Pacific Heights and Sea Cliff.

The last two I cannot answer as they're too subjective. What's expensive to me wouldn't be to another, and "coolest" is far more subjective than just $ or $$$!

One of the biggest issues facing the city now is "Techies". These are well paid, IT-related, young professionals that are moving into the city and rents have been skyrocketing. SF is a very NIMBY city so for years now no one wanted to allow high density building in their 'hoods. Hence a shortage of rental units. We also have some very Renter-centic laws in the city that have owners of apartment buildings just not renting them out and having to deal with those laws.

That should be enough for you to get started on your research. Let me know if anything else comes up.

Personal Note: One of my favorite books is Altered Carbon (https://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novels/dp/0345457684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474925617&sr=1-1&keywords=altered+carbon). It's a sci-fi novel based in SF that's intelligent, very well written and trippy as hell. The author does a great job basing it in SF, but not falling into the trap of "over explaining" the details/scenery to "prove a point". (I hope that makes sense.) It was a joy to read because of that. I could "tell" where they were by what he was describing!

Don't feel lame. I went on a really long kick where I was reading a lot of franchise books - Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, Stargate, etc etc. Sometimes they're terribly written, but sometimes there are really good stories with some great character development.

I'm not really familiar with the other two books but from what I looked up of them (especially considering the Halo + Ben Bova) I think you'd like Ender's Game.

It's technically YA fiction, but it's good enough that you'll often find it in with the regular science fiction. It's also a series so if you like the first one that'll give you a few more to read.

In the classic Science fiction category The Foundation Series is worth looking into as well.

Let's see. Maybe The Sky People too. It's not exactly classic literature, but it's a fun romp in space - a what if there was life on Venus & Mars and it was dinosaurs and prehistoric humans sort of thing. Although not classic science fiction it has that same feel because it takes a stab at what type of life might exist on our neighboring planets.

I haven't read Edgar Rice Burroughs, but he might be up your alley too.

Yeah, you say you've hit the classics, but did you read all of them?

Neuromancer is my favourite book. Not just in the cyberpunk genre. So I'll more-than-second that recommendation. I agree that Burning Chrome is very good.

Mirrorshades (a short story collection) is also pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Mirrorshades-Cyberpunk-Anthology-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0877958688

Altered Carbon is excellent noir/cyberpunk.

http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novels/dp/0345457692/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372885278&sr=1-1&keywords=altered+carbon

The Eisenhorn Trilogy (easily found at most book stores) is probably the most commonly recommended starting point, and for good reason: It's fantastic writing, and provides most of the knowledge you need as it goes on. If you like that, there is a story about his successor called the Ravenor Trilogy.

You can also pick up any short story collection and follow along mostly without issue.

Reading 40k novels/stories is tricky because the universe has grown almost out of control with characters and places and concepts, but the more you read the more you assimilate the information, and after a while you don't even know how you learned this stuff. But damn if it isn't entertaining sci-fi.

Best of all, for something so heavily involved in war and identity and politics, there is almost zero political agenda, by some miracle. Female characters complement male characters rather than trying to replace them. "Good guys" lose and protagonists die very frequently, giving a nice sense of urgency and importance to each story because -- let's face it -- in almost any sci-fi nowadays the protagonist is going to win because box office. Romance is almost never a theme, and in the rare instance it appears, it has a more powerful effect due to occurring naturally (and sparsely), rather than as part of a formula.

Good stuff all around.

Robin Mckinley - anything by her though specifically Sunshine. If you haven't read Mercades Lackey than you would probably like her since you like Tamora Pierce. Start with Arrows for the Queen or Magic's Pawn. Raymond E Feist writes another good fantasy series that has tons of books in it. You might even like the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books since you like the Game of Thrones. If you haven't read the Ender's Game books by Orson Scott Card they are very good. Some classical sci-fi - Foundation series by Issac Asimov.

edit: also because it looks like you like some historical romance The Secret History of the Pink Carnation and Peony in Love.

Thanks for your help man. I just checked out the Steyr M9-A1 at the local gunshop (the .357 I had my eye on is on Gunbroker.) It felt really great in the hand, and I love the sci-fi aesthetic but unfortunately that style of grip angle does not suit me, it pointed really high (like 6" at 3 yards) when held in my natural wrist alignment.

Kinda random, but if you enjoy guns and sci-fi, I'd highly recommend the book Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. In addition to being a fantastic noir/hard future sci fi, it has a quite few plausible but futuristic handguns.

My all time favorite book is [Enders Game] (http://www.amazon.com/Enders-Game-Ender-Book-1/dp/0812550706) by Orson Scott Card. I read it when I was like 8 and it is an amazing piece of work.

I would also recommend two other books I've read recently.

1. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Cool. Weird. Funny
   
   
2. Killing Floor by Lee Child. It's the first novel in the Jack Reacher series. It had me hooked. I've continued the series and this one is a fun and exciting read.

I did the opposite (Perth - Melbourne). First up, it's easy. The roads all the way are busy, and there's no "middle of nowhere" where your life might be in any kind of danger if you break down etc.

It takes ages. It's one thing to know Australia is super big, it's another thing to drive across the island. But it's beautiful, too. I was grateful that I wasn't going to have to turn around and come back any time soon when I arrived, though.

If you are in a super hurry, you can do it 4 full days of driving. With two rotating drivers, and a bit of risk (don't drive at night unless you really have to, your odds of hitting something and damaging your car are not insignificant), you can do it in about three days.

If you're in a rush, Drive Melbourne to Adelaide on day one. Ceduna day two. Noresman day three, Arrive in Perth at the end of day 4. I took 5 days, but I stayed a night on the Nullabor and had a leisurely time of it. If you aren't in a hurry, and haven't seen the Great Ocean Road, take that road. So beautiful.

Other than that, the trip is pretty straight-forward. Treat your drive like you would a day at work. Stop for lunch, have a few little breaks. Maybe work back a little. You'll do fine.

Take something to listen to. I had Audiobooks. As a suggestion if you haven't already read it: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. If you're new to Audible, you should be able to download it for free. Read by Wil Wheaton, about a far-too-possible future for Humanity/Internet/Second Life kind of thing. Full of 80's pop culture.

Might be a little too mature for an 11 year old, but I'd recommend Little Brother and Homeland by Cory Doctorow.
I'd recommend you reading them as well. Some pretty good common-man explanations of some core security topics.

I've read The Book Thief! I really liked it. Here are some books that are similar to the Book Thief, and have changing/growing characters:

• [The Giver] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Giver-Quartet-Lois-Lowry/dp/0544336267/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1WWVNGF0226N13781SPQ). Takes place in the future, in a town where everything is controlled. Very interesting book. It might be too easy for you, but I'm not sure.
  
  
• [Life of Pi] (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Pi-Yann-Martel/dp/0156027321/ref=pd_sim_b_31?ie=UTF8&refRID=1WWVNGF0226N13781SPQ). A man is cast-away after his ship sinks and goes through incredible experiences. This might be a little too complex, but it doesn't hurt to try!
  
  
• [Flowers for Algernon] (http://www.amazon.com/Flowers-Algernon-Daniel-Keyes/dp/0156030306/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413110247&sr=1-1&keywords=flowers+for+algernon). This book follows a retarded man as he gets an experimental treatment to get stronger. If you only read one book out of these 4, read this one! It's one of the saddest books I've ever read and it's also one of my favorites. It also is a great example of a character growing and changing. you really should read this book, I cannot stress it enough!
  
  
• [Ender's Game] (http://www.amazon.com/Enders-Ender-Quintet-Orson-Scott/dp/0812550706/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413110356&sr=1-1&keywords=ender%27s+game). A young boy goes to school to learn to defend humanity in a great interstellar war. This is one of my favorite science fiction books. I'm not sure if you'll like it, it's a little out there. However, it really focuses on how characters grow and develop.
  
  If you have any questions at all or want any more book recommendations, feel free to message me!
  
  puedo hablar un poco español, despues de seis años de clas
  es. tu ingles es mucho mejor que mi español. quiza leo unos libros, jaja
  
  

Use of Weapons and, everything else by Iain M. Banks. Amazing stuff. Trust me.

The Blade Itself and the rest of that series by Joe Abercrombie.

Altered Carbon and the rest of that series as well as Thirteen and The Steel Remains, and it's sequel (still waiting on book 3) by Richard K. Morgan. He's pretty amazing.

That would keep you busy for a long time and are all pretty amazing. Seconding Dune, which is amazing, and the Name of the Wind which is great but very popcorn.

But really, if you were to read everything by Iain M. Banks you would be a better person.

Edit: The Sparrow

It isn't exactly what you asked for but the Bobiverse trilogy by Dennis Taylor might be of interest to you since it is sci-fi and the MC is a hard worker who improves himself through technology although a bit different than you are requesting.

The main character is turned into an AI and placed into an interstellar probe that can self replicate and make copies. He continues to research new technologies while spreading through various star systems. He and his copies are effectively immortal except if they are destroyed by unnatural means and they try to save the human species over the course of generations. Pretty cool read.

https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ

Give the Bobiverse series a try.

The premise: An engineer signs up for cryogenically freezing his brain when he dies on a whim. A bus runs him over. He wakes up hundreds of years in the future except it has been determined that these frozen brains are now the property of the state. They couldn't unfreeze him and bring him back to life, but they COULD use his brain as a template to be mapped into a computer system. He is now effectively an AI, given control over a Von Neuman probe that is to be sent out to colonize space.

There's lots of fun world building and an interesting look at the human condition. They're pretty clever with Bob too. For example, there's no such thing as Faster Than Light travel, so Bob just turns his clock speed down. In this way he experiences time slower than is actually happening and doesn't go insane on the long journey between planets. The books really start to pick up as he constructs other Bobs, each with their own slightly different personalities.

Ok, you like a lot of the authors I do so Imma try and throw a couple out there.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Set in future Thailand where global warming has run rampant, the oceans have risen, and gene companies produce food seed continuously to keep ahead of genetic plagues that destroy anything edible. It's some solid hard scifi and if you like Gibson and Dick it should do ya well.

Red Thunder by John Varley Set in the near future the Chinese are clearly going to win the spacerace to Mars and a small group decides to build a ship to beat em. This is the first in a three part series (which I just learned had a third part lookin up that link) and I enjoyed it.

As for fantasy...

The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher In the world of The Dresden Files, magic is real, along with ghouls, vampires, demons, spirits, faeries, werewolves, zombies and other mythical monsters. Harry Dresden works to protect the general public, who are ignorant of magic and the dark forces conspiring against them. This makes it difficult for Harry to get by as a working wizard and private eye. The Chicago PD's Special Investigation unit, when led by Karrin Murphy, regularly employs Dresden as a consultant to help solve cases of a supernatural nature. I love this series, whenever a new book comes out (and hes up to 14 not counting a few short story collections and such) I read it almost nonstop.

I read all the time, I actually didn't like the idea of reading on a tablet or e-reader at first, but I'm reading every day on my new Kindle and I love it.

I would highly recommend The Thrawn Trilogy, first book here. I also really loved the whole Ender's Game series found here. One last big recommendation is The Sword of Truth series found here.

Richard K. Morgan: A land fit for heroes

It's a pretty damn good fantasy series. I got into it because his cyberpunk noir novels were so damn good. Altered Carbon and the rest of the Takeshi Kovacs novels were excellent.

Also, I was lucky enough to have friends immediately recommend Joe Abercrombie post asoiaf. The First Law Trilogy is absolutely gripping. Personally, I think it's better than asoiaf.

I enjoyed theArcheologist warlord by E.M. Hardy (technically I suppose you would say it is sci-fi, but it feels more like fantasy). The main character gets transformed into a sentient space pyramid thing. At first I thought it would be more of a dungeon building thing, but he ends up sending workers out to gather resources, build pylons to extend his range, construct different units, ect.

It's not litRPG but the Bobiverse books by Dennis Taylor are fantastic and definitely get some of the 4x, spanning across the galaxy vibe as the bobs spread throughout space.

Are you interested in settlement/city building?

I just read a 2 novel series called "The Bobiverse". It's sort of sci-fi pulp but it's fun and I really enjoyed it. It captured the things I like about Star Trek, a little action/adventure/exploration with a few smart jokes.

https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=ZPJFXB9C798XNAT6WP51

My favorite 40k books are usually by Dan Abnett (and it's not a very unusual opinion). The omnibus about inquisator Eisenhorn is probably the best of his that I've read.

I agree that Horus Heresy series is also a great place to start, as it sets the background for the 40k universe. I really enjoyed the first 5. At the time that was all that was published -- I had no idea there were 28 now, wow!

Most of what's on here is fairly classic straightforward detective stuff, which is great, but I've always been a sucker for mysteries that merge with other genres or do unusual things. A good handful if that's your bag:

• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster - 3 short novels packaged together and vaguely related. Also a pretty great mindfuck book
  
• Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem - detective novel whose narrator has Tourette Syndrome
  
• The Alienist by Caleb Carr or In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff - Historical fiction/mystery taking place around the turn of the century and during the dawns of forensics/criminal psychology/criminology
  
• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan - Sci-fi/hardboiled detective novel in a future where the human mind can be digitized and backed up off-site, rendering murder irrelevant. Terrific book, I find myself compelled to reread it and its sequels every year or so.
  
  Those are all more or less "detective fiction" style mystery, if you're looking at the broader genre I cannot recommend The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon any more highly. I haven't been sucked into writing like that in a long long time.
  

> How does one who has never tried at anything, try at life?

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Some challenges seem huge but if you break them down into little pieces you can conquer them. How do you do that? Just start doing anything and something will happen.

Succeeding in my line of work is all about the effort I put into my projects. Even if I work my tail off there is a chance I could fail but the success is so sweet that I have to keep trying. Just do anything. Good luck.

Books: The Four Agreements

Ender's Game

Body for Life

If You Haven't Got the Time to Do It Right, When Will You Find the Time to Do It Over?

The War if Art

I got something out of these, maybe you will too. Good luck.

Hey everyone, this week we discuss action scenes and how to ensure they're engaging and meaningful. Hope you enjoy it!

May 10th is when our Scrivener promotion ends, so if you've been trying it out and want to buy it, be sure to use the code RATIONALLY at checkout for 20% off before then!

The book recommendation this week by /u/alexanderwales is Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. It's a hardboiled detective story set hundreds of years in the future, when human minds can be digitally stored and put into empty 'sleeves' at will. A wealthy man, Lauren Bancroft, hires the ex-military detective Takeshi Kovacs to get to the bottom of a supposed suicide; the suicide was Bancroft's, who was restored from backup and has no knowledge of what might have made him take his own life. The novel has all the staples of hardboiled detective fiction, filtered through a transhumanist lens where bodies are disposable, torture takes place in virtual reality, and the femme fatales have been genetically engineered for beauty. The action in particular is a highlight, which is a good thing because there's plenty of violence along the way.

If you want to give the audio book a try, sign up for an Audible trial through us to get a free book and help support the show. Thanks for listening!

Dan Abnett wrote a short story that went something like this, though set in the Warhammer 40k universe. It was a good story, and a linking piece of the Eisenhorn series, which is a great read if you like sci-fi stuff at all, even if you have no interest in the Warhammer 40k world. Pretty good read even if you don't like sci-fi stuff...very cool development of characters over a long period.

I'm quite a fan of the Origin series by Randolph Lalonde.
The first book is free on Amazon, and I promise you won't have a problem investing in the rest of the series.
(Do you see the irony in the plot?)


About the book

"It is the distant future and one man, Jonas Valent, is letting his life slip by. He is employed by Freeground station as a port traffic controller, a job he took after completing a tour in the military. His only real joy in life is his participation in true-to-life military simulations with a cadre of friends who come together regularly to defeat challenges made to test the brightest military cadets and officers alike. These restricted scenarios stand as an addictive preoccupation that is so enticing that they ignore the potential repercussions of breaking in to participate.

When someone betrays their identities to the Freeground Fleet Admiralty, Jonas and his friends are faced with a far greater challenge: to venture out into the more populated regions of the galaxy to acquire technology and knowledge. They are tasked with laying the groundwork for the Freeground Nation in their efforts to reconnect with the rest of humanity, and to secure the armaments they might need to defend themselves from encroaching enemies."

http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Spinward-Fringe-Randolph-Lalonde-ebook/dp/B004EPYUXA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1394982530&sr=8-4&keywords=Origins+Space

OK, so your mother reminds me so much of Joyful.

Go on you all for taking the threat seriously and acting on it!

Many many hugs from Scotland if you would like them.

And finally, and a fellow lover of Sci-fi I would like to suggest that you check out this online, self published 'book'. There are some clunky bits, and a few bits where an editor could have pulled it together. But in terms of storyline, character progression and universe creation it is one of the better sci-fi books I have read in a long while.

(I have turned them into kindle files, if you want me to send them to you throw me a PM)

Oh and the Honor Harrington series by David Webber.

Riddle the First: Wine
I’ve heard tell that wine can be paired with fruit and cheese. Because I’m a classy lady I would have no trouble substituting traditional cheese for some White Cheddar Cheez-its:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001ONPN9K/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=I2QRJJ8FY0PH3O

Riddle the Second: Broom
Do you know how dusty White Cheddar Cheez-its are? Of course I need a broom to keep my side of the dormitory clean!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006TESANU/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=I37I11D6JNTLOL

Riddle the Third: Hat
What “classy lady” wouldn’t want a miniature top hat headband fascinator? I just hope its not too distracting to the other students…
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IB052U4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=IPL430LO8ISSR

Riddle the Fourth: Book
I chose a muggle book of fiction I’ve wanted to read for a while now, The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. I’ll give you a prize if you can say “Bacigalupi” three times fast…
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1597801585/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=I3IYSDZAX1N183

Riddle the Fifth: Trunk
Cards Against Humanity would be stowed away in my trunk. What better way to learn about all my new housemates after sorting is complete?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S8F7QM/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=I1Z7ZLARVMKSAN

For Bonus Points: Cape
I need variety! Why wear the same boring old cape day after day if I don’t have to? With Dancing Colors Scarves I could have a different colored cape, or a cape of many colors, anytime I pleased!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042SR4F0/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3OX0211BFWC4U&coliid=I2KTI79YW1128G

I've read all these books, and they were decent reads. However, I should mention some positives and negatives about the series.

PROS:

• The books are fairly well written.
  
  
• The plot line at least makes some decent sense.
  
  
• Some of the technology and tactics make sense as well, and the neat thing is the concept of light delay in astronomical terms in relation to combat positioning and fleet tactics. This is really the meat and bones of the books and is usually the most interesting to read (in my opinion anyways)
  
  CONS:
  
  
• There is a lot of deus ex machina with the fleet fights.
  
  
• There is a convenient hand waving of why the main character is so good at what he does. It's literally because everyone else is so terrible.
  
  
• The romantic subplots seemed a bit forced, and constantly talking about 'honor' and crap seems really silly in context of a fight to return home.
  
  OVERALL:
  
  I'd definitely check these out if you're jonesing for some science fiction, but there are definitely better books out there if you're looking for something amazing to read.
  
  OTHER SERIES / BOOKS RECOMMENDATIONS:
  
  Into the Black - EDIT: Had book 4 listed here instead of book one, fixed
  
  Lines of Departure
  
  Old Man's War

Have you read (or listened to the audiobook) We Are Legion (We Are Bob)? If not, you need to! It's $3.99 as a Kindle eBook or free if you're a member of Kindle Unlimited, and the audiobook is only $1.99. It's the first in a series of three books, and it's both amazing and hilarious, narrated from the perspective of a snarky geek. Your mention of Epsilon Eridani is what reminded me of it. I definitely recommend the audiobook as the narrator, Ray Porter, delivers the snark perfectly.

For elaborate world building, it's tough to beat Dune. Intergalactic politics in the wake of an AI rebellion, deep mysticism and Bedouin-flavored lore, religious fanatics, a drug that makes the universe go round, and giant freaking sandworms!

Ender's Game is another popular suggestion to get you into reading. I preferred Dune, though.

Another good read that I enjoyed immensely was Unwind by Neal Shusterman. After the United States has fought a second civil war over abortion, a new deal is struck - no abortion, but unwinding up to the age of 18. It's dark and twisted and I loved it... especially considering it's a young adult novel, which is not my genre of choice.

Odd Thomas is a fun series, but Koontz can be kind-of hit or miss. I'm finding the odd-numbered books in the series to be better than the even-numbered ones, but that's just based on the first four. I wonder if that was intentional?

You've likely read most of these, but here are a few suggestions:

• The Space Trilogy - C.S. Lewis. Underappreciated works by Lewis - in many ways Narnia for adults. These books are a work of supposition. What if there is intelligent life on other planets that have not fallen into sin? What would that look like?
  
• Watership Down - Richard Adams. This is a book about rabbits. Not anthropomorphized rabbits, but rabbit rabbits with their own language and mythology, who care about and experience the things rabbits experience. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it is utterly captivating.
  
• Dune - Frank Herbert. A captivating epic in a richly detailed universe. Themes of politics, religion, and technology iterweave in a fascinating tale.
  
• Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide - Orson Scott Card. The tale of a child trained to be the commander of earth's defenses against alien bugs. The sequels feature the same character but in an utterly different tale. The books are very different but both one of my favorites. The recent movie didn't do it justice.
  
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein is a genius, but his books often disappoint me halfway through. This one doesn't. My favorite of his works.
  
• The Mote In God's Eye - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. After colonizing the hundreds of stars, mankind finally makes contact with an intelligent alien race for the first time. They are utterly foreign and seemingly benign, but with a dangerous secret.
  
  I can recommend others if you've already hit all of those already.

Several books by Charlie Stross, including TOAST (a short story collection), two of his novels, Accelerando, and Scratch Monkey, and several other short stories are available at his website in multiple formats.

Spinward Fringe: Origins by Randolph Lalonde is available from Amazon for free and is the beginning of a great sci-fi series that I couldn't stop reading until I made my way all the way through the entire published series. I can't wait for the next one!

Cory Doctorow I believe has a couple of free ebooks for download on his website, craphound.com - including Little Brother.

I'm sure there are others I've missed but those are all good and off the top of my head. Enjoy!

No need to be worried man! It's just a lovely conversation between space lovers

I just remembered probably my favorite sci-fi novel: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It is so much better than the movie, which, to be honest, I didn't like too much. It's also a very easy read.

The Bobiverse Trilogy was pretty good. I have Kindle Unlimited, and it was included, so I tried it out. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. It reminded me of an easier to read Greg Egan. But, instead of physics like Egan does, it's based on tech. There's even realistic scenarios about project management that are humorous.

The bobiverse is a good, fun, new one... Martin Kloos is great if he likes military scifi. Vernor Vinge is great with little or no bodily fluids, just spiders and dying civilisations...

So many choices!

I am half way through "Infinite by Jeremy Robinson" and it is fab. I would highly recommend. Also Bobiverse is a great book by Dennis Taylor (3 in the series). Finally, I would add "Expeditionary Force" by Craig Alanson.

They all good sci-fi shouts in my opinion. In fact, I would say get all 3!! :)

1. I wish people would more often use turn signals. It's incredibly simple and easy and makes everyone safer.
   
   
2. I made plans to see a friend I don't get to see very often :)
   
   
3. Life is, in itself, meaningful.
   
   
4. Whoooo

I find that authors reading their own books is usually a good thing. Anthony Bourdain reading Kitchen Confidential and John Hodgeman reading The Areas of My Expertise are my favorite examples.

Old Man's War has an excellent narrator. And I know the opinion on Ready Player One is rather polarized, but if you are interested Wil Wheaton's narration is great.

The growing popularity of "evangelical" Christian belief is to blame.

Young people think it's always been this way in the US, but when I was growing up in the 1960s, this crazy religious cult was far less popular. Everybody went to some church or other, but this "evangelical" thing was a fringe cult that most people made fun of. Now most Americans are buying into this garbage.

I don't know if you have heard of Leo Frankowski, but he wrote a fun book series about medieval Poland:

http://www.leofrankowski.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-Stargard/dp/0345327624

The whole Ender's Game series is really, really good. I highly suggest reading all of the books. Everyone always compares it to the Hunger Games, but I personally don't think they really compare.

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America is a book I thoroughly enjoyed, and I had my dad read it too. It's it's a bit apocalyptic, and of course it's a fictional novel, but the story sounds so plausible it's scary.

People have already recommended a bunch of books by John Green, but I second those recommendations. He's a wonderful author.

Finally, a coming-of-age book which just so happens to be my all-time favorite book is The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I can talk about books all day. I love reading so much

It's not fantasy, but David Weber has an amazing series that starts with On Basilisk Station. A strong female lead, a well thought out background, and a lot of math (which he does all of it for you). A hard sci-fi series that's been a treat to read.

Amazon link to the first book

First suggestion, although it isn't fantasy more historical fiction, is James Clavell's Asian Saga. Starting with Shogun. It takes about 70 pages for me to really get into the story, which for a normal length book would be a lot but these are over 1,000 pages for the most part. It sounds daunting but the stories are full of adventure and intrigue and you will very likely be captivated and swept away.

Second Ender's Game Series Kind of a classic science fiction series, just like Dune.

Third The End. The second book in the series releases on the 30th of August.

Have you ever read any Orson Scott Card? His Ender's Game and series is absolutely amazing. He has a few other series, too, like Seventh Son, and some amazing standalone books like Songmaster.

Another trilogy I'd highly recommend is the His Dark Materials series, including The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.

Agreed. I was looking through the gallery of Ender's Game book covers and most of them are atrocious. I do think this cover is probably the best I've seen, in terms of representing the book well and still giving a cool sci-fi feel to it, without looking too much like a kids book like this one.

Player of Games is a good book, and it's early enough in the Culture series that Banks hadn't yet realized he made the Minds too powerful and doesn't need the human characters to actually do anything. But it is not military science fiction and I don't think it's similar to The Forever War.

If you're looking for more military sci-fi I can recommend Forging Zero, All You Need is Kill, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Orphanage...and many more I'm sure. Armor is great and I'm sure you've heard of Starship Troopers.

A note on David Weber, I find his overuse of italics a constant irritation when reading his books. It really helps to get digital copies and run them through calibre to eliminate all the italics first.

Well, there's /u/bethrevis' Across the Universe trilogy for starters. I didn't like the first book much, but loved the next two.

Cecil Castellucci's Tin Star is a standalone YA sci-fi with strong Titan A.E. vibes.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game also fits, though it's a smaller focus, I think.

More adult than YA, but I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Willful Child and it fits the easy reading notes. It's kind of Star Trek helmed by meta-William Shatner/Zapp Brannigan/Zaphod Beeblebrox, as narrated by Kurt Vonnegut.

I believe These Broken Stars would also fit the YA space opera label, though I haven't read it.

Edit: And if you don't mind spinoffs, I forgot about Star Wars' Young Jedi Knights series. Loved those as a kid. Not sure how they stand up, but that was the series fitting the YA niche instead of adult or MG.

The Spinward Fringe series is good. I recommend it if you have an e-reader, because the first book (actually it's more like a prequel but whatever) is completely free. The rest of the books are nice and cheap as well. (again, if you have an e-reader)

Thank you!

I highly recommend it. I know people are really hit or miss with audiobooks, but I love listening to it while playing Aurora.

Here's the first (it's a pretty short series of 3 books): https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ

Interesting, The Kindle version is free on Amazon .. good enough reason to add it to my collection :)

I'm mostly into SciFi books myself. Recently I've been reading a bit by Paul McAuley, If I were to recommend something recent it'd be The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun by him. For old classics you can't go wrong with Ender's Game or Ringworld.

Cross Time Engineer is literally this exact story. Current (2006) engineer is transported back to medieval poland. Has to re-create modern technology since he knows poland is going to be decimated by the mongols in 10 year. He creates like an 1800's level technology in 1241, 4 book series and outside the 'childish' side stories (written like a sex fantasy in some places) the science is awesome.. how Conrad has to create base level technologies, and use his current knowledge somehow, and avoid being thought of as a sorcerer/witch for all his knowledge . Super fun read, would suggest reading until the flying warlord, everything after that devolves into what seems like it was fan-fiction

Cross-Time Engineer, Book 1

This is such a crazy awesome contest, and you are such a crazy and generous person!

A Kindle Fire is the ideal e-reader in my opinion. I'm constantly on the go, and constantly stuck in long rehearsals and going on trips which have a lot of down time. Reading is one of my favorite things to do, and I tend to go through books really quickly. I love real books, that paper feel and smell, but it's not always the best idea to pack two or three books to take along. Luggage can get heavy, there's not enough space, etc. With an e-reader, I could have tons of books at my fingertips! I feel like I should maniacally cackle there, but it might not be the best idea.

If I win, I would love the book Ender's Game to start off the Ender Quintet.

The HItchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The one I linked to is actually a collection of all 5 in the Trilogy, but it is so worth reading. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed anything I've read by Vonnegut.
If you like Sci-Fi, check out Orson Scott Card's work. I'd start with Ender's Game. What Would Satan Do?. Don't let the title discourage you. It offers a very interesting take on the apocalypse. I am currently reading Immaculate Deception, very interesting.

Cheers!

>As to the mental rewriting, I'm able to simply bite the bullet. I would likely feel rather physically violated, but not mentally so.

I think this makes intuitive, almost Cartesian sense, and I think I agree. What if you still had little mental residues of the last mind, though? Dreams, for example, are probably related to our brain processing and consolidating memories. Dreaming and realizing that they're "someone else's" mental residues (or, if you like, "your" mental residues while your brain was rewritten/hijacked/tricked into thinking it was someone else) might be a bit disturbing.

Bit of a tangent but if these sorts of conundrums interest you and you haven't read it already I highly recommend Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, a noir-cyberpunk novel about a future where consciousness can be digitized, with some strange consequences for the idea of the self.

http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Suit-Gundam-Escalation-Confrontation/dp/1611720052/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426918873&sr=8-1&keywords=mobile+suit+gundam+novel

Although it is VERY different than the series, it will give you a good understanding of mobile suits, minovsky particles, newtypes, and the general ideas of why there is a war and how things got so bad. But its worth a read if your interested in gundam and want to do something besides watch a 50 episode anime. Also i definitely recommend reading mobile suit gundam the origin manga, its very good and retells the anime entirely (plus some bonus stuff)

Check out the Honor Harrington series its got a strong female lead and its just pretty dam cool what with the space ships and stuff :) https://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Station-Honor-Harrington-Book-ebook/dp/B00ARPJBS0

Someone already suggested Harry Potter, they are really fabulous reads for adults too (I hadda fight my mom for em when the new ones came out....she was in her 70s :)

There's a series of books by David Weber that follow Honor Harrington, they are total space opera with lots of action and huge space battles and I believe there's a movie in the works and the first book is free on Amazon for ereader/cloud reader http://amzn.com/B00ARPJBS0

I can try to help more when I have an idea of genres!

http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413465938&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mote+in+god%27s+eye

The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. One of the greatest First Contact books ever. Hugo and Nebula nominee.

"Writing separately, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are responsible for a number of science fiction classics, such as the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Ringworld, Debt of Honor, and The Integral Trees. Together they have written the critically acclaimed bestsellers Inferno, Footfall, and The Legacy of Heorot, among others.
The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre."

If you're looking for something for < $1.46 you're mostly only going to find short stories and books of questionable quality by indie authors.

If you're willing to be patient the Kindle Daily Deal has high quality books from time to time for only $2. Just off the top of my head I've gotten sweet deals on Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem, Lauren Beukes and Philip K Dick.

Amazon also has Monthly Deals and periodically a Big Deal where you can find books for $2-$5.

If that money is burning a hole in your pocket a quick perusal reveals a few books within a couple dollars of your credit:

Most of Greg Egan's books are permanently at $2.99

Nod $3.79 was an amazing book, nominated for several awards

1st 3 books of the Dragonriders of Pern $1.99

Player Piano $3.99 by Vonnegut

Flowers for Algernon $4.81

Enders Game $3.99

A Calculated Life $3.99 - was nominated for a couple awards this year

Edit, Also found (and added prices to all):

The Last Policeman $2.99

Horns $2.99 This is horror and not sci-fi but it is a thrilling good book.

On audible and possibly kindle there is the Bobiverse
Also the 'Gateway' series is an OLD hfy, dating back before the internet [the first three books are by far the best] but prep yourself for alternating perspectives as Pohl seems to enjoy them and uses them to great effect.
I know that my 'Back to human' is on kindle unlimited and paperback,

Transcripts has as well [book one] and book 0 will come out soon according to squiggles as will book 2

• Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"
  
• Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"
  
• Joe Haldeman's "Forever War"
  
• Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama"
  
• Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep"
  
• Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan"
  
• Philip K. Dick's "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep" (inspiration for the Blade Runner movie)
  
• Dan Simmons' "Hyperion"
  
  Every single one of these books has something different to offer you from the genre of scifi. Those three at the top are great entries into the genre. As what I perceive to be "deeper cuts", allow me to suggest my four favorite scifi novels:
  
  
• Isaac Asimov's "Foundation"
  
• William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
  
• Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl"
  
• Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination"
  
  Cheers!

Ender's Game...little boy trains to save the world from aliens on a video game. The first book connects you to Ender and books 2-4 make you think about things a little difficult. They deal with some pretty taboo topics from a point of view that allows you to sympathize. They are so well written, Orson Scott Card is an amazing author, and you will be hooked by 50 pages, I promise :)

Sample.
The Course of Empire (Course of Empire Series Book 1) by Eric Flint
1632 (Ring of Fire Series) by Eric Flint
Northworld Trilogy by David Drake
Starliner by David Drake
Star Soldiers by Adre Norton
Oath of Swords (War God Book 1) by David Weber
On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington Book 1) by David Weber
The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington Book 2) by David Weber
The Star Agency (The Star Agency Chronicles Book 1) by R.E. Weber
The Last Praetorian (The Redemption Trilogy Book 1) by Mike Smith
Hard Duty: Merkiaari Wars Book 1 by Mark E. Cooper
The Synchronicity War Part 1 by Dietmar Wehr
Dark Space by Jasper T. Scott
The Tank Lords by David Drake
Redliners by David Drake
A Desert Called Peace (Carrera Series Book 1) by Tom Kratman
Gunship by John Davis
With the Lightnings (Lt. Leary Book 1) by David Drake
Tales of Honor #1 by Matt Hawkins and Jung-Geun Yoon
The Fringe Worlds: (The Human Chronicles Saga Book #1) by T.R. Harris
Freehold (Freehold Series Book 1) by Michael Z. Williamson
The Last Roman (The Praetorian Series Book 1) by Edward Crichton
The Sea Hag by David Drake
Forbidden The Stars (The Interstellar Age Book 1) by Valmore Daniels
FCBD 2015: Tales of Honor by Matt Hawkins and Linda Sejic
The Philosophical Strangler (Joe's World Book 1) by Eric Flint
The Creatures of Man by Howard L. Myers
In the Heart of Darkness (Belisarius Saga Book 2) by Eric Flint
Northworld Trilogy by David Drake
Starliner by David Drake

This is a book I don't see often, but I think it fits really well with your tastes.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

It's got a dystopian future where the world is run by corporations, and has an interesting cast of characters with their own goals. It's a standalone novel, but I will highly recommend it.

Have you read We are Legion; We are Bob? If not and you (OP only) are willing to pm me with your preferred format and an email. There's a lot of laughable/horribly pessimistic assumptions in the story, but it's a good mix of passages in the void and humorous sci-fi illustrating a counter-argument.

I think you are assuming a sub-sapient probe, and that only makes sense if you don't pursue a K type reproductive strategy (i.e. quality over quantity) for your probe. We are K type reproducers ourselves; and I would hope our first von-neuman probes are, at least, as strongly trans-human as the Bobs are.

Books! Especially the two Dan Abnett trilogies: Eisenhorn and Ravenor.

http://www.amazon.com/Eisenhorn-Warhammer-40-000-Omnibus/dp/1844161560

http://www.amazon.com/Ravenor-The-Omnibus-Dan-Abnett/dp/1844167372

Each is an "omnibus", three relatively short novels that were combined into a single book (750 or so pages paperback each?).

Start with Eisenhorn, it's a great primer to the general 40K world. Ravenor is much darker, and also fantastic.

Oh my God, it's such good stuff. Pirate the epub versions, or buy a used copy for pennies somewhere. I think they're out of print now.

So far it's very good. It is the sequel to one of my favorite books Little Brother, so read that first.

EDIT: I goofed the link.

EDIT 2: You can legally download LB for free from the author's website. Enjoy!

EDIT 3: When done with that, you can download Homeland here.

I'm reading Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein right now. It takes place in the year 4272 in an interplanetary human civilization with "the Senior", who's been alive since the 1940's (and who's genes aided research into 'rejuvenation clinics' for the wealthy and connected), giving his life stories and wisdom to the leader of a planet who wants to leave and colonize a new world. It's a fascinating read, and gets into some decent scientific detail too. Heinlein also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.

Good to hear from you. I am not a book critic at all so I thank you for letting me try.

>Indeed, the story is designed to start in media res, and the lack of familiarity with the setting is intentional. The next six chapters are dedicated to exploring the characters and the world around them. I've always found it more interesting when the reader is thrust into an unknown universe, only to have information about that universe slowly disclosed over the course of the story.

Ever read John Scalzi's work? In Ghost Brigades he does this very well in the first chapter where you are just boggled to the point that you can't put the book down to find out where the story will go next. I know that most writers do this, but that was the one that stands out right now. He is a great writer and I recommend him if you haven't read any of his work. Start with Old Man's War.

>You shouldn't ;)

Dang! If you can, link the next installment. I'll be having a slow day at work tomorrow!

>That said I feel like it would be a hell of a lot easier to live on a hot earth than it would be to live on mars.

Maybe; a rise in temperature means a rise in the prevalence of disease and superstorms. Combine those two and it doesn't look very promising for human civilization on earth.

On the other hand, developing a colonized mars with domed cities that have been acclimated to human climate would be quite easy to live in due to the lack of superstorms and disease. We need the tech (no small feat, though possibly achievable in the next half century I think) and the management to manage that tech. Even so, access to these domed cities would be limited so the point is moot if we're talking about moving the majority of human life over there.

If you want a good piece of hard sci-fi, check out Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. The focus of the utopic novel is colonizing and terraforming Mars and includes a great deal of political ideology and quasi-scientific ideas about how we would make it on Mars.

Second Stage Turbine Blade Ultimate Edition

In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 Ultimate Edition

That's the closest thing to a 'compendium' as you'll find. Also, Claudio did releases a Good Apollo Graphic Novel around the release of GA1, but it's not nearly as in-depth as SSTB or IKS as it was written/drawn/published on a severely small budget. It's going to be re-released in the future true to the format we know, though.

Almost forgot YotBR, but you'll have to go searching beyond Amazon for that, as all of the physical releases are sold out and the only thing left available is the Kindle edition.

Happy reading :)

Highly recommend the following series:
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ

It’s fun, it’s an easy read, but it’s not simplistic.

Also huge recommendation for these two books:
https://www.amazon.com/14-Peter-Clines/dp/1618680528

https://www.amazon.com/Fold-Novel-Peter-Clines-ebook/dp/B00NDTS7NC

Again, fun, easy to read and a blast to re-read.

Eisenhorn is probably the best possible place to start in 40k. You get every possible angle of 40k explored in this omnibus as well as a some fantastic characters. Add Ravenor for flavor.

After that, dive into the military side of things with Gaunt's Ghosts. This covers primarily the Imperium vs Chaos side of the conflict, but also the internal conflicts the Imperium suffers from.

Now that you're thoroughly acquainted with the human side, view the universe through the eyes of the super-human Space Marines in The Ultramarines Omnibus. This series shows the strengths (and weaknesses) of the Space Marines as well as introducing the terrifying Chaos Space Marines more thoroughly.

Cry for death to the False Emperor with Soul Hunter. Follow up with the sequels in Void Stalker and Blood Reaver to get a very interesting perspectives from the Renegades.

Finally, finish your introductory odyssey with The Horus Heresy. You'll be reading how the modern universe came to be.

This is a "fuck-ton" of reading and will keep you busy for 6 months to a year or more before you finish. These series are the best of the best in the novel side of things. There are huge amounts more in the Army Codexes ^^that ^^you ^^should ^^be ^^able ^^to ^^find ^^for ^^$0 ^^on ^^"sharing" ^^sites and other excellent novels. PM me anytime and I'll happily answer questions/suggestions.

I recommend Old Man's War

​

The beginning line is awesome: John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.

​

It's part of an amazing series and they are all excellent books.

Best of luck!

Book?

Please, oh please, let me get this new job

/u/prograft Honor Harrington series by David Weber. It's military sci-fi, basically think early Tom Clancy and Red Storm Rising in space. The first 2 books are free on Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ARPJBS0

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BBI9WD6

This is the series that got me interested in hard sci-fi and made it so I could be hooked by The Expanse later on. In the "Honorverse", the two main technological advancements made vs The Expanse are FTL travel and inertial dampeners that allows ships to accelerate at hundreds of g forces in normal space. Outside of that, many of the real-life physics rules that make The Expanse's world so compelling are still in full force.

Combat is typically at extreme distance (10s of millions of KM) with missiles that attempt to swarm opponent's point defense systems. Lasers are used instead of kinetic slugs, but the concept remains the same. Close range combat is with broadsides of massive lasers that can shatter a ship in seconds, so generally ships try to keep out of energy range. A lot of battles come down to how fast certain ships can accelerate vs their opponents, velocity and direction of forces when a battle begins, and flight times of missiles that have ranges of millions of kilometers. Light-speed communication limits the ability to coordinate actions between dispersed forces in the same star system or in multiple systems. Stealth systems allow forces to ambush others when not using their engines to accelerate.

The story is essentially meant to be 1800s England vs France in the age of sail, with our protagonist nation, the constitutional parliamentary monarchy Star Kingdom of Manticore, sitting at the intersection of many wormholes resulting in massive wealth from interstellar trade fees. The antagonist, the Republic of Haven, is an expansionist oligarchic welfare state that needs to continually seize new systems to keep its economy afloat. Manticore has to rely on better technology and training to counter Haven's much numerically larger Navy.

Early books are told almost entirely from Honor's perspective as a young up-and-coming Manticoran Navy captain as she encounters various plots and schemes and Haven. There are re-occurring side characters that are a lot of fun though.

I have to recommend my favorite book, it was even made into a decent movie!

I would love Speedrunners. And if you're feeling extra generous, Nimble Quest is also on sale for $0.50 right now!

www.steamcommunity.com/id/13DprimePlays

I'm also about to do a road trip with two other scientists! Here are some awesome books that either I've read, or I plan on reading on my trip:

Contact - Carl Sagan. This book is absolutely my favorite science-y fiction, ever.

Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, if you haven't read them already.

Anything by Ray Bradbury - specifically Fahrenheit 451, also if you haven't read it already.

If you're into full-on science fiction, I can totally recommend the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card and the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

I ain't so good at book descriptions but here's some stuff I really enjoyed -

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-A-Novel/dp/0307887448

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: http://www.amazon.com/The-Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/1597801585

The author would argue with me about this being SF - Atwood prefers the term "speculative history" I believe - but the entire Oryx and Crake trilogy is very good.
http://www.amazon.com/Oryx-Crake-Margaret-Atwood/dp/0385721676/ref=la_B000AQTHI0_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397411558&sr=1-2 the first book in Oryx and Crake, followed by Year of the Flood and Madaddam

I'd suggest one of the following:

• Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Well written, fun and an easy read.
  
• Seeker by Jack McDevitt. A good old fashioned archaeology mystery set 9,000 years in the future.
  
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Classic story about the child selected to lead Earth's defense against alien invaders.

While not a LitRPG I feel like the Bobiverse scratches the same itch very well.

It's about a guy who's consciousness is put into a robot and shot off into space. He has 3D printers that can create anything he can think of, including copies of himself. While not living "in a game" he still creates his own VR world that he shares with his copies and can control his perception of time by speeding up/slowing down his processor.

He explores, invents, creates and discovers tons of amazing stuff.

Awesome post! Love reading these.

For anyone who wants to read realistic science fiction focused on Mars in the same vein (but much deeper) as The Martian check out Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars

Been on a huge Cyberpunk reading kick lately, especially William Gibson. I've never been much of a reader, so it's awesome to find books that are easy to dive into. Just finished Count Zero, now about half way through Burning Chrome. Altered Carbon arriving today for beach trip this weekend B)

I highly suggest any of these to anyone who is even moderately interested in the genre.

Met new VP of software at work yesterday. I'm actually pretty excited about working for him now. I really liked my old boss, but this dude seems much more... managerial. Hopefully I start getting actual development work now.

Rad Kindle Case is best case!

Red Mars is a book that I've been wanting to read for quite a while. I've been a fan of sci-fi writing ever since my dad handed me my first Heinlein book, Podkayne of Mars. Red Mars seems to be in the same vein, of a futuristic take on colonizing Mars.

I'm okay with PMing you my address, too. Stalk me all you want, I'm not terribly interesting. I also have a screen protector for my Kindle, which has been working well so far!

Withur We
Bonus points that it is scifi and FREE for download. Not only does the author present a "big brother" government but he also offers a solution.

Also check out anything by Cory Doctorow. Little Brother
Found the epub for free also.

Ready Player One is a story about the future of VR [Oasis] and the struggle over who will run it. I hope all the VR Enthusiast read or listen to the book. It's a great story. I don't want to put out spoilers if you haven't checked the book out. The significance of this video becomes apparent after you've reached a little ways into the story. Also the audio book is narrated by Wil Wheaton.

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One/dp/B005HG7BWC/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1395951167

Get those kids some books!

oh lawd, this is going to be LONG
for advanced readers,

Enders Game

The Giver

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

The Harry Potter Series

The Heir Apparent

Farenheit 451


A lot of these books can be read young and then reread when older to get more meaning

For younger beginning readers

Dr Seuss, I really remember Green Eggs and Ham, Go Dog go, and One Fish two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish


Oh and surprise me, i really like SciFi/Fantasy and have read the Dune Series and ASoIaF, but the Modern High Power Rocketry Book would be very very appreciated.

Well, it's certainly more rare than this printing.

In any case, I remember my middle school's library had these particular books. I was pretty stoked to read them, then got a pretty big surprise when I read Amuro boned Sayla and ends up dying. So much for Zeta and CCA.

So, I read and finished Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution, and Revolution, which I referenced in last month's thread. It was a really great collection of stories from a variety of authors.

After that, I continued my cyberpunk trend with Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. It was recommended on a list of cyberpunk books, most of which I compulsively bought. I really liked it, especially the character development. There are two more books in the series, which I'll have to get.

Instead, though, I started Limit, 1200 page epic translated from German. It received a bunch of awards and I read that lots of the technical details are on point, which is something that typically takes me out of the story a lot. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of July, but it's a lot to read and I'm easily distracKitty!!!

My personal favorites (although note, neither are canon anymore):

1.) Shatterpoint: follows Mace Windu, and is essentially Star Wars' take on Heart of Darkness.

2.) The Thrawn Trilogy: Widely hailed as the best of the Star Wars EU. In my opinion, it has some of the best and worst elements. The good: a brilliant, nuanced antagonist; the bad: evil clones (a terrible subplot).

I haven't read it yet, but Lost Stars has been very well received (despite being billed as a young adult novel). I'd recommend it if you'd like a new canonical novel.

> To arms, rise the banners, he who believes in a God will quake when he sees the Hordes of nerd atheist bigots. Descend upon the Theist and show no mercy!

That's what I half expected....

> But, define beliefs?

What I believe in personally even without solid, absolute, undeniable, beyond a doubt, unquestionable, incontrovertible proof.

> Are you spiritual compared to believing organized religion

I guess part of it is spiritual, but it's mostly religion. Just not a single religion.

> And reddit only likes it if you go from Theist ot Atheist, due to then you will agree with them.

All I see on Reddit is these Theist/Atheist conversions so I thought it was time to hear from somebody who did the opposite.

> Favorite book?

Ender's Game

Most of the characters in The Windup Girl are Thai or Chinese.

The Left Hand of Darkness messes around with gender in interesting ways. (Also, Ursula K. Leguin is an all-around fantastic author.)

Robert Heinlein can be a controversial author, but many of his works had non-white protagonists. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is multiracial, and Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers is Filipino, if I recall correctly.

Someone else in this thread recommended The Brief But Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and it's not exactly SFF (more in the vein of magical realism) but it is easily one of the best books I've ever read.

If they ever come up with true machine uploading / true brain-computer interfaces, I'll be one of the first to sign up. Assuming it actually preserves consciousness and the sense of I, and isn't just a memory transfer and someone else wakes up inside.

Something like the tech in Old Man's War would be perfect.

Or for a more future scifi feel, Bobiverse.

This could probably fit in a category called geneticpunk. It's a good read. Also where's your source to the link? Always source other peoples work. That chick is beautiful and I'd like to see more of her.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R is loosely based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1972 Scifi novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky's art house film Stalker, which itself is based on Roadside Picnic and shares its name with the game series. There is an English translation of the book available and the movie is available with English subtitles.

I would recommend looking into both of them. I found the novel very interesting, especially because it was written under the USSR. The film is also very good, but definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea.

I enjoyed Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde. It's not high literature but I thought it was overall well written, a bit pulpy in the best possible way. It takes the Star Trek large spaceship model and dives a bit more into the leadership, tactics, day to day life of running a large spaceship, etc. At least the first one did.

The last book I read for the first time was The Valhalla Call by Evan Currie. Great end to a fun military sci-fi. I would say it was a well rounded story for sure.

Otherwise right now I am re-reading the Spinward Fringe series by Randolph Lalonde. Now that is a very hard military sci-fi universe. But a very compelling story that drags you on.

If you're interested in the the story behind the prequel movies, Darth Plagueis is an excellent book that fills in some of the plot holes from those movies. If you're interested in post-RotJ, I'd recommend starting with the Thrawn trilogy.

Sounds like you might enjoy Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I think Snow Crash is meant to be in the same universe - it's hilarious but not as dense. You might also like his Cryptonomicon, though it's not technically Sci Fi.

Tad Willams' Otherland Series is Epic Sci Fi with a huge amount of detail. Might be right up your alley.

Dune, Neuromancer and The Enderverse if you haven't already read those.

I'd say Start Here Credit to u/smoomoo31

Then to go more in depth, Go Here Credit to u/Sentry_the_Defiant

If you'd like, you can purchase the books for yourself! SSTB and IKSSE3 and Prequel YOTBR (Kindle Edition, They're on Amazon and other mass market retailers if said dealers are available to you)

Good Apollo: Volume 1: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness is getting a re-do of it's original comic, which is quite difficult to get now, so I'd hold off, its coming soon. And No World For Tomorrow is also coming in comic form sometime after GA1.

And just for clarity's sake, it is posted in those resources but I figured I throw it here anyway, with all the prequels, the story's official order is as follows: The Afterman: Ascension, The Afterman: Descension, Year Of The Black Rainbow, Second Stage Turbine Blade, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, Good Apollo: Volume 1: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness.Good Apollo: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow. They're latest a;bum, The Color Before The Sun, is non-conceptual, based souly in their, namely Claudio's, life.

If you have any questions, feel free to post on here or PM me, we all love this stuff!

> there's a strong case that a lot of the postmodernist bullshit could be easily countered by a strong religious identity

AMEN TO THAT.

> the most optimal balances of personal freedom vs controlling the worst aspects of human behavior

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

Post Human is my #1 favorite story on RR. It’s complete too!

It feels like a hybrid between the Bobiverse series with its main character self replication and r/HFY’s Chrysalis with the way its AI main character manages things. I reccomend both of those as well.

Bobiverse (paid): https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ/ref=nodl_

Chrysalis (free) (The most similar to Post Human and said to be a major inspiration for it.) https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/55v9e1/comment/d8e0t50?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=comment_vote

Hah, well there's a loaded tag.

I have no idea what happened to him/her, but I'm happy to have lent some input.

For the record I'm no expert, just a space nerd that reads a lot :-p

If you're curious to read more I'd recommend either Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments for nonfiction, or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy for really well-researched and realistic science fiction.

Super common, actually.


The Black Wolves of Boston by Wen Spencer features a protagonist who becomes a werewolf. Misfit Pack does the same thing.

One Woke Up by Lee Gaiteri features a protagonist wrestling with coming to terms with his time as a zombie


Into The Abyss by J. Langland features a protagonist turned into a horned demon.

The Tome of Bill features a protagonist who becomes a vampire. (Characters turned into vampires is super common, actually)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) features a protagonist who becomes a space probe.

Chrysalis and Queen in the Mud on Royal Road feature protagonists who are turned into an ant and a salamander respectively.

The Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by Richard K Morgan was pretty great. Last good scifi I read.

http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novels/dp/0345457692/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240608120&sr=8-2

Try Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon or Walter John William's Hrdwired for some good cyberpunk. For a good post-apocalypse novel you might like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.

Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle is fantastic.

From Heinlein himself, "Possibly the greatest science fiction novel I have ever read."

http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926

I would love Ender's Game for my kindle. Thank you for the contest and congrats on the new job.

Talk about a hard decision! I seriously cannot choose so here are a few of My Favorite Book (s):

Pride and Prejudice

Shadow Divers non-fiction

Ender's Game

If RedditRaffle chooses me I would like this book.

What a great first contest!

I have three books that I love to loan out (or just strongly recommend to those weirdos out there who refuse a loaner):

• Ender's Game, which has been mentioned.
  
  
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.
  
  
• Lamb by Christopher Moore.
  
  The first two books have in some ways shaped my life over the years. The last book is just the funniest I've ever read.

My kitty makes me happy!

I'd love this kindle book!

Can you feel the love

You talked to the right guy! If you want an awesome point of view and introduction (or just great stories if you are already a fan) to the Warhammer 40k universe I suggest you read the following in the order I put them:

Eisenhorn Omnibus

Ravenor Omnibus

The Emperor's Gift

All these are intertwined, there is another trilogy to follow up Eisenhorn and Ravenor but only the first book has been release for that so far. The Eisenhorn Trilogy are three of my favorite books and I read from many, many sources outside of WH40k

The Timothy Zahn books are really good. You can get all 3 on Amazon for about 23 bucks: http://www.amazon.com/Heir-Empire-Star-Wars-Trilogy/dp/0553296124/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259835520&sr=8-1

Tales from Jabba's Palace was entertaining. My Mom got me the Millennium Falcon novel last Christmas, it was pretty interesting.

The New Jedi Order was good, but I stopped about 5-6 books into it. I read the summary on Wiki/Wookiepedia, and it sounds like they kind of jumped the shark. I might try to finish it up eventually though.

Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood are two of my favourites.

The Wind-up Girl is also pretty neat.

The Fionavar Tapestry is one of my all-time favourite fantasy reads.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is usually a good bet if you like GRRM.

I'm not going to call any of them "literature", but I've read and enjoyed a bunch of new-ish books recently.

• Ready Player One
  
  
• Little Brother/Homeland
  
  
• John Dies at the End
  
  
• Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (and pretty much anything else by Tom Robbins)

May not be exactly what you're looking for but book 1 is free on Amazon so easy to read and check out if you like it. Spinward Fringe.

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins: A Collected Trilogy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EPYUXA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_D4E0CbQ2CTC3N

For an epic series consider Dune by Frank Herbert especially as we approach the new Dune movie in 2020.

For well written political-military sci-fi with a good grounding in realistic physics try the Honorverse by David Weber. First book is On Basilisk Station

For exceptional military sci-fi Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. They are a series of short stories that can stand on their own but when read together form a cohesive story arc.

For a one-off story that deals with some major issues of technology and how it can affect our near future try the bio-punk story The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Be warned however there are some really... uncomfortable parts that are NSFW to put it mildly. Easy to skip but wanted to be up front about that.

As a personal guilty pleasure I will also recommend the military sci-fi series the Legacy of the Aldanata by John Ringo. It is not "hard sci-fi" but I really like Ringo and the core quadrilogy is so much fun. Start with A Hymn Before Battle

>Whatever language becomes the world's first will favor the native speakers for decades to come.

I remember reading a book (The Cross-Time Engineer), which was written by a Pole and was about a Polish engineer. In it, the engineer points out that Polish children need to spend a significant amount more effort than US children do, because they need to learn English to function well in the engineering world.

I'd never really considered that before, and it certainly was an interesting thought.

I really enjoyed the first two of the Honor Harrington Series, not sure how you feel about military scifi.

http://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Station-Honor-Harrington-Book-ebook/dp/B00ARPJBS0/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

the kindle is free, and whispersync gives you the audible for 2 bucks

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. It blends genres (mystery + noir + SF) and I think does a great job of introducing a novice to SF .

[Edit] FWIW, I purposely avoided the "classics" as I think many of them would be quite dated to today's audience and would not be a good intro into the genre. But I would hope that as their taste in SF evolves that they would find the classics on their own and would be better able to appreciate them.

They all seem to be for 8-14yr olds...

Edit: Oh. Maybe that's what the OP meant. I got excited because I thought it would be a bunch of great books for guys, not for kids.

In case that's what you came looking for too, here's a couple of greats:

Beat the Reaper It's like House meets the Sopranos, except better.

Altered Carbon The most bad ass futuristic sci-fi book, ever.

You were pretty vague in your request, but i'll leave this right here:

http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Takeshi-Kovacs-Novels/dp/0345457684

Pretty dark and mature cyber punk/detective noir book.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

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