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I thought we ought to have a place where SD.enizens could pimp their favorite authors or books, sci-fi, non-fiction, or whatever. I know *I'm* always looking for interesting new literature. If everyone makes a few recommendations, it will provide the rest of us with new stuff to dig into. Try to suggest good bits that people may not have heard of before!

On that note:

In Sci-Fi:

Alan Dead Foster's Icerigger or The Damned trilogies or Codgerspace (possibly the best 'first contact' writer ever, both funny and highly original.)

In Non-Fiction:

The Cartoon History of the Universe Volume I-III by Larry Gonick (An *excellent* learning resource despite the name, for basic comprehension of a wide variety of historical topics presented in an entertaining manner.)

The Elements of Reasoning by David A. Conway (This is a great way to begin and enhance your knowledge of how to argue, how to identify fallacies, and how to think logically. Not the best resource but a great place to start out.)

David Weber's Honor Harrington Series:

On Basalisk Station
The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonor
Flag in Exile
Honor Among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory
And forthcoming: War of Honor

If you like those there are three Honor Harrington short story anthologies worth checking out.

The Imperium Trilogy:

Mutineers Moon
Armaggeddon Inheiritance
Heirs of Empire

Stand Alones:

Path of the Fury
The Apocolypse Troll

This has been a public service anouncement by the Cult of Weber.

Anthony Burgess - a clockwork orange
well, everybody knows the movie, but have you read it? it´s better than the movie in my oppinion.


jack yeovil - dark future series

i´m not sure if these books are known in uk or usa. in germany nobody i´ve met has ever heard of them. they play in a paralell time line. the usa is pretty much fucked (mainly desert) fundies are acting up, elvis pressley is alive and is after serving at the army for 20 years a privat law enforcer.
the time line thingy makes it very interesting.

John Ringo as well. Haven't read his collaborations with Weber, but his 3 solo novels were excellent.

Snow Crash (of course)
Grunts (fantasy, by Mary Gentle.)
Almost anything by Spider Robinson.

And, for a non-fiction book, I can not recommend The Naked Ape enough. It's an older work, but still quite interesting.

Does anyone here read much Clancy? I like those books. They're long, and they have a lot of language.

Larry Niven's Convergent Series, including short stories from Known Space, unique universes, and the title short story, in which the main character outsmarts a demon.

McAffrey's Pern. 'Nuff said.

Orson Scott Card's Homecoming Saga, starting with Memory Of Earth. (Note: I've read up to Earthborn, which I didn't like too much. There are apparantly quite a few more after that, and I will deliver my verdict on them once I read them. However, I heartily and strongly recommend everything up to and including Earthfall.

OSC's Ender Saga. If you like Ender's Game, I suggest picking up Ender's Shadow, Shadow Of The Hegemon, and Shadow Puppet's, the Bean series running parallel to them.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, funny and serious at the same time.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, almost a precognition not a sci-fi series.

Brian Jacques' RedWall series, they bridged adult and child fiction long before Harry Potter and Phili Pullman.

2000AD wrote:Brian Jacques' RedWall series, they bridged adult and child fiction long before Harry Potter and Phili Pullman.

That was an excellent series, but I haven't really kept up with it in recent years.

Also, I might suggest Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat series. He also did someother speculative fiction in a series of Short Stories called One Step Beyond Earth.

The always recommended Heinlein. Starship Troopers is much better than the movie.

Also, don't read any of Clarke's sequels, as they suck royally.

All of Glen Cook's fantasy:

The Black Company Saga
The Black Company
Shadows Linger
The White Rose
The Silver Spike
Shadow Games
Dreams of Steel
Bleak Seasons
She Is The Darkness
Water Sleeps
Soldiers Live

The Dread Empire
The Fire in His Hands
A Shadow of All Night Falling
With Mercy Toward None
October's Baby
All Darkness Met
Reap the East Wind
An Ill Fate Marshalling
The Cruel Storm
A Path to Coldness of Heart

The Tower of Fear

The Dragaeran Novels, by Stephen Brust, all fantasy:

The Khaavren Romances
The Phoenix Guards
Five Hundred Years After

The Vlad Taltos Novels(Can't remember them all)

All of my fav authors have been covered thus far, except...

Roger Zelazny:
Lord of Light
The Chronicles of Amber (ten books saga)
Jack of Shadows
Creatures of Light and Darkness
And especially all of the short stories you can get you hands on.

Alfred Bester:
The Demolished Man

For nonfiction:

Norman Friedman's The Fifty Year War and Richard Frank's Downfall are two good ones.

A few classic authors:

Haralan Ellison:

Troublemakers
The Essential Ellison

Arthur C. Clarke:

Childhooods End
Imperial Earth
Earthlight
Rendezvous With Rama (the rest of the quartet is good too)
2001: A Space Oddessy (much easier to understand than the movie)
2010: Oddessy Two
Songs of a Distant Earth

J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion

Until you have read at least The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, you do NOT understand fantasy.

C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Screwtape Letters

George Lucas
Star Wars (From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker)

Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Good Omens

Frank Herbert
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune

Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe, and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Mostly Harmless
The Salmon of Doubt

Timothy Zahn
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
Specter of the Past
Vision of the Future

Brian Daley
Han Solo at Star's End
Han Solo's Revenge
Han Solo and the Lost Legacy

William Golding: Lord of the Flies
Johnathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
JD Salinger: Catcher in the Rye
JRR Tolkein: The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis
Kate Chopin: The Awakening
Beowulf
Le Morte D'Arthur (you seriously don't understand early Christian literature and mythology until you read this)
Stephen Crane: A Mystery of Heroism (short story)
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Sun Tzu: The Art of War

Katsuhiro Otomo
Akira
Domu: A Child's Dream

Robert E. Howard *Old Pulp never dies*
H.P. Lovecraft
Phillip Jose Farmer
Robert Heinline
J.R.R. Tolkein

THe Yosemite Bear wrote:Robert E. Howard *Old Pulp never dies*

I forgot about that. Howard is god in the world of short stories. And Arthur Conan Doyle is Jesus Christ there, too.

most people forget about him, they are repriting his old works with intros by Drake and Weber. I just finished Bran Mak Morn, again.

T.H. White: The Once and Future King and The Book of Merlyn[/i]

God, I loved that book

Mirage by Louise Cooper
Mark Helprin A Soldier of the Great War
James Clavell King Rat
Albert Camus The Plague
Without Remorse by Tom Clancy
Michael Moorecock Sailor on the Seas of Fate