Favorite scifi books

Ray bradbury, martian chronicles

Hmmm...

So many to choose from.

The Stars my Destination

Old Man's War

Stranger in a Strange Land

Pern series for nostalgia's sake

Sprawl trilogy by Gibson

Dune

Starship Troopers

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Btw, i ra'd this to be moved to religion board

Hitchhiker's guide

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Ender's Game

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One of the best IMO


Also, The Martian is amazing. I hope the movie is good. I can't wait to see it.

If you like audio books give a listen to these old radio dramas. They're like audio versions of The Twilight Zone.

Dimension X

X Minus 1



Dimension X ran on NBC 1950-1. The show was later retooled as X Minus 1 in 1955-8. They dramatized stories from the pulp SF "golden age" of the 1940s by writers like Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein etc.

While there are plenty of rocketmen and space travel stories, the most interesting episodes IMHO are those that prefigure the classic Twilight Zone situation -- ordinary people caught up in fantastic situations. Stephen King once commented that Richard Matheson took horror out of the gothic mansion and let it happen anywhere, even the minimart down the street. That's what these shows helped do for SF -- although Twilight Zone would get the credit. I wonder how often Rod Serling listened to them.

A few favorite episodes:

Dimension X:

Kaleidoscope - Bradbury

To The Future - Bradbury

Mars Is Heaven - Bradbury

Dwellers In Silence - Bradbury

Dr. Grimshaw's Sanitorium - I can't believe they got away with this ending in 1950.

X Minus 1:

Zero Hour - Bradbury (notice a pattern here?). The ending is a masterpiece.

The Last Martian - Fredric Brown. This was later filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Steve McQueen. IMHO this radio version is superior.

Hostess - Asimov

Cold Equations

Time and Time Again - a really interesting time travel story

Venus Is A Man's World - not all that great an episode, but a fascinatingly prescient satire on feminism (from 1957!)

X Minus 1 also did two stories by a very young, little-known writer named Philip K Dick, "Colony" and "The Defenders". They're nothing special, although "The Defenders" is not a bad cold war allegory -- apparently a frequently-used device in SF of this period, at least judging by these two series.

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Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazney
Elric of Melnibone - Michael Noorcock
Wheel of Time was good but got tiresome at the end.

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Wasn't sure these qualified as Sci fi.

Also David Brins Uplift series is very cool.

I'm reading the Crimson Worlds series right now and i like it a lot.

Chris Kennedy has a series that started as military fiction (Red Tide) and then went to scifi with the same characters. It's a cool angle on gods, myths, legends as aliens mixed with military scifi. And he will put you in a book if you ask. (I'm in his next book as a redshirt who gets killed by an alien).