Reading Glasses - Fan Group discussion

Let people know which Sci-Fi books you love, what's worth reading, and what's really not.
Keep this one for simple recommendations and short reviews. There's a seperate folder for discussions about Sci-Fi books and authors!

I would have to recommend Redshirts by John Scalzi. It is beyond hilarious and anyone who loves Star Trek would enjoy it.

I've plugged this book a bunch but still New Moon is one I loved. Also I second the Scalzi recommendation and submit The Collapsing Empire too.

This is kind of vague and not all of his stuff is sci-fi, but pick up anything by Jeff Vandermeer and you'll have a wonderful time. I'm pretty sure the Southern Reach trilogy are his most popular books and they're definitely science fiction.

Leviathan Wakes, the first in the Expanse series, is so good. I couldn't put it down. I'm currently struggling to get through the second book, but Leviathan Wakes is awesome.

Meg wrote: "Leviathan Wakes, the first in the Expanse series, is so good. I couldn't put it down. I'm currently struggling to get through the second book, but Leviathan Wakes is awesome."

I am with you there, book 3 is pretty fun and books 5 and 6 are great. overall it is a pretty fun series and the TV show, right now in book 2, is out classing the books imho.

also I hope that my previous "new moon" link wasn't mistaken for a twilight novel, I'm pushing a sci-fi novel by ian mcdonald. just for clarity...

Ah, now this is my area :)


The late Iain M. Banks is one of my all-time favourites, and I was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times. I'd recommend especially Look to Windward, Surface Detail, Matter & Use of Weapons. Space Opera at its absolute hyperspatial, rip-roaring, side-splitting, horrific, lens-on-the-present best.


Banksie's mate Ken MacLeod is also rather good, particularly his Fall Revolution series.


Charles Stross is wonderful across the board, whether it's his spies-battling-monstrosities-from-beyond Laundry series, his spacefaring stuff such as Saturn's Children or his out-there works like Accelerando


An author I've discovered this year is Nnedi Okorafor, who is just wonderful. Try her series of novellas, Binti


Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle (starting with The Shadow of the Torturer) are, I think, some of the finest books ever written. I'd put him up with Saul Bellow as one of the finest writers in the English language


For less technical and hard-edged SF than Banks and Stross, but equally relevant and transcendent, try Sheri S. Tepper. In a similar vein, I'm unusual in preferring Ursula K. Le Guin's SF to her fantasy - and I really love her fantasy



Maybe I should stop before this gets out of hand...

A friend lent me The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. Very interesting. Little plot, but its about a man who is given a time machine and spends his whole life with himself. Literally. He just hangs out with versions of himself at various points in his timeline and it gets weirder and weirder, but never really escalates that much? I LOVE time travel and never saw any story use it like this. It's a really cool read.

To recommend more, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson was fantastic. I also thought Afterparty was pretty fun

Loved Kim Stanley Ryan's Years of Rice and Salt, Scott! Less sci-fi, but excellent speculative history.

Robinson, not Ryan! Sorry!

I wanted to recommend God's War by the amazing Kameron Hurley. The entire trilogy is amazing and Nyx has to be one of the most unrelenting, badass characters ever- she has stayed with me from the first line of the first book in the series.