Israel SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I have to admit that I generally prefer reading fantasy to scifi but I have been making an effort lately to start reading more sf, both classic and contemporary.

Of all the books I've read these are the ones that I've enjoyed the most. I'd be interested in hearing if any of you sf readers can recommend some similar books that I might like.

Venus of Dreams by Pamela Sargent
Diving Into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusc
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

I didn't include any dystopia books because I already read a lot of those, or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because those are given.

That's what I'm saying - I'll read more scifi bokks.... but for the meanwhile I have some "must read" fantasy books" on my list which I haven't read yet.

Vorkosigan and Sirantha Jax, which you have mentioned, are on my list, so I guess I'll try them one day.
btw - I think that there are much more good fantasy books than scifi books.

Nimrod wrote: "I think that there are much more good fantasy books than scifi books"

I wouldn't say that. It's really just a matter of what kind of book you enjoy. I used to find sf too intimidating to try because I'm not good at following all of the scientific explanations but it turns out that I actually really enjoy some of the less sciencey sf books. As long as the story is interesting and the characters engaging.

Last year I read Titanicus.
Before reading this I was slightly intimidated by military sci-fi books. Heaven knows why as it is my favourite genre in TV and film.

Titanicus is set in the Warhammer 40K universe but even though I knew nothing about that world and have never gamed (tabletop or computer) I was completely drawn in and became emotionally involved with both the story-line and several of the characters.

Simcha wrote:
I wouldn't say that. It's really just a matter of what kind of book you enjoy. I used to find sf too intimidati..."

That's the impression I got from readers in goodreads, that there are much more loved fantasy books than scifi books, check this thing quantitatively and you'll probably have the same conclusion.Moreover, I've found much more fantasy books I'd like to read than scifi, and I have no problem with reading social scifi, space operas, hard scifi etc,etc..

Nimrod wrote: "I think that there are much more good fantasy books than scifi books..."

I'm not sure about that but there is a lot of appalling derivative and badly written fantasy out there.

Some of the older sci-fi is interesting but seems very outdated both socially and scientifically.

Esther wrote:
I'm not sure about that but there is a lot of appalling derivative and badly written fantasy out there.
..."

There are appalling derivative and badly written fantasy,scifi,thrillers, historical fiction,science and lots of other genres. Besides, even recycled idea can be well executed, it depends on the author who write it.

Whenever a genre becomes more popular quality becomes an issue and everyone is trying to make a quick buck. At the moment the victim is fantasy.

Esther wrote: "Whenever a genre becomes more popular quality becomes an issue and everyone is trying to make a quick buck. At the moment the victim is fantasy."

True, but the issue was regarding the good books and not the bad books.Maybe there are more low quality fantasy books than scifi books, but we cannot infer from it anything regarding the good books, because there are more fantasy books than scifi, so fantasy can have more high quality books than scifi, and have more low quality books than scifi, there is no contradiction.

I also find that the fantasy/sci-fi balance depends on the group. Sword and Laser is definitely more sword while the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club is more sci-fi and even the fantasy is more dystopian future than sword quest.
My other hobby is knitting and patterns for Tribbles, aliens and ears (Spock and Princess Leia) are abundant.

Fantasy seems more appealing to TV audiences while Sci-Fi does quite well on film, though comic books seem to reign supreme.

True (again :) ). But what I said was in general regarding the goodreads community and the books in goodreads, and not concerning specific groups or specific members.

btw - defining what is "a good book" is almost impossible, but there are books which are considered as "good ones".A quality of a book is not something quantitative and the only way you can "measure" how much readers liked it is by their opinion. In goodreads in many cases the law of large numbers works pretty well (assuming you have large number of people who rated the book). In many cases individuals won't agree that a specific book is good/bad one, and still in won't contradict the law of large numbers.

I think SF is harder to write, which is why we see more authors ending up in Fantasy.

It's sort of a moot point though since there is no shortage of good books.

I actually get the sense that there is a lot more substantial and high quality sf than fantasy. Fantasy books and authors seem to go out of style pretty quickly but I don't think the same goes for sf books. Authors and books that were popular 20 years ago are still well-liked today.

During the 1960s and 1970s most of the good fantasy was being written for children while in SF some of the classics were being produced.
If fact when I look at the books I read in the late 1970s almost all of it had a fantasy element while the adults were still reading Tolkien.

Many of the Israelis that I've spoken with said they became interested in sf and fantasy from reading classic sf as kids, like Heinlein and Bradbury, which I thought was really interesting. I can't imagine reading those kind of books when I was a kid.

It depends on their age, many fantasy enthusiasts in israel started reading fantasy with Dragonlance or The Belgariad. Today, I think it's books more like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the like.

In israel, Dragonlance was the series that put fantasy in the front, because before DL only few series were available in hebrew. Dragonlance was translated to hebrew in 1990 by "מיצוב" and had a tremendous success in israel, consequently many fantasy series were translated to hebrew afterwards.

If we're speaking about isreali kids who started with Heinlein and Bradbury and later got into fantasy - I guess that most of them were born in the early 70's (at least), when only few fantasy books were available in hebrew.Today, scifi has less demand in isreal than fantasy (that's what the publishers say) and therefore much more fantasy books are being translated to hebrew .