Anyone know any good new SF writers?

I don't know about new science fiction writers, but here are some of my favourites, some of whom are still writing today.

For those who like 'steam-punk' alternative history novels, I can highly recommend The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Their premise is simple – how would the British Empire have unfolded had Charles Babbage succeeded in making his difference engine really work. It's a very detailed and atmospheric novel, and a highly entertaining page-turner to boot.

I'd also like to recommend Peter F Hamilton. I've just started reading his The Reality Dysfunction and I'm finding it to be very well written and entertaining and gripping. It's very long, though, at 1200 pages!

When I was younger I read everything I could by Michael Moorcock. Moorcock's fiction first introduced me to the idea of multiple realities – he calls it the Multiverse. At certain times and places, the various planes and dimensions of the Multiverse intersect, and characters sometimes meet themselves in other incarnations. Some characters have the ability to travel between the planes and dimensions, and all are waiting for the Conjunction of the Million Spheres, at which time everything – past, present and future – is renewed. The best examples of this are the Hawkmoon, Corum and Count Brass series.

Moorcock's trilogy The Dancers at the End of Time is excellent. Jherek Carnelian, a resident of Earth at the end of time, travels back in time to 1897, where he meets and falls love with Mrs Amelia Underwood. Moorcock gets an enormous amount of dry comic mileage from the juxtaposition of the completely amoral unlimited society of the end of time with the prim and proper middle class society of 1897. The novels however are not specifically comic novels in the sense of, say, Terry Pratchett, although their tone is generally light and entertaining. The relationship between Carnelian and Mrs Underwood is nicely portrayed as they slowly begin to acknowledge their love for each other, and begin to understand each other.

Moorcock's Gloriana is a tour de force of alternate history, set in an unspecified England, and is a kind of homage to Mervyn Peake, whose Gormenghast trilogy is possibly the gold standard for all dark fantasy series since. The Gormenghast novels (Titus Groan; Gormenghast; Titus Alone) are very densely written, and almost hallucinatory in their visual detail. Peake was an illustrator himself and had a gift for exacting visual description, not to mention characterisation. The third novel is not so good as the first two. Peake suffered from early onset dementia and this affected his writing.
 
With some shorter stories and online writings having been mentioned, I thought I'd mention In The Name Of The Mother by Michael Hahn. ( _http://www.phantasy-star.net/fanfics/hahn/mother.html ) The quality and originality (a number of new ideas, not just a regurgitation of story elements) surprised me, as it is actually fan-fiction connected to the story (spanning multiple millenniums) of an old video game series.

In short, it is about mechanical intelligences and how they can be manipulated for destructive purposes - "All I did was ask for a wall", said the (demonic) Dark Force, and as a result a planet was almost destroyed - literally ripped apart.

It is somewhat "heavy", as it spans the events of a run-up to and a great disaster, a devastating war.

The people are controlled, at first oblivious to the "manager" of their planet, then inevitably pushed into the "service" of one of two sides in the building conflict.

It takes a half-symbolic death and rebirth for the main protagonist to finally be inspired as to how to set out on a quest to solve the issue.



As the story is positioned in a gap between the stories of two games, some main points of the former might be useful for background:

In the history of the Algo solar system, a period came when - unknown to the people - Earthmen came in a space ark after escaping their destruction of their former home. Observing the people of Algo "living in simple happiness", apparently they could not tolerate this.

They decided to conquer - but did not want to perform an overt takeover. So instead they manipulated the people into creating a high-technological civilization - and then gave them their new ruler, the Mother Brain supercomputer. The people, given material goods and comforts in excess, grew soft and complacent, hopelessly inured.

Climate and the engineering and breeding of lifeforms also came under this control - then the systems began to "malfunction", causing great dangers. A disaster was engineered - one of the planets blown up, reduced to an asteroid belt.

The Mother Brain was eventually confronted and destroyed, and behind it two forces discovered - the Earthmen, along with a much older evil; a demonic force that fed on the death and suffering it caused, influencing the minds and events of history.
 
Giray Khan the Brave said:
I particularly recommend 'Consider Phlebas'. I've been a hardcore SF fan for more than 30 years now and thought I'd seen (or read) everything but 'Consider Phlebas' was a complete revelation and a journey of rediscovery. This book (at least for me) both encapsulated the past and present of SF but also took it one step further into something glorious. It's a rare book that I read with my mouth hanging open and this was one of them.

GKtB,

Thanks for the tips. I have most of Iain M. Banks, but for some reason, never got to Consider Phlebas. I think it might have been because I just read The Algebraist and I must admit that I was quite disappointed. Also, Look to Windward failed to deliver the magic, intensity and scope that many of his other books did. In particular, I can recommend Excession for an excellent introduction to his Culture universe. It is simply a gem. Much less fast paced but equally excellent is The Player of Games that simply boggles the mind in its many-layerdness.

As a side note, I stopped reading Banks about 8 years ago but all of a sudden, I woke up a couple of months ago with the name Zakalwe on my mind. Zakalwe is the main character of The Use of Weapons. I have yet to discover if there is any significance to this since it is the only time such a thing has happened to me upon waking.
 
One of the last SF books I've read is Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear.
I never read any other Book by this author so I don't know how it compares to the rest of his books.

Well, I really liked it. I won't say anything about the plot but it's not a conventional space opera story and to me, the major question through the book is what makes us human after all ?
 
Lately I read a SF book by Ursula Leguin, The Left Hand of Darkness. It is a very strange story that happens in a Ice Age. If you love snow and ice there is the book to read. If you want to know how it is to live in a Ice Age, this book is there for that. But in the future, maybe in 2000 years ahead. It is a book about politics, too. This book was written in 1969. Ursula writes very, very well.
 
This is not necessarily new, but I particularly enjoyed Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons. They are SF re-writes (with a twist or two) on the Illiad. I felt the ideas presented in the book were very similar to many things I am learning here. It talks about advanced humans pretending to be gods, for example and a myriad of other topics.

_http://www.amazon.com/Ilium-Dan-Simmons/dp/0380978938

Edit: Sorry, just realized others had already mentioned these books.
 
So many amazing authors mentioned in this thread but I must my support for the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. It starts off very light and builds in intensity. By the end of the third book you're left wondering at the wildness of the ride :)

Donaldson manages to take a look at the idea of a Hive Mind in a way that is both realistic and scary. I often wonder how this relates to the Lizzies.
 
Richard, I love the Thomas Covenant Chronicles. I am waiting for the final book to come out. I couldn't get into the gap series though, I don't know why. I guess I compared it to the Covenant series too much. What in particular did you like about the Gap series?
 
Hi abeofarrell,

When I started reading the Gap, I was thinking that this is very light and fluffy. Having already read Thomas Covenant I was a little disappointed but stuck to it. Things changed in the second and third books after the foundation had been laid. The dynamics and motivations for actions became clearer and the sense that certain things were inevitable became more apparent. But I think what really struck me was how Donaldson must have dug into some really deep places in his imagination to describe the Amnion who are so alien they beggar the readers' imaginations. Even after finishing the books they are still so strangely alien they remain alien to our understanding. I didn't know until today there were more books in the series. Now I'm excited again :)

As for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, I'm almost inclined to describe the first 6 books as the pinnacle of the Fantasy genre - Tolkien for adults. A few months ago I was in a bookstore and saw this really thick Thomas Covenant book which I took to be the third trilogy. Unfortunately it was the 9th book and although I'd missed 7 and 8 I had to read it anyway. I was let down :(

It seems to me that Donaldson is a student of psychology which is why his books have so much depth.
 
Richard, I agree that he was probably somehow involved in psych. Many of his characters are in the medical/psych field too. The 1st and 2nd chronicles are probably the best fantasy I have ever read but most people get hung up on the dark mood and say it is too depressing. I believe that it is simply the story of a man coming to terms with the reality of his disease and the mess his life is in so of course it is dark. And the whole theme was his fight against despair which is an awesome universal theme. Sorry to hear you accidentally read the 9th book first. Apparently there is also a 10th book to come. Waiting . . .

When I have time I will give the Gap series another attempt. Thanks for the recommendation.
 
I believe that it is simply the story of a man coming to terms with the reality of his disease and the mess his life is in so of course it is dark. And the whole theme was his fight against despair which is an awesome universal theme.

I agree, you've got it spot on. But I must add I just love the various races and characters. Not another elves and dwarfs tale.
 
abeofarrell said:
I loved the giants. Foamfollower's story had me in tears.

Agree, many of the characters, like Foamfollower's described above unraveled the most interesting personal struggles, what they have kept burred and how they are resolving. The Autistic child presents some unique messages if you follow the interchange between the groups; a very important character's, imo. One of the difficulties the author would have, and for the reader, is when each book starts, there is a long procession of recapitulation of often confusing character's and events, and their are a great many to keep track of; much more than Lord of the Rings i think. And not only that, the fact that the character's appear in different times (1000,s of years) with their ancestry makes it equally so.
 
Richard said:
So many amazing authors mentioned in this thread but I must my support for the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. It starts off very light and builds in intensity. By the end of the third book you're left wondering at the wildness of the ride :)

Donaldson manages to take a look at the idea of a Hive Mind in a way that is both realistic and scary. I often wonder how this relates to the Lizzies.

I also totally loved the Gap series when I read it, which was when it came out. It starts off as a very narrow plot with sort of low intensity. As the story develops the plot just widens and widens and the intensity increases and increases. Quite remarkable! Also, I find the Amnion one of the most credible alien races I have encountered. So dark, inscrutable and unfathomable. I wonder if it would have the same appeal if I read it today? Also, I loved the symbology in the names he chose for the characters. Just remembering the competence and executive power of Min Donner and the authority of Warden Dios makes me want to reread the series :-).

As for other credible alien races, I also like Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series with Machines/Inhibitors. I'd label it a kind of dark space opera but very well written.

This thread is a loving trip down memory lane - I also remember really loving both the first and second chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I had forgotten Foamfollowers story but just seeing it here makes me remember. I spoke to the owner of the fantasy and sci-fi book store that I normally use and he told me that the last chronicles will be a "four book trilogy" and it is not know when it is expected to be completed :-(. I remember reading a review of the first book of The Last Chronicles and was a bit disappointed so my hopes are not too high.
 
Great thread! Some great authors and books have already been mentioned. Here's my list of favorites:
William Gibson - Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru
William Gibson & Bruce Sterling - The Difference Engine, Burning Chrome
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon
Michael Crichton - Sphere
Cory Doctorow - Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon The Deep
Larry Niven - The Protector
John Scalzi - Old Man's War

Stanislaw Lem, David Brin, Greg Bear, China Miéville, Orson Scott Card, and Michael Moorcock are all good reads too. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Finnegans Wake. Though not science fiction (hard to know what to call it!) it is about the cyclical nature of history, among many other things. It's probably the most difficult read you'll ever find, but it's a gift that keeps on giving.

Since this thread has touched upon the aryan projectors inspiring science fiction, and works were mentioned as being very in line with The Cs, I feel this thread is the appropriate place to say that I've been writing a SF novel. The Wave, Adventures With Cassiopaea, and the transcripts are cited as influences, as are The Ra Material and Bringers of the Dawn and several other books. I'm nervous about introducing my novel to this community because the novel is very ambitious and being that it ties into this community, I don't know how it will be received by all of you. So far, I've gotten good feedback from those who have read it. I don't hold it so tightly to me that I'm not open to constructive criticism; in fact I welcome it. I want the story to be as good as it can possibly be.

Here's the pitch:

"Adam had never met Eve until the car accident...or had he? Through mythology, shamanism, and mediumship, they explore the Fall of Man and Original Sin from a whole new perspective, and learn the terrifying truth about the serpent in the garden..."

I'm editing and correcting right now, and preparing a wiki to accompany the book for those who want to explore the themes in the story in greater depth. If you're interested in reading it in a more-or-less finished state, I save the most up-to-date copy to my Dropbox, so you can always retrieve the latest version at this URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k0i1vpl8z3bxlp9/soul-proprietor.rtf

Also, I can convert the book to just about any format, so if you want PDF, Epub, Kindle, etc. please ask and I'd be happy to oblige.

Comments, questions, suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Drew
 
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