Frek and the Elixer. by Rudy Rucker.

Orson Scott Card : Ender's Game
Robert A. Heinlein : Stranger in a Strange Land
Aldous Huxley : Brave new world, and Island (I haven't read the later but I plan on getting it soon)

I hate hard sci-fi novels, there to dry, I hated Asimov with a passion, him and Bradbury. as long as it's not that technically detailed hard-sci-fi that spends more time on how things work and how they look, rather than any form of story or plot. the closest to hard-sci-fi I could read was brave new world because it actually had a decent plot although the opening was torture to get through. "oh this happens, and then this happens, and some people talk about their day to day lives... oh and ford is a psudo-religion now"... blech.... after that part though it was good.

There's probably more but, I can't remember, its like 3 AM.

Man Miles I hate you with a fiery passion right now but I guess it's better to agree to disagree than fight it out.

Also, here's about 80% of my current personal library.

http://filesmelt.com/dl/books.ods

+1 for 1984, but I shouldn't even need to say how good it is.

I loved Fahrenheit 451, it makes me uneasy about using in-ear headphones, among other things, I'd definitely recommend.

And finally, I'll nominate Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, K. ♥♥♥♥.
Aside from being awesome in it's own right, it also served as the basis for Blade Runner.

Edit:
Miles, what?
Bradbury is pretty much the opposite of hard-sci fi. There are about 3-4 even vaguely technical descriptions in Fahrenheit 451, which is I assume what you have tried to read.

Miles, I am offended ad your lack of understanding for the genre. Bradbury and Asimov are fairly light when compared to the likes of other autors--especially contemporaries. The classic science fiction authors operated in the 50s, 60s, and 70s when nuclear power was just coming of age.

Here's an example. Foundation: 10s of millenia in the future and the only advanced technology Asimov can think of is nucleics and nuclear power. And that was in the 50s.

I don't think you know what Hard Science Fiction is. Heinlein's Troopers--hard scifi. Star Trek and Star Wars--hard sci fi. Blade Runner, hard sci fi.

Educate yourself before you wreck yourself, heathen

Try Next by Micheal Crichton.

Next was pretty good. I enjoyed the insight into how ugly the medical research industry is getting.

RIP my favorite author.

Fitzpatrick's war == the greatest steampunk novel ever.

I like Ender's Game. I also liked My Teacher is an Alien! when I was younger.
Other than that, I don't really like sci-fi movies/shows/books.
I didn't even really like Star Wars.

Great thread. Half my room is a library.

OOOH I LOVE OLD MAN'S WAR. I never found any sequels, though. You should try some Haldeman, it's very similar in some aspects.

Hitchhiker's is great, never really go into either Dune or Asimov; last time I tried was a couple years ago, so maybe I'll open them up again.

I love Ender's Game and I think that Speaker for the Dead is just as good if not better. I like Joe Haldeman (Forever War) and Mike Resnick if I'm feeling fun. Jack L. Chalker is brilliant as well. Would you guys not like me if I said Piers Anthony (Apprentice Adept series and Battle Circle) is cool?

Mainly I read fantasy, though.

Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Lost Colony. Great series.

Forever War is also phenomenal. I loved it. Read it immediately after finishing Scalzi.

Have you read through all of Card's Game series? Bean and Wiggin sagas? They are amazing. Bean's saga is a great piece of hard military scifi combined with some contemporary political intrigue. Wiggin's saga is a great soft psychoanalysis in a space setting. It's a great expose of how flexible Card is as an author. To be able to write books--concurrently--in different styles is ridiculously awesome.

Oh ♥♥♥♥ yeah Forever War. Loved that book.

I actually didn't much like the Bean end of things after Ender's Game. I thought Ender's Shadow was ok, but it didn't really resound with me the way Ender's Game or Speaker did. Card is really talented. His "Earth" series is also really good, until the last book which is a slap in the face. Same with his Alvin Maker books, but that's more fantasy. "Songmaster" is also a nice single read, even though it's really weird if you know about Card's homophobia.

Frederick Pohl's Gateway is pretty nice. For some reason I stopped a couple pages into the sequel.

Dan Simmons, I think, is by far the most skilled scifi writer I have ever read. The Hyperion and Ilium series are both breathtaking. They are pretty dense reads though, so make sure you are pretty lucid. His short story "The River Styx Runs Backwards" almost made me cry.

I've read a little Heinlein, I guess I should read more. I haven't really read many of the classics like Philip K. ♥♥♥♥ and 1984.

Ah there are so many book's I've read... I forget them now.

Oh, yeah, Gateway. I read, uh, all four sequels cover to cover in about six days.

actually,

Star trek =/= hard scifi because none of it has real explenations. They go by "it works because it does" which is something called "Science Fantasy" oddly enough. Star wars is also "science fantasy"... Why does the force work? Because it does. Why do shields work? Energy, and the force. It's fantasy. More specifically those are Science fantasy space opera... As much as I like them, I still prefer babylon 5, which is also far from hard sci-fi, but at least it kept me entertained.

Blade runner, I'm not going to debate because I've never read/watched it.


also yes, the first bradbury book I read was 451, and it put me off of bradbury so much that I not only never finished, but I've never touched another of his books. However, I will point out that the movie equilibrium has many of the same themes... Its like a more extreme 451.

Hard Sci-fi : This is a *something*, and it works in this way because of *this*
Soft sci-fi : This is a laser gun, This is a space ship, I'm not going to explain them at all, this is about a story.
Science fantasy : It works because of bull♥♥♥♥ space magic, be it Dylithium chrystals, the force, element zero, or unobtanium, it just works because it does. they often come up with a bunch of bull♥♥♥♥ explanations to sound smart, even though they are self conflicting at times.

Science fantasy is basically fake hard-sci-fi for the soft sci-fi crowd. (as far as my understanding of it has gone)



Because I don't like asimov or bradbury, or is this because of something else.


Also, I have been meaning to read the aliens novels, but after seeing the movies I'm not sure I'd be able to sit down and read them. has anyone actually read them?