Well, we know we read Gibson. But what else?

For me, on the sci-fi shelves, I like Greg Egan for taking almost-plausible ideas and running with them. Ken MaCleod does decent space opera, though overheavy on the politics. Stephenson of course writes compelling books, even if they leave you feeling a bit undernourished at the end.

And, OK, it's "juvenile fiction", but I'm just now reading Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and it rules.

Murakami, anyone? I think that most people here would enjoy "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". Then read everything else he's written.

Oh, and on the whammy end of things, I once read WG referring to Jeff Noon as his supposed British counterpart...well, after reading Nymphomation, I fully understood why WG had claimed to have never read any of Noon's books. <cringe> Fortunately, the Brits do have authors like Sinclair to balance things out.

So, what are you reading?

My tastes are fairly diverse. I'm re-reading Beowulf for the billionth time, I just picked up Gravity's Rainbow, I worship a man named Tim Powers (last call, declare, et al) and I keep my finger firmly on the pulse of children's lit. OH, and Neil gaiman. er...think that's it.

Michael Moorcock is brilliant. I seem to always be reading his books. Mainly because he has put out 20 or 30 weighty tomes in his eternal champion saga. But then there are all of his other stories on the side like Jerry Cornelius and his twisted world.

China Mieville, of course.

For sci-fi, I'm a huge Stephenson fan. I don't read much of it anymore, except for WG and Neal's latest jaunts...

I love all the work of Don DeLillo...Underworld was one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and Mao II is a masterpiece. Others? Michael Chabon, Annie Proulx, John Updike, Jose Saramago, Richard Russo (Whore's Child, a collection of his short stories, is great.) Dave Eggars was impressive in his debut as well.

Right now I'm reading "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. Educational, and pretty frightening.

cmoore.2003

philip pullman does indeed rule.

other favourites fictionwise:
david foster wallace - infinite jest; don delillo - nearly everything, but particularly white noise; thomas pynchon; neal stephenson (except cryptonomicon which i found fairly dull); greg egan rocks, particularly the short stories; iain m. banks; alan moore; ian sinclair; m. john harrison - "light" is brilliant; george saunders; jonathan franzen's 'The Corrections' is also brilliant, The Invisibles comic book, michel faber - under the skin...

non-fiction (mainly pop science and cultural theory):

emergence - steven johnson
techgnosis - erik davis
the tipping point - malcolm gladwell
the fabric of reality - david deutsch
small world (nexus in US) - mark buchanan

weblogs by douglas rushkoff, steven johnson, and now william gibson.

and today i read a really good article called Cybernetics & Entheogenics: From Cyberspace to Neurospace, which is here:

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/pw-neurospc.html

cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes, graffiti...

I'd definitely second Murakami and Greg Egan. And I'd add Philip K. Dick to the list of sci-fi authors to check out.

Lately, I've been rereading Samuel R. Delany (currently working my way through the Neveryona series). And it's about time I reread _Dhalgren_.

Fans of Gibson should definitely check out the big names in detective noir. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett laid the groundwork for a large number of his stylistic choices. Raymond Chandler's _The Long Goodbye_ is a novel I keep returning to.

Also, I'm on pins and needles waiting for JK Rowling's next Harry Potter book. Very little tops the HP series for sheer pleasure. Makes me feel like a kid again. :^)

This past year I really got back into fantasy after reading Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" books. I've been devouring fantasy novels ever since, trying to find anything that comes close. I've done all of Jordan, Goodkind, Feist, and Duncan. I'm still unsatisfied and eagerly awaiting Martin's next release.

I find myself re-reading Vonnegut and Gibson as far as sci-fi goes, but I will have to revisit Stephenson as well after a recent e-mail conversation about "Snow Crash" with a friend of mine. I generally read anything Card puts out.

I'm developing an itch for some good post-apocalypse stuff with all the media hype on WMD and a nuclear North Korea, so I may hit my shelves and dig up Alas, Babylon, The Postman or A Canticle for Liebowitz.

...but Gene Wolfe is a literary master, as well. His Torturer series is a stylistic gem...nothing quite like it, in either fantasy or sci-fi...

cmoore.2003

There's more here in another thread on this board to which I contributed a nice long list.

yeah -- Murakami! Only read Sheep Chase but Wonderland is on my shelf.

Couldn't finish Dellilo's Underworld, got about 3/4 of the way through and just didn't care anymore about any of it... The planes, the mystery ship, the baseball... GREAT writing, but I just stopped caring. Wierd.

Uh, Alexander Besher I think wrote RIM? That was some cutting edge Sci-Fi!

On the non-fiction side I thought Broderick's "SPIKE" was a good summation of future-tech convergences... Easy readin' too!

I haven't been reading as much lately as I'd like to, but a few authors always manage to attract my attention.

Dan Simmons, hopping from one genre to another and actually pulling it off remarkably well.

Thomas Ligotti, the successor to H.P. Lovecraft but doomed to be discovered by the mainstream after his death.

Stephen Hunter, because I like sniper-stories.

And a variety of gaming fiction from White Wolf, mostly Vampire and Exalted, written by various authors. The quality of these books is as varied as its writers, but occassionally you find a real gem. The "Trilogy of the Second Age" by Richard Dansky is recommended for all who like fantasy and manga blended into one. The last pages of the third book left me in a melancholic mood and craving more pages. Alas.

I also find myself reading alof of non-fiction, non-story books. Most recently "A Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi, and "The Dragon Syndicates" by Martin Booth. Starting to see a pattern here? I have a thing for Asian culture.

Cheers,
- Adamus

---------------------------
"But I have dreamed a dreary dream
Beyond the Isle of Skye;
I saw a dead man win a fight
And I think that man was I."
---------------------------

reading José Saramago at the moment, kind of intresting author...

As dated as some of it is, I'm a huge fan of RA Heinlein's works... I'm slowly trudging my way through his entire library, and every time I'm at the bookstore and see one of his books that I haven't read, I can't resist buying it. I've probably read 20 of them in the last year.

Other things... I have a guilty pleasure for Tom Clancy books, and I can't seem to stop buying books in the Ender universe by Orson Scott Card...

I've only read Ender's Game. It was definitely a "page-turner", but I felt mildly betrayed in the end. Like once the trick was discovered, in retrospect the whole thing felt like a gimmick. The bit at the end on the alien world felt like it was tacked on as an afterthought, and a likely hook for sequels...And I've had no desire to read more OSC.

On the other hand, I've been a sucker for the string-you-along-eternally antics of Robert Jordan, but after reading a review of the latest book (out this week), decided not to buy it after deducing that the plot continues to go nowhere. If I wanted to watch soap operas, I could do it without waiting years between episodes.

And on a positive note, I rather liked John Crowley's "Little, Big"...

In the science fiction genre, which is my favorite:
David Zindell - Neverness and A Requiem for Homo Sapiens are incomparable.
Kim Stanley Robinson - the Mars trilogy of course, but also definitely his short stories. And Antarctica. And Escape from Kathmandu. And basically everythign he's ever written.
Greg Bear - Darwin's Children in particular was a book that really made me take note; I love books that make me think.
Stephen Baxter - the Manifold trilogy.
David Brin - Earth was really, really good.
Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age was my favorite I think; if only the guy could write better endings.
Alexander Besher - Rim, Mir and Chi. All Gibson fans should read this; completely unknown to everyone I've ever spoken to (though I have some hopes in this place; and indeed saw it mentioned in one of the other posts here... ), but his cyberpunk is awesome.
Tad Williams - Otherland; Tad's mostly a fantasy author, and you can see that in Otherland, which really is crossing genres, but on the surface at least Otherland is science fiction, and very good science fiction at that. I particularly liked his descriptions of the next generation MUD/MMORPG/... that two of the main characters played. And the Treehouse.
Robert J. Sawyer - Fast Forward is fairly nice; as with all his books he works on a too low level for me to really like them (though good for beginning science fiction readers), but he still has interesting thoughts.
Olaf Stapledon - well, duh!
Iain M. Banks - Excession is my favorite.
... uhm, yeah, and on and on like that for a while longer...

Quickly noting some fantasy authors:
Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time; been going on for a long time, and has shifted style several times which had lead to a number of disgruntled fans, but it's still the epic fantasy series with the largest scope and best vision.
Robin Hobb - Farseer Trilogy, Liveship Traders and the Tawny Man. I simply love her characters.
Steven Erikson - Tales of the Malazan Empire of the Fallen: awesome characters and awesome scope with layers upon layers of plotting and intrigue; who'd have thought it possible?
Steven Brust - The Khaavren Romances in particular show that there's a lot more to this author than you would say at first sight.
Terry Pratchett - *grins* of course.
Patricia McKillip - one cannot help but love the quietness and wonder of her worlds.
... etc, etc.

--
Fall far, and fall well,
Sander - http://juima.org - Just Imagine...

[This message was edited by Sander on January 09, 2003 at 11:13 AM.]

quote:

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Originally posted by Sander:
_Neal Stephenson_ - The Diamond Age was my favorite I think; if only the guy could write better endings.

---

Stephenson's miserable endings are the reason I hedge when recommending him to friends.

I've got Greg Bear's "Queen of Angels" in my bag, still waiting for it to kick in...

Need to finish out Tad Williams series, liked the first book. Oh man, Besher's RIM was a great read in so many ways.

Adamus -- ya me too! First it was "Tales of a Yakuza" then I started reading "Musashi" off the shelf at borders... Then Murakami. There's a lot of great Japanese fiction being translated.

Want the Kurosawa/Mifune collection of Samurai movies!

"If on a winters night a traveller" is a super-deluxe meta-fictional romp. I dig it, I dig it, I dig it.

I also liked Ken Kesey's "Sailors Song"

John Brunner - "The Shockwave Rider". Published in the 70's; cyberpunk way ahead of its time.

Recently I've been reading:

Neil Gaiman - "American Gods" was simply awesome, and "Neverwhere" is a nice read as well.

Chuck Palahniuk - a new fascination for me. I've read "Choke" and "Lullaby", and recently got two more. More movies need to be done based on his work.

Thomas Harris - the entire Hannibal "trilogy".

China Mieville - while he in "Perdido Street Station" did the classical fantasy/sf mistake of explaining too much, with "The Scar" he did much much better.

Like most of you, I've done the whole fantasy thing too. These days it takes a lot for me to be fascinated by it though, since so much of it is generic high fantasy crap, good vs evil, maidens in distress, evil empires and all that. Yawn. I still have a childish fascination with Peter Morwood's "Horse Lord" series though. Good stuff.

I've recently acquired "Revelation Space" and "Chasm City" by Alastair Reynolds, and intend to read them as soon as I finish "Good Omens" and a Palahniuk or two.

Please. No tears. Its a waste of good suffering.