Favorite Sci-Fi Books - or "Why This Book Rocks"

[Nan]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Yeah, the [iost_uid0]Dune[/iost_uid0] series (haven't read the prequels yet) is quite good. Haven't read [iost_uid0]Heretics of Dune[/iost_uid0] or [iost_uid0]Chapterhouse: Dune[/iost_uid0] yet...

William Gibson is good. Cyberpunk. His collection, [iost_uid0]Burning Chrome[/iost_uid0] is good, as are his "series" books: [iost_uid0]All Tomorrow's Parties, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Neuromancer[/iost_uid0]... I heard the audiobook (tho' abridged) version of [iost_uid0]Idoru[/iost_uid0]. His latest, [iost_uid0]Pattern Recognition[/iost_uid0], is out this year I think.

Some of the anthologies are good too... Starlight 2, Northern Stars (SF from Canadian authors, often featuring Canada), this anthology of Australian sf that I can't remember the name of...

[iost_uid0]Analog[/iost_uid0] and [iost_uid0]Asimov's Science Fiction[/iost_uid0], both periodicals of short sf stories, are good too. [iost_uid0]Analog[/iost_uid0] is one of the last bastions of "hard" sf.

Asimov is great. [iost_uid0]The Gods Themselves[/iost_uid0] is quite good. Collections such as [iost_uid0]Nine Tomorrows[/iost_uid0] and the volumes of short stories are good too.

Peter David gets away with alot, which is why I like him as far as Trek novels go. Diane Duane and PD have written only only Trek novels I liked. I've read upwards of 100 Trek novels and have been almost uniformly disappointed. I don't know why Carey gets so much work. I don't her stuff, PARTICULARLY her "Equinox" adaptation. *shudder* Voyager novels just about all SUCK. DS9 novels are often disappointing, the only gripping on being... agh... the one with the weird holosuites that make you go nuts... TNG novels are pretty much MEH, unless done by PD or DD. TOS I've had better luck with. "How Much for Just the Planet?" is quite funny. New Frontier books aren't bad, of course, being PD's stuff. "Starfleet: Year One" was a huge disappointment.

As for other SF/sci-fi series:

Star Wars novels aren't bad, depending on the author. I prefer Timothy Zahn's work to just about everyone else's, though Stackpole's novels are good too.

X-Files novelizations and original novels are often MEH. "Skin" was boring. "Antibodies" was good, though. Kevin J. Anderson. He also did two others that I have. "Ruins" bored me, and the other one, which featured ghosts and radiation and stuff, wasn't as good as "Antibodies" either.

The X-Men novelization sucked cesspool water. NOTE TO POCKETBOOKS EDITING STAFF: ALBERTA IS NOT A CITY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. PLEASE STOP COMING TO WORK DRUNK.

Hmmmmmmm...

I'll think of more later.

~Nan[/colorost_uid0]