Good science fiction and fantasy books?

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Yes, read the original Dune series books first and then the newer ones after

I like CS Lewis' Space Trilogy
Out of the Silent Planet
Peralandra
That Hideous Strength

Ben Bova isn't too bad either. My favorite books of his were Jupiter and Venus.

If by fun you mean good-humoured, then i'd repeat other posts in recommending you have a go at Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.

TP's Discworld series (Mort, Guards Guards, Wyrd Sisters are popular fan faves - but every book uses a real world theme/popular reference, so see what appeals).

Also on similar lines are the Jasper Fforde 'Thursday Next' novels, The Eyre Affair etc. Protagonist is a literary detective who ends up travelling between her bizarre real world & even more bizarre world of fiction, where she becomes a Jurisfiction agent policing the world of literature. Surreal, but if you like Douglas Adams this may be a hidden gem.

On the 'straight' side, how about reading some short story collections? Vastly underrated for reading fun, shame as some cracking stories out there. Plus they never last long so even if there's drama, it will be soon over anyway.

Philip K Dick - The Father Thing,
Ursula le Guin - The Birthday of the World
Alfred Bester - Virtual Unrealities
or his novel The Demolished Man which is about telepaths living in a world of 'normals' & was the reason the creator of the scifi series Babylon 5 used the author's name for his evil telepath character. But I digress

Rock on, all ya'll, who enjoy the Discworld novels!
My favorites were The Wyrd Sisters and Small Gods.
Also McCaffrey and Scarborough's Power Lines series.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin -- One of my favorite books, it takes place on a planet where the humanoid inhabitants change their gender in monthly cycles and therefore everyone is judged as an individual since there are no gender 'roles'. The narrator is a human character who struggles to understand the strange ways of this world, (something that Aspies can appreciate perhaps? )

i seem to remember the protagonist of 'the dispossessed' having a very pronounced aspie or pseudo-aspie feel.

Some of my favorites are:

Sci-Fi:

The Kovacs Trilogy - Richard K. Morgan
The Sprawl Trilogy - William Gibson
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Runner Series - William C. Dietz
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Fantasy:

The Watchers Series - Sergei Lukyanenko
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
The Leandros Trilogy - Rob Thurman

I'm not really into fantasy so I'm not much help there, but my absolute favourite sci-fi is by Kim Stanley Robinson, especially his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). It does have a fair bit of drama in it, but with a more... historical feel to it? It's like reading historical fiction about the future - all about the colonisation of Mars, and the political and scientific evolutions that fall out because of it. It is really a quite impressive series, taken even from an appreciation of how much work and imagination went into it.

I have thought of a fantasy series I love - Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next series. It is quite tongue-in-cheek, smart, and light; it's based in an alternate universe where books are valued... differently than in our universe, and where it is actually possible to go into books themselves - the book is a portal to another layer of the universe.... really very cleverly done! There is drama but it is all light-hearted and cheeky. You'll find it even funnier if you've read some of the classic novels that are referred to. The series starts with The Eyre Affair.

I think the protagonist of the series, Kaylin Neya, is an Aspie. She interrupts, is "rude" and disrespectful, blurts out inconvenient truths at exactly the wrong time, fails classes in subjects that she finds unnecessary and uninteresting, is always late...

She did have an unusual childhood, even for this rich fantasy world, and also magical special talents.

oooh yes ursula le guin is so good and the left hand of darkness is an awesome piece of queer feminist fiction.
also china mieville's work which i have recently been introduced to. he describes his work as weird fiction. it is not strictly scifi or fantasy.
lian hearns tales of the otori
david gemmels anything. his work is heroic fiction. the brigante novels were my favourite.
marge piercy's woman on the edge of time
you cant go past the classics. H.G. wells is so good. the reading level is basic but reading it makes me feel young again. (at my age 2 decades feels old.)
would neil gaimans work be considered horror or fantasy? i think his work could be both depending. smoke and mirrors was a good read.

The only fantasy I've ever read is actually an EXCELLANT story. It's the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind & here's his website:

http://www.terrygoodkind.com/index.shtml

pretty much anything by Neal Stephenson or Peter Watts

Anne Mccaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. SO SO SO GOOD!

This has been moved to the Writing,Music and ART forum
I am obviously not a moderator so I don't have that power.


I Really don't care too much for Fantasy or Science Fiction books.
I prefer non-fiction books and fiction books with realistic characters.

When I was a kid I liked "The Chronicles of Narnia" Series.
Some fantasy films are good but fantasy books seem like a waste of time for me.

For fantasy, one of my favorite series is Steven Erikson's book of the fallen, which is 10 books long and only just finished (checking the release date of the last book in the series and it was released exactly a year ago today, 15/feb/2011). I really can't recommend it enough. If you want a series of books that is so complex that you'll end up revisiting it multiple times over the course of your life to see if you can soak up a little more, this is one of those series. This series combined with the original 6 books of the dune series are probably going to take up months of my life for how many times i'll reread them to squeeze a little more from.