More double dipping, SciFi reading recommendations

Originally posted as a comment in ‘s journal.

A single book recommendation would be “China Mountain Zhang” by Maureen F McHugh. After China has economically conquered the US, we have a semi-cyberpunk setting with early mars colonization. It’s got the whole trying-too-hard-to-be-gritty thing going on. A gay titular character with a life that is far from centered on his sexuality. And the sort of ending that makes me think it was all worth it. (lent to me by )

I’m sure you’ve read Ender’s Game, but I’ll put it out there anyway. Despite the author.

Some of my favorite scifi authors are George RR Martin (not just fantasy, check out tuf voyaging, nightflyers, and portraits of his children). His stories feature vivid, engaging backdrops, intrigue, politics, big picture social stuff, and good characters.

Another good one is Octavia Butler; Her work is focused on themes of unresistable, if not absolute, power, control, obedience, and hope in opposition to the above. I didn’t notice that she was African-American until I was on the third book, but when I did, I felt like I had a better understanding of what it might be like to be African-American.

Bujold tells a very enjoyable story, with both pulpy action excitement, long term character development (spanning several novels, though her main character lost interest when he got married. Less interesting in his internal conflict, perhaps?). She is most well known for her Miles Vorkosigan series, justifiably. Her work has a very human scale to it.

(both butler and bujold were recommended to me by ).

Dave Duncan is an author I’ve been reading for awhile. He’s fantasy, not scifi in almost all the stuff he’s written (‘Hero’ being the only exception that comes to mind). He’s like a pulpier, fantasy-oriented, George R R Martin, but with major buddy/loyal companion themes in his writing. ‘Hero’ also strikes me as the exception to that, as I recall. He has written a series about an alternate universe in parallel with WWII-era england, which was my favorite of his works. The alternate universe is classically fantastic, but I still kinda liked it.

As for the classics of sci fi… Asimov is okay if you can ignore his characters and look at his big ideas; I liked the Foundation series. But I find it amazing that when he conceives of a robot with boobs, it’s histrionic to the core, while a robot without is calm and rational. You don’t want to know about his human female characters. Niven is better (though still not great) with characters, and spectacular technology ideas, but to my mind tends to lack an overarching theme. His plots are coherent, but at the end I always wonder if there was supposed to be a point. Heinlein from what I’ve read (one book) and heard (from many people) has a tendency to write powerful/capable women, obedient to a charismatic male figure with obvious parallels to the author. That aside, he explores interesting themes. I haven’t read much by other classic scifi authors.