Sennadar Forums

A bit unusual but I feel this is on topic.

The Incomparable podcast, Episode 99: Convenience Store Clerk of Dune: A Summer Reading List, is recommending scifi books this week.

Including:
"Altered Carbon" by Richard K. Morgan
"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
"The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger
"A Wrinkle In Time" by Madeline L'Engle
"When Gravity Fails" by George Alec Effinger
"To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis
"The Stars My Destinaton" by Alfred Bester
"Hyperion" by Dan Simmons
"The Long Walk" by Stephen King (Richard Bachman)
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
"Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson
"Galactic Pot Healer" by Philip K. Dick
"The Devil You Know" by Mike Carey
"Contact" by Carl Sagan
"My Teacher is An Alien" by Bruce Coville
"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman
"The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell

I'd recommend the following which you can find either in Amazon's Kindle store or at Smashwords:

The Demon Accords Series by John Conroe - It's a decent Urban Fantasy series. Bears, Weres, and Vampires, oh my.
The Blood Destiny Series by Connie Suttle - It's a decent blend of Urban Fantasy and Space Opera.
Legend of the Ir'Indicti by Connie Suttle - It's like YA Blood Destiny.
The Latelian Cycle by Lee Bond - Good blend of Mil SF and Space Opera with a kick-ass protagonist.
The David Brirkenhead series by Phil Geusz - Anthropomorphic Space Opera. Like Honor Harrington as a former bunny slave.
The Advent Mage Cycle by Honor Raconteur - Fantasy
The Hayden War Cycle by Evan Currie - Good blend of Space Opera and Mil SF.
The Eli Donsai series by Laurence E Dahners - I love this series. Female Supergenius Engineer.
The Tales of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell - A great series. Space merchant marine. Wonderful low-key series.
The Channel Riders by Valerie Gaumont - a very cool contemporary sf series
The Ring Realms Metaseries by Will Greenway - a great series of series, anything from epic fantasy to space opera to time travel or any variation therein. I highly recommend any of his books.
P. S. Power - has a lot of self published stuff. Lots of grammar mistakes, but decent story telling.
Janrae Frank - great story telling, dark fantasy.

The Clan Amir series by Ernest Edwards - contemporary mil sf. Very cool genius, engineer, and soldier.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned them before, but Thomas DePrima's A Galaxy Unknown series is pretty good, so is James Doohan's Flight Engineer series. Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series is very good.

A new up and comer on the self-published scene is Bruce Bretthauer with his Families War series, which is very engaging. Gina Wylie is also publishing some of her works in the Kinsella universe on Amazon.

This is borderline scifi with a strong F/F part. Jacquiline Carey, Santa Olivia. What if you were a child of a part of a biological experiment, trying to make the ultimate soldier. A soldier without fear. What if you were raised in a town not a part of the nation; a dirty secret. How would it make you different; how would you survive? Read and see..

Abaddon wrote:Don't know if anyone has mentioned them before, but Thomas DePrima's A Galaxy Unknown series is pretty good, so is James Doohan's Flight Engineer series. Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series is very good.

A new up and comer on the self-published scene is Bruce Bretthauer with his Families War series, which is very engaging. Gina Wylie is also publishing some of her works in the Kinsella universe on Amazon.

You can still get the original Families War series including all the newest shorts fro free over on GMW's site Beyond the Far Horizon:
http://www.beyondthefarhorizon.net/phpBB2/index.php

Updating my 'recently read' list:

Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow
Brilliant bit of YA fiction set in London a few years into the future where current proposed "Three Strikes" copyright laws have been implemented, and the effects it has on families.

Year Zero, by Rob Reid
...it's hard to explain without giving it all away, so from the blurb:

Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it’s a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news.

The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity’s music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when American pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything—and the aliens are not amused.

Wool (Books #1 - 5) by Hugh Howey
Don't let the name 'Wool' put you off thinking it's not sci-fi. It's a compelling post-apocolyptic story of people who live in an underground silo. It gets much more complex and involved in the later books, and Book 6 starts to give backstory as to how things got to where they are. I'm eagerly awaiting the next in the series.

The Rapture of the Nerds by Cordy Doctorow and Charles Stross
A somewhat confusing post-singularity story. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would to finish this book. I much preferred Accelerando by Charles Stross, a lot of the same themes - but with a very different twist.

Edit: I accidentally mentioned Halting State by Charles Stross where I meant Accelerando. Also a good book. Highly recommended.

Recently I read Ready Player One. by Ernest Cline

It's in the 2050s. The internet has been replaced by a graphical online realm called the OASIS. There are many worlds based on about any subject you can think of. The disigner was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. In his will he describes that there is an easter egg found in the OASIS and the first person to find it will be his successor. There is lots of 80s references especially geek culture from this time, from dungeons and dragons, music, tv, movies and more.

The books website: www.readyplayerone.com/

I would recommend
Terms of Enlistment by Mark Kloos
Koban I & II by Stephen W Bennet
To Honor you call us & For Honor We Stand by Harvey G. Phillips
http://www.royalroadl.com/table-of-content/ this site is for a Lite Novel about a virtual reality RPG, very humorous/ interesting.

Sharon Lee and Steve White have put two of their Liaden Universe books up in the new Baen Free Library:

Agent of Change - http://www.baenebooks.com/p-595-agent-of-change.aspx

and

Fledgling - http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1026-fledgling.aspx

If you have bookmarks to the Free Library dating back to Dec 2012 or earlier you will need to redo them to:
http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx

John Ringo's eARC or electronic advanced reader copy for Under A Graveyard Sky is out... If your a Ringo fan... this is John's ZA series... Zombie Apocalypse. Get it at Baen.com hardcover comes out in Sept! Can hardly wait!

“Speaking of which,” Sophia said, dipping into her bag. “Hand sanitizer.” She rubbed some on her hands, then passed it over.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve said, smiling. He wiped not only his hands but the steering wheel.

“This had better be for real,” Faith said, rubbing her hands vigorously.

“You just want to fight zombies,” Sophia said.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve added with a grin.

“Derp,” Faith said. “Of course I want to fight zombies. Who doesn’t?”

“Me,” Sophia said.

“Me,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well there had better be zombies or I’m shooting somebody and two guesses who. Oh, wait, they’re both right…”

I read the sample chapters. It does not have a good kick as yet. Have you read the full book?

Wolfee wrote:John Ringo's eARC or electronic advanced reader copy for Under A Graveyard Sky is out... If your a Ringo fan... this is John's ZA series... Zombie Apocalypse. Get it at Baen.com hardcover comes out in Sept! Can hardly wait!

“Speaking of which,” Sophia said, dipping into her bag. “Hand sanitizer.” She rubbed some on her hands, then passed it over.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve said, smiling. He wiped not only his hands but the steering wheel.

“This had better be for real,” Faith said, rubbing her hands vigorously.

“You just want to fight zombies,” Sophia said.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve added with a grin.

“Derp,” Faith said. “Of course I want to fight zombies. Who doesn’t?”

“Me,” Sophia said.

“Me,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well there had better be zombies or I’m shooting somebody and two guesses who. Oh, wait, they’re both right…”

Mizriath wrote:I read the sample chapters. It does not have a good kick as yet. Have you read the full book?

Wolfee wrote:John Ringo's eARC or electronic advanced reader copy for Under A Graveyard Sky is out... If your a Ringo fan... this is John's ZA series... Zombie Apocalypse. Get it at Baen.com hardcover comes out in Sept! Can hardly wait!

“Speaking of which,” Sophia said, dipping into her bag. “Hand sanitizer.” She rubbed some on her hands, then passed it over.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve said, smiling. He wiped not only his hands but the steering wheel.

“This had better be for real,” Faith said, rubbing her hands vigorously.

“You just want to fight zombies,” Sophia said.

“Which is why I have you along,” Steve added with a grin.

“Derp,” Faith said. “Of course I want to fight zombies. Who doesn’t?”

“Me,” Sophia said.

“Me,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well there had better be zombies or I’m shooting somebody and two guesses who. Oh, wait, they’re both right…”

Being a Ringo fan I paid 15 bucks to get access to the Advanced Reader Copy... which while it has a few mistakes yet and hasn't go through final editing its still a good read. I think the 2nd and 3rd books will be better. This one spent a lot of time setting up the story.

Wolfee wrote:
Being a Ringo fan I paid 15 bucks to get access to the Advanced Reader Copy... which while it has a few mistakes yet and hasn't go through final editing its still a good read. I think the 2nd and 3rd books will be better. This one spent a lot of time setting up the story.

Thanks Wolfee. I am also a fan of his especially the Paladin series. I will purchase at more normal prices. or get a copy of the real book when it is out.
Books Depository is decent in selling and deliver the books.

Posleen wars are good, Empire of Man is even better, Council Wars are still too short a series,
Paladin of Shadows is different and still very interesting & Looking Glass is avesome...
but Troy Raising will be very hard to top

OK, I love his writing but there is no way I will pay 15$ for ARC... on other hand 18$ for that and three other books in Baen monthly bundle is fair...

probe wrote:Posleen wars are good, Empire of Man is even better, Council Wars are still too short a series,
Paladin of Shadows is different and still very interesting & Looking Glass is avesome...
but Troy Raising will be very hard to top

OK, I love his writing but there is no way I will pay 15$ for ARC... on other hand 18$ for that and three other books in Baen monthly bundle is fair...

I only buy a couple eARCs a year, only from certain authors...for the others I just wait like everyone else.