Best Modern Fantasy and SF

[Morrigan]

Read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion and then stop; the others aren't nearly as good. Or even read Hyperion and stop, since it's the real standout of the four volumes.

I disagree, Fall of Hyperion was really fantastic as well. And of course in my initial post I wrote "epic fantasy" and I really don't know why, I clearly meant "epic science-fiction".

 

[rocketdodger]

I have been systematically reading the Hugo winners, from most recent back, and that works out pretty well. I wouldn't say that being an award winner is a guarantee of greatness, or that books which *didn't* win won't be great, but its a place to start at least.

I haven't found any Hugo winners that aren't good, although the Red/Green/Blue Mars series read like ******* geology textbooks 3/4 most of the time.

 

[gumboot]

I would strongly recommend:

Cecilia Dart-Thornton:
The Bitterbynde Trilogy
-The Ill-made Mute
-The Lady Of Sorrows
-The Battle Of Evernight
Some of the most original and well-written fantasy I've come across.

Robin Hobb:
The Farseer Trilogy:
-Assassin's Apprentice
-Royal Assassin
-Assassin's Quest
The Liveship Traders:
-Ship Of Magic
-The Mad Ship
-Ship Of Destiny

And if you like George R R Martin I'd strongly consider looking at what I call "historical fantasy" - that is fantasy-type books set on earth or on sort of earth-parallels:

Bernard Cornwall
Stonehenge
Warlord Chronicles (Arthurian)
-The Winter King
-Enemy Of God
-Excalibur

Mary Stewart
The Merlin Trilogy (Arthurian)
-The Hollow Hills
-The Crystal Cave
-The Last Enchantment

Jack Whyte
The Camulod Chronicles (Arthurian)
-The Skystone
-The Singing Sword
-The Eagle's Brood
-The Saxon Shore
-The Fort At River's Bend
-The Sorcerer: Metamorphosis
-Uther
-The Lance Thrower
-The Eagle

 

[gumboot]

Double post.

 

[Mojo]

I'll second Ken McLeod, and add Greg Egan.

 

[GreyICE]

China Mievelle (Fantasy)
- Perdido Street Station
- The Scar
- The Iron Council

C.S. Friedman (SF/Fantasy)
- In Conquest Born (SF)
- The Coldfire Trilogy (Fantasy)
- This Alien Shore (SF)

Michael Swanwick (SF)
- Stations of the Tide

Neil Stephenson (SF)
- Snow Crash
- The Diamond Age: or a Young Ladies' Illustrated Primer

John Varley
- Steel Beach
- Millenium
- Titan/Wizard/Demon (trilogy)

Nancy Kress
- Beggars in Spain

Roger Zelazny
- The Amber Chronicles
- Lord of Light
- Lord Demon

Joe Haldeman
- The Forever War

Neil Gaimen
- Sandman (Graphic Novels)
- American Gods

I'll edit the list as more occur to me. Anything on this is basically pure gold.

 

[wollery]

I'm currently reading Chindi by Jack McDevitt, and I've read several of his other books. I recommend them highly.

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

I highly recommend this book: http://www.nesfa.org/reviews/Mann/sparrow.html

Although it is set in an SF world, it is more a commentary on religion and relationships (IMHO).

I'm looking forward to the sequel "Children of God"

Charlie

 

[GreyICE]

I highly recommend this book: http://www.nesfa.org/reviews/Mann/sparrow.html

Although it is set in an SF world, it is more a commentary on religion and relationships (IMHO).

I'm looking forward to the sequel "Children of God"

Charlie

Hate to ruin it, but its not as good. Still, The Sparrow definitely belongs on the list.

 

[epeos76]

The Algebraist
Ian M. Banks

Cordelia's Honor et seq.
Lois McMaster Bujold

The Hard SF Renaissance
Dozens of first rate short stories from some of the best writers around.

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

Hate to ruin it, but its not as good. Still, The Sparrow definitely belongs on the list.

Thanks for the heads up.

Like most things in life, the sequel is never as good as the first ...

Charlie (still gonna read it) Monoxide

 

[Worm]

I would recommend Raymond Feist. The early books.

Magician
Silverthorn
A Darkness At Sethanon

the Empire series is worth a read as well

Daughter of the Empire
Servant of the Empire
Mistress of the Empire

after that, things go downhill a bit,

 

[Morrigan]

Dude, he asked for good fantasy, in the veins of GRRM. He didn't ask for children's fluff. :\

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Raymond E. Feist can die in a fire. China Mieville's stuff is for people who haven't seen eclectic scifi/fantasy worlds before, because the plot and characters sure aren't anything special, and Gene Wolfe just rewrites Vance in an affected, distant style. Like Mieville he's seen as enormously original and clever by people who don't know any better but I don't think his work has any particular merit.

I'd recommend The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick over anything by Mieville, and The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance over anything by Wolfe.

Hearty seconds for CJ Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold.

Sheri S. Tepper has written some terrible potboilers but also some real gems. The Gate to Women's Country and Shadow's End are very good but on the harrowing side. Family Tree and The Fresco are more lighthearted, Grass is in the middle.

My brother, whose tastes are reasonably reliable, highly recommends "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" (that's the title of a book, not two author's names) by Susanna Clarke. I haven't read that one myself yet, partially because I found a CJ Cherryh book I didn't have yet in a second hand stall today. Yay!

 

[GreyICE]

Raymond E. Feist can die in a fire. China Mieville's stuff is for people who haven't seen eclectic scifi/fantasy worlds before, because the plot and characters sure aren't anything special, and Gene Wolfe just rewrites Vance in an affected, distant style. Like Mieville he's seen as enormously original and clever by people who don't know any better but I don't think his work has any particular merit.

I can see your point on Perdido Street Station, but how can you say the characters in The Scar or Iron Council are shallow? The Lovers? Tanner Sack? Judah Low?

I'd recommend The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick over anything by Mieville, and The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance over anything by Wolfe.

Swanwick = good. I like Stations of the Tide more than The Iron Dragon's Daughter. Not really a fan of Vance too much, but Wolfe is pretty bad too.

My brother, whose tastes are reasonably reliable, highly recommends "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" (that's the title of a book, not two author's names) by Susanna Clarke. I haven't read that one myself yet, partially because I found a CJ Cherryh book I didn't have yet in a second hand stall today. Yay!

Ooh! That one is a definite must.

 

[alfaniner]

Just an observation...

I know that Strunk & White recommend underlining book titles. But that was before the internet and the convention of underlining hyperlinks. Is it acceptable to use bold for book titles instead?

I can't think of any recently published SF book that I have liked as well as much of the older stuff, and many I have disliked intensely.

 

[Wudang]

Definitely second Erikson's Malazan books. How he juggles so many story lines, characters and races and so on is quite amazing as so many writers of fantasy and "extruded fantasy product" flounder with a much smaller set.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Definitely second Erikson's Malazan books. How he juggles so many story lines, characters and races and so on is quite amazing as so many writers of fantasy and "extruded fantasy product" flounder with a much smaller set.

I wanted to like the Malazan books, and the setting had a lot of potential, but I never got to the stage of caring about any of the characters or about the story. I just watched the superheroes fight for a while and lost interest. (From memory I read Gates of the Moon and the following novel before I gave up).

As far as Mieville's plots and characters go, I confess I did not read anything past Perdido Street Station because friends told me his other books were more of the same and no improvement. If the general consensus is that his later books have plots and characters that you could give a rat's about I'd think about picking them up.

While I think of it, Tim Powers is another hit-and-miss author with some impressive hits (The Anubis Gates, Last Call), and Guy Gavriel Kay is sometimes a bit cute and annoying but has done a lot of fun stuff. As unashamed Tolkien-recycling fantasy goes The Fionavar Tapestry is really good.

Someone listed Zelazny's Lord of Light earlier - I think a lot of Zelazny's work (particularly the Amber stuff) has been wildly overrated, and it's just a fact that a lot of it is repetitive, but Lord of Light deserves all the praise it gets.

 

[jimbob]

Zelazney's hardly "modern" SF...

But I like it.

We had "Today we Choose Faces" at home.

I quite enjoyed some of the Michael Scott Rohan stuff (fantasy).

Mary Gentle too

 

[Bikewer]

'Tis rather interesting to see different folk's take on these various authors. I've read all of Miehville's stuff to date, and enjoyed them all. I suppose if you want character building The Iron Council might be the best, but I enjoy them for the prose and the inventiveness.

I love both Wolfe and Vance, and never had a moment's association between the two. Oh, I suppose that Wolfe's far-future "torturer" novels might have some slight correlation with Vance's Dying Earth stories, but they're so utterly different in tone...

It's what makes art interesting, I suppose.

I just got the sequel to Iron Dragon's daughter, The Dragon of Babel, but haven't started it yet as I have started K.J. Parker's Devices And Desires.
This is a fantasy novel dealing with a technological society in the midst of an essentially-feudal land. One of the main characters is an engineer, who escapes a sentence of death for the crime of "technological innovation"; he made a machine that did not conform to specs....
Interesting so far, but a tad slow.