Hi there ;)
I'm looking for good science fiction and fantasy stories. I've just found some via jewel box and I think there are some more I haven't read already. As you perhaps know I'm a sucker for those kind of stories, so it would be kind of nice if you could tell me some stories or authors, I might not have read by now.
Thank you for providing me with new food :D
*hugs*
Beyogi
Baen has some very good stuff...
http://baen.com/library/authors.asp
John Ringo is my fav atm.
Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front were very hard to put down.
PS...they are free to download too.
-- Sleethr
-- Sleethr
Thanks sleethr and beyogi
for this blog
Definately one of my favorites
Then there is David Weber. He writes prodigious amounts of work, I suspect he is one of the few who make a good living doing nothing but writing, but it is all high quality. He also has some free work, the starter for his Honor Harrington series (about a woman and her career in a space navy, with her being basically a genius) called "Basilisk Station". You could spend years catching up on his work. His stuff is very thick and a good read, with both fantasy and SciFi, mostly SciFi.
Another up and coming that has had several really good novels, Michael Z. Williamson. His "Freehold" is told from the POV of a woman to has to flee the fascist state Earth has become to make her way in a culture that is a mixture the old west with high tech capitalism, a former colony Earth still resents as having left the fold. He doesn't limit his point of view to women, he is a very capable writer who ties things together nicely. If you read Freehold follow up with "The Weapon", same universe but another (male) protagonist. The 4 or 5 books are all based in the same universe, but like Niven's stuff it is very rich and that touch of authenticity.
thanks
Thank you for this library, it'll definitly help :D
*hugs*
Beyogi
The Baen Free Library is a bit limited
I prefer to link to the Baen CDs on the Fifth Imperium website. Baen includes a CD in some of their hardcover books. Right on the CD it says to go ahead and share them (just don't sell).
One fan has collected all of the CDs on his web site.
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
--Brandon Young
--Brandon Young
Try...
The Caregivers universe stuff here yet? Amazing stuff and Joe Gunnerson has a good story here.
Bailey Summers
Caregivers
The following link will lead you to a complete list of the Caregivers Company stories, as well as other TG fiction mentioned in the Whateley Academy stories. http://crystalhall.wikia.com/wiki/Links
http://crystalhall.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Authors will lead you to a main page for the Whateley Academy authors, follow the links to the individual authors for a fairly complete listing of what they have posted where. This lets you work with known quantities, like Maggie Finson, Heather O'Malley, Bek D. Corbin, etc.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Science Fiction and Fantasy stories
Checkout http://forums.sennadar.com/index.php for some good internet fiction, and then look through their forum thread for good books to read and good internet fiction, it's how I found Whateley Academy, which got me here.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Lyrical
I think one of the best and most lyrical fantasy/sf novels I've ever read was Roger Zelazny's magnum opus, Lord of Light, in which he evokes the Hindu pantheon with a background of science beneath the surface, and then another layer of "fantasy" beneath that.
Elizabeth Hand is always good, but Mortal Love is my particular favourite.
Mervyn Peake's granddaughter and son have just released Titus Awakes, the conclusion (at long last) of the Titus novels, partially written by Maeve Gilmore, his wife, after his death, and based upon his notes.
The original trilogy, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone, plus this new volume, comprise one of the greatest works of literary fantasy in English.
It's been adapted several times for radio, television, and film, by BBC Radio 4, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the first to attempt all three novels of the trilogy, and BBC/PBS (the first two books), and many more.
I also quite like Suzy McKee Charnas' Vampire Tapestry (1980), arguably (almost) the first (and very much the best) of the modern vampire stories, as well as Dorothea Dreams, which explores the interface between life and death and art. Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1979) seems shallow by comparison.
You might also enjoy Edith Forbes' Exit to Reality, a very thoughtful "virtual reality" fantasy/sf which makes The Matrix look exactly like the puerile fantasy of omnipotence it is in its darkest heart. It even has a transgender element.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
As a retired librarian I
As a retired librarian I find myself compelled to ask several questions.
1) TG SF and Fantasy, or SF & F in general?
2) Who have you read and enjoyed? Who did you not enjoy?
3) What about those works have you enjoyed?
4) What formats are you looking for? Internet, dead tree, eBook, or what?
5) Where have you already looked?
This information could help myself and others provide more directed readers advisory.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
1) TG SF and Fantasy, or SF
Kind of both... Actually I meant TG-Fiction, but I'd like general SF & F too.
Hm... Ian Banks was cool, Sergej Lukianenkow rocks (my favourite author ^^) and Alastair Reynolds for Science Fiction.
For Fantasy: Lukianenkow again, Kim Harrison, J.K. Rowling, Hamilton (Anita Blake before Porn)
Well I'm a sucker for gender bender stuff. I like innovative stuff, I really don't need high fantasy story 9574, with the five man band from hell. I love philosophical stuff. Religious things are awesome too. For science fiction I pretty much need a believable backstory. I hate pure distopia (It can be ok, but I can't stand stories were I know after a fourth that it is going to be a tragedy). Differing society developments are very interesting imho- yeah I've got a thing for soft SF while I like the hard stuff too.
In the end I really love when I can't predict the story.
Well mostly Internet, but I'm looking for some good fiction in english language so the other stuff would be ok too.
Well I've read everything in the crystallhall library ;)
I've looked on fictionmania into pretty much every writer who had more than 1000kb written material uploaded. Well at least I tried too ^^ I may have ignored half *blush*
It's a bit hard on this side, since sf stretches over 30 pages. I guess I read some of the stuff, but I don't really want to start reading every story, so I'm asking if someone knows which are good.
For paper books I'm using the amazon ranking since it tends to produce pretty good books. Well and Warhammer rule books ^^
Thanks to everyone who wrote some recomendations here, I'm going to look into them.
*hugs*
Beyogi
you say you don't like High Fantasy...
And I suppose you have every right not to... However, I still suggest the few I suggested, they are good reads. Only one of the two that actually had any TG in them is High Fantasy, but it's an EXTREMELY good one! It's not your everyday, run-of-the-mill, big buncha underdog good guys have to team up against a too-powerful superbad. Really, it's not. In fact the "big bad" in The Golden Key turns out to have been an underdog themselves, once, and was even a protagonist at one point. Seriously. I don't think telling you that gives too much away. The other High Fantasy's I suggested are also much more than your typical fare.
Lynn Flewelling, otoh, is modern style fantasy (not to be confused with modern fantasy, which means it takes place in the mostly current mostly real world, modern style is the style, not the milieu), one of very few modern style I actually liked.
Abigail Drew.
Well it's not that i
Well it's not that i particularily dislike hight fantasy, it's just that there are so many crappy series out in the world, and I read too many of those.
I'll go through the recommendations here. I'm normally a library book reader and they tend to have some crappy books.
Thank you for your recommendations again.
Some recommendations
So, sociological SF would be cool? C. J. Cherryh, L. E. Modesitt, Lois McMasters Bujold would be good. Your library will have stuff by them. Steven Brust does good fantasy, I'd also recommend Diana Wynne Jones, who's been writing British YA fantasy since long before Rowling; if nothing else, her Tough Guide to Fantasyland is an incredible analysis of modern quest fantasy. Charles de Lint does celtic/urban fantasy and does it very well indeed. Again, these will all be available through your library. None of them, however, are gender bender.
There are others just at the edge of my brain, not creeping into the light of day, and my books are all boxed up in preparation for my moving to Tacoma so I can't go look at them.
Gender bender ish. Well, Penny Lane seems to write a good story, Somewhere Else Entirely is currently 31 chapters long and updating weekly, if you aren't reading it why ever not? Lilith Langtree's The Center and Comics Retcon universes are both worth checking out if you haven't. Do check out the bibliographies for the Whateley authors at the Whateley wiki, as I mentioned in an earlier post these are known quantities. Geode is a new author, his only story so far is a very sweet post-apocalypse realistic story, worth checking out. And at that point we've reached the limits of my knowledge for recommendations, I've been hesitant in checking stories out because certain themes are not my cup of tea and it's hard to tell without reading.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Librarian
You might have heard of a little known author named Robert Heinlein.
You might read 'Time Enough for Love'
Also look up a novel named 'Transmigration' - I do not remember the Author's name.
Wholeman
Yes, the weird author with the boob fetish.
Yes, the weird author with the boob fetish.
J.T. McIntosh
Wrote Transmigration. I checked Google to be sure. :)
Heinlein also wrote "All You Zombies..."
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
All you zombies
Well, Jane, can it get any more confused?
speculative fiction
There's Kate Elliott, I highly recommend her Crown of Stars if you haven't read it. It's a 7 book epic though, so be prepared for a very long, involved, read. High Fantasy, obviously. Science Fiction, even if extremely long, is never called an epic. ;P
The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson is also a good fantasy. It's kinda High Fantasy, but with a bit of a modernized twist.
The Golden Key by Melanie Rawn, Kate Elliot, and Jennifer Roberson is EXTREMELY OLD, but a lot of people miss out on this truly awesome piece of High Fantasy somehow. I'm not sure how they manage to overlook it, but they do. There's even a itty bitty tiny bit of transgender themes that crop up in it, btw.
Another author who has a bit of transgender in published form with a mass publisher is Lynn Flewelling, with the Tamir Triad.
To reveal HOW there's transgender themes in either work would be giving far far too much of the story away.
Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series has more gay/lesbian themes, but not so much transgender, again, can't tell you how, or I'd be giving too much away. BTW, if you do try Nightrunner, stick with stopping after the first three books. This series works well as a prequel trilogy to Tamir, the newer books aren't worth the effort.
Abigail Drew.
a little older but
Jo Clayton has some really great stuff. she unfortunately died in her fifties about 10 years ago but her stuff is readily available at most used book stores.
her diadem series is a must read. start with "diadem from the stars" she also wrote some great fantasy books.
For SF with a bit of TG, I
For SF with a bit of TG, I recommend Jack Chalker, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_L._Chalker you never know what you will find in one of his books.
For fantasy I recommend Mercedes Lackey, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey some of her work is available free from the Baen library. She has at least a couple of stories that would drop right in here. The short story "Turnabout" in the collection Oathblood would fit, and the story is retold with a continuation at the end of The Oathbound.
Baen has for a while been including CDs with a selection of their books in various ebook formats. These are free for distribution and are available here http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
Other story sites in my bookmarks
Other than the usual TG sites of Fictionmania, Stardust, Whateley, Sapphire's, and Crystal's, I also have in my bookmarks the following sites with TG content.
The MORFS Universe by Mritney McMaster
http://morfs.nowhere2go.org/
MORFS is a disease that causes mutations, animal hybrid transformations, superpowers, and gender changes, etc.
Stickmaker's story site (AKA Rodford Edmiston Smith)
http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/Stories/
Stickmaker writes various different transformation stories. His largest story is his Masks superhero universe. In the first Masks story, the main character is a guy who turns into a female superhero.
Raven's stories (AKA Chris Lester)
http://transform.to/~ravenb/stories/index.html
Raven wrote stories in the Metamor Keep universe, and then expanded into creating Metamor City, a podcast audio drama series.
If you don't mind listening to a story instead of reading, the podcast stories can be found at http://www.metamorcity.com/
It starts off with some short stories, and there is a novel length feature that has TG content.
--Brandon Young
--Brandon Young