Hello, I have just booked my self on a very long flight which will involve me changing planes several times and pretty spending about a 24 hour period in planes and airports so I am thinking about bringing a book along with me to help me pass the time. Most of the ideas I have had for writting have been more in the Sci-Fi area so I was wondering if anyone could recommend a few good sci-fi novels? I will probably end up only picking one but I would really like to have a book that will keep me me going so that this flight won't seem so long. I would prefer a sci-fi book about space and space travel, going to other planets stuff like that but would also be open to other sci-fi types if they are very good. Thanks.
You could try Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. It's a particularly good example of the space opera sub-genre of science fiction.
Hyperion & The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. so good, they left me speechless for months. can't recommend them enough.
I checked and all the books mentioned get very good reviews. Especially Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperon. The other two books in that series got great reviews as well. Is this it though, is this all the good Space Operas out there? Thanks or the recommendations
Might want to look up Peter F Hamilton. (The Commonwealth Saga and The Void Triology) There is also the Night's Dawn Triology, but i haven't read them yet. Can't say i have read many Space Opera's, but i love these.
You specified spacecrafts and space flight, so my suggestions are chosen accordingly. Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama is a very good novel about exploration and first contact. Larry Niven's Ringworld is one of my favorites for the Wow! factor alone. Ben Bova's novels Jupiter and Saturn are more near-future novels about exploration within our own solar system, with a good level of scientific plausibility. Of the two, Jupiter is the more scientifically intriguing. Saturn is all about the journey, and has a more political storyline. There aren't a great many writers currently producing novels about exploring the frontiers of space, so it's probably a good nice to consider for writing. More of what is appearing in bookstores now tends toward space warfare and interplanetary intrigue, and around franchises like Halo or Star Wars. One of the two novels I'm working on falls squarely into the exploration and discovery category, so it is certainly a sub-genre where I see plenty of potential.
I can't really recommend any books that involve lots of space travel, but a good sci-fi book that I would recommend is I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. It's a great read.
Yes, I've noticed that as I have searched the internet looking for this type of novel, there just doesn't seem to be much there. I my self and currently working on a Short Story about a team of Americas who are sent to live among an Alien People for 10 years to observe their culture, technology, ect. I thought that since I would be trapped on a plane all this time, It might do me some good to read some books in this genre to help with my writing and as stated above, to help keep me from going insane!!!! Ringword is a title that I keep happening upon as I google. I Have never heard of the Jupiter I you mentioned though. It sounds very interesting.
Anything by Ray Bradbury is fab, but the Martian Chronicles is probably closest to what you're looking for (And it's on amazon for a penny, which is always good!)
All of Cogito's recommendations are excellent for the kind of story you are looking for. Both Clarke and Niven are masters of this particular trope.
*cackles gleefully* Space and space travel? Right. Try these: The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In the far future, a warp-type drive called the Alderson Drive has been developed, and humanity has gone to explore the stars. Hundreds of years after space travel became possible, humans have not yet reached a system with intelligent alien life - until now. When a Motie exploration ship is accidently destroyed by an automatic meteor-impact defense system, two starships are deployed to visit the aliens' home planet. Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein is largely about a school where space pilots are trained. Their real purpose, however, is to ensure that the people in charge of the planet's nuclear weapons systems are loyal to the entire species, not just to a single country or ideology. A very good book, and neat - the author, for example, predicted cell phones back in the 1940s - but it doesn't have as much space travel as you might like. Legacy of Heorot by Steven Barnes, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Colonists have reached an alien planet and are setting up a new home for themselves. The local ecology is simple, primitive, and nonpoisonous. So when one individual opposes the decision to take down the electric fence (which is, after all, a hazard for kids and dogs), tensions rise. When a kid goes missing, is it just an effort by the one guy to make himself feel necessary? About a colony rather than interstellar spaceship travel, but it's well-written, the characters are neat, and since the science fiction emphasizes biology, I really had fun with it. Ringworld by Larry Niven. Louis Wu is one of several explorers - some of them quite alien - chosen to investigate the Ringworld. It's a really cool book, which has sequels because some engineers from my university (and the science fiction club I belong to, come to think of it) checked the math and wrote Niven letting him know that "The Ringworld is unstable!" Angry Ghosts by F. Allen Farnham. To be frank, it's not nearly as good as the other books on this list. But it is short-ish, maybe good for a quick read (whereas the aforementioned books are generally on the long side), and looks into the ways human societies might be changed over time by interstellar travel, especially if the humans of Earth are no longer communicating with the colonies. Berserker by Fred Saberhagen. A collection of short stories about how the human and Carpanthan species try to deal with their encounters with the Berserkers, moon-sized semi-intelligent machines with orders to destroy all life other than their makers. This is a bit far from your original perameters, but it's a good book.
Wow, some really good sounding titles. Their are several on your list that intrigues me HeinleinFan. The Mote in God's Eye sounds really good, right up my alley.
Why has no one recommended Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? It's science fiction comedy. No one can write like Douglas Adams.
No one can write like Larry Niven, either. Or Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert Heinlein, or Orson Scott Card. So why hasn't anyone already mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide? Because somebody has to be first in a particular thread, and this time it was you. But this thread is largely identical in purpose to another recent thread, and I am pretty sure Hitchhiker's Guide was brought up in that thread.
