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**Drake Tungsten** · September 11, 2003, 09:37

I nominate The Forever War by John Haldeman.

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home. . .

I liked it...

**JohnT** · September 11, 2003, 10:06

Good book, Drake.

I'm still thinking about my nomination and am torn between Sherri Teppers Grass or James Blish's A Case of Conscience. I'll probably wait until I go home tonight to see what in my library is sticking out at me.

**Starchild** · September 11, 2003, 12:03

I'd like to recommend Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I just got it from Amazon and it's a wonderful, eclectic mix of science fiction, Hindu mythology, Buddhist philosophy, and Sanskrit. Here's an edited (it was LONG) review with some very minor spoilers:

Colonists from Earth, using a mix of mental powers and high technology, have long ago subjugated the native inhabitants -- and are now making themselves into gods, ruling over their descendants within a framework set up in imitation of Hinduism and ancient India. But even as the "Deicrat" consensus firms, there is dissent: Sam, one of the First, the crew of the original spaceship, remains an "Accelerationist", wanting to spread scientific knowledge to everyone. He starts a one-man crusade to bring down Heaven, a crusade that will lead him to the depths of Hellwell and to Nirvana and back.

**JohnT** · September 11, 2003, 13:59

Oh, God. I did LoL for my real life discussion group (now disbanded) and didn't really care for it.

(he says in an attempt to bump the thread with a relevant comment)

**Ramo** · September 11, 2003, 14:33

Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

From Amazon:

This book won the 1969 Nebula Award and the 1970 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year. I recall first reading this book when it first appeared and being stunned at the originality and the beauty. I have read every Hugo and Nebula winner (and most of the nominees) and this is still near the top. In this classic novel, all of the action takes place on the planet known as Gethen or Winter, a frozen world set in Le Guin's Hainish universe. All of the humanoid inhabitants of Winter are exactly the same as the humans of Earth except in the means of reproduction. They are all of a single sex and can assume either sex when in "heat." If one person of a couple becomes female, the other automatically becomes male. The culture and society of this world is shaped not only by the harsh environment but by this sexual structure. A main portion of the novel is concerned with the trek of a human ambassador and ethnologist, Genly Ai, across Winter's surface with a Getthenian. The man from Earth and the manwoman from Winter grow to know and understand each other. The novel not only raises issues about our perceptions of sex but the problems associated with cultural chauvinism. It is a book that all serious students of science fiction literature should read. [...]

**Bugs ****ing Bunny** · September 11, 2003, 14:45

My nomination is...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1840680326/qid%3D1063305658/026-4582337-5808427

It's "Tits-out teenage terror totty" by Steven Wells.

Wells started with one aim- to write a book with a bigger body-count than the Bible. He succeeded, and in the process he wrote the sickest, most darkly-comic and ludicrously OTT splatter-fest I have ever read.

Don't read it on the bus, unless you're cool about laughing your arse off in public.

**ajbera** · September 11, 2003, 15:23

Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep

From Publishers Weekly
It has been six years since Vinge's last book ( Marooned in Realtime ), but the wait proves worthwhile in this stimulating tale filled with ideas, action and likable, believable characters, both alien and human. Vinge presents a galaxy divided into Zones--regions where different physical constraints allow very different technological and mental possibilities. Earth remains in the "Slowness" zone, where nothing can travel faster than light and minds are fairly limited. The action of the book is in the "Beyond," where translight travel and other marvels exist, and humans are one of many intelligent species. One human colony has been experimenting with ancient technology in order to find a path to the "Transcend," where intelligence and power are so great as to seem godlike. Instead they release the Blight, an evil power, from a billion-year captivity. As the Blight begins to spread, a few humans flee with a secret that might destroy it, but they are stranded in a primitive low-tech world barely in the Beyond. While the Blight destroys whole races and star systems, a team of two humans and two aliens races to rescue the others, pursued by the Blight's agents and other enemies. With uninterrupted pacing, suspense without contrivance, and deftly drawn aliens who can be pleasantly comical without becoming cute, Vinge offers heart-pounding, mind-expanding science fiction at its best.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812515285/qid=1063307965/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/103-8754630-9225405?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

**JohnT** · September 11, 2003, 16:39

Oh, man! I got on this thread to nominate Vinge's superior A Deepness in the Sky.

**JohnT** · September 11, 2003, 16:40

Though FoTD is a quality book, I think DitS is just a liiiiittle better.

**Imran Siddiqui** · September 11, 2003, 19:21

My nomination is Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (my favorite sci-fi book

):

An all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle's puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama's secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible "southern" half of the enormous cylinder. Rama's unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed. Rendezvous with Rama is fast moving, fascinating, and a must-read for science fiction fans.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553287893/102-6846485-1724966?v=glance&s=books

**Drake Tungsten** · September 11, 2003, 20:04

Rendevous with Rama is good.

**GePap** · September 11, 2003, 20:06

What of all the other Rama's?

Anyway. hmmm, I want to say something by Brin, but which?

I say either the Uplift War or Glory Season

**St Leo** · September 11, 2003, 20:24

Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.

For twenty thousand years, every observable phenomenon in the universe has been successfully explained by the Sarumpaet Rules: the laws governing the dynamics of the quantum graphs that underlie all the constituents of matter and the geometric structure of spacetime. Now Cass has stumbled on a set of quantum graphs that might comprise the fundamental particles of an entirely different kind of physics, and she has travelled three hundred and seventy light years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, in the hope of bringing this tantalising alternative to life. The “novo-vacuum” is predicted to begin decaying the instant it's created, but even a short-lived, microscopic speck could shed light on the origins of the universe, and test the Sarumpaet Rules more rigorously than ever before.

Cass's experiment turns out to be more successful than anticipated: the novo-vacuum is more stable than the ordinary vacuum around it, and a region in which the new physics holds sway proceeds to expand out from Mimosa at half the speed of light.

Six hundred years later, more than two thousand inhabited systems have been lost to the novo-vacuum. On the Rindler, a ship that has matched velocities with the encroaching border, people have come from throughout inhabited space to study the phenomenon. Most are Preservationists, hunting for a way to turn back the tide, but a few belong to another faction: Yielders, who believe that the challenge of adapting to survive on the far side of the border would reinvigorate a civilisation that has grown stale and insular.

Tchicaya has come to the Rindler to join the Yielders, but when Mariama — a childhood friend whose example inspired him to abandon his own home world and traditions for a life of travel — arrives soon after, he is shocked to discover that she plans to help the Preservationists find a way to destroy the novo-vacuum.

As a theoretical breakthrough leads to a sequence of experiments that begins to reveal the true richness of the world behind the border, tensions between the opposing factions grow. When a splinter group responds to these revelations with violent, unilateral action, Tchicaya and Mariama are forced into an uneasy alliance, and travel together through the border, balancing old and new loyalties against the fate of two incomparably different universes.