Recommend Good SciFi

[David Floyd]

OK, I'm looking for good (or even decent) science fiction, that has nothing to do with Star Trek, Star Wars, or any other TV show, that involves either time travel, alternate history, or major galactic wars. Preferably all of them, naturally.

Any ideas?

[Apocalypse]

What? Like a book or another TV show other than Star Wars/Trek?

[Edan]

Anything Asimov. And for alternate history, I would take a look at Harry Turtledove's books.

That should give you something to start with.

[MattHiggs]

Quantum Leap is great. Red Dwarf is amazingly funny sci-fi.

[David Floyd]

Edan:

Yeah, I really enjoy Turtledove.

Apocalypse:

No, no TV shows, and I'm also kinda sick of Star Wars/Star Trek. Used to be a big fan, but not really anymore.

[Ramo]

For starters, try Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, Frank Herbert's "Dune" series, and Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep"/"A Deepness in the Sky" series.

[Graag]

Asimov rules for general sci-fi ponderings and good stories, Red Dwarf is ****ing hilarious (as is Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - read it now), but Dune is the **** when it comes to establishing functioning, believable sci-fi realities.

[DinoDoc]

Are comics out of the question?

[David Floyd]

I've read Hitchhiker's Guide, and it's great.

I am not really a fan of comics, DD.

[Ramo]

As far as time travel/alternate history goes, Poul Anderson is pretty good.

[Graag]

Have some fun with the Dune and Foundation books... they'll last you a good while, with much general thinking thrown in. Ultimately, you can't beat HHGttG. It says everything that needs to be said, ****s your head, and makes you laugh. But the above serieses (sp?) will waste a lot of time in a fun way.

[TCO]

Starship Troopers
The Door into Summer
The Pilgrim (doesn't have a galactic war but has a human/alien conflict).

[Urban Ranger]

Foward has some great ones. Both Dragon's Egg and Starquake are excellent. I also got one of his new books but haven't started on it yet.

[redbaron]

A few classics to consider

H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
E.E. Smith - The Lensman series
Fritz Leiber - The Big Time

Also,
Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships (a sequel to Wells' book).

[molly bloom]

O.k., off the top of my slightly less sunburned bonce:

Ursula K Le Guin: The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness.

Her later works are also well worth picking up, as his fantasy sequence, the Earthsea Quintet.

J.G. Ballard: High Rise, Concrete Island and Crash. The science fiction poet of urban alienation and breakdown. Crash is infinitely better than the Cronenberg film.

David Brin: The Uplift War series (six novels and some short stories). An embattled humanity with intelligent chimps and dolphins as allies- with a galactic struggle for recovered artefacts of an eons old civilization as a backdrop.

Dan Simmons: The Hyperion sequence. Elements of space opera, but a tremendous set of ideas.

George R R Martin: Tuf Voyaging

Samuel R Delany: Einstein Intersection, Babel-17, Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.

Greg Bear: Eon sequence

Philip K ****: We Can Build You, Time Out Of Joint, Ubik, The Zap Gun.

William Gibson: Count Zero, Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, All Tomorrow's Parties.

Richard Kardrey: Metrophage

Alternate realities/histories:

Turtledove: Agent of Byzantium. He has yet to do better than this. His Great War series I find too prolix, and too unlikely at times.

Michael P Kube McDowell: Alternities. A chilling novel set in alternate Americas- with a psychopathic senator with access to the other worlds, and a taste for sadistic murder.

Robert Charles Wilson: Gypsies- what if where you could go was determined by your will? - the stronger your will, the better your alternate destination.

Ward Moore: Bring the Jubilee- the best what if the South won? novel by far.

Harry Harrison: A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! George Washington lost the Revolution, and his descendant is helping construct a transatlantic connection with the mother of parliaments.

Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt. Imagine a mutated black plague- it depopulates Europe, leaving only a few Europeans in the Orkneys, and off Ireland. A renascent Islam fills the void in Spain, in the Balkans, China colonizes parts of Australia and the Americas, and the Great War is fought between China and Indian civilizations and the Islamic world.

Joanna Russ: The Female Man

Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man

Philip K **** The Man in the High Castle