Science Fiction Novels

[AKKuya]

I'd like to start a thread on what are the best science fiction stories out there that have not been translated into films.  Each entry should have Title, Author, Year Published, and short synopsis without the ending revealed.  Why it was a good novel?

Title - Across a Billion Years
Author - Robert Silverberg
Year Published - 1969
Short Synopsis - Across A Billion Years is a 1969 Science Fiction novel by Robert Silverberg set in the year 2375, Tom Rice a young archaeologist attached to a two-year dig on the planet of Highby V. It is a search for artefacts belonging to a long-lost and ancient race known simply as The High Ones. Throughout known space, details of this billion-year old civilisation have been uncovered on many planets. What seems like a fairly straightforward expedition becomes a galactic odyssey when an artefact never seen before is uncovered. This device hints that perhaps the High Ones are not extinct at all. But, if they are not, then where are they? And will this lead to the culmination of Mankind’s greatest challenge or greatest disaster? (courtesy of Wikipedia)

When I read this as a kid, the story appealed to me as a hard science story.  No flashy space battles just a thought provoking novel making the reader ask where are we, where are we going and why do we go in relation to the fictional species.  The human race is around 2 to 4 million years old roughly and this story is about a race that lived for a billion of our years.  It makes the reader imagine what our race will be like in a billion years.

Who's next?

[moot]

Random pick: The Diamond Age.
It'd be cool if someone did Engine Summer.  That book is unreadable.

[phatzo]

I always found Isaac Asimovs foundation and Robots series fascinating. Can you imagine my dissapointment at the movie I Robot. OTOH bicentenial man was amazing but still hardly scratched the surface.

[AKKuya]

Random pick: The Diamond Age.
It'd be cool if someone did Engine Summer.  That book is unreadable.

Ok, who wrote it and what's it about?

I always found Isaac Asimovs foundation and Robots series fascinating. Can you imagine my dissapointment at the movie I Robot. OTOH bicentenial man was amazing but still hardly scratched the surface.

Azimov books are classic but many have never read them.  What makes them good to you?

[uptown]

Stephen King is about the only nonfiction i read. His mind is bizarre.

[moot]

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is a bildungsroman focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. Some main motifs include: education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as a Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards, placing it among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history.[1]

A six-hour miniseries scripted by Stephenson and produced by George Clooney is being developed for the Sci Fi Channel.[2][3][4]

Snow crash would probably be fun if someone who knows what he's doing would write, produce, and direct it.

Engine Summer (ISBN 0-385-12831-2) is a novel by John Crowley, published in 1979 by Doubleday. It was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award.

Synopsis
The novel tells the story of a young man named Rush that Speaks and of his wandering through a strange, post-apocalyptic world in pursuit of several seemingly incompatible goals.

The story is set in a post-technological future. Our own age is dimly remembered in story and legend, but without nostalgia or regret. The people of Rush's world are engaged in living their own lives in their own cultures. Words and artifacts from our own time survive into Rush's age, suggesting that it is only a few millennia in our future. Yet we are given hints that human society and even human biology are significantly changed. Even such basics as reproduction and eating have been altered, one by industrial-age genetic tampering, the other by contact with extraterrestrial life.

[Treize69]

I'm partial to the Battletech-Mechwarrior series. No author or date to list, except 'various' and '1986 to present'.

[wrongwayric]

Starship Troopers.......would you like to know more?

The first movie was great, kept to the book plot line and all. Second 1 suxed, 3rd one was so/so.

I average a book a day and sci-fi, along with supernatural fantasy are my favorites.

I have a movie i've been waiting to watch, Underworld, rise of the lycans, saving it for a slow day/night.

I'd like to see Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonriders of Pern" turned into a movie, but i suspect they'd ruin it. I mean look what they did to Andre Nortons "The beast master", no where near what the book was about.

[akusher]

Well, since you started this thread--here's a little shameless self-promotion:

Book of Books is a Sci-Fi novel I wrote that was published as an E-Book a few weeks ago by AKW Books (no relation to me). It's set in the near future, and centers on a best-selling author whose stories have the odd habit of to prophesizing real events. Only he's not the author he seems to be, but rather, a mere pawn in a long-running conspiracy aimed at altering the fabric of society.

Our heroes, Elijah and Violet, must stop this writer before he can write the book that ends it all.

This is the first part of a trilogy that I will finish before I leave sci-fi behind and transition to the world of espionage.

Here's the link:

http://www.akwbooks.com/BookStore/product.php?productid=11

[Becinhu]

R.A. Salvatore

Any of the dark elf series with Drizzt Do'Urden.  I have the entire collection plus some of the spin-off novels.  The storytelling is superb.  The detail with which he writes about the battles makes you fell like you are right there in them.  Plus I am partial to fantasy novels anyway.

[RTHolmes]

Any of Iain M Banks stuff would work great on film

[Saxman]

Snow crash would probably be fun if someone who knows what he's doing would write, produce, and direct it.

Well that rules out SciFi Channel....

Becinhu,

I enjoy fantasy more as well, too, but the thread IS about SciFi.

That being said, gonna show the depths of my Geekiness:

Any of Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston's Star Wars novels from the Bantam run:

Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command) can be directly credited with reviving Star Wars from nostalgia into the merchandising force (no pun intended) it is today. The success of the Thrawn Trilogy led directly to the development of X-Wing Space Combat Simulator, and it all snowballed from there. The Prequel Trilogy would have been a LOT better had Lucas hired Zahn to write it.

I LOVED the X-wing novels (Stackpole and Allston). It was great to focus more on original characters who you didn't know were going to survive, and LOVED seeing that the hellish difficulty of X-wing Tour of Duty 1, Mission 4 had such an impact that it made it into print as the "Redemption Scenario" in Rogue Squadron. Oh, and Allston's X-wing books were HILARIOUS. Yub-yub.

I, Jedi (Stackpole) was a great twist, with an almost film-noir aspect (especially the first-person perspective) that really set it apart from the rest of the series. Somehow it made it just FIT with the grittier look of the Original Trilogy.

I wish they'd just ended the post-Return of the Jedi continuity with the Hand of Thrawn series (Zahn). It was a perfect end to the Galactic Civil War, and FINALLY got Luke and Mara Jade together. Things took a DRASTIC downward turn once DelRey took over with NJO and later. I don't acknowledge anything after Vision of the Future. As far as I'm concerned Chewie and Mara are alive, and Jacen did NOT become a Sith Lord (never even read that series).

[1Boner]

"A Barnstormer in Oz"  by Phillip Jose Farmer.  (of Riverworld fame)

Its set in the mythical land of Oz. (as in The Wizard of Oz)

Dorothys adult son, who is a pilot, flys his bi-plane into a mysterious green cloud only to be magically transported(plane and all) into Oz.

Alot of the characters from the original story are present.

This is not a kiddie story.

Violence etc.

Awesome book, but alas, I'm sure if it was made into a movie it would suk.

Highly recomended reading though.

While I realize its not "sci-fi", I thought some of you guys might enjoy it anyway.

[jimson]

City

Clifford Simak

I don't remember much except I liked it

Cold War era,  something about people having been dispersed from cities so there would be no targets for ICBMs, also had talking dogs and robots.

[moot]

Well that rules out SciFi Channel....

  You don't say....  They got Diamond Age, though.  Who knows how that'll turn out.  They've got the contract and Stephenson is working with Clooney for the TV-compatible rewrite.