Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Sci-fi lists part one

Since I love reading and I love to make lists, I'm going to make a list of some recent science fiction I've read. WARNING: If you don't like lists, don't read this as you'll find it boring.
I'm generally a fantasy-reader, but recently I've started to love science fiction as well. It actually started through my obsession with the Lord of the Rings movies last fall (still haven't read the books by the way. I know, I'm a bad fantasy lover). This January, I was looking for an online audio book to listen to when I came across "Ringworld" by Larry Niven. I thought, "Oooh...it has 'ring' in the title! Like 'The Ring'! Awesome!" So I downloaded it. I had no clue what it was about, and I'd never heard of Larry Niven, but I saw it had won a sci-fi/fantasy award, so I figured it must be good.
Let's just say I found a new obsession. So...from classic fantasy to hard sci-fi. Kind of a big leap, but I have to say that sci-fi really isn't that different from fantasy. Anyway, it turns out that not only is Larry Niven famous among the sci-fi crowd, but he's written a lot of books and short stories. So, here are the books I've read so far:

"Ringworld" and its sequel "Ringworld's Engineers"
(Ringworld was awesome, the sequel not quite as great...and I'm afraid to read the third one as I've heard lots of negative things about it)

Fleet of Worlds
(I was very excited to find out about this one because it was about one of my favorite characters from Ringworld. It's really good too! This one is co-authored by Edward Lerner)

Protector
(I mainly read it as background info for "Ringworld's Engineers"...I didn't like it as much, but it was still fun for its ideas)

And these ones I'm still reading:

Neutron Star
(I'm actually almost finished with this one. It's a good short story collection that would make a great introduction to Larry Niven's universe)

Three Books of Known Space
(An omnibus with two novels and lots of short stories. I wasn't too impressed with the early stories, but I'm reading the first novel and it's very interesting)

Juggler of Worlds
(Sort of a sequel to "Fleet of Worlds"...not as good as Fleet but not bad so far. It seems to contain a lot of stuff about Niven's short stories, so I want to read lots of those first before finishing this)

This turned out longer than I expected it to be, so I think I'll split it into two parts and make the second post (which will be about various non-Niven books) sometime soon (if not tomorrow, then this week). I may also make a more in-depth post about Ringworld or one of the other ones...I dunno. Would you want to read it if I post it? Leave a comment.
Seriously, if anyone reads this blog, leave a comment. I'd like to know who reads it. I don't bite. =)

4 comments:

Dan said...

Ooh, ooh, I read it!

Nicole said...

Yay! That's one more than I thought, then! :)

Val said...

I read it regularly too! But I think you already knew that:-)

Dorothy said...

I check it at least once a week usually! :)