Sci-Fi annual thread.

I’ve recently enjoyed A Memory Called Empire and A Desilation Called Peace by Arkady Martine.

I recently read the "Children of Time" trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky, really enjoyed them, especially books 1 and 2!

Project hail Mary by Andy Weir (author of the Martian)

Artemis is also enjoyable
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/andy-weir/

Adrian Tchaikovsky and Alastair Reynolds were the suggestions I picked up from a previous thread. Not got to them yet though

Whilst nobody can fill the shoes of Iain M Banks, Adrian Tchaikovsky seems to be one of the go-to authors as an alternative. His output is prodigious; I'm currently half way through the second in the Final Architecture series but most of his stuff is worth a go.

Second Alastair Reynolds, the Revelation Space series (and universe as a whole) is well written sci-fi/space opera. Terminal World is a standalone thats more kind of steam punk sci-fi but again, well written.

Another recommending Adrian Tchaikovsky. Great series like Dogs of War and Bear Head plus the Architect and children of series already mentioned. Plus some good stand alone novels and novellas like The Expert Systems Brother, Cage of Souls and One Day All This Will Be Yours.

Sea of Rust and Day Zero by C Robert Cargil are worth reading. I’ve just finished the last novel in The Expanse series. Quite a lot to get through at nine books but worth it. Blake Crouch and Richard Morgan have also written some sci-fi that I’ve enjoyed.

After watching the Apple TV series I have been reading the Foundation Novels.

I tried to explain the Children of Time series to my partner and now she thinks I’m crazy.

I must admit, I'm struggling to find "good" new Sci fi books out there, so very interested in this thread. All of the above are well kent (and well read) options. Marko Kloos was a goodish find a couple of years ago. Been re reading Anne McCaffery books recently cos they were super cheap on Amazon. Charkes Stross is good from an easy read perspective.

Jeff Wheeler was OK (again ish). Desperate for some really good Sci fi though.

If you haven't read them already, a couple of oldies but goodies from Olaf Stapledon - Last and First Men and Star Maker.

First book of The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer is also good. Second book takes ages to get going but has a good ending. Third book I couldn't finish.

Not to repeat those already recommended, John Scalzi & Neal Stephenson are always good fallbacks for me, and David Brin's (slightly older) uplift series seems to go under the radar.

Lately Dennis E. Taylor Bobiverse has been very good, not so sure about his other series though, and many either love them or hate them but the I like Craig Alansons Ex-forces books (new one out december).

Presume you've read stuff like Raft and Timelike Infinity by Stephen Baxter (don't bother with his later stuff).

Peter Hamilton is good. Really enjoyed great North road.

Ursula k leguin is an astounding sci-fi author as is Margaret Atwood ( the flood trilogy)

And William Gibsons recently books - the peripheral and agency are excellent.

I really enjoyed the  Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, and I'm looking forward to book 6 being published next month. Another wee book that I just finished and enjoyed was Junk Yard Dogs by Dominique Mondesir. It's a bit rough around the edges, think it might be one of those self published novels with no editor, and reading it I thought it was a pretty blatant rip off of an anime series called Black Lagoon, but hey, it features Space Pirates and I learned my new favourite swear word from it. What a Thunder****!

Suggest Ian McDonald's Luna series (also Brasyl and River of God's, but they're properly demanding reads). I enjoyed Tade Thompson's Wormwood trilogy - Earth bound sci fi set in Nigeria.

Great North Road by Peter Hamilton is a great standalone novel.  Fallen Dragon by the same author is good, but not AS good.

Liam clays sci-fi series Antiverse is one I read recently and really enjoyed.

Adam Shadowchild, especially Jenny Starpepper and the Huge White Gibbon...

Peter F Hamilton (will build your biceps - he writes BIG books!)

Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon etc now on Netflix)

Alistair Reynolds

Also worth reading all the Iain Banks (no M) books too, just in case you haven't. Not SF but still very, very good.

Iain M is the best, though 😉

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time trilogy (I've not read the 3rd yet, which doesn't get the best reviews tho!)

First book is amazing tho second is still great

Tchaikovsky is a genius. And he shits out books, so if there's one you don't like the look of, don't worry, he'll have written another one by the time you get back to the search. Dogs of War is maybe my favourite of his, the first Final Architecture novel is fantastic but the second nothing like as good unfortunately. The Apt fantasy stuff is good too, gets a bit carried away with itself but the first few are fantastic.

Also Chris Beckett's Dark Eden series... I don't really know if it's good or not. I know it's brilliant, but, it might not be good.

Older Ken Macleod stuff- he went a bit military scifi, I think when he discovered it's easier to write and sells well possibly. But Star Fraction and its sorta-sequels are all good.

And you're still not allowed to call Margaret Atwood scifi but, I'm a good way into Year of the Flood right now and loving it, better so far than Oryx and Crake.

Iain M Banks "Culture ' book 8 in the series. Garbage. So bad I have not been able to bring myself to read anything at all in the six months since I dragged myself through it.

+1 for anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky, think I'm about 90% through his back catalogue now, and all are excellent although I didn't get on with 'the tiger and the wolf'. 'Dogs of War' is also a favourite.

If you like BIG space opera then Peter F Hamilton, and Stephen Baxter. not a massive fan of Hamiltons stuff my self and Baxter's early works lack lack character depth but gain in big subjects - his more recent stuff is much better.

really enjoyed the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, and I’m looking forward to book 6 being published next month

I really enjoyed first and second books - easy to read, hunger games esq. But I'm struggling now with the later ones, I've got through them - and will get the latest one on release, just to finish the series. The last book I found written in a completely different style with too many characters involved.

Alistair Reynolds 'Revenger' is great, pirates of the Caribbean In space....

Engines of God by Jack McDevitt is another good one if you like big ideas.

With Peter F Hamilton there's basically 2 versions, pre and post editableness. You can feel the change in Night's Dawn but it doesn't really kick in til the Commonwealth series, where he's the golden goose that lays golden, massive, bloated, million word eggs and the publishers don't want to mess with that. Before that, he still had people saying no, that's rubbish. Not all the time, nobody could fix the sex scenes even then but still. I met him at a signing around then and he was so excited for what he was going to achieve now that "they" weren't holding him back, ah well...

But I do love Night's Dawn for all its wonkiness and the Mandel series has some really good bits.

Al Robertson's Crashing Heaven is pretty great, and has a bit of Banksishness, and quite a bit of Richard Morganness, and a lot of its own strangeness. The sequel Waking Hell is not good sadly and it looks a lot like he's never going to release part three but that first one is worth it as a standalone.

Hmm. Kate Elliot's Unconquerable Sun might be worth a look. It's a bit young-adultey and made-for-tv but it's a fascinating universe and the story is bright and shiny and fun, and I definitely felt a lot of early Banks in it, they could definitely do a wee diversion from the main plot and crash a megaship or a really big train or something. Plus I like that she doesn't feel the need to explain everything, a lot of books like this would have a prologue thing explaining the universe and the background but it just gets on with it and shows instead of explaining.

Ann Leckie divides opinion I think? But I loved the Ancillary series, they can be hard work but totally worth it imo. ALiette de Bodard worth a look too.

+1 for Kate Elliot in general.

The Neil Asher Polity stuff is fun

As are the Expanse books

Douglas Adams.

This thread looks to be the same people recommending the same stuff they recommend in every other SF thread, highlighting that if there is any decent speculative fiction being published they're keeping it well quiet. What is it they don't want us to know?

I have read a few China Mieville novels recently which I enjoyed.

I tried his Perdido Street Station years ago and couldn't finish it, it just got too weird. But I read Embassytown last year on holiday and really enjoyed it, so I gave The Scar a go, and finally Perdido Street Station again.

I don't know if it's exactly sci-fi, but if you're into far out ideas and imagined universes then he's worth a try IMO.

The Neil Asher Polity stuff is fun

yep I always thought he was a bit of a sleeper, I do like a bit of Richard Morgan.

I’d love to see Netflix do the Harry Harrison’s stainless steel rat books in an edgy gritty style, I should get around to re-reading the first lot and the last few I missed but am too worried that revisiting them may ruin the childhood memories 🙂

Watching this thread with interest!

I would really add my own recommendation to this:

I’ve recently enjoyed A Memory Called Empire and A Desilation Called Peace by Arkady Martine.

It's quite engaging/ fun/ gripping type sci-fi, in a vein that feels quite similar to Iain M Banks. Alastair Reynolds is good, but it is big space opera type stuff rather than the smaller societal/ alien interaction type pieces.
I also have Children of Time in my "to read" pile, having read a lot of recommendations for it here.

Only other thing to add is I've gone back to read quite a bit of 70s scifi (Heinlein, Niven etc) and... it's not aged so well. They had amazing ideas and concepts, but the storytelling was sometimes just soooo bad - things like Number of the Beast, even Ringworld etc are so bogged down in conversational he said/ she said.
But when they get it right (Puppetmasters, Inferno, Day After Tomorrow/ Sixth Column, if you ignore the outdated ethnic elements) it's compelling stuff.

The Books of Babel series by by Josiah Bancroft. The first book (Senlin Ascends) took a while to get into, but by the end was enjoying it and have enjoyed the rest of the series.

Cordwainer Smith - The Rediscovery of Man

I read Children of Time on a 2 week work trip to Asia, it was the only non-work thing in English I had with me and it was a real grind. Did not like it. Likewise Ancillary Justice. Just did not like that one at all.

Jeff Vandermeer is really patchy, Annihilation is good but the 2nd one in the series is dross. Didn't bother with the 3rd. The 'Borne' stuff is cool though.

I've been reading Charles Stross' "Laundry Files" series with great enjoyment. If you're a middle-aged geek who's worked in IT you will relate to his writing. Call of Cthulhu meets Len Deighton/Harry Palmer, but with more network cabling.

I really enjoyed N.K.Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy, and the Inheritance Trilogy (although it seems to be listed as five novels).

Not the usual space opera, and a world away from Iain M Banks, but in a good way.

I was trying to remember Memory Called Empire and The Fifth Season, I'd read them and then forgotten the titles, the authors, just couldn't get back to them. So thanks!

Just started reading Great North Road and liking it so far. So thanks to whoever recommended it. Gave up reading Peter F Hamilton after the Nights Dawn trilogy as lots of his books seemed to end with some sort of convenient plot device appearing at the 11th hour and tying things up in a neat bow.

The Luke Smitherd Stone Man books are worth a shot. I think he’s self published as the books could do with a good edit but are still a good read and quite creepy IMO. He writes all sorts but has a few good sci-fi /horror novels.

For something a bit different The Humans by Matt Haig is good.

If you like Dark Fantasy/Future, then the Gaunt’s Ghost Series of the 40k universe by Dan Abnett is very good, as is almost anything he writes.

i’d also highly recommend the Expanse novels by James S A Corey.

I got truly sick of bloated trilogies by Hamilton and Baxter.  It always seems like even the author is bored of them by the end.

Currently reading Machine Learning by Hugh Howey who did the silo series that most people love.

It's a really good selection of short stories, with great little afterwords by the author explaining how, why and where he wrote them.

Theres also three or four short story followups to the silo series, kinda a mini expansion which are great.

I recently enjoyed Inversions by Iain M Banks, but thought that Surface Detail was awful.

Thanks to anyone that recommended Luna, just finished the first one and loved it. Basically if you like KSR's Mars series but wish it was all incredibly gloomy and dystopian and hopeless, Luna is for you.

On Pg 131 of "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir, enjoying it so far.
Lots of suggestions to look through.

I really enjoyed the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown

Yep,I started audibling them ,on the second one and enjoying it.

New Iain M Banks material in 4 months 😀