iapetus said:
The Algebraist - Iain M Banks
I'm currently 2/3 of the way through
Consider Phlebas, and if Banks' other novels are anything like it then, yep, that's one helluva SF recommendation. Meanwhile, this is obviously tentative but, yeah, consider
Consider Phlebas crucial space opera reading: sprawling adventure, dirty (if not entirely ruthless) espionage, deadly gambling, intriguing aliens, some of the best spaceship names ever (I'm particularly fond of the GSV
Eschatologist), and the mysterious Planets of the Dead. All this and The Culture, too! And, if you dig
Consider Phlebas, there are several other stand alone books in the same setting; I'm told Use of Weapons is particularly good and have it waiting patiently in my to-read pile.
I'll also second Brimstone's recommendation of Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Vorkosigan series is some of the best damn space opera available, period.
Cordelia's Honor, a compilation of the first two Vorkosigan books (
Shards of Honor and
Barrayar), kicks off the series with a bang: interstellar war, romance, and some particularly brutal culture clashes. However, the bulk of the series follows a generation later with mildly-crippled, brilliant overachiever Miles Vorkosigan getting into epic levels of trouble across the galaxy, ranging from your run-of-the-mill deep shit to seriously being put thorugh the wringer later in the series. If you're in the mood to jump ahead a bit,
Young Miles collects the next two Vorkosigan novels (The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game), as well as the Hugo Award winning novella "The Mountains of Mourning". While
Cordelia's Honor comes first both chronologically and in publication order, the Vorkosigan novels stand alone well enough that you can start with either one (or, with a few exceptions, wherever you like in the series). Just don't judge
Young Miles by the god-awful cover art on the current paperback edition. Woof. Rolicking (and sometimes intense) military SF with wonderful characterization and a flair for romance - Bujold's novels are positively addictive and I just can't recommend 'em enough. Besides which,
Young Miles has space pirates! Space pirates, for god's sake! How can you resist?
Finally, while I'm busy plugging the same old SF books I always plug, I have to pimp Vernor Vinge's
A Fire Upon The Deep which is, in short, entirely fucking awesome.
A Fire Upon The Deep kicks off Vinge's loose Zones of Thought sequence, wherin the galaxy is divided into sections where the laws of physics change depending on location - in the Unthinking Depths of the galactic core virtually nothing happens at all, while the level of technology capabe increases as you move outward through the Slow Zone (sub-FTL), The Beyond (FTL), all the way through to The Transcend (fuck knows); the later ties in with Vinge's interest in the
technological singularity, the point where technological progress extends beyond the bounds of human comprehension. In
Fire, someone tinkering at the edge of the Transcend let loose an entity known as The Blight which proceeds to lay waste to everything in it's path, leaving our heroes frantically following after survivors into the Slow Zone, trying to obtain the key to defeating The Blight. The plot doesn't sound terribly exciting when spelled out like that, I realize, but in practice it's phenomenal - vastly stylish, dripping ideas, wonderful characters, and some of the coolest alien races I've ever read about in SF. All this and the Galactic Usenet, or at least it's far future equivalent. Raymond, if you're in the mood for a new universe and new aliens to explore, this, my friend, is the book for you. Vinge followed it up with a prequel (and, boy do I mean prequel - we're talking 30,000 years previous to the events of
Fire),
A Deepness In The Sky, a cleverly structured excercise in perception with another wonderful alien race and positively chilling bad guys; while not as epic in scope as
Fire I'd say
Deepness is even better, and that's saying something. Both novels get my highest possible recommendation (for what it's worth).
FnordChan
