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Cassie - Sci Fi Reading list please

I was reading the reviews of Pushing Ice on Amazon and fans seemed to think it wasn't one of his better books. Does anyone have recommendations for ones of his to start off with?

Also, I was listening to something on the radio with Ian Stewart and his book Wheelers sounded interesting. It's out of print now and not available digitally. Has anyone here read it?
 
Fuddlemiff said:
I was reading the reviews of Pushing Ice on Amazon and fans seemed to think it wasn't one of his better books. Does anyone have recommendations for ones of his to start off with?
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I'd start with either Pushing Ice or Revelation Space. Personally, I found Pushing Ice to be a lot easier to get into than Revelation Space, but eh, whatever floats your boat. Of course, the reason that his fans could say less positive things about Pushing Ice is because the tone of Pushing Ice is much more optimistic than the books set in the Revelation Space universe (which features a swarm of terraforming nanites that threatens to overwhelm the entire universe), and they were used to Lovecraftian levels of pessimism, but that's just my theory. Personally, Pushing Ice will always be my favorite Reynolds novel, as it was the book I took on my trip to Italy back in '08, and reading it brings back memories of that trip.
 
Thanks for your thoughts. I'll probably start with Pushing Ice, then. I don't mind reading something pessimistic, but I don't really feel like getting into another trilogy right now.
 
Mind you, Pushing Ice isn't a really optimistic novel by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a hell of a lot more optimistic than Revelation Space.
 
I just searched through my e books again, hoping I'd have some Alistair Reynolds hidden away, but I guess I don't :rwmad: I did discover that I have Good Omens, which makes me happy, so it all balances out!

Also, I'm going to start reading Foundation. I remember that Foundation comes first, but now I can't remember the order of the rest. Does Second Foundation come next, or is it Foundation's Edge? I'm going to put all three of them on my e-reader but you can tell me the order OKAY?
 
THANK YOU WACKY.

Okay, so I have been reading Foundation. I think it's wonderful, so far. I don't know why I resisted reading it for all these years. I guess I assumed I wouldn't like the writing style, or maybe I was afraid it would seem outdated or something. Anyway, I like the writing style very much and the story so far isn't anything like I imagined it would be. I don't even know what I imagined it would be. Maybe I thought it would have WWII references or Cold War references? WHO KNOWS, NOT EVEN I. I think I might have lumped Asimov in with Heinlein in my mind. I very much loved Heinlein when I was in high school, but now his stories really do seem dated.
 
Already I am seeing how this might have influenced Dune a bit (the stagnation of the empire).
 
Jumping on the Foundation bandwagon tomorrow thanks to Cassie. :) I always pictured them being proper doorstops of science porn, so avoided them, but they don't sound so difficult after all.

Just finished Life of Pi. Seemed a bit too religious for me at first, but it's quite a good story, with a kind of choose your own adventure element at the end. I don't know they managed to make it into a PG rated movie, though. Some of the biggest moments of impact in the book are gory, brutal deaths.
 
Really enjoying Foundation so far. A very easy read after all. And I can see how people think it influenced Dune. The idea of millions of inhabited planets, a quintillion humans and empires that span millennia has the same, almost mystical feel to it.
 
Okay, I just started Foundation's Edge. I was debating whether to go past the original trilogy, and decided I'd read a few pages. FINALLY A WOMAN CHARACTER WHO ISN'T A DINGBAT!! It's pretty good so far, I've only read a few pages. It's kind of more of the same as the first three, only I can tell some years have passed between the writing of Second Foundation and Foundation's Edge because - like I said the woman character isn't a dingbat!
 
HI, of course I've only read Dune a million times, and haven't ever talked about it with anyone, so I was completely unaware of the references to Rome.
 
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