Rec me stuff!

[oyceter]

OMG people! I have my plot brain back! Not only that, but I am suddenly feeling the urge to read really dense SF with lots of worldbuilding and aliens. This is extremely strange, given my three-year-or-so romance novel spree and my general tendency toward the fantasy side of sf/f.

Rec me stuff! I have been contemplating attempting Cherryh again, as I just reread Gate of Ivrel and could actually figure out what was going on, but I am a little scared of where to start. I've mostly just read her fantasy, since plot-brain abandoned me years ago, but now I want to try more of her SF. I own Faded Sun, Foreigner, and Invader.

... while I'm at it, I should probably read some Ursula K. LeGuin SF too, since I haven't even read Dispossessed.

Mostly I want cool cultures and politicking and alien-ness, although anti-colonialism and feminism are huge pluses. I've already been slightly thrown out of a book or two thanks to the use of terms like "native" and "reservation" and not being sure if the author was aware enough to deconstruct or was just thoughtlessly using it. POC authors also a big plus. Have read Karin Lowachee's Cagebird and have some of her others out, recently went through a fair amount of Butler and mean to reread her Parable books, would like to know if Tobias Buckell's current books fit the amount of denseness I am in the mood for.

This feels so odd, but I figure while I am in the mood, I should read as much as possible, since this seriously hasn't happened for years and years.

Comments

[lnhammer]

Second the rec for Banks -- he's one of the few plot-heavy SF authors I still keep up with. The Culture novels start with Consider Phlebas, but the second one, Player of Games, is generally considered the best entrypoint.

Charles Stross is hit-or-miss for me, but I did enjoy Singularity Sky. Haven't gotten to the sequel yet.

---L.

[lnhammer]

Oh, and the two SF books over the past year I most enjoyed are Declare by Tim Powers (it's SF cleverly disguised as a historical spy thriller) and Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

---L.

[oyceter]

Charlie Stross is autopope, isn't he? If so, he has left such a bad taste in my mind through various iterations of racefail that he's automatically on the do-not-read list, no matter how good he is. (Bujold I am still on the line with and am waiting to see if she actually learned or if she will continue being sporky.)

Thanks for the other recs! Someday I should get around to reading Stephenson...

[lnhammer]

That's Stross, yes. I'd missed him having a part in the various!fails.

I've been a fan of Stephenson since picking his first book out of the remainder bin my freshman year of college. Because The Bug U is exactly the sort of thing you want to discover while still a student. He's not always on, but he's always entertaining.

---L.

[lnhammer]

ARGH me and typing late at night do not get along. That's The Big U, not Bug.

[kate_nepveu]

I would recommend _Last Call_ over _Declare_ to someone new to Powers, though _Last Call_ is explicitly fantasy while _Declare_ is--well, I'm not sure _Declare_ is actually SF instead of fantasy. But I found _Declare_'s denouement disappointing.

_Last Call_: http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2005/09/powers_last_call.php

[lnhammer]

I see the point about the denouement, but I still find Declare the smoothest and best-constructed of his novels, and the one most geared toward a mainstream reader -- in the sense of not written for someone who has acquired a taste for Powers.* But they are both very good, and with Last Call you get two more books in the trilogy.

* I mean, compare Three Days to Never: it's like the plot mechanics of Declare written in the style of Last Call and others.

---L.

[kate_nepveu]

I've never not actually gotten around to _Three Days to Never_, so I can't say.

I am willing to acknowledge the existence of more books in the same world as _Last Call_, but I don't remotely feel the same way about them and don't think of it as the first book in a trilogy at all.

I do, however, now badly want to re-read _Last Call_, which may break my "reading something other than fanfic" block, so that's good.

[lnhammer]

:-)