Entertaining sci-fi and fantasy

[Milo]

Recently I've been making my way through several of the books mentioned in the sci-fi and fantasy thread and have realised I'm not really finding them entertaining to read. I like the ideas but often find myself skimming to see how things turn out rather than being involved in the story.

I just paused halfway through Salvation by Peter F Hamilton and started reading Needful Things by Stephen King and was quite struck by how much more engaging and entertaining the writing is.

So I'm asking for recommendations for sci-fi and fantasy that isn't just interesting ideas but actually entertaining to read.

Examples I've read of entertaining scifi/fantasy: Iain M Banks, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Ann Leckie, Becky Chambers, Claire North.

Thanks.

[Endicott]

John Varley's Titan trilogy. If that grabs you maybe try some of his short stories.

Kurt Vonnegut? Ursula Le Guin? (sorry these two are a bit obvious)

[Toki]

Robert Sheckley's short stories, and Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat. The latter I found very entertaining, and Sheckley is also hugely entertaining and funny but the short story medium obviously allows a wider range of ideas. Sheckley's novel Dimension of Miracles is also great, and better than Hitchhikers Guide (although I don't really find much to recommend about the Hitchhikers series after the first three).

[Gladys]

For fantasy I really like Joe Abercrombie for when I want to disengage my brain a bit and just be dragged along for the ride. Particularly on audiobook. For science fiction the Expanse books do the same job.

[badaids]

I found a bookshop in my neck of the woods with piles of cheap second hand Sci fi.

They had piles of Scott Gibson Card or whatever his name in. Can someone tell me which ones are good so I can get them?

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Orson Scott Card? Shit books and a total knobhead to boot


_{some people like ender's game}

[Mr Vegetables]

Robert Sheckley is a great shout; I'd second him.

I don't know how you feel about Doctor Who novels, but some of those might actually be what you're looking for? Alien Bodies especially, if you can track that down for a reasonable price

[Milo]

For fantasy I really like Joe Abercrombie for when I want to disengage my brain a bit and just be dragged along for the ride. Particularly on audiobook. For science fiction the Expanse books do the same job.

Thanks for reminding me of Joe Abercrombie. I remember enjoying some of those a long time back, there's bound to be more.

I enjoyed the Expanse show and forgot there were books. I'll add those to the list. Thanks!

Looks like Sheckley for the list too.

[Famous Mortimer]

For science fiction the Expanse books do the same job.

Agreed - they're modern pulp, perhaps with a bit more ambition but still very entertaining.

I feel like...it's a bit of a false dichotomy? A casual glance through the other thread and all sorts of different things get discussed; including the things you listed as "entertaining". Perhaps you started off on the wrong foot with Peter F Hamilton, an author I also don't have a lot positive to say about.

[Milo]

Hamilton was only the latest foot. I've appreciated quite a few things from the other thread but that's not quite the same thing as entertaining.

I think I'm maybe a bit overstuffed with interesting scifi and want some more entertainment at the moment.

[Famous Mortimer]

Hamilton was only the latest foot. I've appreciated quite a few things from the other thread but that's not quite the same thing as entertaining.

I think I'm maybe a bit overstuffed with interesting scifi and want some more entertainment at the moment.

I appreciate that, but I've just read the other thread and

Thanks for reminding me of Joe Abercrombie. I remember enjoying some of those a long time back, there's bound to be more.

I enjoyed the Expanse show and forgot there were books. I'll add those to the list. Thanks!

Looks like Sheckley for the list too.

all three of these authors / series are discussed at length.

[Alberon]

I'm always looking for entertaining stuff to read. Not my fault a lot of what I'm trying is dull!

Good shout on the Joe Abercrombie books. Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series are the best modern urban fantasy series I've read, though admittedly it's not a sub-genre I was ever hooked on. China Mieville's fiction has been really good, especially Perdido Street Station, The Scar and The City and the City. After a couple of non-fiction books about communism he seems to be back to fiction again so it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

John Varley's work hooked me at a young age and I'm keen to go reread a lot of his old Eight World short stories, especially after he only fairly recently finished the trilogy set, aproximately, in that universe. A bit long in the tooth now, but I always enjoyed Larry Niven's Known Space series, another set of novels and short stories I devoured as a teenager.

Iain M. Banks Culture novels, of course, which manage to be interesting and entertaining but I'd guess you'd already had been through them.

I finally gave up on Peter F. Hamilton with his Salvation series and he hasn't published much since it.

[Milo]

I appreciate that, but I've just read the other thread and
all three of these authors / series are discussed at length.

Aye, I've not read the whole thread but I'm wanting to specifically focus on entertainment value which isn't often a focus in scifi/fantasy discussion.

[Milo]

I'm always looking for entertaining stuff to read. Not my fault a lot of what I'm trying is dull!

....

Iain M. Banks Culture novels, of course, which manage to be interesting and entertaining but I'd guess you'd already had been through them.

Didn't mean to slam the other thread! Loads of good stuff in there.

And Iain M Banks, I have absolutely rinsed those books. In recent years via the world-class Peter Kenny narrations. Superb.

And thanks for the other names!

[Gladys]

I was completely obsessed with Iain Banks when I was a teenager in the '80's - both with and without the 'M' - fell out of interest a lot with his later books although the later Culture books mostly always were well worth a read. I've struggled to find many writers who scratch that itch with regards the Culture- maybe that's just teenage nostalgia but I really do think his Culture stuff is amazing.

Like you, I've loved revisiting them on Audible with Peter Kenny who is a superb narrator.

Finding a great Audible narrator is great. One of the reasons I've been loving the Joe Abercrombie so much is that they are narrated by Steven Pacy who is fantastic and on par with Kenny. Abercrombie is getting noticeably better and better as he goes on and his last trilogy of books in the First Law world are great. I think there are nine books all in all now and all well worth it - keeping in mind how much better he gets.

My taste in a lot of genre type stuff tends towards the more weird and experimental but I find I cant do that on audiobook but for flat out action and long interlinked books I just stick to audible these days.

[Milo]

The narrator for the Lies of Locke Lamora books is also superb, Michael Page I think. There's a bit where he's haggling and he offers "the steam off my piss!" that always comes back to me.

Annoyingly, there's one Culture book that doesn't have a Peter Kenny narration, presumably for some boring rights reason.

Just remembered I got Peter Kenny to narrate a bit of the Jack Vance Dying Earth books as I was hoping the rights holders would agree that he was perfect for the series. They didnt.

[badaids]

Orson Scott Card? Shit books and a total knobhead to boot


_{some people like ender's game}

Okay, I'll let them be then. I just read he is a hard-core Mormon so I can't deal with that.

[13 schoolyards]

It's getting a bit long in the tooth now I guess but Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination is highly entertaining - doesn't let up from the start and it's constantly throwing ideas out there.

Only problem is that it was written in the late 50s and while it doesn't feel that dated at all to read, it's not exactly breaking new ground after half a century of being ripped off.

(Bester's The Demolished Man is also lots of fun. Don't read any of his later books though)

[surreal]

Maybe give John Scalzi a go - his "Redshirts" and "Old Man's War" always seem to get good reviews.

Also a nod for Charles Stross - the "Laundry" series from him, starting with "The Atrocity Archives" mashes up Lovecraftian horror, MI5/spy novels and a bit of IT tech thrown in for good measure.  I've read more than half of them but not caught up to the last couple yet.  Always found them easy to read, quite funny and entertaining.

[Kankurette]

The Wheel of Time is the fantasy series I'm most into along with Discworld. It's boss up until A Crown of Swords, which is when Robert Jordan lets his very obvious humiliation and spanking kinks get in the way of storytelling, with added slavery apologism, and the pacing is much worse. Avoid the Brandon Sanderson books, they are crap. The Great Hunt is when it starts to get good and The Dragon Reborn/The Shadow Rising/The Fires of Heaven are the series' peak, although Egwene (one of the main girls) needs a boot up the hole. Jordan also helpfully provided a glossary for anyone wondering what the fuck an Aes Sedai is or whatever.

[Mister Six]

Just to elaborate on Discworld: because it ran for about 40 novels plus related stuff, and those novels were divided into different sub-series that sometimes crossed over with one another, the fans have created various "timelines" and "guides" and stuff that are bewildering and intimidating. Unfortunately, even Pratchett didn't think the first three Discworld books (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites) were much good so going in publication order as a total novice isn't ideal either.

So here's the easiest way to go about it:

Read Small Gods, which is somewhere around Pratchett's first peak era, and is completely self-contained.

If you dig that, read any two of Mort (Death hires an apprentice), Guards! Guards! (the first in a series of procedural crime stories) and Wyrd Sisters (Macbeth, except the witches are the good guys).

If you're still on board, go back and read the books in publication order, starting with The Colour of Magic - you'll still have the best books to come, and you'll be able to enjoy the way the Discworld develops from a knockabout anything-goes fantasy sandbox to a genuinely well thought-out, robust world that increasingly reflected our own.

Iain M Banks

Banks was my first thought - proper science fiction and themes and stuff, but also frequently exciting and funny with it.

[Milo]

Read Small Gods, which is somewhere around Pratchett's first peak era, and is completely self-contained

Small Gods was actually the very first Discworld book I read when an aunt gave me a copy when I was about twelve. It was a major paradigm shift in my brain and set me reading everything Pratchett ever did.

Sounds like quite a small thing but just the concept of gods having power proportional to the level of belief they commanded was a huge thing in opening my mind to what might be possible in fantasy.

I'd read Lord of the Rings by that point but that is quite straight fantasy, not really anything by way of novel ideas.

And my son is named Sam because of Vimes.

[Mister Six]

Small Gods was actually the very first Discworld book I read when an aunt gave me a copy when I was about twelve. It was a major paradigm shift in my brain and set me reading everything Pratchett ever did. 

Ha, me too - although in my case it was a misprinted copy that we got cheap at a small shop somewhere in the Lake District to distract me on a boring (to 10-year-old me) ferry ride.

[Milo]

When I got into later ones I loved seeing the odd reference to the reinvigorated Om religion.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, with

Spoiler alert

them having turned into the Disc's equivalent of the Jehova's Witnesses.

[close]

[madhair60]

there isnt any its all bollocks. tell me about something real, mate.

[Kankurette]

I'd say Thud! was probably the last Discworld book I really liked. The Moist von Lipwig ones were OK. I didn't want to read Snuff because it just sounded awful and I like Vimes and I didn't want him to be ruined.

The Watch books are my favourite, then the Witches, then DEATH.

[Mister Six]

I liked all of them up to and including Snuff, which was the last one I read and where Pratchett's deterioration was actually noticeable to me, but I really enjoyed Unseen Academicals, as minor as it was. Thud was probably the last of the second Peak Pratchett era though (first peak being Reaper Man to Hogfather, and second being Fifth Elephant to Thud!).

God, I want to stab Alzheimer's disease in the dick.

[madhair60]

God, I want to stab Alzheimer's disease in the dick.

then you are no better than it

[Mister Six]

Not even a bit?