Butcher built a new home, and it was apparently a total cluster Fk. Ended up taking two or three times longer than it was supposed to so he was basically a vagrant for a couple years. Reportedly now working on the next book.

I like sci-fi and fantasy stuff, but I have a hard time finding books that are really great.

Three of the better science fiction books that spring to mind:

The Time Machine H.G. Wells
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
The Shrinking Man Richard Matheson


A few short stories:


The Last Question Isaac Asimov
Second Variety Philip K. Dick
Harrison Bergeron Kurt Vonnegut
EPICAC Kurt Vonnegut
With Folded Hands Jack Williamson
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Harlan Ellison
It's a Good Life Jerome Bixby
The End of the Whole Mess Stephen King
A Song for Lya George R. R. Martin
The Star Arthur C. Clarke
The Girl Had Guts Theodore Sturgeon


Today I bought:

Worms of the Earth (short story collection) Robert E. Howard
The Demolished Man Alfred Bester

In the past year I've read:

Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, The Book of the Short Sun): Probably my new favorite series. I saw the guy getting a shit load of praise from people like Le Guin, Mieville, GRRM, and Alastair Reynolds and decided to dive in. Mieville calls him the greatest living author and there are some nods to Wolfe in Game of Thrones. Incredibly intricate/beautiful writing. Loved the dream-like quality it has. Kinda a mashup of sci-fi and fantasy set in the far future as the sun is dying. Very literary.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds: Really loved this one, too. The worlds Reynolds builds are great. Loved the timespan this covers, too.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny: Another great one.

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger: Cyberpunk/neo-noir set in the middle-east. Didn't love it but it was pretty good.

Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts: Loved this. You could probably call it cyberpunk. Holy shit Watts is a bleak guy, though.

Diaspora by Greg Egan: Probably the "hardest" hard sci-fi I've ever read. Lots of math, physics, and geometry. Pretty mind blowing stuff about the singularity and the possible future of mankind. Loved it.

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick: Apparently heavily influenced by Gene Wolfe. It was pretty good but he doesn't pull it off quite as well as Wolfe does.

Reading Rendezvous with Rama right now by Clarke. Enjoying it so far. I've probably left some stuff off the list but that's what I remember.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

I'm only 15 pages in and it's got my attention.

Been reading too much of what I would call Pop Corn SCiFi.
This already seems like it has some depth/legs to it.

That’s on my short list. Heard really great things about it.

I've always had a hard time finding good sci-fi books. Usually there is a cool initial concept, but the overall book is disappointing. The book I just read "The Demolished Man" is a good example of this. It's about a billionaire who is plotting to murder one of his rivals. The twist is that there are a number of telepaths of various powers in human society and it's made getting away with murder virtually impossible. Cool idea. Bad execution.

A lot of stuff you listed in your previous post is pretty dated. I just finished Rendezvous with Rama, which is considered a classic, and wasn’t terribly impressed. I would recommend something a little newer, maybe. Or something that’s aged well. Something like Blindsight by Peter Watts, the Culture series by Iain Banks (each novel is standalone but I wouldn’t start with Consider Phlebas), House of Suns or Chasm City or Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan, or Dune. Most of the modern stuff reads much better, IMHO.

Yeah, you're probably right. I downloaded some of the Gene Wolfe books you mentioned upthread. I'll give them a shot when I find some time.

Finally read that Steven Eriksen AMA. I'd kill for them to realize a GURPS edition of the Malazan world.

I'm not playing a tabletop game right now (having twin toddlers does that to you), but I'd find a way to get a group together if this existed.

I ran a 5E campaign a few years ago in which I built Whiskeyjack's squad as an NPC ally option for my PCs. They made the mistake of killing the Trotts stand-in.

We experienced a Total Party Kill shortly after that.


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They're old too, fwiw.

They’ve aged well. They’re a very challenging read and not everyone’s cup of tea, though. I’ve never read anything like TBotNS or Wolfe in general.

The kindle edition is actually on sale for .99 on Amazon right now for anyone interested.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00SN...rd_i=133140011

ROFL

Bought it for $2.49 four days ago.

Haha that's awesome.

I am actually a part of a GURPS based game now and we played this past Sunday. I brought up the Erickson AMA and we got sidetracked for about 2 hours.

Nice!

My long term group - of a decade - broke up about a year and a half ago because two members of it developed a hatred for each other after living together.

I keep thinking I'll find a bi-weekly or monthly game. Is a weird itch... played once a week for the most part for about a decade.