Apr 102010
I just got done reading ‘Conventions of War’ by Walter J Williams, is the third book in the series of “Dread Empire’s Fall”. I think a fourth book is coming out, but it’s going to be a wao. I’m looking for a good book with similar story. “The Praxis” and “The Sundering” were the 1st and 2nd book in the series respectively.
Try “The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut.
Here I have a veritable list of answers to my own question to that effect.
John Varley – the Gaea series, Asimov ( Robot series, Caves of steel, Or foundation)
etc.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnSRi8d6l372b.DFi4C15ffsy6IX?qid=20070312072528AAK1ufO
If this was high tech science fiction, I would recommend “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card and “The Tactics of Mistake” by Gordon Dickson.
I recently read a 2 book series by John Scalzi. The first book is called “Old Man’s War”. The second one is called “Ghost Brigades”. He’s an excellent writer with a vivid and unusual imagination. The books were page turners and I was sorry when I was finished with them.
The other author that I have discovered recently is Peter Hamilton. He’s written several book series. One series I read this year starts with “Pandora’s Star”, and is followed up by “Judas Unchained”. When I finish this guy’s books, I feel like I have been living in an alternate reality for awhile. That’s how vivid his writing and how detailed his imagination can be. The flow of his writing isn’t quite as easy to read as Scalzi for example, but once you get used to it, you don’t think about it. If you want to get involved in a series that’s going to take you a good long time to get through and be entertaining the entire time, read his book series that starts with “Reality Dysfunction:1″. It’s a series of 6 books.
Both of his book series are basically doomsday scenarios. “Pandora’s Star” is more near term, and the “Reality Dysfunction” is placed literally thousands of years into the future. He takes his stories into so many complex twists and turns and brings together so many threads, that you will wonder how he can ever pull them all together, but he does, and when the story lines start to gel, that’s when you’ll be up until 3 am on a work night making excuses for why you overslept.
Another author with a completely different style, but one that is nonetheless very good and fun to read is Greg Bear. I would suggest his book “Darwin’s Radio”. It’s got a sequel as well. If you like the tv show ‘Heroes”, you would enjoy this book as well, but he had his ideas and wrote his books many years ago.
Good luck, and if you’ve finished anything excellent recently, please feel free to put that in the comments for this question.
thank you,
Kevin
I’m not a huge fan of military science fiction but I loved the older Robert Heinlein stuff like Farnham’s Freehold and of course Starship Troopers. If you haven’t read those you should check them out.
Also if you DO like that kind of thing (or even if you don’t) check out Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. He won the John W. Campbell best new author award last year and deservedly so. This book was fantastic. Here’s the summary from Amazon:
“John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army.
The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.
Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.
John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.”
He has a second book that follows this one and a third one is due out this year.
All three of these books are very good and similiar in theme and story as Walter J. Williams books.
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Orphan’s Destiny by Robert Buettner
Judas Unchained Hardcover by Peter Hamilton
Anything by Larry Niven and/or Jerry Pournelle.
Anything by Robert Heinlein
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series
Harry Turtledove’s “alternative history” SF.
That’ll keep you busy for a few months.
The hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
The Last Book in the universe…don’t remember the author
These are all kind of teenage books though…
You may want to try Karin Lowachee’s excellent series beginning with Warchild. She writes intense character-driven SF that is also very much military based. Her prose is gritty and realistic. There are no good guys or bad guys, and the characters are never as simple as they might seem at first. It’s one of the best SF series on the market today, and definitely deserves a bigger audience than it has so far. This is a space opera that really exemplifies the best the genre has to offer. Furthermore, Lowachee has detailed knowledge of wartime politics and society. Throughout the series, she takes a look at the impact of war on various class systems. If you liked Dread Empire’s Fall, I really think you’ll enjoy this series.