Question O-F Suggested Reading List...

[MaverickSawyer]

Couple of weeks back, a member of the Orbiter-Forum.com Facebook group asked whether or not there was a suggested reading list for the community. That spurred me to start compiling a short list of my personal suggestions, and now I am requesting input from the rest of the community. Feel free to add suggestions. I'll routinely check through the posts and update the list here.

NON-FICTION
-Rocket Boys, Homer Hickam Jr.
-The Case For Mars, Robert Zubrin
-The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

CLASSIC SCI-FI
-Rocketship Galileo, Robert Heinlein
-Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein
-Red Planet, Robert Heinlein
-Farmer In the Sky, Robert Heinlein
-2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clark
-Songs of Distant Earth, Arthur C. Clark
-Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clark
-Rendevouz With Rama, Arthur C. Clark
-Midworld, Alan Dean Foster
-Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
-Dune, Frank Herbert

HARD SCI-FI
-Flight of the Dragonfly, Robert L. Forward

MODERN SCI-FI
-Von Neumann's War, John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor
-Return to the Moon, Travis S. taylor and Les Johnson


Again, feel free to add suggestions. These are just some of the ones I've read.

, and good reading!

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Ben Bova, his "Grand Tour" series is, what I think, should be required reading for every sci-fi-space and rocket junkie.

 

[Ark]

Ben Bova, his "Grand Tour" series is, what I think, should be required reading for every sci-fi-space and rocket junkie.

Oh yeah, totally.

My bookshelves are a shine to hard sci fi, gotta pick the good stuff.

Non-fiction:

Project Orion by George Dyson. This will make you angry that we don't have 4000-ton interplanetary battleships riding nuclear detonations into orbit.

Classic:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. This needs no explanation.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Great imagination in how relativistic flight and warfare relate to each other.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Dunno how old it is, but it deserves classic status. Everybody should real this. Shame about how the rest of the series turns out, but this book is essential.

Hard:

Titan, Voyage, Flood, Ark and The Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. He is probably my favorite hard sci-fi author of all time. Fair warning, though, a lot of his writing has a hard pessimistic slant.

Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. Some seriously crazy hard sci-fi imagination packed into those books.

New/not-so-hard/other:

Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton. Be warned, this pair will require a significant time investment to churn through. But, you get 2000-page Chekhov's Guns, train-based interplanetary teleportation networks, brain-backup immortality, oh, and an armored blockade running train. It better have some wild stuff to justify reading that doorstop.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Love this book, love the series. It has actual characters, and believe it or not, humor!

 

[sorindafabico]

I'd add Arthur Clarke's The City and the Stars and Asimov's The Gods Themselves.

 

[garyw]

Ben Bova, his "Grand Tour" series is, what I think, should be required reading for every sci-fi-space and rocket junkie.

And every budding VSA builder. Lots of ideas in that.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Yes! I wanna be Dan Randolph when I grow up! Or Masterson...

 

[orb]

To add some to the list:

• The Orbiter Forum List of Essential Science Fiction.
• The Orbiter-Forum Top 100 Greatest Science Fiction Novels of all Time

 

[Izack]

So as to avoid simply including every hard or otherwise interesting piece of sci-fi in the universe, I'll try to restrict myself to the following. :lol:

Non-fiction:

Space (and also A Man on the Moon) by Andrew Chaikin. A very large book full of beautiful imagery regarding outer space, and the history of mankind's exploration of it, with a foreward by none other than Cpt. James Lovell of Gemini and Apollo fame. It was a major inspiration for me, and possibly other orbinauts as well. Get it in hardcover.

Fiction:

The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is an excellent series about colonising other worlds, and human technological and social advancement in general.

The manga Planetes is both a great mostly hard space story, and a commentary on existence in the universe that I think many orbinauts would agree with.

Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. Some seriously crazy hard sci-fi imagination packed into those books.

A very big YES to these! Some of the best fiction I've ever read.