SCIENCE FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS: As promised, here are some. I’m not including fantasy or alt-history here — maybe I’ll do that later. Just real science fiction.
Anyway, in no particular order:
Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage:
I liked Peter Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star enough that I ordered the sequel, though it hasn’t come yet.
Series often run dry, but the Larry Niven Ringworld-derived Man-Kzin Wars series has gotten a new lease on life with installments X and XI which are pretty good. The Kzin have always been one of my favorite alien species.
The Heechee are another, and Fred Pohl’s new book, The Boy Who Would Live Forever was very good. His AI-Chef hero is pretty fun, too.
John Birmingham’s Designated Targets, sequel to the Hillary-Clinton-inspired Weapons of Choice, is very good. I’m not sure if I should score it as alt-history or science fiction, but I’m putting it here since there’s interdimensional travel involved.
It’s been a big Scalzi year for me: I liked Old Man’s War, and its sequel, Ghost Brigades. And Agent to the Stars was fun, too.
It’s also been a big Charles Stross year, with Accelerando coming out. And you might also like his Iron Sunrise, which features a warblogger hero. You can read Accelerando free on his website.
Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies are all very good. On the other hand, I couldn’t get through Market Forces: I just found its premise impossible to swallow.
Well, that’s a pretty fair assortment. Here’s an earlier post with science fiction recommendations, and here’s one with alt-history recommendations. And here’s another along those lines. Meanwhile, here’s a post from last year with lots of other book recommendations. That should be enough to get you going!
But don’t forget, you can get a lot of excellent science fiction books, many quite recent, for free online at the Baen Free Library. And don’t miss the introductory essay by Eric Flint.