SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

i am looking for good SiFi in ONE book not 3 or 5 or 7
have any suggestions ?

Hey Geraard, I moved and renamed the post so folks could better help you :)

What kind of scifi do you like? Off the top of my head, I'd say basically anything by Ursula K. Le Guin in her Hainish Cycle. They treat it like a series, but they're not. They're all individual standalone books, and absolutely wonderful.

Emma Newman also writes a bunch of standalone books that share a sort of similar universe.

Do you like space operas? Hard scifi? soft scifi? Military scifi? There are so many books, it's hard to narrow it down!

Hi Geraard



All of Iain M. Banks books are stand alone novels ( most set in the same universe but with only tenuous links between most of them ) and are superb. You can't go wrong starting at the beginning with Consider Phlebas.



Station Eleven is a beautiful, terrific post-apocalypse book, although not hard SF.



The Gone-Away World is one of the best debut novels I've ever read, such good fun.



The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August



Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson



The Stars My Destination



The Snow



Hopefully that should keep you busy :)

I second Station Eleven and Diamond Age.

Based on your rated books:

The Forever War

Buying Time

Wild Seed

Midnight at the Well of Souls (there are sequels, which are excellent, but the first was written as a stand-alone)

Flowers for Algernon

Across Realtime

The Martian

Fahrenheit 451

Allison wrote: "Hey Geraard, I moved and renamed the post so folks could better help you :)

What kind of scifi do you like? Off the top of my head, I'd say basically anything by Ursula K. Le Guin ..."

i do like Steampunk (J verne or Pevel [merveilles de Paris]) and true low fantazy Sword & Sorcery (F Leiber)

Paul wrote: "Hi Geraard



All of Iain M. Banks books are stand alone novels ( most set in the same universe but with only tenuous links between most of them ) and are superb. You can't go wron..."

thanks Thoug i did read some Stephenson and found it a bit difficult

has anybody read Old man's warScalzi, John ?

Geraard wrote: "has anybody read Old man's warScalzi, John ?"

Yeah. I don't think I'd call that standalone.

Given this, I think I might recommend Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany too. Both have written many standalones and seem to play in that space of a sort of retro-future or low fantasy scifi.

Geraard wrote: "has anybody read Old man's warScalzi, John ?"

Yes, but those aren’t really standalone stories. He doesn’t wrap up all the threads at the end of Old Man's War.

Diamond Age is steampunk-ish, and it’s Stephenson’s most accessible work.

Combining steampunk with the Savage Worlds RPG, I’d recommend The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Also the various Tarzan and Pellucidar (hollow Earth) books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. In fact, Tarzan at the Earth's Core features him fighting dinosaurs while riding around in an airship.

Perhaps Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky could be to your liking. It is a mix of SF and Fantasy.

KateT wrote: "I would suggest Frankenstein if you haven’t read it yet.

With October quickly approaching, this is a classic."

Plus this is the 200th anniversary of its publication.

oh, it might be time for a Frankenstein reread!

I second the recommendation of any of LeGuin’s SF. All excellent, all stand alone. I always recommend people start with The Lathe of Heaven. Then go on to anything but especially The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and The Telling.

I’d also recommend
Way Station by Clifford Simak.
Beggars in Spain by Nancy kress
Solaris by Stanislav Lem
The Death of Grass by John Christopher
For something humorous, especially if you are a fan of Star Trek: Redshirts by Scalzi
He, She and It by Marge Piercy
Fool's War by Sarah Zettel
Cloud Atlas
The Power

Also, if you like classics or older SF they are largely stand alone. 1984, Brave New World, the Time machine, Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, anything by Heinlein, if you can stand him, Anything by Philip K. Dick especially his short stories.

I think that’s probably enough for now!

Geraard wrote: "Paul wrote: "Hi Geraard
Old Man's war is one of my favorites!
I have read it 3 times


All of Iain M. Banks books are stand alone novels ( most set in the same universe but with only tenuous links between most of them ) and are superb. You ..."

Geraard wrote: "Paul wrote: "Hi Geraard



All of Iain M. Banks books are stand alone novels ( most set in the same universe but with only tenuous links between most of them ) and are superb. You ..."

I’d recommend any of HG Wells first several sci novels. Some of them are novellas though, and not novels. To the best of my knowledge, all of them are standalone. I’m not sure if Wells wrote sequels or recurring characters. The ones mentioned above, The Lost World, The Jules Verne, and Tarzan books are actually NOT standalone, although they do hold up well as individual novels compared to many contemporary series. There were multiple Captain Nemo, Professor Challenger (The Lost World), and Tarzan books. I do still recommend those as well though, and you only need to read one. I’ve only read The Lost World of the Challenger books. The others aren’t as available.

All of Philip K. Dick and most of Greg Bear (I personally really liked his The Forge of God, which he wrote a lesser sequel to , but the first one was essentially a stand alone).

I also really like most of what I've read by Alastair Reynolds, who has several books set in the same (Revelation Space) universe but the stories are not totally connected.

Geraard wrote: "has anybody read Old man's warScalzi, John ?"

Yes, but it is a series.

I agree with The Martian and Fahrenheit 451 as well as a few of the other suggestions.

It's no longer in print in English, but it is in French--the latest publication of this is 2018 (not sure if you speak Flemish or French or both) is The Ice People by René Barjavel. The French Title is different, La Nuit des temps

Have you tried Michael Crichton - older but I do believe most are standalone - at least the ones I have read.

Lord of Light
Beacon 23
Childhood's End
Hunter's Run
The Space Merchants (techically part of a series, but the books are all stand-alone)