SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Hello, I am a real fan of Asimov (stories, style, pace, etc), but I think after many years I pretty much run out of his titles...
I realise I have to grow up and venture into the perilous world of "new authors".
Can you suggest an author which is not too different from Asimov's style?

Cheers

My entryway in the Sci-fi genre was Asimov, then I started to read Arthur C. Clarke and went on to read Space Opera based on the Star Trek universe. Most Sci-fi books will be great if you liked Asimov.

I loved Asimov, and now I love Robert J. Sawyer, p'raps esp. Flashforward and James Alan Gardner, esp. his League of Peoples series that begins with Expendable. Older, but you shouldn't miss, would be Clifford D. Simak, esp. Way Station and City. Also older, but known for punchy & powerful short stories is Fredric Brown, author of Arena.

Newer is The Martian by Andy Weir (I didn't like his second and have not read his third yet). Another option is Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, but that is so long for those of us who are used to authors like Asimov who get to the point concisely... it's excellent, but might be a bit intimidating if you're like me.

I'm not as crazy about most Literary SF, the stuff that tries too hard to escape the supposed limitations of the genre. I make a definite exception for Station Eleven.

I'm sure I can come up with many more ideas if pressed, and you can also follow or friend me if you like.

You have some good leads on contemporary SF, but you might take a look at the writers whose early works were appearing at about the same time as Asimov's, mostly in John W. Campbell's "Astounding."

The best-known would be Robert A. Heinlein. Early installments of his "Future History" (in order of publication, not internal chronology) unfolded during the same years as the original Foundation stories. (Which only later collected as a 'trilogy' of "novels' by the small publisher Gnome Press: most of the Future History was much later compiled in the 1967 omnibus volume "The Past Through Tomorrow.). There is a good bibliography on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
and especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pas...

Also of interest is one of Asimov's personal friends (from their days with Heinlein in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII), and favorite writers, L. Sprague de Camp. Also known for quite a bit of fantasy (often humorous), and excellent non-fiction, his science fiction "Viagens Interplanetarias" series has interesting alien species, and reliably fallible human characters. (It was a nominee for the Hugo for "Best Series," which "Foundation" won.) The "Viagens" series' extraterrestrial settings also allowed him to import themes from Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars (Barsoom) stories, but with a hard-science background. Again, see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Spra...

For writers who were active before Asimov, and during his early career, I would suggest Jack Williamson and E.E. Smith: especially Williamson's "Legion of Space" and "Humanoids" stories, and Smith's "Lensman" series, despite some dated views on women (which he almost makes up for in the final volume). His "Skylark" stories, mainly from the earliest days of magazine science fiction, may be an acquired taste.

Both continued to write into advanced old age: I think that Williamson improved as he went along, or at least became more conscious of what he was doing, but the early stories are fascinating, too.

For Williamson, with bibliography, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wi...

For "Doc" Smith (he had a PhD when they were not very common in SF circles), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._S... and also the extended bibliography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._S...

You might look at Michael Crichton and Timothy Zahn. Nobody writes exactly like Asimov, but both authors have pretty good science grounding in their speculative fiction stories.

Pacing-wise, his great works would be similar to novellas in our time, or short stories. Plot-wise, he did seem to follow "what ifs" fairly thoroughly.

In terms of the pulpier/Golden Age pacing, I think the closest in modern terms would include:

Ted Chiang, his most famous work being Stories of Your Life and Others
The Forward collection put out by Amazon has a good selection of short stories with strong, pulpy what if-based works.

For pulpy/Golden Age esque plots in the modern era, Chrichton is probably not the worst, though I think he's a bit more cinematic. Ditto Blake Crouch. Very thriller paced.

But for me I think the pulpy side of things would be better in the era--Delany, Vonnegut, Zelazny, Vonda McIntyre, CJ Cherryh, Theodore Sturgeon are all good places to start. You might also enjoy, from the modern perspective, Rosewater or next month's SFFBC pick, The Steerswoman

ETA. I think Neal Stephenson, CS Friedman and Lois McMaster Bujold might also do the trick.

Leticia wrote: "My entryway in the Sci-fi genre was Asimov, then I started to read Arthur C. Clarke and went on to read Space Opera based on the Star Trek universe. Most Sci-fi books will be great if..."

Hi Leticia,
yes of course Clarke's Odyssey is also in my library...!
I used to watch Star Trek on TV but never read anything inspired by it. I guess I always found it too "light" for a book, but I could be wrong of course.
Thank you for your advice!

Cheryl wrote: "I loved Asimov, and now I love Robert J. Sawyer, p'raps esp. Flashforward and James Alan Gardner, esp. his League of Peoples series that begins with [bo..."

Thank you Cheryl.
I also read the Martian, but I wasn't overly impressed I have to say... I might give it a try to his second book if I get enough suggestions about it, but it's not on top of my list.
I will definitely take a good look at all the authors you suggest, many thanks for your time!

Ian wrote: "You have some good leads on contemporary SF, but you might take a look at the writers whose early works were appearing at about the same time as Asimov's, mostly in John W. Campbell's "Astounding."..."

Dear Ian,
I love your take in your answers: instead of looking for "new authors", dig in other classic authors, contemporary of Asimov. Even more interesting is your suggestion of looking into authors who might have influenced Asimov! Thank you for this great suggestion and for a few names to follow up!

Do you believe that SciFi goes in "fashionable waves" and that nobody actually took the Asimov torch these days?

Brandon wrote: "You might look at Michael Crichton and Timothy Zahn. Nobody writes exactly like Asimov, but both authors have pretty good science grounding in their speculative fiction stories."

Thank you Brandon for your reply. I think I have read two or three books by M Chrichton (Jurassic Park for sure) many years ago, and then I kind of forgot about him...
Which one is your favourite by Chrichton?

I don't know about T Zahn, but I will check it out, thanks. Any title in particular?

Allison wrote: "Pacing-wise, his great works would be similar to novellas in our time, or short stories. Plot-wise, he did seem to follow "what ifs" fairly thoroughly.

In terms of the pulpier/Golden Age pacing, I..."

Thank you for so many ideas, Allison! A living SciFi encyclopedia?
It will take me a while to go through your list... where do you think I should start? Your absolute favourite about these?

Sorry, but I have to disagree w/ Ian. None of the authors he listed have aged well. I keep trying those "classics" and find them both extremely sexist and also both sociologically & scientifically silly.

You might be interested in the Evolution of Science Fiction group, though. You could post this question there, and you could also look over past 'book of the month' discussions.

Edit to add: There are a lot of older SF books that *have* aged better, and it's worth the effort to seek those out.

Cheryl, I felt similar with Classic fantasy such as Robert Asprin.

Giovanni, did you try The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Old Man's War ?

Giovanni,

For Crichton, I would recommend Sphere or The Andromeda Strain. His version of The Lost World is a great book on its own and has almost nothing to do with the movie sequel to Jurassic Park. Two other works of his that I like that are not science fiction are Airframe and The Great Train Robbery.

Zahn is justly famous for his Star Wars work. If you would rather read a sci-fi standalone work, then The Icarus Hunt, Deadman Switch, Cobra, Warhorse, and Manta's Gift are the ones I would recommend. The Conquerors' trilogy is another favorite of mine.

Cheryl wrote: "Sorry, but I have to disagree w/ Ian. None of the authors he listed have aged well. I keep trying those "classics" and find them both extremely sexist and also both sociologically & scientifically ..."

I won't try to dictate your tastes, but almost all older literature can be called out as sexist in one way or another. Some of it is also at least implicitly racist, anti-semitic, anti-Catholic, etc. One either skips them or learns to adjust.

"Sociologically and scientifically silly" can be applied to the basic postulates of Asimov's Robot and Foundation stories, which is where we started.

After all, the Foundation series relies on faster-than-light travel as a basic postulate. (A storytelling convention which de Camp avoided in his slightly later Viagens stories, demonstrating that it could be done).

Getting down to particulars, I mentioned mainly authors whose works, in my opinion, illuminate what Asimov's original readership was familiar with, mostly from appearances in the same magazine, and how he played with their expectations (whether he was aware of it or not).

E.g., there is a massive battle in space in the Foundation stories, which, plot-wise, could have come right out of installments of Smith's Lenman series, which ran a few years beforehand. (WW II delayed the later installments, so it mostly wouldn't have been running in the same issues of Astounding.). Smith included lots of pyrotechnics, with force-fields and energy weapons galore.

But Asimov's handling of the battle is so different that hardly anyone remembers it, just what characters say about it afterwards. (Not my original observation: I'm not sure where I first found it.)

Jack Williamson's nightmarish "Humanoid" stories are about "rhodomagnetic" robots intent on protecting humans, invoking an invented physics and technology that is no more implausible than "positronic brains," which Asimov created to avoid vacuum tubes, and get on with the story.

But Norbert Wiener apparently felt that Williamson's view of artificial intelligence therein was very plausible, rather to Williamson's surprise, and distress. (Wiener occasionally dabbled in science fiction himself....) Williamson himself later traced the main premise of the story to events in his own childhood.

As a sidenote: Williamson's "Legion of Space" is very creaky in places, but not entirely dated so far as a mass audience is concerned: there are many plot elements in common with the first Star Wars film.

(Williamson was also shocked to hear from a chemist who had worked on the Manhattan Project that she had started thinking about "ultimate weapons" while reading this story.)

Andres wrote: "Giovanni, did you try The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Old Man's War ?"

I have started the Hitchiker's Guide but it's definitely not my thing (I am more like a hard-SF kind of guy...). Never looked at Old Man's, thank you for the suggestion.

Brandon wrote: "Giovanni,

For Crichton, I would recommend Sphere or The Andromeda Strain."

Oh yes, I have read the Sphere, many years ago. Not bad, actually. Thank you for the other suggestions, I am now building a library of things suggested to sift through...
Cheers!

Giovanni, you mention “Clarke’s Odyssey”, but I would suggest reading more of Clarke if you haven’t already. He was prolific and a lot of his work was very good.

I don’t know how Asimovian it is, but for wild scientific speculation in our own day there’s Chinese author Cixin Liu whose novel The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo a few years ago. (As translated by Ken Liu.) According to Wikipedia, he cites Clarke as an important influence.

Stephen wrote: "Giovanni, you mention “Clarke’s Odyssey”, but I would suggest reading more of Clarke if you haven’t already. He was prolific and a lot of his work was very good."

What is your favourite by Clarke, and why?

I think my favourite Clarke novel is Childhood's End, from the early ‘50s. Thematically it’s not unlike “2001: A Space Odyssey”: ultimately transformative human contact with aliens/alien influence. It has been a while since I read it but as I recall I thought the cultural situation of the humans under the sway of alien “overlords” was nicely shown.

I recently read his story collection Tales from the White Hart, jokey science-based tall tales supposedly told in a London pub. Again this is from the ‘50s. There is one perhaps distasteful story by modern standards involving a family whose members share a tightfisted attitude toward money, and happen to be Jewish. But otherwise it’s good fun.

Rendezvous with Rama is another classic Clarke novel to check out.

I agree enthusiastically with the recommendation of The Three-Body Problem.

Thank you both, I will definitely check out The three-body Problem and the Childhood's end, then.

I'm reading one now that reminds me a bit of Asimov: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It has a lot of science in it and seems fairly well written. It also won a Hugo Award in 2006

Spin is excellent! It’s first in a trilogy but the others are not nearly as successful—I read and reviewed them all

thanks for the heads up on the rest of the books. I bought it as part of a Humble Bundle a while back (2017 or earlier) and hadn't yet read it I don't go through the Humble Bundles very fast (over 250 yet to read).

I usually like writers with the same kind of direct, simple writing style as Asimov.
Among sci-fi books I like and have a similar style were Starfarers, Killing Gravity, We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Children of Time, Old Man's War, Pandora's Star, Hidden Empire, The Mote in God's Eye and Falling Free.

I don't think a discussion of following up on Isaac Asimov is complete without mentioning The Flying Sorcerors by David Gerrold. If you like the puns that Asimov used to indulge in, this book serves up a lot of them. More to the point, literally, (view spoiler)[ the book is an on target shot at Asimov capped off by a massive pun on his name (hide spoiler)]. I hope I used the spoiler tag properly, even as old as this book is.

After you finish Asimov, my suggestion is Clarke. After that, maybe, The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury, the Hospital Station series by James White.

My recommendations for following Asimov are Robert Silverberg, Ben Bova, and Larry Niven.

Thank you all for your many suggestions so far. Please keep posting, I am taking notes!
I can see that this is a path that many had taken before me...

Also, Frederick Pohl's GATEWAY novels, Octavia Butler's XENOGENESIS TRILOGOY (aka LILLITH'S BROOD), Paolo Bacigalupi's THE WINDUP GIRL, Robert Silverberg's DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH (helps if you've Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS first), Iain M Bank's THE PLAYER OF GAMES, Greg Bear's DARWIN'S RADIO, William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, John Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER and SHEEP LOOK UP, John Varley's STEEL BEACH, Frank Herbert's DUNE, Walter M Miller's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ.

If you don't like absurdism, skip Vonnegut. I hated THE SIRENS OF TITAN. If you can get a good translation (unless you can read Polish), try Stanislas Lem.

Of course, there are the Expanse novels. Uneven as a series, but the characters are generally fantastic.