Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you like non-sci fi wise, OP? That can help direct my recs.

I liked the political intrigue in Dune, so things along those lines. I appreciate good writing (like an English major wrote it ), muti-dimensional characters, intersecting story lines, a plot that moves.

Pretty vanilla, but there you go.

I have read The Patternist series, Dune, and started Foundation. Here are my observations:

-Patternist has some/good deal of political intrigue, there are certainly hints of an earth you know. The characters are well-developed and I found iy engaging.
-Dune is really a work of political fiction set in an alternate world setting. Despite these books being really long, they are page turners. Hard to turn into movies/miniseries, but there's a reason people keep doing it.
-Foundation. Well, I have always had a hard time with Asimov. I find him plodding. I found this book plodding. I love the concept, but after the series came out on Apple TV I stopped reading. If you have watched the series it's very different. One of my beefs with the book (as far as I got, anyway) is that every character was male. As a 51 year old woman I am over it.

I'm the OP and I would like to thank those who recommended The Three Body Problem. I just finished it and really enjoyed it and will probably read the next two books in the trilogy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel trilogy is great. Sci-fi but also mystery.

Second The Martian and also Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir.

Andy Weir writes such a pure Science Fiction book. He is sensational and I love his work.

Andy Weir’s books are good but I’m not sure I’d say they read like an English major wrote them

Anonymous wrote:Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel trilogy is great. Sci-fi but also mystery.

Second The Martian and also Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir.

Andy Weir writes such a pure Science Fiction book. He is sensational and I love his work.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is outstanding. I know it's marketed as YA, but it's one of my favorites.

Silo Trilogy: Wool and the two other books in the series. By Hugh Howey.

Hyperion Cantos: Hyperion and the three other books in the series. By Dan Simmons.

The Doomsday Book. By Connie Willis.

Project Hail Mary. By Anthony Weir.

The Expanse (series, first book is called Leviathan Wakes)
This is How You Lose the Time War
A Memory Called Empire (series)
The Martian
Ancillary Justice (series)
Station Eleven
Never Let Me Go
The Craft Sequence (first book is called Three Parts Dead; maybe more on the urban fantasy side)

IMO, a lot of newer SF tends to be well written because they have to in order to be published. The exception often time being the nth book in a long series by an established author. Can I say David Weber badly needs an editor with a large pair of scissors?

Of what has been mentioned, I dont know that I would put the Dune series high on your list, especially if you've read the first. The series starts strong and goes down from there, with book 5 being a long slog.

I agree with the PP who mentioned gender (and I would add racial) stereotypes and norms in older books can be grating. I read a ton of Heinlein as a teen and quit him cold after Farnham's Freehold, but even before then found him grating. Foundations is quite a bit better, IMO, and if you're after reading a SF classic series, that's a good bet. Andre Norton is a good exception to some of the male and human-centric style of older SF.

I personally love anything by Lois McMaster Bujold and second the Shards of Honor duology or the longer Vorkosigan Saga. Something that really distinguishes the Vorkosigan Saga is the hero has significant physical disabilities which the author leans into unapologetically. As others said, there are strong elements of political intrigue throughout.

I started Foundation and found it to be really dated, which is a strange thing to say about sci-fi, I guess, but it was literally all men. Women were a clear afterthought. I am a 50 year old woman that has been reading sci-fi since I was a pre-teen so I'm used to the gender disparity, but it really stood out to me for some reason. I also found it slow and plodding and I was looking for a point, any point. So I don't know that I'd recommend it. I do enjoy the Apple TV series of it, however.

I read the Patternmaster books when I was a teen. I loved them and want to revisit them.

I read several of the Dune books in my 20's and I think that's a great classic series.

If you liked Dune, I would consider Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It’s arguably more fantasy than sci fi but definitely epic.