h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1. Anything by Diana Gabaldon!!!! That's all I can think of right now, but if you've never read a Gabaldon let me stop you before you do; and if you have, you have my sympathy. I read 'Outlander', her first, thinking it would be decent historical fiction about the Jacobite Rebellions (an interesting period, in my view)... but no, it was all graphic romance. My 13-year-old mind was quite shocked, I can tell you!

Given that you have started it, I am going to put *my* bottom 5...

1. Anything by Ursula K Le Guin
2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
3. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
4. Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens*







* Or, as I nearly put, Great Expectorations...

That reminds me, I've been meaning to get Strangers in Strange Land I've never read any Robert H.

Starship Troopers? Forgive me, I'd have thought that was right up your alley Adela.. I know your a big sf buff. I did like the cheesy movie...allot of people hated it...I guess it appealed to my childishly silly wry sense of humor mixed with some grisly bits.

Which also reminds of a book by Eric Frank Russell - Next of Kin (50's sf), hilarious, should be on my fave list

"Stranger In A Strange Land" is cool, MV. Wish I still had my loaner copy, but it never came back. You should be able to find dozens of used copies.

My top ten books have changed since I listed them here a couple of years ago. I'll have to think a bit and come up with a revised list...

A2659999

B

I rather like Heinlein and LeGuin. They are the sci-fi classics, after all. What kind of sci-fi do you particularly enjoy, Apple?

Ayn Rand positively sucks though. The only way in which her books come in handy is that they always ask questions about 'Atlas Shrugged' in Academic League.

I disliked Ayn Rand's books very much as well. I haven't read that much LeGuin, but I have enjoyed Heinlein for years.

I'm quite fond of Piers Anthony, too, as far as sci-fi and/or fantasy are concerned, and Terry Pratchett.

My ten favorite books (at this point in time) would be the following, in no particular order:

Richard Adams- "Watership Down"
Evelyn Waugh- "The Loved One"
Umberto Eco- "Foulcault's Pendulum"
Salman Rushdie- "The Satanic Verses"
John Kennedy Toole- "A Confederacy of Dunces"
Robert Graves- "I, Claudius"
Katherine Dunn- "Geek Love"
Anthony Burgess- "A Clockwork Orange"
Victor Hugo- "Les Miserables" (can't do proper French on this keyboard)

and, at the risk of sounding trite (but it's the reason I'm here), the Hitchhiker's Guide.

It's difficult to narrow the list down to ten, when you've got a room full of books.

Ooh, I just love I, Claudius, but I have to confess I enjoyed the tv series with Derek Jacobi more than the book... a little less boring.

I love the series as well, I'm itching to buy it on DVD but it's a bit more than I can afford for DVDs just now.

I was doing a compare and contrast thing at the time, MV, reading Starship Troopers at the same time as Joe Haldeman's 'Forever War'... Heinlein's politics got right up my goat, as Kath & Kim (Aussie comediennnes) would say.

The movie is quite different from the book, we have the movie on DVD, and my son (who bought it) loves it.

The most notable thing to me about the movie is that everyone is impossibly good-looking!

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Wow, I could do a whole Guide Entry on this! (In fact, I did - have a look at A1140139)
Verbal diarrhoea coming up...

Roger Zelazny and all his works,Kristine Kathryn Rusch and hers, to start with. Phillip K Dick, David Brin, Samuel R Delany (to mention classics, notably City of a Thousand Suns - awesome!) Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the Star Trek novelisations by John de Lancie and Andrew G Robinson, Olaf Stapledon and Brian Stableford, David Zindel and many, many more...

There has been great discussion about where sf and fantasy shade into one another and where they part company. Look at another of mine A 625943... and many of the sf authors/books I like might be considered to be more on the fantasy side...

Why did that not become a link? I'll try again...

A625943

Peter David is my favourite Star Trek novelist. He also wrote scripts and books for Babylon 5, in addition to some other sf and fantasy works, like the 'Sir Apropos of Nothing' trilogy. Very funny.

Yes, Peter David is great! Have you read William Shatner's series of novels about Kirk? Pretty weird but not bad at all...

I got fed up enough with Shatner's acting to not want to ever encounter him again. If there's ever a bigger egomaniac than my music teacher, that's Shatner!

He is an egomaniac, and he never could accept Kirk's death, but the books are surprisingly good!

I see Robert Graves on your list Pc, have you read the translation of The Golden Ass by him too?

Yes, your quite right Adela they were very good looking, I'd shag em all

Sorry.

About the only other movie I've seen where everyone was so tasty, was a very good video we found in December, Wing Commander, surprisingly brilliant!

I am re-reading 'The Hobbit'...

1. Grunts, by Mary Gentle
2. Life, The Universe & Everything, by Douglas Adams
3. A Dog Called Demolition, by Robert Rankin
4. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
5. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
6. Valhalla, by Tom Holt
7. Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle
8. The Hitchikers Guide to The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
9. The Long Dark Tea Time of The Soul, by Douglas Adams
10. Books of Blood Vols:1 to 6, by Clive Barker

1. The Gunslinger(DT1), by Steven King
2. The Wizard and Glass (DT4), by Steven King
3. The Stand, by Steven King
4. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
5. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Steven King
6. The Thief Of Always, by Clive Barker
7. Lord Of The Rings, by Tolkien
8. The Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov
9. (still thinking)
10. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by HP Lovecraft