Speculative Fiction /Science Fiction covers such a huge range of potential topics!
I'm a huge fan of the older masters Heinlein/Clarke/Niven/Asimov/EE Smith, etc. Many of their stories are smaller in scope than a typical space opera (not counting the absurd scale of Foundation!).
Ian Banks's Culture books have fascinating worlds and usually great characterization. I highly recommend them.
In Military Sci-fi, I'm a big fan of Jack Campbell's Lost Fleets serieses. Honestly most of the characters aren't terribly deep, but it's great fun. My #1 shared world is Battletech (big robots), but because that's been written by so many authors, the quality really varies.
I really didn't like the first book, but I can't not finish reading one. The Chinese political side was really interesting, the concept of folding up dimensions was neat (not unique, though; I've read of computers or ships or creatures that only exist as an abstract version of their higher-dimensional selves) but the game stuff was extremely boring. Maybe it was a translation issue, but most of the time spent with the aliens was painful.
Here's a direct link to the teaser, via an inviduous instance.
I only got halfway through the first book; I thought the game sequences were extremely boring, so I hope the series doesn't focus on them too much.
I hate finished the trilogy. It was at this point I learned I don't like SciFi, I like space operas
Speculative Fiction /Science Fiction covers such a huge range of potential topics!
I'm a huge fan of the older masters Heinlein/Clarke/Niven/Asimov/EE Smith, etc. Many of their stories are smaller in scope than a typical space opera (not counting the absurd scale of Foundation!).
Ian Banks's Culture books have fascinating worlds and usually great characterization. I highly recommend them.
In Military Sci-fi, I'm a big fan of Jack Campbell's Lost Fleets serieses. Honestly most of the characters aren't terribly deep, but it's great fun. My #1 shared world is Battletech (big robots), but because that's been written by so many authors, the quality really varies.
I really didn't like the first book, but I can't not finish reading one. The Chinese political side was really interesting, the concept of folding up dimensions was neat (not unique, though; I've read of computers or ships or creatures that only exist as an abstract version of their higher-dimensional selves) but the game stuff was extremely boring. Maybe it was a translation issue, but most of the time spent with the aliens was painful.