Your Favourite SF & Fantasy Series

[foreverjuly]

Originally Posted by M0zza

Definitely the Vatta series. And the Deeds of Paksennarion, and the Serrano Legacy.

The Wheel of Time
The Belgariad and the Mallorean (not that keen on his others)
The Drenai Saga
The Riftwar Saga (and all the others)
Honor Harrington
The Phule series
Stainless Steel Rat
Harry Potter
His Dark Materials

I really could go on and on...

From your list it sounds like we have really similar tastes. The last series I got into that you didn't list was Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls. Have you heard of that one? I definitely recommend it!

[Tessie6]

I haven't seen a mention of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller - co-authors of "The Liaden Series". Excellent fantasy/SF and available at e-books thru Baen. They also write in other genres but my favorites is The Liaden stories.

[Tessie6]

And here's a place be possibly get e-book copies in a contest

Expanding Universe Contest
Enter and win - by July 16.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by llasram

I think it's just bad luck. The publisher goes digital and starts releasing e-books after the first x volumes of the series are already in print. Ambiguous contracts or lossy workflows make it not worth the effort for the publisher to go make some older works available as e-books just because they happen to be the initial volumes of a series. Them's the breaks.

It is incredibly annoying when halfway through a series the publisher decides to geographically restrict the latest installment and any subsequent.

I had to go through serious hoops to get hold of the latest and final book in the current "Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell.

I did not resort to the darknet, but would have happily done so if I had not been able to buy a legit copy via the pet trapdoor.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

They are indeed part of the Federation universe, about mid-period when the Federation was still in full flower. _The Cosmic Computer_ predicts the fall of the Federation, as the war with the break-away System States Alliance emphasized the fault lines along which the Federation will fracture. _Space Viking_ is set after the fall, as raiding parties from colonies on the fringes of the former Federation raid back into what had been Federation space, and inadvertently provide the foundation of a new interstellar civilization.

I have Little Fuzzy in e-format, as well as a good deal of other Piper material. I haven't seen _The Other Human Race_ or _Fuzzies and Other People_ in e-form yet, but that may be a matter of folks just not being finished with the conversion. Ace had the rights to Piper's work, and inexplicably let all of it save _Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen_ lapse.

A friend is a small press publisher, busy returning Edgar Pangborn and E. E. Smith's "Lensman" series to print. He had been talking to Ace about the rights to do limited edition trade hardcover editions of Piper. Ace was willing, as his books weren't aimed at their market, but their rights and permissions folks were tied up with other things and hadn't gotten around the the paperwork for him. He was quite boggled when they let the rights lapse. Given some of the stories I've heard about publishing, I can't help wondering whether they let the rights lapse because they'd forgotten they had them.
______
Dennis

I neglected to add those to my list. Superb series by a sadly underrated author who was convinced he was a failure and took his own life. Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series was influenced by Piper's writings.

I picked up Uller Uprising as a young bloke of 15 and devoured it. Superb book which I still have. Got to love Gen Karlos Von Schlichten! Piper was a student of Future History so he wrote his future history series based on important historical events on earth. Uller Uprising was based on the Sepoy rebellion in India.

The other books are equally as good, particularly the Paratime novels.

I am sure I heard somewhere there was a tribute Paratime series written somewhere and not just the Lord Kalvan sequels.

[sabredog]

I will add;

"The Lost Fleet" Jack Campbell
"Kris Longknife" Mike Shepherd
"Spinward Fringe" Randolph Lalonde
"Star Wars X-wing" (yeah I know), but I liked 'em!

A heap of other series I like have been mentioned but pretty sure these have not been.

[jehane]

Some of these have already been mentioned, but I'll repeat them.

My list:
Terry Pratchett
Guy Gavriel Kay
Jacqueline Carey
CS Friedman - her fantasy is more widely known, but I prefer her SF - favourite is This Alien Shore
Cordwainer Smith
Elizabeth Moon - again I prefer her SF to her fantasy
SL Viehl
Sergei Lukyanenko
Simon R Green
Ursula Le Guin
Diana Wynne Jones
Jim Butcher - Dresden Files, haven't been able to get into Codex Alera
Lois McMaster Bujold - Vorkosigan
David Weber - favourite is Path of the Fury
James P Hogan - Inherit the Stars (the others got progressively worse)
Gregory Benford - Timescape
Susan Cooper - Dark is Rising
Melanie Rawn - be warned, the Ambrai (Exiles) trilogy doesn't look like ever being finished
Isobelle Carmody - Obernewtyn. Again beware, I read the first one 20 years ago and still waiting for the last book, and I think it's only up to 4 books. But the first one can be read as a standalone quite comfortably.
Mercedes Lackey - The Last Herald-Mage is the only series I found to stand up to re-reads.

It's a long list, I know. And these are just the ones I have thought of, away from my bookshelf, which I have read multiple times. Did I mention I'm a book addict? :P

[wayspooled]

Fantasy -
-------------
Tolkien - Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
Raymond E Feist - Magician (Riftwar)
Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time series
Dennis McKiernan - Silver Call Duology
David Eddings - The Belgariad series
Terry Pratchett - Discworld series
Mary Stewart's Merlin series (Crystal Cave, Hollow Hills etc)

Sci-Fi -
-------------
Frederick Pohl - Gateway trilogy
Stephen R. Donaldson The Gap SF series
CJ Cherryh - Chanur series (SF), Faded Sun trilogy (SF), Company Wars series (SF)...
Orson Scott Card - 1st 2 of the Ender series
John Varley - Gaea trilogy
Julian May - The Many Coloured Land series
Vernor Vinge - Fire Upon The Deep, Deepness in the Sky
David Brin - The two Uplift series
Lois McMaster Bujold - Barrayar and 1st 3-4 Volksigan books

[wayspooled]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Lots of great material in the posts in this thread, but I would like to change direction a wee bit and ask these questions:

1. What is your favorite scifi/fantasy series or book that is available as a free ebook?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

There's a fair bit of choices there, especially when you have the Baen Free Library to draw from.

Off the top of my head, I'd list David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series

...............
______
Dennis

I don't find that there's a lot of exceptional sci/fi or fantasy at Baen. Enjoyable, worth reading stuff, yes for sure but the only things they've got that I consider exceptional or favorite are the David Weber "Honor Harrington" series and the CJ Cherryh book "The Paladin". Some of them, like the Grantsville stuff, first book was a neat read but it gets kinda old after a couple books. James P. Hogan and Murray Leinster who have a book or few there are good writers.

edit - and something new, Baen has Dave Duncan's Seventh Sword trilogy. Now that's a very fine read.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I neglected to add those to my list.

(Speaking of the late H. Beam Piper.)

Superb series by a sadly underrated author who was convinced he was a failure and took his own life. Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series was influenced by Piper's writings.

Yep. Pournelle had corresponded with Piper, and claimed to have formal permission from Piper to write in his universe, though I don't believe he ever did.

The proximate cause for Piper's suicide was the unexpected death of his agent. His agent had essentially been keeping Piper's records in his head, and his death threw Piper's affairs into chaos. (I recall hearing back when that he was shooting pigeons from his window to get food.) Ironically, at the time he died, John W. Campbell was trying to find him because he'd purchased a Piper story for Analog SF Magazine.

The late George H. Scithers, who knew Piper socially, suggested that another reason for suicide was Piper's wife. Part of her demands when she married him was that he take out a large insurance policy with her as beneficiary. The marriage was apparently not a happy one, and death by suicide voided the policy so she saw no payoff.

I picked up Uller Uprising as a young bloke of 15 and devoured it. Superb book which I still have. Got to love Gen Karlos Von Schlichten! Piper was a student of Future History so he wrote his future history series based on important historical events on earth. Uller Uprising was based on the Sepoy rebellion in India.

It was a lot of fun. It was one of several short novels published by Twayne Books based on a specification by Dr. John D. Clark for a world where Silicon instead of Carbon became the basis for life.

The other books are equally as good, particularly the Paratime novels.

I am sure I heard somewhere there was a tribute Paratime series written somewhere and not just the Lord Kalvan sequels.

Not that I'm aware of. I have a couple of the Lord Kalvan sequels, and have mixed feelings. The characters seem a bit off, and I don't think I agree with the direction in which John F. Carr was taking the story line.

I did know folks years back trying to work up a Lord Kalvan board game, starting with geological survey maps of the area in Pennsylvania where the storing took place, and developing rules for combat among units with a roughly 16th century level of technology.

There were also a couple of third party efforts set in the Fuzzy universe, that got published before the lost manuscript for the third Fuzzy novel, _Fuzzies and Other People_ was discovered.

One bit that remained lost was Piper's notebooks. He was one of the earliest SF writers to write stories in a common setting with a timeline, and had notebooks where he kept track of what he had done and planned to do. Those seem to have vanished.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wayspooled

I don't find that there's a lot of exceptional sci/fi or fantasy at Baen. Enjoyable, worth reading stuff, yes for sure but the only things they've got that I consider exceptional or favorite are the David Weber "Honor Harrington" series and the CJ Cherryh book "The Paladin". Some of them, like the Grantsville stuff, first book was a neat read but it gets kinda old after a couple books. James P. Hogan and Murray Leinster who have a book or few there are good writers.

I can accept that. I think of Baen as the literary heir to what DAW Books was doing.

DAW Books, as originally conceived by Donald A. Wollheim, published mid-level action/adventure SF and fantasy. It wasn't likely to be noted for style or win awards, but it wasn't trying to. It was trying to be a fast fun read, and part of a line where if you liked one book they published, you'd probably like others. When Don died and his daughter Betsy took over, the direction changed, and these days DAW is known for fantasy "bricks".

Baen is still concentrating on midlist action/adventure SF and fantasy. Some things, like the Honor Harrington novels, have broken through and become best sellers. Baen also likes series, like the Eric Flint "1632" series that includes the Grantville Gazette anthologies, and encourages collaborations between authors, so there are a variety of books where David Weber, Eric Flint, David Drake, Steve Stirling, Mercedes Lackey and others share the writing chores.

Essentially, Baen is a niche market specialist with a clear idea of who their audience is and what it likes to read. It's fared much than some of the big houses in the current malaise affecting publishing, because it's less dependent on best sellers to cover the losses on books that tank. I think far fewer Baen titles fail to sell.

edit - and something new, Baen has Dave Duncan's Seventh Sword trilogy. Now that's a very fine read.

I haven't gotten to those yet. Noted.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I can accept that. I think of Baen as the literary heir to what DAW Books was doing.

DAW Books... was trying to be a fast fun read, and part of a line where if you liked one book they published, you'd probably like others.

I like this idea a lot. I just wish there was a group doing it for the stuff I like to read. I like lots of science in my SF, and a bit more of social issues in either SF or fantasy. I'm not much on stories with a military setting, regardless of era or milieu. (With the exception of Lost Dorsai and a very few others.)

[DArenson]

My favourite fantasy series is Amber by Roger Zelazny.

[dworth]

I've been a big fan of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels for many years. They're always highly imaginitive and entertaining. You get a real sense that the author's really having the time of his life writing this stuff. Also, he has a sense of humour. (His non-sci-fi stuff is generally very good too)

Another series I really enjoyed was Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series, a mixture of 'hard' semi-plausible sci-fi, interstellar war and solid story telling. He's written a tonne of other stuff too, but these are my favourites.

Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy is a lot of fun, though it does get a bit silly at times. As an author he's a bit uneven and has put out some truly dreadful books at times (Mis-spent Youth, for one) but these three kept me entertained

[Kurt]

ahh

so many books/authors i would love to re-read

where are the ebooks?

every one i've looked for are not available - - - well, not legitimately anyway


actually was amazed at the pirating of books - who knew
maybe authors should get a clue?