I'm looking for sf/f book recommendations

[thewayne]

I have a friend who apparently wants to get more into SF/F, and possibly into conventions, and I'm going to build a reading list for her. Fortunately we have two great used bookstores here and one fair one, so getting ahold of older SF shouldn't be a prob.

Yes, there are numerous lists online, I wanted it from my friends. :-)

Some that I'm going to recommend are:
Asimov: I, Robot
Harrison: the Stainless Steel Rat trilogy
Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Pratchett: the first Discworld trilogy
Zelazny: The Last Defender of Camelot
(Yes, I obviously have pretty old taste in books)

There was a Heinlein collection of short stories that I'm trying to remember, I know it had By His Bootstraps and The Man Who Traveled In Elephants, was that The Past Through Tomorrow? Did it have The Roads Must Roll?

Her main exposure is Star Wars/Star Trek/Battlestar Gallactica, so I'm trying to expand her horizons.

Come to think of it, Scalzi's Old Man's War would be a good addition.

Comments

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

How about the good ols SF classics like War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells or some not so known titles by Jules Verne (A Floating City, Robur the Conqueror and its sequel Master of the World, The Green Ray)? I admit that they fall into the Steampunk genre from our modern pov, but they are still great novels.
Also, how about some Cyberpunk like Neuromancer or some novels by Philip K. Dick?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Excellent suggestions, Shep! I was considering Dick. Unfortunately, he's kind of hard to find here. You can find Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep everywhere, but not a lot else. I finally bought a collection of short stories so that I could get a broader feel for him. They're beginning to bundle his stuff into collections, but a lot of the individual titles are pretty rare.

There was a hidden second purpose to my asking for this, and that was to look for some add'l SF that I would enjoy! I've heard of those other Verne titles, but never read them. I'll check them out.

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

Jules Verne was a very productive writer (cf. Wikipedia entry on him). You should be able to get most of his novels in all major bookstores. Some of them might be unavailable, but there's always a chance to find a .pdf here or there...

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Also a lot of material on Project Gutenberg....