The Sci-fi and Fantasy thread

I'm a huge s-f and fantasy fan, but not of any TV series or not even films. I mostly read books, I used to read much more (so I know all the classics), now I lack the time. I admire imagination and worldbuilding - and the story, a lot of s-f and fantasy writers are simply great storytellers.
ATM I'm refreshing one of my favourite books from teenage years, Karl E. Wagner's "Kane" series, and I'm having a great time.

Read some of Pern books when I was a teenager. I guess nowadays it would be considered young adult literature. It's a fun read but I don't feel like re-reading it now.
Oh, and I also really like Terry Pratchett. It started out as humoristic fantasy mostly based on puns but evolved into something much more complicated.

Do Harry Potter, Merlin and The Lord of the Ring belong to Sci-fi?
Someone think they are too magic to be defined as 'science' fiction.

And from the science aspect, I like the whole series written by Jules Verne. They are amazing. Some of his hypothesis even are verified true now.

idril: Oh, you should try and read them, they are hilarious! Although i can be a bit embarassing , if you read them in public, because people starring at you, when you burst out in uncontrollable laughter....that happened to me more than one time....

Does anybody of you the author Tanith Lee and her books about the flat earth? They're a favourite of me. But after all, i have sooo much i like about sci-fi and fantasy, i just can't list them all.Just want to mention Alan Dean Foster as a great author with his Homanx Books (I love Flinx and his little Pip).
And of course Tolkin.He was my entry card into a world beyond imagination and i owe him a lot.His world was a save haven in a time of my life,when real life was picking hard on me...

@ Shelybear: I think Harry Potter and LotR belong more to the genre of fantasy.

Yes, i know that problem...Soooo many books to read and so little time...
But this weekend i ended up with a flu and a heavy cough, so i will rest most of the time, taking the opportunity to read!

Strangely, i thought i've read nearly everything from Foster, but i didn't even KNOW that he's written transformer books....
Learn something new every day! (adding to "to read list")
I really like his writing style a lot!

As for now I'm settling with Bernhard Hennen, a fantasy author. It's ok, but a bit of complicated setups.

Great thread.

I love Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld series, but also his other stuff. Love Douglas Adams, may he rest in peace. In my teens, I was very fond of Tolkien and I still think creating the universe of Middle Earth was a fantastic achievement. Apart from that, I don't read all that much sci fi and fantasy, although I've read some of the obvious stuff, like HP, some Brian Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Lem, Verne, H. G. Wells... Of the more recent stuff, I thought Game of Thrones might be worth checking out, but I haven't done so yet.

Concerning films and TV series, I'm a Trekker (my favourite is DS9) *and* a Star Warrior (original trilogy only), and I love classics such as Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner...

Wow, lots of people here like sci fi and fantasy. I grew up on the classics (Asimov, Bradbury, etc.), but I always loved Star Trek, then Star Wars when it came out, and later Stargate SG-1, and various other sci fi series. (I think my favorite episode was the one where the invisible bugs became visible. Now whenever one of my cats stares intently at something no one can see, I always quip that she's just staring at an invisible bug.)

@Alia - If you like the "hard" sci fi classics (that's what it sounds like), have you ever read anything by H. Beam Piper? He's one of my favorite authors. He died in 1965 (commit suicide - sad story why), so all of his books except for one that was printed 20 years posthumously are public domain. You can find them for free for Kindle at Amazon, or at the Gutenberg Project. If you like the old classics, I think you'll love him.

I also love fantasy - read LotR I don't know how many times, same with Harry Potter (although I always skip book 2; just don't like it), the Chronicles of Narnia (yeah, kids stuff, but still great fun), and others. I go back and read an old series every so often; I can often finish it in just a few days, because I read very fast. (And I have a semi-photographic memory, so reading a series I've read before, I read even faster.) Anyone who loves fantasy, have you guys ever read the Belgariad/Malloreon series by David Eddings? A most awesome epic fantasy, I've read it over 50 times all the way through. (Yes, all 10 books of it.) I can probably quote any character in that entire series verbatim... And I'm in love with Silk, so there!

walkinslow: Do you mean Stanislaw Lem? I've never met anyone who has read his stuff. His Cyberiad is still one of my all time favorite books.

I feel that I am not in the same dimension with you.
HP and LotR are the only two fantasy I read(I can't remember if there are more),even those two are quite long time ago,3 years or more. But I was big fan of HP though, I read all books first then watched all movies. After that, I decided to write some letters to those actors and actresses, asking for signatures..

@MilkaQ - I read Tanith Lee years ago and I remember I really liked it. The Oriental elements really appealed to me then, and the atmosphere of a fable or fairy-tale, I guess.

@MiaSkywalker - I read Lem, too. Well, it's not very hard if you are Polish, like me. He's our most famous and best known science-fiction writer and some of his works are even discussed at school on Polish literature lessons (We talked about "Star Diaries" in high school). And I also love "Cyberiad" (and "Star Diaries"). Such marvellous sense of humour and of the absurd.

MiaSkywalker: But of course. Lem is such an underestimated writer and not as widely known/read as he deserves. Solaris is a true classic, but I also like the Cyberiad, The Futurological Congress, His Masters Voice, and of course the stories about Pirx the Pilot. But I realise Lem is not for everyone, I know only one other fan, a friend of mine I met at the university (and another friend who has sadly passed away). C.S. Lewis is also an exceptional writer. Apart from the Narnia Chronicles, I can recommend the Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), although the strories are rather dark (a bit like the last two Narnia books). Actually, Lewis was a colleague and close friend of Tolkien's, they often exchanged ideas and influenced each other quite a bit.

Edit: Wow, two other Lem fans in this forum (waves at Alia ), who would have thought that!

@ Alia: Oh my, didn't expect to find another Tanith Lee reader here, for she is not so well known.Nowadays at least.What really is a pity, because she really is unique and her tales are....dark and lovely.I'll never forget the tale about how the demons changed the form of snakes to cats...
And of course the master of them all, Azrharn....

As for C.S.Lewis...oh well, i loved Narnia as a kid.But after re-reading it as an adult, i felt very disappointed.I've suddenly noticed all those christian allegories and that really spoiled the fun for me.I felt like the reader should be teached something at all costs and i really can't stand being influenced in such an obvious manner.... So i didn't read his other books.

@ walkinslow (and MilkaQ) I tried to read some of C.S. Lewis' other wordk, but as MilkaQ said, the overly Christian preachiness got to me. (I'm not Christian; never have been. It's not the religion of my ancestors. And I absolutely cannot stand when people evangelize at me. I don't think they realize how absolutely offensive it is to tell someone else that his religion is "wrong" or that yours is "better".) Narnia I can overlook it, even though it is more obvious to me as an adult than it was as a child. But Peralandra... you can't really overlook it in that series. It put me off on the author, and I've never wanted to read anything else that he wrote.

Going back to fantasy, has anyone ever read Patricia McKillip, or Patricia Wrede? I think my absolute favorite stand-alone fantasy novel is McKillip's "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld". It showed me that someone can write a novel that feels like poetry all the way through. I've tried to emulate her style when I write fiction, although I always feel that I fall short. And Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles are just hilarious. In what other book could you have as a main character a 7 foot floating blue donkey with wings whose name is Killer and is really a rabbit?

@Milka & Mia: Re C.S. Lewis - I fully understand, I also had a hard time getting past the Christian undertones. But then I chose just to ignore them and focus on the writing, which is excellent. Actually, I think the Narnia Chronicles are much more explicit in their Christian allegories than the Space Trilogy. But never mind, I have no intention to proselytise.

Another related genre I enjoy very much is magical realism, represented by writers like Marquez, Borges, Calvino, Rushdie..., all of them great storytellers!

I´m a real great Fantasy and SciFi Fan. But I´m a lousy writer on english ...
Wenn also irgendwer das ganze übersetzen könnte ...

Derzeit lese ich mal wieder ein paar geliebte alte SciFi Bücher aus der Cyberpunxzeit - genau genommen DAS Werk was den Cyberpunx erst so richtig ins rollen brachte: Neuromancer/ Count Zero/ Mona Lisa Overdrive von Wiliam Gibson. Und erstaunlicherweise bringt es noch immer soviel Spaß wie vor 20 Jahren.
In Sachen Fantasy hab ich natürlich auch die üblichen Autoren gelesen - Tolkien mit ca. neun Jahren das erstemal, genau wie die Narnia Chroniken und Alice im Wunderland. Für Tolkien kann ich mich bis heute begeistern, auch wennn ich heute beim lesen auch schon mal denke "Hm. Ob die Gesellschaft gegen die Verunglimpfung von Siliziumleben wohl davon weiß?". Über zwanzig Jahre Scheibenwelt machen sich halt irgendwie bemerkbar. Als Kind mochte ich Narnia, aber so die ganz große Liebe wurde es nie. Und Alice ... hab die beiden Bände noch Jahre später gelesen und denke seitdem: Ja, mit Pilzen macht das ganze wirklich viel mehr Sinn. (Ich gehe jede Wette ein, das der Autor selbst da mächtig genascht hat - mal darauf geachtet wie oft dieses Motiv auftaucht?)
Zu meinen Immer & Ewig Lieblingen im Fantasy gehören jedoch vor allem drei deutsche Autoren: ETA Hofmann, Michael Ende und Walter Moers. Ins Englische sind alle drei übersetzt worden, wer also mal drei vermutlich eher unbekannte Autoren entdecken möchte. der probiert es damit mal aus.