RE: Eagle Time Reading List
04-29-2017, 03:42 PM
I'm gonna put in a vote in favor of Stephenson, based on the five books I've read (Reamde, Seveneves, and the Baroque trilogy). The only one that had an egregiously bad ending was Reamde (everything ends in a super overblown shootout and then there's an epilogue where everyone is married). The second part of Seveneves isn't as good as the first, and System of the World is probably the least rad of the Baroque books, but neither is disappointing enough to undercut what came before.
The Baroque Cycle is his big historical fiction thing, set in early Enlightenment times, and it's one of the most purely entertaining genre prose things I've ever read.
Name of the Wind is up there too--I tend to roll my eyes at "system of magic" stuff, but this is good fantasy even if that's not your thing--with the caveat that it's very romance focused. It sometimes piss off Rothfuss fans when I describe it as a harem anime, but it totally is. Roughly three-quarters of the notable characters other than the main guy are hot, somewhat-older-than-him women (when I met Rothfuss I asked him how he went about striking a balance with depicting the sex lives of teenagers, and I swear to God he said "all those characters are eighteen") with at least a hint or a shadow of romantic/erotic attraction to him. Most of them are well-written characters, but they're shaped in some way by that framework.
Ender's Game is pretty good, but Orson Scott Card's writing seems a little flat to me now. When it comes to big-name 20th century sci-fi dudes, give me Dick or Herbert.
I'm currently rereading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is still dope, and then I might take a shot at Cryptonomicon, while I have Stephenson on the brain.
The Baroque Cycle is his big historical fiction thing, set in early Enlightenment times, and it's one of the most purely entertaining genre prose things I've ever read.
Name of the Wind is up there too--I tend to roll my eyes at "system of magic" stuff, but this is good fantasy even if that's not your thing--with the caveat that it's very romance focused. It sometimes piss off Rothfuss fans when I describe it as a harem anime, but it totally is. Roughly three-quarters of the notable characters other than the main guy are hot, somewhat-older-than-him women (when I met Rothfuss I asked him how he went about striking a balance with depicting the sex lives of teenagers, and I swear to God he said "all those characters are eighteen") with at least a hint or a shadow of romantic/erotic attraction to him. Most of them are well-written characters, but they're shaped in some way by that framework.
Ender's Game is pretty good, but Orson Scott Card's writing seems a little flat to me now. When it comes to big-name 20th century sci-fi dudes, give me Dick or Herbert.
I'm currently rereading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is still dope, and then I might take a shot at Cryptonomicon, while I have Stephenson on the brain.