I loved the mini-series Ascension on Netflix. Its 1950s vibe is uncommon nowadays and the plot really keeps you guessing.

Re-reading the first dozen Perry Rhodan books a few years back was a guilty but very real pleasure. It's mindless space opera not pretending to be anything else than pure escapism, but it is full of ideas and has a very brisk pace.

The movie Ex machina (also on Netflix) has to be seen if you haven't already. Real SF instead of space fantasy!

Comic-book wise, I would try Twilight if you haven't already, by Chaykin and Garcia Lopez. A reinterpretation of DC comics' old SF heroes, in an iconoclastic Chaykin vein.

I shall forego much of the obvious suggestions and throw out a few of my favorites.

Books:
Spider and Jeanne Robinson: the Stardance Trilogy. Beautiful, evocative story focus upon the humanity, artistic, love and committment over technological science fiction. 

Colossus: the Forbin Project and it's sequel. Albeit they may be hard to find. humanity versus the advent of the mechanical super mind.

Cyborg: another that may be hard to find. Martin Caidin's book that the Six Million Dollar Man is based upon. Very different from the show and yet still more depth and imagination into the psychological aspects as well.

Movies:
Forbidden Planet: classic and eternal in every way. Plus Robby the Robot.

Total Recall: Ahnuld's and 2012 Colin Farrell version. both fun, creative visual treats with unique twists.

Colossus the Forbin Project. A movie with very little action yet suspenseful and interesting still today.

2001 and 2010. Classics and so much more. Both have their own flavor and style and pull you in with story and visuals that mesmerize.

V: the Miniseries. the 1st is the best but 2nd has it's moments. Great television science fiction on a budget that allows story and characters to keep you interested.

Comic Books:
Deathlok: Rich Buckler's post apocalyptic "cyborg hero" that started the trend...
Adam Strange: golden age space faring adventurer full of fun and pseudo science.
Godland: new take upon the "cosmic epic" as envisioned by the likes of Engelhart, Starlin and Kirby and seen through a distorted telescopic crystal lens by Tom Scioli. 


 

It's really meant to be read as a series, so it's better to start with the first one... It allows us to see how Rhodan essentially bluffs his way into turning late XX century Earth (circa 1962) into a small space kingdom.

Later on, there are several story arcs which are good jumping points. The storyline beginning around book #110 (maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later... it's hard to tell with the translated titles) introduces unstoppable invaders who are part-machine, part biological, and who flies around in huge cubic ships. Just goes to show that a good idea never goes away!!!

I probably wouldn't hunt them down... but if you find one cheap, especially one of the very early one, they have the same zany energy as early Marvel comics.

Slam did some great classic sci-fi, so I'll do some more 'current' ones:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - My very favorite near future novel...I have got at least 5 people who previously refused to read sci fi to not only love the book, but embraced the genre afterwards (including my wife, who was raising thinking sci fi was only for kids)

It's a series, but you can very easily just read this book and have a satisfying experience.

If it's your thing, you can also check out Red Rising by Pierce Brown, which I consider the spiritual successor to Ender's Game (The characters, in fact, at one point mention Ender also with Napleon and Alexander as if he was a real person).. that's a trilogy though, so more of a time investment.

If you like/can stand Manga.. I'd highly recommend Akira.. excellent distopian sci-fi that has a little bit of X-Men in it.

You can't go wrong with anything by John Scalzi... I like Old Man's War alot, and have heard good things about Locked In

If you like Military Sci-Fi, go with David Weber.. his stuff is all pretty epic, though. My favorite is the Honor Harrington series.. the first one being On Basilisk Station ... its brilliant Naval Fiction in space. At one point the publisher (Baen Books) had it free on their site (in hopes you'll buy some of the other 20-ish books in the series).. if they still do that, it's a great place to browse... it's rare I've been disappointed by something published there.

You could certainly go through the book thread some, too.. 100 pages of reviews and discussion there. 

Curse me, I was forgetting the most amazing SF I read in the past ten years: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. It's got enough high concepts for three novels, and yet is told at a brisk pace and is not that long a book.

The sequels were O.K., but cannot compare to the first one.

In a nutshell: today's Earth suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the universe by some kind of membrane that only lets a certain level of light from the sun pass through. Solid objects are fine, though, and so we can send a few rockets to find out what that thing is... but to no avail. The only thing we manage to find out is that inside the membrane, our time is slowed down by several orders of magnitude. Earth is apparently stuck in time as the rest of the universe ages!

It might be just a puzzle, except that physicists remind us that at the current level of time dilation, the sun will run out of hydrogen within a few decades max, and then we will all be incinerated.

The plans we come up with to try and understand what's going on, and to find a way to avert our fate, are as scientifically inventive as they are thrilling. The way our society reacts to its impending doom is also pretty engaging. I loved that book!

Another I went through recently is also very impressive in its hard SF way, but is way more challenging: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. If you love very, very authentic-sounding SF, this is for you. Orbital calculations are given in detail, hundreds of pages are devoted to side plots that sound like they involved weeks of consultancy at NASA, and in all honesty I had a hard time getting through the first half of the book... but the future world Stephenson then depicts is so fantastically rich that it would deserve a dozen more books. In fact, in my humble opinion (and because I do not have enough brain power to enjoy hundreds of pages of orbital calculations), I think the novel could have started with its second part. But the fault lies in me, not in a book that is as impressive as it is eventually engaging.

In a nutshell: Earth is doomed. The moon is hit by what is possibly a micro black hole and is broken in several big pieces. Scientists know what will unavoidably follow: these pieces will keep hitting each other and produce so much rubble that a hard rain will fall on Earth for thousands of years and sterilize its surface. Plans are made to build a few orbital habitats to try to save at least a little bit of life as we know it, and the first part of the novel tells of these final days of preparation and eventual chaos. Because of course, some things will go awfully wrong. The second part of the novel is set 10,000 years in the future, as human civilization has rebuilt itself in a completely new and strange fashion, in a giant orbital ring above the planet. Our descendents, split in several factions, start recolonizing our planet... and a few surprises await them. Great speculative fiction, really putting the "science" in science-fiction. (But man, those calculations...)

Great suggestions all, keep them coming!



Cyborg is one of those books I keep an eye out for everytime I hit a used book store or flea market. I just put Arnie's version of Total Recall on the DVR the other day but haven't gotten around to watching it yet-I did see it in theatres when it came out but haven't seen it since. I read the Showcase volume of Adam Strange stories this past winter/early spring and enjoyed them quite a bit, though they did get repetitive when read in chunks.



I'm one of those folks who refuses to give a dime in support of Card's work, but appreciate the recommendation. It was one of my wife's favorite sci-fi works before she learned of Card's homophobic activity and lobbying and won't touch his stuff any more either, but that's a personal choice and I don't hold anyone to my decisions on it.

I just read Collapsing Empire by Scalzi, but haven't tried anything else by him.

What I have in progress/lined up-I'm currently reading Dune, just started it 2 days ago and am flying through it. It's my third try, but the first two attempts were thwarted by outside factors rather than lack of interest (I took a freelance project that took 6 months of free time a week after I started it the second time and read nothing but research related material for it for six months and didn't pick it up again after the long gap, and I moved after starting it the first time and the box of last minute sundries I put it in got left behind and never recovered, and it took me a while to pick up another copy, but I never picked up where I had left off that time).

I have a few books waiting for me at the library on hold-short story collections by Harlan Ellison and Phillip K. Dick, an Illustrated history of science fiction comics by Mike Benton, a book called Sci-Fi Chronicles, a Visual History of the Galaxy's Greatest Science Fiction, and The Language of the Night, a collection of essays on fantasy and science fiction edited by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I also am making my way through the Alien, Predator and the classic Planet of the Apes movies on my DVR (the IFC has been doing a lot of series marathons of these this month). I've watched the first 2 of each series the last week or so. I have the first 2 new Apes films on there too to watch as well, plus the aforementioned Total Recall. Comics wise and I am reading the first volume of Jack Katz's First Kingdom, and have Vol. 2 plus Barberella and the second volume of Mind MGMT waiting in the wings. I recently read the most recent volumes of Descender, Trees, and Injection as well. Television-wise, I recently watched the second season of the Expanse and have been sampling some of the Trek series as well (I stopped watching Trek regularly about 2/3 of the way through Next Generations original run and have been watching the first season of classic Trek again for the first time in years, plus revisiting the early Next Gen, but am sampling the other series too. I'm also making my way through Star Wars The Clone Wars too. My wife has been watching Dark Matter and The Killjoys on SyFy, but I haven't, though I've seen bits and pieces and may catch up on earlier seasons so can watch along with her.

So really, there is nothing too obvious to recommend, as I am revisiting some staples (or getting to them for the first time as I have neglected them for whatever reason over the years), but also looking for new and/or different suggestions too.

-M