What is your favorite SF story that is not Star Trek or Star Wars?

[Peter B]

...Voyage by Stephen Baxter...

Hmmm. One of his more...derivative books. And not in a good way. I'll leave it at that.

If anyone would like me to expand on that cryptic remark, please PM me.

...The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James Patrick Hogan...

I rather liked his novels "The Proteus Operation" and "Endgame Enigma", as both involved people solving problems in what seemed like impossible situations.

However Hogan lost my respect because of his questioning of evolution and the Holocaust, among other things, and his championing of Velikovsky's hare-brained theories.

[smartcooky]

However Hogan lost my respect because of his questioning of evolution and the Holocaust, among other things, and his championing of Velikovsky's hare-brained theories.

Same here, but for mine, that never took away from his skill as a sci-fi writer. The composer Richard Wagner was an anti-semite and had he lived in the 1930s and 1940s, he would almost certainly have been a Nazi. But I still think he was a brilliant composer; Tannhauser and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg are among my favourite pieces of classical music.

The premise for "Inherit the Stars" and the following "Giants" series was clearly based around part of Velikovsky's absurd ideas regarding planets moving around in the Solar System. Nonetheless I enjoyed reading them, and in fact, I liked the cover art on "Inherit the Stars" so much that I enlarged and framed it, and it hangs on the wall on my study...



...and before the pedants start up about stars and the milky way visible in the picture, it is art so it is allowed some licence.



"Code of the Lifemaker" was another of his clever stores.

[Al Johnston]

For a series, a toss-up between The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan stories

I'm rereading Borders of Infinity for the umpteenth time when there's a reason I want to be reading a paperback, not one of the hardcovers I'm currently reading from the library.  I met her once, too; nice lady.

I was most of the way through A Civil Campaign when I realised she'd got me to read (and enjoy!) a regency romance...

[gillianren]

I'm just glad she's writing them again, though I sobbed at the end of Cryoburn.

[Echnaton]

I've never been a big scifi reader, at least relative to some friends.  I'd have to say I've enjoyed Dorris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series the most.  To pick a favorite from that, then Shikasta.

[gillianren]

Honestly, I'm not hugely into sci-fi, either.  I prefer fantasy.

[Zakalwe]

Any of Iain M Banks early works: Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas. The trend stopped after Excession and I didn't rate Inversions, Looking to Windward or Matter.
He was back on form with Surface Detail and his last Culture novel The Hydrogen Sonata.

[gwiz]

Honestly, I'm not hugely into sci-fi, either.  I prefer fantasy.

Try Zelazny's "Lord of Light", starts off looking like a Hindu fantasy before the underlying SF justification for the scenario is revealed.

[ka9q]

Much of what passes for science fiction these days is, in my humble opinion, fantasy.

[Echnaton]

Much of what passes for science fiction these days is, in my humble opinion, fantasy.

The border has become quite blurred.  SciFi, and much of the fiction that aspired to be serious used to be characterized by realism, even if the material connections are only tentative.  Realism is an old fashion though and much fiction today is fantasy dominated by vampires, witches and magic.  It leaves me a bit cold too.  But it does make for great movies and I suppose that the familiarity with video entertainment drive the demand for the types of books people read.   

I have started Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series on audio books.  It is hard SciFi and I have enjoyed the books as a good companion on long walks.

[Andromeda]

You guys might enjoy this site: http://www.freesfonline.de

Stories from F&SF, Analog (Astounding), Isaac Asimov's and Interzone going back years!

[Ranb]

Asimov's Foundation/robot novels.

Ranb

[ipearse]

A book that really struck me the first time I read it, and still does... A Fall of Moondust by the great Arthur C. Clarke. But I also love the Robot stories by Isaac Asimov...

[randombloke]

Some of the best new sci-fi is in graphic novels (comics) now. "Y: the Last Man" for example.
Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli fame) is another master of the format though he trends toward sci-fantasy more than not. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the most sci-fi of his stories, as well as being a legend in its own right.

In terms of novels, I do enjoy the classics (Asimov, Heinlein, Wells) and the Dragonriders series (at least until Anne stopped writing them) as well as her other scifi, and Dune (the book, not the series) is also a firm favourite.

All that said, I still think seasons 2-9 of Stargate SG-1 are some of the best sci-fi written in recent times. Farscape too even though it's even softer than Stargate. In a similar vein, I do love me some Firefly too, which, weirdly enough, is actually pretty damn hard sci-fi despite (or possibly because of) its being a Space Western.
Of the above I'd pick Stargate if I was to be consigned to a desert island with nothing else to watch. And not just because of Amanda Tapping, Claudia Black, Lexa Doig, Morena Baccarin, Teryl Rothery, or Vanessa Angel…

[Sus_pilot]

I've always liked Clarke's Prelude to Space. Yes, the technology evolved in a radically different way (any Aussie's here want to irradiate significant chunks of your desert?), but I like the human story he told.

Also, there were a bunch of Asimov robot shorts that were in a book called The Rest of the Robots.  I enjoyed them because he wasn't yet taking himself too seriously in those.  The later shorts and the merger of the Robot and Foundation series were brilliant, always felt like heavy lifting.

Finally, for pure fun, Allamagoosa (sp?) is the single best SF short, ever.