Anyone read science fiction, fantasy, or horror books?

F

fishmounter

New Member
Ever since I could read I have enjoyed reading stories and books about animals, but dinosaurs, monsters and space aliens really caught my interest. Scary stuff where as you read, you place yourself in the book or story. (I think all books do this to the reader) I've read just about every Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon and H. P. Lovecraft book, not to mention the more sci fi books and stories of Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov and many other great writers. Does any other seniors read this stuff? They are fun and interesting, and believe it or not.. educational.
 

My favorite genre(s) - except for fantasy - that does nothing for me. But the Golden Age sci fi masters such as those you listed (and many others) are what I grew up on. The Foundation Series from Asimov is my all time favorite. I also love most thrillers and mysteries.
 
I used to read a lot of SF but now that I have lived into the years during which the stories were to have taken place they no longer seem to have the edge that they once had.;) I've tried reading some of the newer stuff that is labeled as SF but seems more like fantasy which is not my thing.

New discoveries in astrophysics and astronomy have revealed things far more amazing than anything SF doyens of the 50s dreamed up so now I prefer science fact over fiction.
 

I used to love horror; vampires, possession, etc. That was a long time ago

I never could get into sci-fi except for Larry Nivens and Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
 
Last edited:
My spouse and I read lots of sci-fi and fantasy. I'm also one for romance but we both like history so lean towards writers in all genres who have a good "feel" for history.

I especially find many of the younger romantic fiction authors to be very poor on historical accuracy. I'm not insistent upon absolute correctness, but it annoys me when somebody's writing about 1820's England and has a character say "Okay, blah blah blah". I mean really, you don't even know that's an "Americanism", let alone that "okay" didn't come into wide usage until the 1860's? Sheesh.

Some of the steampunk fantasy novels have been pretty good - not great, but good reads. I still have all my Ray Bradbury books too, LOL.

We enjoy our sci-fi and fantasy with a good dose of humor. Piers Anthony's Xanth novels were fun for quite a while until he overworked the idea and kept it going too long. Adore Simon R. Green's Shaman Bond/Secret History series and even better are his Hawk & Fisher sword & sorcery stories.

Also in my permanent collection I have:
- Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and her Merry Gentry Fae P. I.
- J. D. Robb's In Death series/Lt. Eve Dallas (more of a hard-core murder mystery but set in 2056)
- Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. Not big on his other YA series, however.
- Eileen Wilks' Tales of the Lupi series
- Patricia Briggs - I started to get bored with Mercy Thompson series, but love the spinoff Alpha and Omega series
- MaryJanice Davidson's Undead series. This too, petered out for me after a while, but the earlier books are quite funny if decidedly profane.
- Seanan McGuire - I read both her October Daye and Incryptid series
- Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Series (Sookie Stackhouse)
- Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series, don't care for the others she's written.

Spouse is a wargamer so he reads a lot of Warhammer 40K sci-fi. I'm more the Mercedes Lackey reader; love her Valdemar early books (although like Anthony's Xanth, it's gone on for too long).

There's a few series we both like:
- Gail Carriger's The Parasol Protectorate. He even likes the spinoff The Custard Protocols, which I got bored with and stopped.
- Jodi Taylor's wonderfully chaotic Chronicles of St. Mary's series, which has just segued into a new Time Police series.
- C. B. Pratt's Eno the Thracian series.
- H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy books
- Robin McKinley's Blue Sword series (young adult, like Rick Riordan)

I read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series but got bored with it after the first 3 books. Naomi Novik's Temaire series was interesting for a while; I stopped after about 5 books although my niece still loves all the series. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files was another I read for 2 or 3 books but then stopped.
 
If you like post-apocalyptic literature (or at least post-disaster), try William R. Forstchen's books, One Second After, One Year After and The Final Day, which are a series. In my opinion, the first one was fantastic; the second one was pretty good and the last one was....meh....

His other book, 48 Hours, was pretty good and definitely set up for a sequel.
 
Robert McCammon's "Swan's Song" and Stephen King's "The Stand" are both excellent, well written post-apocalyptic books. Once you start reading either one of these stories, you won't be able to stop.
 
I really like the old masters of the sci-fi genre: Wells, Verne, Doyle (Lost World), Stevenson, Lovecraft (more horror/bizarre than sci-fi). Then there's Asimov, Bradbury and Heinlein. Le Guin is great. Clarke, too. Can't leave out Orwell, author of one of my favorite books that may have been off by forty years, or so, but I see the world of 1984 drawing nearer, even as time puts the year further in the past.

I regularly get the yearly, award-winning, short story collections from the newer sci-fi authors, but, in truth, none have caught my fancy. Most are way too predictable. Steam punk leaves me cold, pun intended! (Yeah, I know, Wells and Verne are often cited as being fathers, or strong influencers of the genre.)

King, meh, for the most part, and I've given him lots of chances. If not for the great success of "Carrie," the original movie, I wonder if he would have been as successful as he's been. That being said, "The Shining" is one one of my favorite, creep me out, movies.
 
Dr. Jekyll said:
My favorite genre(s) - except for fantasy - that does nothing for me. But the Golden Age sci fi masters such as those you listed (and many others) are what I grew up on. The Foundation Series from Asimov is my all time favorite. I also love most thrillers and mysteries.
Click to expand...
I'm sure you're an R L Stevenson fan, as well, right Doc?
 
I've been a science fiction fan since the 60's when I used to read the Danny Dunn books. in the 70's I had the good fortune to spend time around some knowledgeable science fiction fans who turned me onto the work of Harlan Ellison. He remains my favorite science fiction author.

Most of the fiction books I've read have been science fiction. Some of my other favorite authors are William Gibson (I love his cyberpunk series that starts with Neuromancer), Stephen Baxter, David Brin (The Uplift Trilogy is my favorite), John Varley (The Gaea series Titan, Demon, Wizard is my favorite of his but I also like his other work) Octavia Butler, Nancy Kress, Ursula K LeGuinn and many others. Another great series is the one that starts with A Million Open Doors by John Barnes.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend Worldcon in 2018 when it was held in San Jose and had an amazing time. Membership allowed me to vote for the Hugo awards and that was a lot of fun. I read a lot of great new authors as part of my work to prepare to vote. Some of my favorites were N.K. Jemisin, Martha Wells (her Murderbot series is wonderful), Sarah Pinsker (fun and funny stories), Nnedi Okorafor (I recommend her Binti series) and JY Yang (very interesting gender roles in his work).
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top