> Hey, doesn't anybody like Orson Scott Card? > > His books (specially Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow) are probably > among my top-5. > > -- > Juan Cespedes > http://www.cespedes.org/
Ender's Game is fine. I don't think I read Ender's Shadow. However, I read the Homecoming books and got suspicious part way into the first one... by the time I approached the end I was confirmed in my suspicion that he was rewriting the Book of Mormon (albeit with a slightly more believable storyline than the original). This turned me off so strongly that I haven't read any of his other books since. Go Heinlein is my recommendation, the early stuff especially. Try his Expanded Universe. Then after you get a taste for his writing, read Stranger in a Strange Land, followed by Starship Troopers, and see what got all those hippies so riled up. Avoid the later stuff where he essentially goes crazy. VERNOR VINGE. Ron and others will appreciate his novel "The Peace War", in which Lawrence Livermore National Labs has taken over the world. "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" are also brilliant. Dune is essential, as noted earlier. Skip anything by Brian Herbert. Charles Stross' "Atrocity Archives" is excellent too, but I'm a sucker for techno-Lovecraftian stuff. And yes, read Jules Verne and H G Wells. I got "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 3rd grade and read it until the cover fell off... then read it a few more times for good measure. John Floren, Duke of Off-topic
