[narfstar]

Skylark had to be the inspiration for Perry Rhodan. I read some later Perry before reading the first one. The first couple reminded me so much of Skylark. I liked the later Perry better. I stopped reading Skylark after the second I believe. First Perry's were kinda the same with things just escalating to near omnipotence. Reminds me of much of manga where things happen and powers are gained/used just because the author wants/needs them without any real explanation of how.

I have read many Doc Savage and Avengers as great fun reads. I enjoy what is often considered young adult fiction. Often excellent stories without having to rely on sex, violence and bad language. The writers have to write good stories with interesting plot and characters. I am a fan of the teen series: Tom Corbett, Rick Brant, Bomba, Three Investigators all good stories easy fun reads.
I fantasized many times about having the Three Investigators' secret hideout with secret passages under Jupiter's uncle's junk yard.
My great uncle's junk yard adjoined our property when I was a kid. I remember playing in a big old Chrysler that was our Batmobile.
Alan E Nourse was in young adult when I was a teen. Anyone else a fan of his?

Being a comic fan I still have to say that graphic novels just do not hold up as well as novels. Whenever I have read the graphics after having read the books like Pern and Robert Silverbergs Nightwings, I am usually disappointed. You just do not make the connection with the characters like you do becoming engrossed in a novel. Characterization is so important to make me care. The only Chrighton I have read was Jurasic Park and I found I did not care for the characters so did not care if they died. In contrast, Grisham adds little human foibles to his characters that make them real. His books became clones with different names.

I loved Dean Koontz until Strangers. The Bad Place was a really interesting book. Not teen so I do like me some adult sci fi sometimes.
David Morel is not sci fi but great adventures.

[John C]

I don't have many childhood favorites that I think still hold up, except for Douglas Adams (speaking of who, Eric, have you gotten your hands on the old Infocom games?  "Bureaucracy" is...well, I liked it).  I wasted more than a bit of time and money on, say, Star Trek novels that I wouldn't be caught dead with, today.

Since then, I haven't looked at much recent material.  In fact, the few modern novels I've bought, I would recommend against, rather than for, for the most part.  William Gibson?  Neal Stephenson?  Eh.  (Though I thought Gibson and Sterling's "Difference Engine" was decent at the time.)

No, wait.  Let me edit my message to be mroe direct.  Avoid "Cryptonomicon" at all costs.  Imagine any faults you could ever find with Tolkien, but add more computer jargon and set it on streets that seem even more excessively described because they're places you've probably already seen.  And his characters talk about things I'd really rather not hear about, to be perfectly honest.

Where I've been doing most of my reading has been the public domain, mostly via Project Gutenberg and similar sources.

The one major exception to that has been Philip Wylie.  He's a strong bridge between the "scientific romances" and the comic books in more ways than one.  "Gladiator" (public domain) is Superman without the optimism.  "The Savage Gentleman" is darn close to Doc Savage.  "The Murderer Invisible" is part HG Wells and part Arkham Asylum.  "The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise" isn't as nifty as it sounds, but is still fun...Anyway, I haven't gone in full pursuit of his work (for example, "When Worlds Collide" has been on my shelf gathering dust forever), but what I've read has been worthwhile.

Through Gutenberg, though, I've discovered quite a few interesting authors that seem otherwise forgotten.  Paging through the list, I see a few...

Laurence Mark Janifer is one where I have only read a couple of the stories, but they have a light feel to them and examine some interesting ideas.

I don't know if he's done anything other than what's available, but Roger Kuykendall has a nice, wide range.  "We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly," is the sort of story I'm surprised we don't see far more frequently.

Will Jenkins ("Murray Leinster") has become a favorite of mine.  Quite a few outlandish ideas floating around that seem to have inspired more than a bit of Golden Age DC's work as well as more modern writers like Roy Thomas.

Abraham Merritt isn't particularly good, to be honest, but the stories move fast, and the scope is always enormous, which is appreciated.

H. Beam Piper is probably the gem, and I'm really surprised his work isn't more widely known.  Or maybe I'm not.  After all, it doesn't make much sense for a company to make a big deal about stories they don't own.  But I don't think I've read anything from Piper that wasn't excellent.

Cliff Simak...hey, he might be the one I like that people have actually heard of!

...And now that I've paged through the list, I see that they've added a lot of new stories.  So if I vanish for a few weeks in the near future, that's probably why...

[OtherEric]

How the hell did I forget Piper on my first list?  That's TWO authors where I've read everything; in Piper's case I actually have most of his stories in the original magazine appearances as well as the later collections.  And thank goodness for Project Gutenburg; otherwise I would still be missing Murder in the Gunroom and Rebel Raider.  I think part of Piper's problem is that he had an almost negative ear for titles; or he picked ones that worked then but haven't aged very well.  Space Viking?  Little Fuzzy?  They're both excellent and smart novels but I know several people who refuse to read them because they consider the titles stupid.

Oddly, the only Dean Koontz I've ever read has been his early Science Fiction that showed up in Ace Doubles- which is, for most fans, the rarest of his material.  (Then again, I wouldn't call myself a fan.  I just have a habit of grabbing doubles when I see them cheap.)

Happily/ sadly, while I don't have copies right now I have played the old infocom games.  I don't think I've ever actually played Starship Titanic, though; just read the book.  So maybe there is something for me to look for out there still; I thought once I watched the Shada webcast I was out of material.

[Yoc]

Ha!
I've played/read Starship Titanic as well.  I never got beyond the parrot iirc.  I loved those old 80s adventure games!  I've still got them in a box someplace.

I grew up reading Asimov, hating Bradbury (with some exceptions), loved Heinlein and Douglas Adams.
Especially enjoyed Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle novels.  I was hooked on the early Robert Asprin 'MythAdventures' novels and comics when Phil Foglio was doing them.  Silly books that lead me to Terry Pratchett books.  I've enjoyed all of Neil Gaimen's novels so far - especially 'American Gods' which reminds me a LOT of the 'Fables' comics on DC's Vertigo.  Fables has been my favourite current comic since I first read the TPB at the library.  'Mice Templar' has the same feel to it.

-Yoc

[Captain Audio]

Thought of something about the Skylark series that may be why they were so popular with young readers.
In that universe, as the author envisioned it, knowledge was pretty much a commodity the possesion of which gave great power over ones enemies and subjects for that matter.
The learning helmets made it possible to obtain vast knowledge with very little effort, which is an idea that would appeal to any student.
In the film version of Jurassic Park it's said that the problem with the technology and science behind it was that it had come too easily.

When man first unlocked the atom it was due to a tremendous amount of hard work by generations of scientists, but suddenly the information was out there to be used and misused by those who'd obtained it without having put in the hours.
Like a young heir to a fortune who'd never worked at a real job or risked all on his own dreams, the vast armies of lab rats took the ball and ran with it, giving their patrons what they were willing to pay for while people like Openhiemer were appaled by what they had unleashed.
The result was the Earth teetering on the brink of total Global Thermonuclear War for decades, and pocket dictators of third world pestholes being given nuclear power plants by well meaning but myopic statesmen who believed that cheap energy would pull mankind up by its bootstraps to a new dawn of peace and plenty.
Genetic engineering holds the same seed of destruction, on an even vaster scale, and it will prove far more difficult to put that Djinn back in the bottle.

All modern scientific achievement is due to good scientists standing on the shoulders of giants, but the air can get thin up there, and its a long way down.

Blackie wanted knowledge and found he could use the found or stolen technology to obtain it in a very short time, or rip it from the minds of unwilling captives.
I think this made his particular form of piracy very attractive.

[JVJ]

I don't have many childhood favorites that I think still hold up, except for Douglas Adams

Does that mean that you're not reading much sf these days, John?

Since then, I haven't looked at much recent material.  In fact, the few modern novels I've bought, I would recommend against, rather than for, for the most part.  William Gibson?  Neal Stephenson?  Eh.  (Though I thought Gibson and Sterling's "Difference Engine" was decent at the time.)

No, wait.  Let me edit my message to be mroe direct.  Avoid "Cryptonomicon" at all costs.  Imagine any faults you could ever find with Tolkien, but add more computer jargon and set it on streets that seem even more excessively described because they're places you've probably already seen.  And his characters talk about things I'd really rather not hear about, to be perfectly honest.

I've never been able to get into either Gibson or Tolkien, but  Stephenson hooked from the back cover blurb of Snow Crash when it described the main character as Japanese-American pizza delivery guy for the mob named Hiro Protagonist. I felt he stumbled a bit with Diamond Age towards the end but totally hit his stride with Cryptonomicon, which we'll have to agree to disagree about. I loved it. As soon as Karen finished it, I read it a second time - all 900+ pages. And the Baroque Cycle was the same. I reread all three just as soon as I finished the third one - again, we're talking about three 900+ page books.

Where I've been doing most of my reading has been the public domain, mostly via Project Gutenberg and similar sources.

Occasionally I pick up a book from a childhood/young adult favorite only to discover that my reading tastes have moved on. But then I had read every (then published) Heinlein and Bradbury by the time I was 10, and was through with REH before I was 12, thanks to the Gnome Press reprints. In my teens I read just about everything that was (re)published in the 1960s. All the Ace ERB books, E.E. "Doc" Smith, H.G. Wells, etc. Harlan Ellison, John Brunner and Asimov were familiar friends. I still think that "Stand on Zanzibar" is the 'father' of modern novels and is under-appreciated for its impact. I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for about 20 years (1965 to 1984). And I still have all the above books in my library - except the Gnome Press editions which I read from a Bookmobile in Pittsburgh PA in 1956-57.

The one major exception to that has been Philip Wylie.

Never could get interested. I tried...

Through Gutenberg, though, I've discovered quite a few interesting authors that seem otherwise forgotten.  Paging through the list, I see a few...

Have yet to get accustomed to nor comfortable with reading on a computer screen. Probably never will.

Laurence Mark Janifer is one where I have only read a couple of the stories, but they have a light feel to them and examine some interesting ideas.

I don't know if he's done anything other than what's available, but Roger Kuykendall has a nice, wide range.  "We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly," is the sort of story I'm surprised we don't see far more frequently.

I've somehow always preferred novels to short stories. I have dozens of issues of Galaxy, If, Amazing, Fantastic, etc. from the '50s through the '70s, but hardly ever read them. I want the meat and depth of a long story.

Will Jenkins ("Murray Leinster") has become a favorite of mine.  Quite a few outlandish ideas floating around that seem to have inspired more than a bit of Golden Age DC's work as well as more modern writers like Roy Thomas.

Abraham Merritt isn't particularly good, to be honest, but the stories move fast, and the scope is always enormous, which is appreciated.

Both authors I sampled and found okay but never compelling.

H. Beam Piper is probably the gem, and I'm really surprised his work isn't more widely known.  Or maybe I'm not.  After all, it doesn't make much sense for a company to make a big deal about stories they don't own.  But I don't think I've read anything from Piper that wasn't excellent.

I loved Piper's stuff when I was younger and, again, still have all of his books (especially the Fuzzy novels with the Michael Whelan covers).

Cliff Simak...hey, he might be the one I like that people have actually heard of!

...And now that I've paged through the list, I see that they've added a lot of new stories.  So if I vanish for a few weeks in the near future, that's probably why...

Other modern folks I like are Elizabeth Moon, Charles De Lint, Orson Scott Card (sometimes), Walter Jon Williams (sometimes), and Christopher Moore (though no one would DARE call him an sf writer).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

and happy post-Thanksgiving.

[JVJ]

How the hell did I forget Piper on my first list?  That's TWO authors where I've read everything; in Piper's case I actually have most of his stories in the original magazine appearances as well as the later collections.  And thank goodness for Project Gutenburg; otherwise I would still be missing Murder in the Gunroom and Rebel Raider.  I think part of Piper's problem is that he had an almost negative ear for titles; or he picked ones that worked then but haven't aged very well.  Space Viking?  Little Fuzzy?  They're both excellent and smart novels but I know several people who refuse to read them because they consider the titles stupid.

The titles never affected me, Eric. Odd. But you're right to be a completist with Piper. Uniformly good, sometimes great.

Oddly, the only Dean Koontz I've ever read has been his early Science Fiction that showed up in Ace Doubles- which is, for most fans, the rarest of his material.  (Then again, I wouldn't call myself a fan.  I just have a habit of grabbing doubles when I see them cheap.)

I've read a few Dean Koontz books, and they were okay, with the very pleasant exception of The Watchers, which I thought was outstanding. It's the only book of his I've bought and revisited.

Happily/ sadly, while I don't have copies right now I have played the old infocom games.  I don't think I've ever actually played Starship Titanic, though; just read the book.  So maybe there is something for me to look for out there still; I thought once I watched the Shada webcast I was out of material.

Happily, I've never played Starship Titanic nor any other video game. My sf TV experience pretty much ended with Star Trek, the original series, though Bud Plant talked me into watching DVDs of Firefly a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

I don't have any problem with Piper's titles, myself.  I've just had trouble getting OTHER people to read the books because of them.  I would dearly love nice uniform hardcovers of his collected works; I think John F. Carr is planning a Paratime collection (minus Lord Kalvan) soon.

[John C]

Does that mean that you're not reading much sf these days, John?

More that my tastes have trended towards the older material.  I've been looking more at Jack London than Orson Scott Card, to pick random names that fit.

I felt he stumbled a bit with Diamond Age towards the end but totally hit his stride with Cryptonomicon, which we'll have to agree to disagree about. I loved it. As soon as Karen finished it, I read it a second time - all 900+ pages.

I think that the problem for me, especially, is that the elements were too familiar.  I'm a software guy.  I worked for a company with contracts throughout the Philippines (though I never went).  Our sales guy and tester were WWII vets stationed there (one Navy, and a radio operator for the Army Air Force).  So I can tell you that just about all the details he sprinkles in are completely authentic.

But that authenticity also makes it terribly boring for me to read, especially when there are more flamboyant characters in my own life.

The one major exception to that has been Philip Wylie.

Never could get interested. I tried...

I could see him being bothersome for a lot of people.  He was obviously troubled and certainly didn't see science and technology as a good thing (at least in his fiction).  That kind of hamstrings a lot of the fun aspects to the genre...

Through Gutenberg, though, I've discovered quite a few interesting authors that seem otherwise forgotten.  Paging through the list, I see a few...

Have yet to get accustomed to nor comfortable with reading on a computer screen. Probably never will.

For years, I would print a few pages (to a chapter or two, for a novel) at a time then bring them with me to lunch.  Today, I don't, but only because I bought one of those XO Laptops.  I won't claim that the screen is like paper or that the machine is perfect (it can't read external hard drives or access shared folders from Windows, making it tedious to read the comics I've downloaded from here, for example), but the screen is definitely low-strain and can even be read reflectively.

http://pixelqi.com/blog1/2009/11/22/screens-in-office-lighting-part-2/

I've somehow always preferred novels to short stories. I have dozens of issues of Galaxy, If, Amazing, Fantastic, etc. from the '50s through the '70s, but hardly ever read them. I want the meat and depth of a long story.

I don't have a strong preference either way.  I agree with you to a great extent, but there's also something to be said for "say your piece and get out," as well as something I can read while I'm waiting for a phone call without needing to break the flow.

Both authors I sampled and found okay but never compelling.

"The Ambulence Made Two Trips" is a favorite of mine from Jenkins.  The dialogue isn't great, but the plot and concept are clever, I think.  "The Leader" stops shy of being really good by being so transparent.  And I have to appreciate "The Runaway Skyscraper" for providing one of the very few innovations in managing fictional time travel.

[Yoc]

I love a well written short story myself.  They say it's becoming a lost art though...
Forgot to mention another early read for me - John Christopher (Samuel Youd).

[Captain Audio]

Just found a site where the original 1940 Harry Bates story that was later made as the film "The Day the Earth Stood still" can be read online.
The story is titled "Farewell to the Master" and differs quite a bit from the first second film versions from what I've read so far.

http://manybooks.net/titles/batesharryother09farewell_to_the_master.html

Its a free E Book site, I chose to read online rather than download for later.

There are other sites that have the text available.

[Roygbiv666]

Will Jenkins ("Murray Leinster") has become a favorite of mine.  Quite a few outlandish ideas floating around that seem to have inspired more than a bit of Golden Age DC's work as well as more modern writers like Roy Thomas.

I think others have mentioned Leinster. I've only read the one story everyone's probably heard referenced by now:

From Wikipedia:
"Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" contains one of the first descriptions of a computer (called a "logic") in fiction. In the story, Leinster was decades ahead of his time in imagining the Internet. He envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers (called "tanks"), to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and commerce; one character says that "logics are civilization."

The story itself can be found here, it's pretty cool:
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm

Hey, wait ... I'm using a .... Logic to ... tell other people ... via the ... tanks ... about a story about the Interwebs. Crazy.

[narfstar]

I loved John Christophers "White Mountains. I would get it and re-read it over summer vacation. I read it several times before I found out it was the first in a trilogy. I was ecstatic. I read the trilogy several times. I seldom ever re-read a book a second time let alone more. Not sure why this one captured me so much. Probably like comics and has to do with my age when I first read it. I loved the British Tripods series also. Faithful to the books too bad they did not finish the third book. Only other book I can think of that I re-read a few times was John Grishom's "The Firm." I got the book for a Christmas present and stayed up all night because I could not put it down. I think I finally had to take a nap before I finished it.

[Yoc]

Yep, 'White Mountains' was likely my first sci-fi novel and for sure the first series I ever read back when I was 10-year old.
I also had a love for Roald Dahl (1916 - 1990).  He wrote for all ages and I followed him as I grew up.  I even enjoyed his TV series.
Thanks to Roy, I've ordered Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe" collection from the library.  It sounded too good to miss.

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

I vividly remember the Tripods series.  I actually first encountered it in comic form in the back of Boys' Life and I found the books so I could learn what happened quicker.

[darkmark]

Just found a site where the original 1940 Harry Bates story that was later made as the film "The Day the Earth Stood still" can be read online.
The story is titled "Farewell to the Master" and differs quite a bit from the first second film versions from what I've read so far.

The silly-a$$ in me persisted in reading this as "Farewell to the Master" --Bates. ;-)

[jfglade]

 Not that it probably matters, but one of the few science fiction writers I liked when I was fifteen, Thomas Disch, is still a science fiction writer I like today. His novels "Camp Concentration" and "334" are both minor masterpieces, but remain very little known. He also writes a fair amount of poetry, some of which I like and some of which I don't care for but I generally find that true of any poet.

[mr-mind]

I really liked EE Doc Smith's last series "The Family D'Albart(sp)" I got most of the Skylark and Lensman series cheap. Then I started reading them from the start. I really did not like Skylark at all. It just kept getting more far fetched with what was needed just being added. Famiily D was pretty down to earth while Skylark became too far out. In case anyone is not aware of his later work the Family D was a circus family from a triple gravity world. Fit acrobats on their homeworld they were amazing on single gravity worlds. Would make a very good comic book series.

I love The Dragon Riders of Pern series. I have stopped getting them because even the best series wear thin. I do recommend them.

Not sci fi but I have read the whole Forrester Hornblower series. A naval hero worthy of a comic book series.

I just changed the topic to favorite sci fi writers but am mentioning some I did not like. Witch World had several books so I tried it. I could not get into Andre Norton's writing at all and did not get very far into the first book.

Try Christopher Stasheff <Warlock series & Wizard series [ The first series is the is the father & family,  secord is firstborn son]>.

[RickDeckard525]

I'm late to this, but @narfstar

[RickDeckard525]

And here's my favorite writers:

Obviously Philip K. Dick...

Jack Vance (although his sf is is pretty similar to his fantasy and I'd call him a fantasy author first), Olaf Stapledon, Edmond Hamilton, A. Merrit (yeah, he's not that great, but I get a kick out of his ridiculously overwrought prose and I love cheesy golden age stuff).

And yeah, Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 is overrated, but everything else I'm cool with), Arthur C. Clarke, etc... I'd say I prefer Wells to Verne.

Basically, I read lots of sci fi and I like most of it. Intelligent, thought-provoking stuff is great, but I also have a soft spot for cheesy, pulpy action and weirdness.

I'd say the best writers today are Kim Stanley Robinson and John Scalzi. I like James S.A. Corey's Expanse series, but it's pretty basic Space Opera. It's fun as hell, but not really worth reading unless you're into that.

[narfstar]

I wonder how different Family D would have been if Smith had written. The family would probably have been able to fly on lighter gravity worlds and gained telepathic powers. Another favorite scifi writer of mine was Robert Silverberg. Fantasy wise I liked Thomas Burnett Swan.