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Hey /tg/,
Anonymous
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Well if theyre really into Star Wars, best thing to do is read a bunch of novels then run Saga edition or something. Start with I, Jedi.
Mediocrates !!tG3QhWVtE/n
Anything by Gibson, Neuromancer etc.
Anonymous
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Heinlein's Starship Troopers is a good one. It's basically Full Metal Jacket in SPESS.
Anonymous
just fucking read everything by asimov
Anonymous
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take some cues from battlefield earth and make the silliest of situations dead fucking serious
Anonymous
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>>3069894 This is going to be incredibly dismal, isn't it?
I really liked the first Dune, anything similar to that?
Anonymous
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From the "I can't believe it's not magic!" category:
Anonymous
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Dune
Starship Troopers
and niches go to
>>3069894 "so wait... these soldiers in powered armour are brainwashed from clinically vegetative people and worship a virtual idol who is the avatar of a sentient robotic planet"
"and you're taoist masters, yes"
Anonymous
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Either the Hyperion series or the Ilium series by Dan Simmons would be a great lead-in from scifi to fantasy if you want to increase the area of common ground between yourself and your players.
Anonymous
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The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle really struck a chord with me, drawing the perfect line between sci-fi and the necessary plot concessions to spin a good tale. It's one of the finest sci-fi books I've read. It gives you jump points in between systems for instantaneous travel, but interplanetary travel is still done the old fashioned way (without artificial gravity). The alien psychology is really the main focus of the book, and it's well done too.
Anonymous
Asimov, definitely. Foundation is a good... foundation? I, Robot, is also very good, as is The Gods Themselves, and just about every other sci-fi book he wrote.
Anonymous
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>>3070172 Ew, hey! This guy says that dick is fantastic!
Anonymous
Thanks for the leads, neckbeards. I think I'll start with Aasimov or Gibson.
Anonymous
Another thing, any good book specifically in the realm of Technological Singularity and Transhumanism?
Anonymous
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
Anonymous
>>3070203 Just keep in mind that these were trendsetters, and you're likely familiar with a lot of elements of their work that have been bastardized or just oversaturated. Neuromancer is a classic for many, many reasons, but you have to create a mental blank slate if you go into it with a head full of Shadowrun images that will ruin it for you.
Anonymous
>>3070208 Followed by every other Ender book. Just be sure to NOT get the most recent printings of Ender's Game. Card had the latest versions censored because he felt that kids don't really talk the way they did in Ender's Game... This after he made the point so eloquently in the introduction of the edition of the book I have. When asked by a school counselor (IIRC) why he wrote the dialog he wrote in Ender's Game when kids "don't talk like that", he said only this: "They don't talk like that AROUND YOU." Fucking Mormon church ruins everything.
Anonymous
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>>3070217 Thanks for the tip. You're very likely correct on the cliche thing.
Anonymous
Asimov, Bradford, Clark, and Dick, are all excellent choices.
Anonymous
>>3070248 Gibson and Herbert deserve to be there too. I just wish there were an E and an F to make it work.
Anonymous
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Douglas Adams for the lulz.
Anonymous
>>3070268 Frank Herbert had one great book and a ton of mediocre ones.
Then again, I've only read the Dune series novels. Were any of his none-Dune books any good?
Mediocrates !!tG3QhWVtE/n
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The Green Brain is worth a read
Anonymous
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Lois Bujold and the Vor novels.
Anonymous
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>>3070207 vernor vinge, notably Marooned in Realtime and A Fire Upon the Deep
Charles Stross' Eschaton series. "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise."
John Wright's "The Golden Age" and its sequel "Phoenix Ascendant" are absolute masterpieces of post-humanism. HIGHLY recommended, more so than any of the other in my post. About this guy in a transhuman solar system who gets kicked out of the society and has to rough it on his own while trying to save civilization. It's awesome.
and anything by Alistair Reynolds is automatically full of win for hard sci-fi buffs
http://www.anonib.com/bookchan/index.php?t=402&tcss=0 just ctrl f and you'll find their pages
Anonymous
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>>3070329 Destination Void and it's subsequent series was pretty win.
Anonymous
Stuff that's already been mentioned that I'll just endorse without comment: Dune (first three books), Neuromancer, Do Andriod's Dream of Electric Sheep, Asimov's Foundation trilogy.
Anonymous
>>3070229 >>Card had the latest versions censored because he felt that kids don't really talk the way they did in Ender's Game... Wat. I'd heard about how one of the later chapters in Ender's Game got slightly altered in recent editions to better fit what he wrote later, but hadn't heard about this change yet. Was it his call, or the publisher's?
Either way, I thought that was limited to the graphic novel version. Everyone saying "Formics" instead of "Buggers" there was really pissing me off... I couldn't believe anyone would screw with a masterpiece of fiction like that. Dammit.
Anonymous
>>3070384 >>Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, an amazing book and a true classic. I found this book to be almost a transcendent work when I first read it, and I still do. It lets us see some of the deep truths of the world. Hear, hear. I swear, every time I read that book I come away with something new.
Anonymous
>>3070388 Card's insistence, IIRC.
Anonymous
>>3070429 Dammit, that's one of the worst things I've heard all week.
Anonymous
Some stuff that's more on the border between sci-fi and general novels:
Anonymous
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>>3070429 Card's gotten more religious as the years have gone by, and his later works are shit because of it.
Anonymous
Anonymous
And they said 4chan isn't helpful.
Anonymous
>>3070388 >>3070394 >>3070429 >>3070442 The way I feel about Card is that he had it in him to produce one masterpiece and a few pretty good followups. And after he did that, he got a bit weird. You can see this in the whole Ender's Shadow series: it's still Card, the writing is good, the series is interesting, but he can never attain the mastery that was Ender's Game again.
On top of that, it's been more than twenty years since he wrote Ender's Game - and from what I understand, he has become substantially more conservative in that time.
Of course, none of this changes how good Ender's Game is, just means that you need to be sure to ignore any "revisions" Card makes. I still have a copy of the original paperback edition, and they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands. (Or it will just fall apart after I reread it one too many times).
Anonymous
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>>3070464 Reading this now, it's pretty messed up, fun read though.
Anonymous
>>3070474 Savage Worlds; then again, Savage Worlds can run almost anything.
You might want to look into Traveller as well.
Anonymous
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Iain M. Banks's Culture Books: "Look to Windward" and "The Player of Games" are both excellent stand alones.
Mediocrates !!tG3QhWVtE/n
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>>3070474 Despite rules one and two for most people 4chan = /b/
Salamanders Fanboi !!Q4/i89xuPmX
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I'm glad to see that another Bujold fan has stumbled into our midst.
Drawde
Read Dresden Files or a robot from the future will go back in time and kill you.
Anonymous
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Walter Jon Williams' "Aristoi" has a similar feel to Dune in terms of the large scope, but is much more Transhuman and singularity level science.
Drawde
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>>3070551 Oh, wait, this is SciFi?
What the hell does House of Leaves have to do with SciFi?
Anonymous
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>>3070464 House of Leaves is sci-fi? Huh? Awesome book, but I wouldn't call it sci-fi.
And:
http://xkcd.com/472/ Anonymous
>>3070537 I've played Savage Worlds, absolutely great for beginners but very skint on science fiction stuff. Are there any supplements in that realm?
Traveler is GURPs, right? Way too heavy for new guys in my opinion.
Anonymous
Any others? I haven't heard many Space Opera titles mentioned.
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4 Thu 27 Nov 2008 10:57:00 No. 3070748 Report Quoted By:
>>3070597 Yes, there are Science Fiction Toolkits for Savage Worlds. I'll have them up in a bit.
Anonymous
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>>3070707 Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy for Star Wars is very good. Same for Michael Stackpole's X-Wing books and I, Jedi. Other than that, I know of no good Space Opera novels.
Anonymous
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Check out the Lensman series by Doc Smith. Skip Triplanetary and First Lensman though. Start with "Galactic Patrol".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman Anonymous
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>>3070499 I wouldn't say he's gotten more conservative so much as he's gotten more strictly Mormon. He's probably gotten sick of receiving abundant flack from both sides of the political spectrum by now (he's gotten it in spades), and these changes might be a form of concessions.
I've enjoyed everything in the Ender series. The latest book in the series, Ender in Exile, was well worth reading, and tied up numerous loose ends while providing a bit more of the Ender that I felt was missing in Speaker for the Dead and later (it seemed like he'd lost everything that made him an awesome character after Ender's Game). But Ender's Game was a masterpiece that Card was never able to meet the levels of again.
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4 Thu 27 Nov 2008 11:12:00 No. 3070856 Report Savage Worlds - Science Fiction Bestiary Toolkit
http://www.mediafire.com/?mw2ugffjdmx Savage Worlds - Science Fiction Gear Toolkit
http://www.mediafire.com/?dyqixlgojdv Savage Worlds - Science Fiction World Builder Toolkit
http://www.mediafire.com/?td3umm20vxe The pulp toolkits should also have applicable material if you should choose to use them.
Savage Worlds [Toolkit] - Pulp GM
http://www.mediafire.com/?ucvbbysgnvr Savage Worlds - Pulp Gear Toolkit
http://www.mediafire.com/?mjnm1lthzfx Anonymous
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>>3070453 That's "Aldous Huxley" not "Aldolphus Huxley"
Anonymous
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>>3070707 I could be wrong, but I don't think many space opera books really get counted as among the classics.
If you really want Space Opera, I think the Honor Harrington series by David Weber is decent and pretty representative of the genre. YMMV, I remember reading a few of the books, he's pretty good on battle descriptions and details. The political strawmen get annoying, though it's fun to play "spot the parallels with the history of Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s".
Anonymous
>>3070856 Got a link for your image's source as well?
Anonymous
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>>3070856 The only thing more delicious than your links is your Kyonko.
Anonymous
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>>3070453 Ooh, I forgot about "Silent Planet." I need to read that again. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles are very good, also. Really any of Bradbury's Sci-Fi. Hell, any of Bradbury. That guy was a fucking genius. Oh, and Stranger in a Strange Land is far superior to Starship Troopers.
Also, Exiles of Colsec is a very good young adult scifi book if you're looking for something light. Or at least I think it was. I haven't read it in forever but I remember it being good.
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Admiral Gary, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Admiral Gary, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4 Thu 27 Nov 2008 11:25:00 No. 3070943 Report >>3070909 Here's where I grabbed it.
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=2224958 However, I don't have any of the book. It might not even be out.
Anonymous
>>3070943 Nice, thanks.
The blurb from the author says it's a doujin that'll be coming out during the December Comiket.
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4 Thu 27 Nov 2008 11:42:00 No. 3071009 Report >>3070990 Thanks for the heads up.
I'm going to go to bed, if I'm no longer required.
Anonymous
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>>3071009 You have done your duty.
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4
Unholy Clown Ninja Maid Anonymous, Xom's Champion !!0aKrfPDoCW4 Thu 27 Nov 2008 11:54:00 No. 3071068 Report I just realized that /rs/ is currently unavailable, so here's the Savage Worlds core book:
http://www.mediafire.com/?loe1jdqf1dd With that, I think everything necessary is available.
Vanzetti !!N/2mhBhcfAI
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>>3069894 second
personally I liked the: Virtual Light, All Tomorrows Parties, Idoru arc
Reasons:
The Chunker
The Gun that shot Grapefruit cans filled with Concrete
Gunhead
The Death Star
Chain Gun
Cevette Washington
Anonymous
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>>3069908 This.
THIS.
Enjoy your massive tie-in with everything.
I know I did.
Anonymous
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>>3070474 Go with Traveller.
It has it's own setting, but you can easily rip it out and slap in your own.
I mean, really easy. Easier than breathing.
Anonymous
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>>3071068 Awesome. I love how modular and simple Savage Worlds is. Thanks for that.
Anonymous
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William C. Dietz's Sam McCade series is a fun read for military (read: mercenary) scifi.
Anonymous
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>>3070207 One more for singularity: Accelerando, by Stross.
And it is available online under a CC license:
http://www.accelerando.org/book/ Anonymous
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>>3070172 Phil is brilliant, I agree.
