Known Space

An entire universe of books. Ranging from the popular Ringworld series to the more historic Man-Kzin Wars books.

The Known Space books start with interesting ideas like cryonic aliens then takes them to their furthest extremes. This series is must read for any hard Spec-Fi fans. (and the aliens aren't just humans with a few odd customs and deformed faces :)

Nivens writing is very detailed about the design of the worlds and of the psychology and creation of his aliens. His weak point of course is his characterizations tend to get a little one dimensional. I suspect that this is because of his being more of a behavioural psychologist (as I remember his minor was in psychology) rather than a cognative one. Aka he looks at it more as in the human's behaviour rather than thinking of them as people. :)

Other good books

• Destinys Road: This is probably the best of his new books. About the Early days of colonization, and earths second extra-sol colony. Part of the Beowulf's Children series.
• FootFall: Independance Day done Right. Niven shows off his expertise as a Behavioural and Evolutionary psychologist again.
  
• Fallen Angels: This one is a near future story. Environmentalists destroying the world? :)

Looking for a new website for him!

The Baen free library is a noble experiment in getting the content to the readers, while still getting food for the authors. I wish them the best of luck, and hope that you will frequent the site.

They're far more realistic than the RIAA and MPAA who want to stomp anything unfamiliar into the ground and stomp the paying public into submission. I really hope that the riaa and mpaa destroy themselves by their corporate nazism. (we might get some decent music and movies if this happens!)

A superb author. One of the highly regarded authors of the mid-early century SF scene. If you're into Spec-Fiction, you have to read Heinlein. He seems to be gaining popularity recently in the motion picture industry. There's even a Sat-Am computer animated cartoon based on his work.

RAH books i like

• The Past Through Tommorow: This is a good book that outlines heinlein's Future History series, where man has colonies on the moon in the late 80's, cars become obsolete in the 60's, and various other interesting ideas. because it was written in the 50's it's a trip to see what at his time was thought possible. My favorite story of the whole series was "The Menace From Earth" with the concept that humans could fly in the 1/6 gravity of the moon. Another good one is his story about the man who's company sent the first man to the moon and colonized it under his direction. Very cool.
• Stranger in a Strange Land: Probably his most popular book. one of the first SciFi books to actually show entirely non-human thought processes. It also touches on some interesting religious topics. The uncut version is better!
• Starman Jones: A very cool book and one of heinleins lesser known works. The Star navigation corps only allow for entry via heredity. But Jones has wanted to become a navigator for as long as he could remember. He has an excellent memory so he memorizes the entire star navigation book set and joins the ship as a crewman. When the ship looses it's way and its books, jones ends up helping fly the ship.
• Have Spacesuit, Will Travel: Nice little book. Kid wins a space suit in a contest, refurbishes it, and accidentally ends up in space.
• Citizen of the Galaxy: Another lesser known Heinlein book. This one is quite a bit further in the future and has a feel more like Sassinak. The main charicter is a slave who gets freed. And his adventures at being a Trader ship dweller and later a cadet.
• StarShip Troopers: Heinleins classic military adventure book. Very good. The jury is out on wiether you should see the movie first or read the book first. If you read the book first you'll probably be unhappy with the movie because it ruins the mood the book set forth. On the other hand, I really dont know what watching the movie first would do to the enjoyment of the book.

RAH books I like less

• Double Star: Sort of interesting book. But it's more about acting and politics, subjects I like less than his other works.
• Waldo and Magic Inc: Errm. Waldo is sorta cool. But... Magic Inc... I just didn't like it. Not much more I can say about it.

A good source of Info about RAH!

Another link here

Books, By Paul S. Gibbs

The Sah'aaran Embassy, A new site for a series of scifi stories. This should be interesting! (although it's not exactly new anymore, shows how often I used to update my webpage.)

Since I first put this link up, he's broken off of that "other world" and has firmly placed his charicters on a new foundation and a much more interesting, and realistic, universe.

His Sah'aarans are much friendlier than my kzinti alteregos. They absolutely come to life under his expert charicterizations. And he gave me a very nice link :)

He finally has his new books up, and having read the first of them... It should be a wild ride. Lands End is AWESOME. Go there and read his short stories and samples, absorb, purchase, worship, etc.

Creator of several humor books. Distributed into 3 seperate series.

• Cups and Sorcery: The source of the all-encompasing Greep storylines. He only released 2 books in this series. Another day, another dungeon, and One quest, hold the dragon. The storyline was left hanging after one quest, and no new books have been released since 94.
• By the Sword: I have yet to read this, as I dont want to get involved in a series that won't get completed
• The third is a story about aliens. I can't remember the title off hand, it was recently released however.
• Toon RPG: not a novel, but a good RPG game for pen and paper.

Costikyan appears to have reduced his writing down, and increased his video game production. I guess thats a good thing. He has a fairly popular game out for Cell phones.

Check his page at costik.com

An amazing Scifi author. He was the one who first got me into Scifi in the first place. (STORY TIME!) When I was a little computer nerd, I bought a really cheap 'Flippy Book' Type thing with the book "Press Enter" on one side. Press enter was a sort of high tech Computer-Mystery. It was ok... But I wasn't as happy with it. On the other side of the book was Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg. Hawksbill was alot more interesting than press enter ever was. So i decided to buy more of his stuff.

• Majipoor Chronicals: Great book. I think i still have it somewhere with both covers worn off. The other majipoor books are good as well.
• The Gate Of Worlds: If you read just two books from him, Gate of Worlds and Majipoor Chronicals are IMO his best. Gate of Worlds is an Alternate history novel. Very good.

the Quasi-official site

Weis and Hickman are somewhat famous. They wrote the DND series Dragonlance, and later went on to build many interesting worlds in other series, The main two I am reading or have read from them are below.

• Deathgate Cycle: a 7 book epic. Written in such a way that you can comfortably enjoy any book in the series without reading the others. All info that relies on other chapters is footnoted and crossreferenced in each book. A true masterpiece. Also does some nice pseudo-science to explain it's magic, almost more Scifi than fantasy.
• Darksword: I've yet to read this entire series, It has a nice companion book that is a complete simplified-RPG game in it. Darksword Adventures. Very interesting.

Still looking for a web page for this duo.

I'm afraid i'm being too lazy to do more indepth research on thes right now. hope to get to it as soon as I get off my backside and do it.

• Anne McCaffery a more or less official home page
• Elizabeth Moon Her website
• Stephen R. Donaldson, Can't find a good website...
• Fred Saberhagen his site
• CJ Cerryh
• Spider Robinson a site
• Orson Scott Card His site
• Terry Prachett
• Anyone else i can think of