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[ChairmanPoo]

For the record, I didn't like Ender's Game at all. I think it's a lousy novel.

[Vattic]

Larry Niven has a number of books which are very scientifically sound *if* you accept the initial, usually incredibly rare physical conceit of the setting (like the Integral Trees/Smoke Ring world, which is a free-floating ring of atmosphere and scattered material in orbit around a neutron star)

On that note The Mote in God's Eye makes an honest attempt at being realistic. Larry Niven wrote it with Jerry Pournelle. Lots of characters or at least it seemed like that after what I had been reading.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman has some interesting Scientific/Engineering concepts in it, most signifigantly relatavistic time dilation and its implicayions for war.

I'd also suggest this (third person).

For two books quite different from my other suggestions you might want to look into Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly both by Philip K. Dick. I thoroughly enjoyed them and find their bleak depiction of the every day future to be interesting. I hear his other works are good too but I've not gotten around to them yet.

You could even look into books like 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess but I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're asking for. They are more like both the Phili K. Dick books I mentioned than the others.

[Kogut]

If you need something more intellectually challenging then try Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan. Wiki describes it as involving 'non-trivial' mathematics and theoretical physics. I read it while taking graduate level quantum mechanics courses and didn't feel it was talking down or over-simplifying things. And the story remains engaging.

And "Diaspora"!

[warhammer651]

For the record, I didn't like Ender's Game at all. I think it's a lousy novel.

Eh, I thought it was pretty good.


A general Sci-Fi series I would reccomend (though it does ditch "Realistic" for "Awesome" several times) is the Posleen War seris by John Ringo.


Though I Might just like it because, for once, Humans aren't diplomats or the baseline race and are instead one of the very few races that is good at warfare

[Ampersand]

I just want to step in as a counterweight to Palsch, and say that I really rather enjoyed Anathem and would suggest it freely, along with the rest of Neal Stephenson's fairly small, but, shall we say... Robust?.. body of work.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Yes pretty much all of his books can be used as coffee tables.)

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

For the record, I didn't like Ender's Game at all. I think it's a lousy novel.

Eh, I thought it was pretty good.


A general Sci-Fi series I would reccomend (though it does ditch "Realistic" for "Awesome" several times) is the Posleen War seris by John Ringo.


Though I Might just like it because, for once, Humans aren't diplomats or the baseline race and are instead one of the very few races that is good at warfare

+1 for John Ringo.  Gotta love how he wrote that the goverment called in all the SF writers for what to do after the gov got all the free alien high tech.  Also, if you love gung-ho military fiction, you will love Ringo.

[sluissa]

If you can stand audio books, or waiting, give a look to the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell.

http://www.solarclipper.com/

He's slowly coming out with print/ebook copies and has the first two out already, but the entire series is already released FOR FREE in audio book form via http://www.podiobooks.com/.

Direct Link to the first book in the series: http://www.podiobooks.com/title/quarter-share

You can either go there and download each episode individually, or register with the site(again free) and get it via an RSS feed if that's more convenient.


Series follows Ismael Horatio Wong as he's all but forced into work on interstellar freighters. It's mellow, compared to most of the war focused sci-fi novels I've seen, but it does have its excitement, and even though a good chunk of it is simply him making coffee(not joking) it still held my interest enough that I read it first as an ebook, then went back and listened through it again as an audio book before I went on to the others in the series in audio book form. I had been avoiding audio books for some time before this and never thought I could get into them, but this one changed my mind.

IIRC, the author is a former member of the US Coast Guard and used his nautical experience to its full extent making these books as "realistic" as possible.

I digested the entire series, 6 books, all within a month, including the double reading of the first book.

[olemars]

I see Arthur C. Clarke is already mentioned, but I'm going to specifically point out the Rama series (although technically he only wrote the first one himself, the rest are primarily written by Gentry Lee). Other ones by him I remember as very good are Childhood's End, The Hammer of God (which preempted the Armageddon and Deep Impact movies by a few decades), A Fall of Moondust, and The City and The Stars.

[Pwnzerfaust]

The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, chronicling the colonization of Mars from the initial landing of a hundred scientists and engineers, to far into the terraforming effort a couple hundred years later. Quite a good series, though it gets a little weird at some points.

[inteuniso]

Ditto on the Mars Trilogy.

For good military Sci-Fi, go with the Classic Starship Troopers (A must-read for any sci-fi fan) and the Lost Fleet series (3D battles? MADNESS!). I just read Old Man's War, and that book was just ridiculous in how action-packed it was.

[Kogut]

IMHO the Lost Fleet series and Mars trilogy are not very good. Something on level of Harry Potter. I prefer to read better books.

[jester]

I liked the Mars series, was impressed by what I thought was a bit of science in them too, then I gave one to my dad who is a biochemist.  FARK. Did I ever get told.  They are an ok series imo, not stellar, but if you are looking for SF, worth a look.

Other series that I would recommend are The Amtrak Wars, By Patrick Tilley, post apocalyptic SF fun, books are only a few 100 pages each, not long, not hugely realistic but 'fun'

And the CHUNG KUO series by David Wingrove.  Really interesting series about future society,  definately worth a look.  Not a 'space book' though if thats what you are after

[Darkone]

Gosh, all these suggestions and none for Footfall?

Maybe not realistic, but the Bolo series has some of the best AI I've seen ever in any medium. It also hits pretty high on the "awesome scale" when you get to the later marks of Bolo, which are quite capable of engaging orbital targets from the ground. Related, Hammers Slammers is also fantastic, just on a smaller scale.

Infinity Beach is a good first contact book, as well as the only one that's actually gotten a physical response out of me (namely fear). Has some neat concepts, like using an FTL ship fitted with massively powerful observation equipment to observe an event from the past.