Epic Science Fiction Books

[alias_sqbr]

I was discussing this with Cam: what are the good (or at least halfway interesting) science fiction epics? By which I mean long, somewhat mythic stories with a sense of history and gravitas. All I could think of was Dune and the Gap series (which I never finished due to Stephen Donaldson reaching my "sympathetic portrayal of rape" limit)

Kind of: The Xeelee Sequence and the Foundation Series and Worthing Saga.

EDIT: I'm rather tired and getting all confused in my definitions, so feel free to ignore my qualifiers and mention anything you think deserves mentioning.

gyges_ring has reminded me of semi-epic books which are painted on a large canvas but aren't very mythic or whatever, more like reading a historical novel set in the future e.g C J Cherryh's Union/Alliance books. I realise this is a very subjective thing, and don't think there's anything wrong with a prosaic tone.

Also: A Fire Upon the Deep (how could I forget?)

And thank heaven for Wikipedia (not all space opera is the sort of epic I'm talking about, mind you). *ponders investigating these authors*

Comments

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Star Wars?

[alias_sqbr]

Oops, sorry, forgot to add: books, not movies or tv, since there's a couple of those (Babylon 5 for example)

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

Book Of The New Sun - Gene Wolfe (I actually don't like him that much, but other people seem to)
All of those Stephen Baxter books that fit together. Which I also didn't like them much.

If it was sci-fi with a sense of history and gravitas, I'd say John M. Harrison's Virconium books. But it's a bit dodgy to call that sci-fi in the sense I think you mean.

[alias_sqbr]

Book of the new sun! I actually really liked that series, though you have to squint to see the science fiction under all the fantasy trappings. Hmm, the Stephen Baxter books (you mean "Time" etc?) are like a couple of others which are epic in scope but to me feel rather prosaic in tone and vision. But are still worth mentioning.

Hadn't heard of the Virconium books.

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

I got more into the Wolfe books the more I read them. But there's a bit at the end of one of them where he threw in an author's post-script that went along the lines of "This came from the future. That's why there are words in it that no one can read. Because they haven't been invented yet." And that just annoyed me. It seemed so unecessarily pretentious.

There's also the Arthur C. Clarke serieses.

And bah! I wrote John M. Harrison. I actually mean M. John Harrison.

Oh, and there's always The Shape Of Things To Come. Can't go past that one for a historical documentation of the future.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, while I liked them some bits were pretentious and others just..weird.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Ewwww. Stephen Donaldson. He's yuk. And when he's not yuk, bloody boring.

[alias_sqbr]

You forget when he's yuk and boring.

[warpwind.livejournal.com]

Stephen Donaldson breached the exact same threshold with me.

and he's just plain yuk... and boring :P

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

I thought the Farseer trilogy had a nice feeling of epicnessfullness to it. With the whole "following lead character from birth to old age, more or less in real time" feel that it had. Also a nice sense of history and mythology.

Being (still) right in the middle of it, I'd have to say that Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell seems to fit your criteria as well.

[alias_sqbr]

I'm meaning "science fiction" in the specific sense here, not as a catch all for "speculative fiction" since there is indeed a lot of good epic fantasy :)

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha. Missed that intent :P

I haven't read anywhere near as much SF as fantasy, and most of what I have has been relatively brief and self-contained.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The Gateway books, Frederick Pohl.
The Star Fraction tetralogy, Ken McLeod. Or the Engines of Light series, same.
The series that begins with Revelations Space, Alastair Reynolds.

[alias_sqbr]

I haven't read the last two (though have been pondering Ken McLeod for some time)
I think the first Gateway has the sense of mythos, and the series as a whole has the large scope, but too me it felt too obvious that each was written to be the last, since he kept getting rid of his villains/sources of conflict and having to invent more from scratch.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Not my impression at all on the Gateway books.

McLeod basically writes books that are mostly about left wing politics, set in SF settings, though the Engines of Light books also gets into galactic scale mythos kind of things. May or not be quite what are looking for, but worth checking out.

Reynolds I am somewhat grumpy with, as the final book in the Revelation Space series, Absolution Gap, left me with a very distinct feeling that he intended to write at least two more books when he started out, and then just decided he couldn't be bothered writing them any more. Grr... but the books are individually good, if a little unsatisfying as a series, not least because the 'big villains' never get confronted on screen.
I strongly recommend checking out his standalone book Pushing Ice for that sense of epic scope in a story that finishes nicely in a single book, though.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I'm not sure anyone but me sees the books that way :)

Thankyou for your suggestions, they are duly noted. I've been running a bit low on books to read recently.

[edible-hat.livejournal.com]

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (which is historical, not futuristic, but contains a lot of science, an immortal alchemist, samurai cowboys and a pedal-powered computer). Also there's Cryptonomicon which is the Hobbit of Baroque Cycle's LOTR.

[alias_sqbr]

I got rather sick of Cyptonomicon well before I was finished reading it, which put me off the tome-like Baroque Cycle. Which is annoying, since the ideas do seem intriguing and I like Neal Stephenson.

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

The Cordwainer Smith Instrumentality books as well

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, absolutely!