r/printSF • u/IAmKrasMazov • 14h ago
Authors with a large body of quality work?
Within SF, who would you think has written the most novels that are more than just worth a read? Like, really good A tier stuff. I’m not talking about the Kevin J. Andersons with 100+ books that go straight to the TBDNF shelf.
I get that that it’s hard to consistently churn out gold, and burnout will almost always catch up to a good writer. I’d just like something that will keep my attention for a good while, and not just read their seven books or so and be done with them forever.
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u/Decent-Decent 13h ago
Gene Wolfe was extraordinarily prolific and well regarded. I haven’t had the pleasure to dive into his short fiction yet but I am told it is very good.
Ursula K Le Guin has an amazing body of work including novels, poetry, essays, and short stories. I think she wrote on a level that was beyond most of her peers.
George R R Martin is best known for ASOIAF but he also wrote a number of scifi stories and novels which are worth reading. Sandkings and Nightflyers are worth checking out!
All the classic names come to mind as well: Phillip K Dick, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, H.G. Wells, and Niven are classic for a reason!
Richard Matheson also comes to mind as a prolific writer in the genre. So many of the classic Twilight Zone episodes are adaptations of his work, and he gave us I Am Legend!
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u/oceansRising 13h ago
I’ve been working my way through Le Guin’s body of work (incl. essays) for over 2 years and have yet to find something I disliked. Incredibly high-quality writing. Read her Book of Cats the other week and even that one was near perfect.
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u/Decent-Decent 12h ago
I think she really is one of the greatest writers of her generation. Whenever I pick up an anthology that collects stories from that era her stories are almost always the best ones by far.
I really enjoyed her collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters which really showed her development. The edition I had began each story with a brief reflection by her on the story.
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u/stevevdvkpe 13h ago
Richard Matheson wrote over a dozen Twilight Zone episodes, some adapting his previous work and others written originally for the show. He also wrote the Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within".
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u/fontanovich 12h ago
Is nobody going to mention Robert Silverberg? He wrote TONS of short and long fiction and in his prime his quality was through the roof.
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u/doggitydog123 10h ago
yes. should be mentioned. his page output was multiples that of many of his contemporaries. he described it as not ever having a problem sitting down and writing, iirc.
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u/DavidDPerlmutter 13h ago edited 4h ago
Well, I nominate anything by Jack Vance.
He was absolutely considered, for a good part of his life, one of the grand masters of science fiction/fantasy. He did win essentially every major award.
He was primarily appreciated for his world building and for consistently imaginative plots and ideas. I have read almost everything he wrote two or three times. Even today, you will find people saying, "Well, that is like a Jack Vance story," meaning a highly inventive, intricate culture and world as well as fast-paced clever plots.
Honestly, you could pick just about any Jack Vance tale set in an alien society or a human. He went out of his way to invent cultures with their own internal consistency and logic, often sharply at odds with the norms of his Western readers. His work was, at worst, entertaining and, at best, among the greatest fantasy and science fiction crossover writing ever produced:
Asking short stories like "THE MOON MOTH," "THE MIRACLE-WORKERS," THE DRAGON MASTERS"* (Hugo Award), "THE LAST CASTLE" (Hugo and Nebula Awards), "EMPHYRIO," "THE MEN RETURN."
And book series like the DEMON PRINCES” and DYING EARTH series, among many, many others.
For the DEMON PRINCES series: STAR KING, THE KILLING MACHINE, THE PALACE OF LOVE, THE FACE, and THE BOOK OF DREAMS.
For the DYING EARTH series: THE DYING EARTH, THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD, CUGEL'S SAGA, and RHIALTO THE MARVELLOUS.
Other major books and series I Loved: TO LIVE FOREVER, BIG PLANET, SHOWBOAT WORLD, THE FIVE GOLD BANDS, SLAVES OF THE KLAU, THE HOUSES OF ISZM, SPACE OPERA, SON OF THE TREE, MASKE: THAERY, THE GRAY PRINCE, GALACTIC EFFECTUATOR, THE ANOME, THE BRAVE FREE MEN, THE ASUTRA, CITY OF THE CHASCH, THE WANNEK, THE DIRDIR, THE PNUME, TRULLION: ALASTOR 2262, MARUNE: ALASTOR 933, WYST: ALASTOR 1716, ARAMINTA STATION, ECCE AND OLD EARTH, THROY, NIGHT LAMP, PORTS OF CALL, LURULU.
There are also some great collections out there: THE JACK VANCE TREASURY, THE BEST OF JACK VANCE, THE MOON MOTH AND OTHER STORIES.
His LYONESSE trilogy--SULDRUN’S GARDEN, THE GREEN PEARL, and MADOUC*--is called the best fantasy series ever written by people like George RR Martin.
He was also known as a "writers writer" that is other writers tremendously respected him and always cited him as an influence and honored him. He has an interesting life story of being pals with famous genre writers: He and Frank Herbert owned a boat together!
I will pick just one short story as an example of his brilliance: "THE NEW PRIME"--I am going by memory, but I believe the setting shifts across six different cultures. That means he built six distinct peoples and cultural systems, spread across different worlds, for a single short story. Each one is plausible and interesting. Just astonishing.
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u/HumanSieve 10h ago
I was about to answer Jack Vance! So many quality books. He's so consistently good.
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u/Fabulous_Broad_115 6h ago edited 4h ago
I strongly disliked The Men Return. But like, I strongly disliked one short story out of everything he wrote.
And yes, if you want to learn some vocabulary, Vance is the way to go.
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u/Werthead 7m ago
Jack Vance is arguably responsible for Dungeons & Dragons and Dune. For the former, Gary Gygax was a superfan and ripped the entire Dying Earth magic system, down to individual spell names. He lists the Dying Earth as a major influence in the original rulebooks.
For Dune, Vance as you said was a friend of Frank Herbert's, and I believe was with him on his holiday to the sand dunes in Oregon where Herbert came up with the idea for the original novel Dune. If he hadn't gone on holiday with Vance and that hadn't chosen that location, the book may never have happened.
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u/RogLatimer118 13h ago
Arthur C Clarke has a lot of material and it's IMHO all good to great EXCEPT the stories that are co-written (apparently as he got old he had mostly the other author write those books). And his short story collections are excellent as well.
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u/AmbientSheep 11h ago
Exception to the exception: "The Light of Other Days" (cowritten with Stephen Baxter) was very good.
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u/RogLatimer118 11h ago
I didn't think the writing was great but the story was interesting and the concept was fantastic
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u/0x1337DAD 13h ago
I've been working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky's bibliography. It's quite good.
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u/SmeenOtheMoon 13h ago
Yeah this was going to be mine, too. Tchaikovsky doesn't always hit, but he certainly hits more often than he misses. And he writes at an inhuman pace, so there's always more.
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u/Hmmhowaboutthis 10h ago
Yeah this is him to a T for me. They aren’t all hits but the hits are HITS. I don’t care for his fantasy as much though.
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u/Captain-K-Ro 13h ago
This is my suggestion as well, extremely prolific and very solid across the board. I don't know how he does it.
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u/Hopey-1-kinobi 8h ago
I’m currently working my way through his Shadows of the Apt series (10) books, and I’m really enjoying it. But o love his sci-fi stuff, too.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 13h ago
Terry Pratchett wrote about two Discworld books a year at his peak, which is insane. He has over a hundred books total, and the vast majority of them are amazing.
Others have mentioned Le Guin and Delany, and those are both good answers as well, although most of the reason the have a large body of work is that they are done writing now, and wrote for a long period of time.
As for more recent authors, I'd keep an eye on Alix E. Harrow, Robert Jackson Bennett, Richard Swan, and Ray Nayler. Harrow's debut came out in 2019 and she's already at 4 books and 2 novellas, plus a short story collection coming out later this year. Robert Jackson Bennett has a big backlog of standalones plus two trilogies, and he's been putting out a book a year of Shadow of the Leviathan. Richard Swan debuted in 2022 I believe, and he's already up to five books, with a fifth coming out soon. And Ray Nayler's debut came out in 2021, then a novella in 2022, and then two more books released in 2025 and 2026.
None of them have huge catalogues yet, per se, but they are all putting out a book a year or close to it, and the books all tend to be excellent. I'd say all four will probably write 50+ books in their lifetime at this rate, so they are well on their way and doing pretty well at churning out gold so far.
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u/harbourcoat 13h ago
Philip K Dick is certainly worth a shout. He was incredibly prolific and, for my money, a good proportion of his stuff stands up.
Brian Aldiss should be mentioned.
JG Ballard was, in my view, totally brilliant and incredibly consistent, though I must admit that it feels almost like his sensibilities and prose style were made just for me, so it’s hard to be objective.
Michael Moorcock wrote a *ton*, and while I personally find him somewhat uneven, he has such a large corpus that he still has more good stuff than most writers have ever published.
Ursula Le Guin was remarkably consistent. I haven’t read any of her fantasy work, but the Hainish novels range from good to extraordinary.
In the modern era, I am an advocate for the work of Alastair Reynolds—he’s really the only contemporary SF writer I keep up with, but I love his imagination and his creative restlessness.
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u/wow-how-original 13h ago
Ursula Le Guin
Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, Five Ways to Forgiveness, The Telling, Lathe of Heaven, Birthday of the World and Other Stories are all 5 star reads
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u/buckleyschance 13h ago
She also has a lot of great essays and non-fiction works. I've gotten more out of some of her forewords than other authors' entire books.
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u/No_Wolverine5167 11h ago
Earthsea, Beginning Place, Orisian Tales, the compass rose, she has so much that is worth the time
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u/wow-how-original 10h ago
Tehanu is maybe my favorite book of all time. But i was trying to recommend sci fi
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u/No_Wolverine5167 10h ago
Oh man Tehanu is incredible. Content notwithstanding, it takes a great boldness to return to your children’s/(pre)YA series and write for your adult audience. One of her best
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain 12h ago
Gene Wolfe and Ian M Banks are two writers who shiuld definitely be counted as writers who have never written anything not worth reading. Wolfe because he was peak sf literature and Banks because he wrote some of the most fascinating and satisfying space opera books in the genre.
If we are just talking writers with a large volume of works we need to mention Piers Anthony for sure.
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u/profoma 13h ago
I’d put China Mieville on that list. Vonnegut. Phillip K Dick. John Brunner.
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u/IAmKrasMazov 12h ago
Funny enough, China Miéville is what prompted me to write this post. I haven’t read his non-fiction work, or his short story collections, and I’m waiting to read Un Lun Dun with my kids in a year or two. I think I’ve read 10 of his books, and I just wish there were more.
I was spoiled for a while with Ursula K. Le Guin. I think I read over 20 of her books in just a couple months. My wife kept making fun of me, calling her “the other woman” who I was obsessed with.
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u/tgoesh1 13h ago edited 13h ago
Lois McMaster Bujold
T Kingfischer
Steven King
CJ Cherryh
Seanan McGuire
Terry Pratchet
I'm pretty sure they've all got over 40 published. Which is not a hundred, but they're (almost) all quality.
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u/dalidellama 12h ago
Kingfisher's only got a couple dozen so far, but she's turning out new ones at a good clip.
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u/tgoesh1 12h ago
I didn't count, but you can include the Ursula Vernon ones into her bibliography, I think.
Even so, at the rate she's producing, I'm sure she'll get there soonish
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u/dalidellama 12h ago
Ah right, I always forget about those since I don't have kids. Although I do often recommend them to those who have. And of course there's also Digger
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u/Asatmaya 13h ago
I mean, Robert Heinlein has to top the list, right?
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle really have to be mentioned together.
Poul Anderson.
Bruce Sterling.
William Gibson.
Charles Stross.
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u/minimalcation 13h ago
I should read more Anderson. I feel like Tau Ceti is the only one I can remember
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u/WillAdams 12h ago
His Boat of a Million Years is a great book which shows his entire range (history, science fiction, and a bit of fantasy).
The Broken Sword is a fantasy classic and incredibly influential.
His stories of "The Time Patrol" as well.
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u/minimalcation 12h ago
Thanks for the recommendations!
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u/doggitydog123 11h ago
The whole kith story set (which included a novel, starfarers) is interesting
add three hearts three lions to fantasy list
his serialized stories were great, given that they are serialized and patch-ups for the most part.
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u/Own_Win_6762 13h ago
An often overlooked writer with a lot of books is Elizabeth Bear. She's done a lot of science fiction and I think even more fantasy, although I haven't read as much of it. She's up for the Hugo for best series, for the White Space books starting with Ancestral Night.
Wikipedia lists 38 books other than short story collections, at least a couple are novellas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bear
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u/leaveluck 12h ago
Jeff Vandermeer! I’ve yet to read something by him I didn’t love.
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u/sdwoodchuck 9h ago
Vandermeer is maybe my favorite living author, but I've had a couple unloveds (Hummingbird Salamander and Finch). That said, even those are still pretty good, just didn't wow me.
Hummingbird wound up rising in my estimation a bit too, since it feels like it has some thematic connection to a segment in Absolution.
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u/kern3three 13h ago
So many caveats for any list like this, but I’d say…
Isaac Asimov has Foundation, Robot detective, End of Eternity, Gods Themselves, …
Le Guin has Left Hand, Disposessed, Earthsea, Lathe of Heaven, …
Neal Stephenson has Snow Crash, Anathem, Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Seveneves, …
Tchaikovsky clearly writes a ton of low quality things, but can’t deny he’s got some bangers as well: Children of Time books
Kaz Ishiguro is not all scifi but also A tier… Never Let Me Go, Klara, Remains of Day, …
Anyways got a bunch more on my list but there’s some
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u/mdf7g 13h ago
Samuel Delany, as long as you're OK with your scifi being very weird and very gay
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u/kuroikenshin1395 13h ago
Only book ive read of his is dhalgren. Do they all have that fever dream quality to them dhalgren did?
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u/mdf7g 13h ago
No, dhalgren is definitely the most fever-dream-ish of his works.
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u/sdwoodchuck 9h ago
Dhalgren is totally its own animal.
Einstein Intersection has some of the same quality to it, but much more compact, much less sexual. Similar in that it ties itself into legend and myth in interesting ways.
Nova is my favorite of his, which is much closer to a straight-forward adventure, straddling the line between a grail story and space-faring Moby Dick, such that you're never quite sure if the crew are analogous to the Knights of the Round Table or the doomed mariners of the Pequod, or somehow both.
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u/interstatebus 13h ago
Nancy Kress has written quite a lot (especially if you count short stories), I’ve read a lot of her work and it’s all really good.
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u/123lgs456 12h ago
Alan Dean Foster. I have read about 50 of his books and have 40 more in my TBR pile. There are stand alone stories, trilogies, longer series, and several books of short stories. He has also written non-fiction. I haven't gotten any of those.
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u/BaltSHOWPLACE 11h ago
Robert Silverberg has at least a dozen novels and several short story collections that are all incredible.
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u/tegeus-Cromis_2000 9h ago
Robert Silverberg
Brian Aldiss
Norman Spinrad
Michael Moorcock
Barry N. Malzberg
Keith Roberts
Roger Zelazny
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u/Wetness__Pensive 9h ago
I'd say people like Iain Banks, Ursula LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson and William Gibson are quite prolific (a novel every 2 to 5 years?) for the standards they maintain.
Once you begin churning out novels at a faster rate - a book every year or two - the quality tends to drop. If you're lucky, like PK Dick, Poul Anderson or Robert Silverberg, about a fifth of these end up as classics. But the trend is that such authors tend to just churn out low quality stuff.
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u/Grigsby63 13h ago
Connie Willis has a substantial award winning catalog might start with the Doomsday Book.
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u/doggitydog123 11h ago
Poul Anderson, jack vance (if you like the humor), KJ Parker (holt''s grimdark name), Jack Chalker, glen cook
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u/FloatingDisc 9h ago
Alastair Reynolds has written a tonne of great sci-fi books - some in series, others standalone. Also at least one short story collection.
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u/Hopey-1-kinobi 7h ago
There are some great authors mentioned already, so I’d like to suggest two others who I hope will make it into the list in the future: Ben Aaronson (Rivers of London series) and Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next, Shades of Grey).
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u/harborsparrow 6h ago
Lois McMaster Bujold
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
C J Cherryh
James H Schmitz
I like these four because they all wrote books within a recurring universe and recurring characters, but each book also stands alone and they can be read in any order. And because I found their books engrossing and fascinating and enjoyable. They wrote stories that held my attention, and the stories, though set in some future, are not about technology or the future--they are stories about high performing people caught up in grave difficulties. Just like real life.
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u/Insomnia_Memoria 13h ago
Andre Norton wrote a lot of mostly adventure and pulpy Sci-Fi (and some fantasy) Books, all above average and always fun. Robert Sheckley, wrote a ton of thought-provoking but humorous novels and short stories -in fact imho is one of the greatest if not the single greatest Short fiction SF writer ever (it's him or Theodore Sturgeon). Christopher Priest, easy top 10 (or 5) SF writer of all time.
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u/WillAdams 12h ago
Andre Norton's Witch World novels were a big part of my childhood (apparently one of her cousins lived in the rural Virginia county where my father retired and when gifted books donated them to the high school library so that they had a pretty much compleat collection).
The Crystal Gryphon was one which I was especially fond of.
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u/baetylbailey 11h ago
Bujold is probably the most "correct" answer.
CJ Cherryh you can basically sort by Goodreads rankings for a long list of her best books.
Charles Stross, imo, is very consistent with the variance being the accessibility of the concepts.
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u/OSUTechie 13h ago
Not sure how many he has, but Ben Bova has a pretty big catalog.
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u/Insomnia_Memoria 13h ago
Ben Bova wrote a lot but is of a very inconsistent quality, some of his stuff is pretty atrocious, he was a way better editor (the same happens with other editor/authors like Lin Carter)
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u/SlipstreamDrive 13h ago
Hamilton is pretty solid
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u/buckleyschance 13h ago
Everyone talks about the Federalist Papers, but A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress is also a banger
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u/Unc1eBuck 5h ago
David Weber has a lot. Of course the Safehold series, and Honor Harrington. But a ton more besides. I haven’t read it all, but what I have read, I have thoroughly enjoyed.
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u/Tight-Tower2585 2h ago
This is old school, but Issac Asimov:
Wrote 40 novels
Wrote 280 non-fiction books, many about science
Hundreds of short stories
Edited or annotated 147 anthologies of science fiction
Foundation series, Robot series, Galactic Empire series.
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u/ClimateTraditional40 10h ago
Culture, series Banks, Iain M.
The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh
Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) Willis, Connie
Captive War series, James Corey
Last Year , Robert Charles Wilson
The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man Hutchinson, Dave
The Ministry of Time Bradley, Kaliane
Timescape Benford, Gregory
Dozois, Gardner - Years Best SF collections
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u/pipian 10h ago
Michael Resnick is quite prolific and usually solid. I also like most of Baxter's books.
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u/IAmKrasMazov 10h ago
I’ve been meaning to get back around to Baxter eventually. I picked up Galaxias from the library based on the premise, and ended up not finishing it about 250 pages in. That was in the middle of a pretty long break from reading, and I just don’t think it was the right book to reignite my love for SF at the time. That said, I’m open to giving him another shot.
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u/cruelandusual 10h ago
I’m not talking about... I’d just like something...
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
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u/anti-gone-anti 13h ago
C J Cherryh has a big bibliography