I have a funny paradox. I enjoy reading, but I am not very adventurous when it comes to exploring new authors.
So I read every book by a favorite author and then I've got nothing.
I'm trying to branch out. To refill the coffers of my 'unread' collection.
I am most attracted to First Contact stories, and New World stories.
I am not fond of military stories (though Haldeman's Forever War was awesome) or far-future woo stories (this is what has kept me way from Vinge's 'Zones of Thought' series, even though I liked Marooned in Real Time - which I brought on title alone).
I like sciency adventurey stories. Tend to prefer near future rather than far future.
Every blurb nowdays seems to finish the blurbs with 'and possibly the very survival of the human race!!'
I've read every Larry Niven story there is. And every Robert J. Sawyer book there is.
I like Alan Dean Foster for all his strange worlds, such as Drowning World.
and Kim Stanley Robinson for his Mars series and for 2312.
Really liked Reynolds' Pushing Ice.
Loved Varley's Gaia series.
Got a love/hate going with Crichton. Read every book, but found his increasing pandering to screen rights irritating. (well, that's moot now, ain't it...)
Yeah. Strange New Worlds and Strange New Aliens are probably my preferred trope. In Sawyer's 'Starplex', he devoted a good portion of a chapter to the first steps of communicating, starting with 1+1=2.
Here's where I'll lose many of you.
I could not get more than 50 pages into Dune.
Same with Foundation. (I was halfway through Foundation and still wondering when the actual story was going to start. It's all backstory!)
Couldn't get past the backwards baby in Hyperion. Seems too much like fantasy to me.
I've pored over Top Sci lists. I've probably checked out every author you can name, some I've read, some not. Gibson is okay in small doses.
I do like Steampunk, but it seems like a subgenre.
The last book that blew my tiny little mind was Mieville's Kraken. So then I read, like, six more of his books. All great.
Long series are all the rage now. If I could find one I like, I might read them all. I'm not specifically looking for series (ADF's planet novels were not a series, but I knew what I'd be getting in each novel - more planets! Drowning World was cool. I know he's got a bit of a formula going there, but hey)
Suggestions?
(I mean, other than 'stop using so much bolding in your posts!')