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A Canticle for Leibowitz

Walter M. Miller Jr.

14 readers recommend it across 13 discussions

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Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.

bookofjoe
"A Canticle For Leibowitz" "The Sparrow" "Lord of Light" "The Immortal" "Hyperion" "The Last Question" "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" "Stranger in a Strange Land" "The City and the Stars" "Childhood's End" "Anathem" "Eifelheim" "A Case of Conscience" "VALIS" trilogy "The Book of Strange New Things" "Behold The Man" "The God Engines" "Book of the New Sun" "The Parable of the Sower" "The Dosadi Experiment" "Grass" "Project Pope" "Calculating God" "Factoring Humanity" "Jesus on Mars" "Surface Detail
cicero
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller (recommended SF classic) The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (an old favorite, recommended) The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (some interesting parts, but overall a disappointment) Theology and Sanity - Frank Sheed (recommended; a very written description of the Catholic faith; weaknesses are it's long and it's aimed to a mid 20th c. audience) Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees - Peter Kreeft (recommended; a good exposition of Blaise Pascal's thought) Catholicism: A journey to the heart of the faith - Robert Barron (recommended; a good explanation of Catholicism for the common person) His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem (recommended; very intellectual look at the problem of first contact) The Industries of the Future - Alec Ross (the robotics chapter is best; other parts are more light-weight; easy read) Clouds of Witnesses - Dorothy Sayers (not my favorite Sayers mystery, but enjoyable) A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle (recommended) Why Gender Matters - Leonard Sax (recommended; most of the book is based on good science, but he does go out on a limb a time or two.)…
dwarman
Stand on Zanzibar, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Childhood's End, A Cantilce for St Leibowitz, The Stars My Destination, Midnight At The Well of Souls, Nine Princes in Amber, Halting State, Strnger In A Strange Land, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
brudgers
I recently have been reading Hugo Award Novels and recommend Roger Zelazny's This Immortal which is good enough to have shared the award with Dune in 1965. Lord of Light is also a great read and won a Hugo in 1968. Clifford Simak's Way Station, Phillip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, and Walter Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz are other great Hugo novels from the early 1960's that tend to be overshadowed by more famous authors from that period such as Heinlein (not that I wouldn't recommend The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you haven't read it).
wildwood
The only book I ever force on people is "A Deepness in the Sky", by Vernor Vinge. If you haven't read it, please do. I've really been enjoying David Weber's Honor Harrington series, if you're open to military sci-fi. It's not on the Amazon site, but it's easy to get from the Baen Webscriptions site. Iain M. Banks - "Algebraist" was a lot of fun, easily the best visualization of a gas-giant alien society I've ever read. I read "Matter" a while ago, and keep feeling pulled back to re-read it sometime soon. For classic sci-fi, I would recommend Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz". Don't forget to check out all the free public domain books that are available in the Kindle Store. All the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc that you can eat, at no charge.
jing
Here's a few I've really liked that have a broader subject matter than only what you asked for. I figure that if you like to read you'd like these books. --- NON-FICTION --- Darkness Visible A Mathemematician's Apology Omnivore's Dilemma Fermat's Enigma The Code Book Born to Run Judgement of Paris Siddhartha Killing Pablo The Victorian Internet Lone Survivor I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman Papillon Into Thin Air Born on a Blue Day Touching the Void Got Fight The Conquest of Happiness --- FICTION --- Switch Bitch Lost Horizon The Cuckoo's Egg The Simlarillion The Time Traveler's Wife The Alchemist The Count of Monte Cristo A Canticle for Leibowitz Neverwhere My Uncle Oswald Stories of Your Life and Others Invisible Cities Life of Pi Atlas Shrugged --- WALL STREET / FINANCE --- When Genius Failed Liar's Poker Buffett (Lowenstein) Bull! Black-Scholes and Beyond (textbook) Fixed Income Securities (textbook) The Road to Serfdom The Smartest Guys in the Room Fortune's Formula The Fourth Turning Inside the House of Money --- ENTREPRENEURSHIP / COMPUTERS (non-textbook) --- Masters of Doom It's Not About the Bike Dot. Bomb Founders at Work The PayPal Wars…

Also recommended in this reply

nazgulnarsil
depends on the subgenre :) Superhuman: Slan by A.E. Van Vogt More Than Human by Theodore STurgeon Odd John by Olaf Stapledon Post Apocalyptic: The Day of The Triffids by John Whyndham Earth Abides by George R. Stewart A Canticle for Lebowitz by...don't remember Space Opera/Adventure: any of The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks The Reality Dysfunction series by ...don't remember Hyperion series by Dan Simmons To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer Dystopian: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin <---highly overlooked, predates 1984 and Brave New World But the Absolute Best would be anything by: Stanislaw Lem (Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, Solaris) Alfred Bester (The STars my Destination, The Demolished Man) or Samuel R. Delany (Babel-17, Dhalgren, Trtion, Nova) oh and Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and This Immortal are both great. Some of Philip K. Dick's stuff is great, but everyone recommends him. :) almost forgot John Brunner, check out Steel Beach, The Sheep Look Up, and Stand on Zanzibar.
icky
Fiction: - The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells) - Dune (Frank Herbert) - The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien) - Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson) - The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling) - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Cryptonomicon (" ") - Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers) - All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber) - The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin) - 'salem's Lot (Stephen King) - Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) - the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman) - various Cory Doctorow short stories - Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey) - Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix) - A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) - Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova) - the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison) - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) - Ringworld (Larry Niven) - Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)…