Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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Just re-read Jack L. Chalker's Well of Souls and Four Lords of the Diamond books as well as Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series, looking for more that combine magic and sci-fi in interesting ways. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If you haven't read those books, give them a go!

Edit: added Apprentice Adept to the title

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Up-vote for the Well World books! I remember them fondly. It's been 40 years -- might be time for a refresher :) Now I see he wrote two more in the series in 1999/2000? I had no idea. Suppose I have no choice now

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Make sure to read the forward, quite funny how/why he wrote them. Not as good as the first few, but a worthy entry to the series.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Will do! I must have given away the series I had long ago. I'm sourcing out a new (used) set tonight. Down the rabbit-hole I go...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those were f*cked up but also great. The reveal in “Well of Souls” was so good.

Fantasy+Sci-fi - Timothy Zahn has a couple (Triplet comes to mind), as does David Brin (The Practice Effect). Also well worth mentioning C.S. Friedman’s “Dark Fire” trilogy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The Practice Effect is great!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Magic/science crossovers I can think of offhand…

The Madwand series and the Amber series by Zelazny. Actually Lord of Light may sort of qualify too? He was big on mixing the two. Roadmarks is another one.

There’s also people writing about magicians living amongst us. Stuff like the Unseen University by Naomi Novak. Very much traditional magic but also taking place in the modern world. Same for An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard. Actually one of the very best from this genre is The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

I also love Strata by Terry Pratchett which is a suitably hilarious take on building a flat planet where magic works in a science universe.

And another idea I really enjoy is books that have applied the principals of science to magical systems. Probably my favorite is The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. Magic is basically something like a stock market/economic system and you end up with index funds of souls and so forth. Very strange but fascinating to think about. Similarly Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is all about using magic as a system and developing new spells based on known principles of that system. (And using them to steal things.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My first exposure to sci-fi + magic were the Shadowrun novels. I enjoyed reading them years ago, but not sure how well they've held up.