Looking for a particular style of Fantasy/Science Fiction.

[ZorroGames]

Not into the latest run of fiction I see reviewed on forums like Goodreads.

Pardon my personal preferences but I really don’t want/need:

1) Explicit Sex - I assume the characters have love/lust interests but I do not need “excessive details” that bring nothing to the plot. Imply the passion please.

2) Constant Gratuitous gore. War in any era is violent (I remember the Vietnam War and after 38 years of military/Intel research on the hellholes of the world and 15 years of nursing I have seen the gamut of disease and injury so it is just the case of excessive detail does not make better story that is my source of disinterest.) Some authors seem rather perversely addicted to mind numbing people to violence.

3) And this is the biggest bore - A trilogy when one volume tells the story or more than more than four volumes with the same generation of characters. Or the same damn elf stones as the key widget in every story. Raymond E. Feist took it about as far as any author I have read without killing the story in a multi volume work.

So, if you can point me to some Fantasy that lacks the crap above or some decent MilSciFi * that doesn’t do the same superheroic bulletproof heroes for multiple repetitive volumes I would appreciate the input.

* Honor Harrington is an example of a series that doesn’t work for me because if you keep the main character in play with cyber-parts you begin to lose the human factor in the stories.

Bonus points for MilSciFi that deals with future Combined Arms Action, double bonus points if there is a viable air force element.

Gracias in advance.

[Adderbane]

Some more things you've liked and disliked would help. It'll also help us not recommend things you've already read.

[2D8HP]

You've probably read them but for Fantasy I recommend the early Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber collected in Swords Against Death or Two Sought Adventure.

The later stories get more explicit (so you should probably avoid The Knight and Knave of Swords).

For Science Fiction I recommend Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon..

My favorite novel from the 21st century is Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

[BWR]

Firstly, I second all of 2D8HP's suggestions.

I can't say I've come across any actually good military SF, but you can try the StarFIST series by Dave Sherman and Dan Cragg - both ex-military. It's basically the USMC in SPAAAAAACE. Decent enough timewasters and I cannot recall much by the way of 80s action heros or gore. There is a bit of porn, though: raging hard-ons for marines, mil-wanking, and gratuitous descriptions of gear. At least that's the impression I'm stuck with now. I honestly can't remember much about the series, except that I thought it was good enough to buy most of it when I was in my brief milSF period. I liked them a lot more than Honor Harrington, for instance.

There is David Weber's "Path of the Fury" /In fury born for semi-military SF/F. This is two variants of the same story. The former is the original single story with fantasy elements, and the latter is an expanded version which is basically three short novels jammed together with even more military stuff.

I suppose John Steakly's Armor can count as milSF. It does have a mostly invulnerable hero in the military fighting aliens, but it is handled in a way where you feel more sympathy for the hero's abilities and situation than enjoyment. It's a quite good book.


For fantasy I almost always start off by recommending Tanith Lee's "Tales from the Flat Earth" for stories that feel mythic and epic in the traditional sense. They are also some of the most beautifully written prose you will come across.

[Fyraltari]

I cannot recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation enough.

[2D8HP]

I cannot recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation enough.


I thought of that series as well, but I just didn't remember the (much later) novels that tie in the Robot series to the Foundation novels as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

Lost Fleet series? (Admittedly, more than three/four books, though.)

[Seppl]

Seconding both, Asimov's Foundation and Robots series.

In general, most classic Science Fiction perfectly fits your criteria. The authors are busy exploring high concepts. That leaves no place for gratuitous sex nor violence and the plots are usually short and on point, instead of meandering through long running series. Just look at Hugo and Nebula award winners of the past. Two other series that I would highly recommend are Larry Niven's Known Space series (including the famous Ringworld) and David Brin's Uplift stories. You may skip Sundiver, which is disconnected from the rest of the series, but definitely check out Startide Rising and The Uplift War.

[Rynjin]

I remember C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born being pretty solid sci-fi, but the last time I read it was in in school. Her Coldfire Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series as well, and all three are necessary for the character development of the two mains to make sense.

[Mordar]

It kind of violates restriction #3...but give Glen Cook's Black Company books a try. If I understand correctly you could consider it MilFan, with normal levels of sex and violence (probably kind of tame compared to some more recent work).

- M

[Florian]

Second Lost Fleet.

I don't know whether they're available in english, but the Ulldart books by Markus Heitz are a slightly different, more mature take on fantasy. And with "more mature", I don't mean PG rating, but people having a life, family, real connections to those around them and politics are portrayed rather down to earth, not Star Wars Emperor style.

[Traab]

Mercedes Lackey. Her Valdemar series. Starts with black gryphon timeline wise, overs thousands of years of history. The main character is usually someone else from series to series even during the period where there are like a half dozen trilogies in the same generation. The previous main characters tend to become secondary at best. There is some sex but its mostly fade to black setups rather than lemons. What I like the most is she is constantly creating new books to further flesh out the timeline. You an also skip numerous series and be fine. I read them all out of order but aside from further detail you pretty much never need to read the previous series to follow along, so if you hate the massive series with the same main character, you can skip the collegium chronicles and its follow on series as its like 10 books all following the adventures of a single guy and his friends and not miss anything important for future books.

[Anonymouswizard]

I cannot recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation enough.

Was going to recommend Foundation as well. Especially the original Trilogy, I've not read Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, or the prequels yet, but the original trilogy is excellent. They're also a great example of more 'thinky' SF, almost the archetypal example, where problems generally aren't solved by hitting them with beam weaponry.

I'm also going to throw my weight behind the Robot novels, especially the Elijah Baley books (the 'Robot trilogy'). A really enjoyable mix of SF and detective fiction.


On a more military front, Lensman by EE Smith. I'm still working my way through the series, trying to finish Triplanetary is next on my list before I move onto Second Stage Lensmen (yeah I'm reading the prequel in the middle of the series, at SSL the series started costing more than a quid per book), but it is a really enjoyable space war. Bit, okay quite sexist (by the standards of the time it's not disrespectful, but I still cringed at one point), to the point the GURPS book literally suggests 'remove the sexism and allow female lensmen' as a way to make it better in a modern setting.

[Fyraltari]

Was going to recommend Foundation as well. Especially the original Trilogy, I've not read Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, or the prequels yet, but the original trilogy is excellent. They're also a great example of more 'thinky' SF, almost the archetypal example, where problems generally aren't solved by hitting them with beam weaponry.
You should, they're really good and you'll meet an old friend again.

But yeah all of Asimov's body of work concerning S-F fits. Also Robots

[GrayDeath]

HMmmmm....

For SciFi: Try the Safehold Series by David Weber (its long,a s its ... Weber^^), aside from a few War Crimes in the middle/late BOoks it should fit the bill, and it has a very interesting set up.


For Fantasy: Sandersons Stormlight Archive is new, without explicit SSex scenes, has relatively little explicit violence (given its more or less about a Society at constant small scale war .... encoutnering other problems^^), or to recommend a Fantasy Classic, David Eddings Elenium Trilogy (yeah, its AS Trilogy, but its 3 short, concise books).

[Anonymouswizard]

You should, they're really good and you'll meet an old friend again.

I've only recently finished the Robots trilogy, I'm taking a short Asimov break and finishing Out of the Silent Planet (on that note


But yeah all of Asimov's body of work concerning S-F fits. Also Robots

I think the only two I know of that fail are The Robots of Dawn (but there the sex scene does serve a plot purpose, but it's short and the previous two books had no sex) and The Gods Themselves (which IIRC was written because Asimov had worked out what conditions an isotope could exist in, and includes alien sex).

But yes, pretty much everything else Asimov wrote fits. He didn't seem to like writing about violence as he did writing about people, his robot stories are especially good for being a disturbingly plausible vision of what we might do if we ever develop hard AI. I'd say that the Robot novels are his highlight there, although Foundation is also very interesting with what he does.

I think my favourite Asimov character is Hardin, because he really does believe his motto and manages to stick to it. Motto and a bit of discussion spoilered for those who don't want spoilers.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Until the end of the Mule's reign the Foundation wins all it's conflicts by following this motto. Not one crisis is successfully solved by force of arms, although eventually the Foundation gets far enough ahead of everybody that trying to attack them is effectively suicide, but until the Mule everything is solved via a mixture of clever diplomacy, economics, and even the internal politics of their enemy (which they planned to exploit, but the situation solved itself while they were trying to do so).


For Fantasy: Sandersons Stormlight Archive is new, without explicit SSex scenes, has relatively little explicit violence (given its more or less about a Society at constant small scale war .... encoutnering other problems^^)

I think all of Sanderson's books except maybe Warbreaker qualify, although even then I remember it being more 'and then the sex happens' as a sort of fade to black moment.

[Clertar]

Ed McDonald's Blackwing, and the sequel Ravencry. The setting is an interesting fantasy-realistic world where there's a cold war going on between human civilization and the empire run by the immortal undead demi-gods calld the Deep Kings and their mutated followers. On humanity's side there are the Nameless, a handful of all-powerful mages that are in constant war against the Deep Kings. The protagonists are trapped in the frontier between the two sides of this centuries-old war. There is no gratuitous sex, and although there's grim violence it's always depicted as something negative, a sign that the world is wrong and that the cost of things achieved through violence is often too high.

[Wookieetank]

Peter F. Hamilton's commonwealth Saga (Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained) is very solid. Its more on the political/intrigue side of things at times, but it does have a fair bit of everything sci-fi thrown in. The 2nd book is much heavier on the military action side of things.

Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space Trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, & Absolution Gap) is an interesting case. Its very heavy on the space opera (with a basis on hard sci-fi), but it does have some rather unique combat situations (hell class weapons, space battles at near relativistic speeds, a machine forge that can make you any weaponry you can think of). Also changes up main characters each book, and the only character that hangs around for the whole series becomes very minor/background at best by the end.

[Themrys]

Fantasy:

I'd recommend the Hurog series by Patricia Briggs (not really a series, just two books). It has dragons and swordfighting and there's quite a bit of violence and sex, but it is all written in a tasteful fade-to-black way as far as I remember. (Not a fan of gore myself, and explicit sex ... is nothing I am against in principle, but in practice, it is never done well.)

And
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I believe it has been mentioned a couple times on this forum, perhaps you know it already. Rather subtle and character-driven, no big battles and such.

(The author's name is a pseudonym, don't be tempted to read her other books, those seem to be ... very different)

Sci-Fi:

Jasper Fforde might write fantasy or sci-fi, I am not sure as his books are just too weird to really fit any of those genres, but there's no explicit sex, no gore, and though the Thursday Next series has always the same protagonist, the books are short and entertaining.

The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie, starting with Ancillary Justice - I am not sure if it counts as miliary sci-fi because I found it entertaining and I am not much interested in military stuff, but there definitely is fighting.

[dps]

It kind of violates restriction #3


Yeah, that's kind of a major sticking point these days. A lot of what is being written nowadays is series, although some of them take place over so long a period of time that they don't stick to the same group of characters.

[Aotrs Commander]

Probably not for the OP, but since this is as good as any place to mention it, I just got done reading the Captain Smith series by Toby Frost, which is basically a parody scifi in the mould of Biggles or the old WW2 Commando-sort of stories. It is about the titular Captain Smith of the Space British Empire leading his band of men (none of whom are actually men) against the evil empire of the Ghasts ("gertie") and is is, frankly, bloody brilliant. (Though one suspects British readers will likely get the most out of it...!)

It contains some sex (though not at all explicit, because we're British), some inneundo (in the fashion of good British comedy (see 'Allo, 'Allo, Carry On and/or Up Pompei), excellent humour, copicous Tea-drinking, explict Still Upper Lip and giving Gertie a Jolly Old Right Good Thrashing.

(Six volumes (Space Captain Smith, the God-King of Didcot, Wrath of the Lemming Men, A Game of Battleships, End of Empires and The Pincers of Death), though, so technically violates the OP's requirements.)

[Cespenar]

The Temeraire series fits your points in a general sense, though I'm not sure for #3 because I haven't read that far. But it's also gets the bonus points.

"Serious Napoleonic era military-fantasy fiction with dragons as an air-force", should give you enough of an idea. Also, the protagonist that gets his dragon in the start of the book is... not a precocious youngster, but an experienced captain in the navy.

[Knaight]

"Explicit" and "Gratuitous" are both soft enough descriptions that I'm going to be guessing where they are (I'm fairly confident that, for instance ASoIF violates both of them, and also the series restriction for that matter), but I can at least aim for minimal in both. The third rule is explained extremely poorly, so I'll favor single books that aren't part of a series - to my reading trilogies are fine if each book is a seperate story, and up to four books with the same generation of characters are fine, but not more, so some of the stuff will fit this.. So:

Fantasy
The Lions of Al-Rassan, Guy Gavriel Kay
Kingdoms of Light*, Alan Dean Foster
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin
The King Arthur Trilogy, M.K. Hume
Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed

Military Sci-fi
Old Man's War, John Scalzi.
The Damned, Alan Dean Foster

*Absolutely no rule breaking at all, even by extremely stringent standards.

[GloatingSwine]

The Temeraire series fits your points in a general sense, though I'm not sure for #3 because I haven't read that far. But it's also gets the bonus points.

"Serious Napoleonic era military-fantasy fiction with dragons as an air-force", should give you enough of an idea. Also, the protagonist that gets his dragon in the start of the book is... not a precocious youngster, but an experienced captain in the navy.

"Hornblower but Dragons" is usually considered enough.

"Hornblower but....." is a genre all its own, after all. (And frankly for most of them you would be better off just reading Hornblower.)

[veti]

With rare exceptions, approximately every book published before about 1980 seems to meet your requirements. Could you be a little more forthcoming about what you do want to see, as opposed to what you don't want?

[ZorroGames]

With rare exceptions, approximately every book published before about 1980 seems to meet your requirements. Could you be a little more forthcoming about what you do want to see, as opposed to what you don't want?

Okay, before 1980 is a parameter I can live with.

I feel I have been as clear as appropriate.

First, It is the unnecessary sexual and gore aspects that seem very popular with a percentage of the books on some other forums that have made my reading experience less enjoyable.

One MilSciFi book, off the top of my head on a sleepy just barely awake morning, (which alas is a series) that covered my OP well, except for the series aspect, was Valor’s Choice by Tanya Huff.

Second, I think much of the MilSciFi written today fails to relate to the reality of ever growing integration of the services as Combined Arms and Joint Operations exist today and swan off into single service superhero realms. As long as AIs are not doing all the fighting I think that trend will be a facet of future warfare involving humans and other intelligent biological life forms.

Fantasy has similar issues with gratuitous sex and violence distracting from the story. Heroes are not perfect but not every character needs to be horribly flawed and not every villain needs a redeeming virtue.

Finally, a story can be told in less than ten plus volumes (exaggeration except Wheel of Time does exist) and heroes/villains are born, grow, and die. Right now there, for the first time, there are no Fantasy or MilSciFi books on my shelves except for my “heritage” books that I read annually (that violate the series rule) by Tolkien, plus seven from Lewis, five from Burroughs, and six from Andre Norton. Everything else on my book shelves is historical (befitting a Historian and Cartographer by education.)

Maybe that is a key, maybe little of today’s literature is appealing to me because it is not marketed to readers like myself.

That said, I will be looking at the books in this thread closely to see what gems 💎 I can mine. Muchas Gracias for the people posted possible books.

[GolemsVoice]

What about the Witcher novels? While the game is renowned for blood and sex, the novels feature those, too, but way less explicit. And although it's not military fantasy, it deals with wars, and the aftermath of wars, as well aswith the underlying politics in a fairly mature and realistic way.

[J-H]

Hammer's Slammers, by David Drake
Series of short stories/anthologies following a mercenary armor company (combat car, tank, artillery, infantry, MPs - don't recall any aircraft). Drake served as an Intel officer in Vietnam and draws heavily on his experience there, and it "feels" realistic. He does not pull punches about collateral damage, but other than that I recall the books being fairly clean.

Berserker (series), by Fred Saberhagen
Long, long, long ago, a species we know only as the Builders created Von Neumann-type (self-reproducing in space) warships - not truly AI driven, but close enough to be effective combatants and hard to tell apart from AI - as a last-ditch effort to win a war against an implacable foe. Their instructions? Destroy all life (except us). Guess which part got lost.
This is a mix of short stories and novels from different eras in humanity's battle against extinction. A few are, as you might expect, rather grim, but many of them carry a spark of hope in the darkness (my favorite being Wings out of Shadow). Berserker Planet is the one in the lot that doesn't meet your criteria, and I don't think I have that one any more. Start with the basic anthologies Berserker or Brother Berserker.

Bolo (series), by Keith Laumer
Do you like giant tanks? Do you like AIs that are better people than humans? Do you like valiant last stands against overwhelming odds in defense of humanity and for the honor of the regiment? Sign up for the Dinochrome Brigade today! Yes, you too can accompany the best huamnity has to offer into combat aboard a 200m-long, multi-hundred-ton Continental Siege Unit.
This started as a series of short stories and novellas by the late great Keith Laumer, but expanded on into a series (6+) of anthologies drawing on his work, as well as several novels by authors such as William H. Keith Jr.

Battletech
I read the novels as much as I played the games. Giant battlemechs fighting, politics swirling, and those who are best at intrigue usually win in the long run. No gore, no sex, and a complicated enough universe that it could out-run Game of Thrones (without the gore & T&A) if they'd ever bother to make a series out of it. A few characters do have plot armor, but their flaws do become apparent (and hurt them quite badly) over time. Start with the Warrior series (3025-3027).
Anything after 3067 is bad fan fiction.