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90’s novels you like and recommendations?

Markness

Markness

Young God
V.I.P Member
90’s novels don’t get enough love, in my opinion. People tend to talk about books from the previous decades more in my experience. There are a lot of interesting stories and ideas from the last decade of the 20th century that need to be reevaluated. My favorites in order would be:

S. Andrew Swann’s ‘Moreau Quartet’ -
Forests of the Night (1993)
Emperors of the Twilight (1994)
Specters of the Dawn (1994)
Fearful Symmetries (1999)

William Gibson’s ‘Bridge’ books -
Virtual Light (1993)
Idoru (1996)
All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999)

David Brin’s ‘Uplift Storm’ books -
Brightness Reef (1995)
Infinity’s Shore (1996)
Heaven’s Reach (1998)

Alan Dean Foster’s A Call to Arms (1991)
This one is part of a trilogy called ‘The Damned’ but I haven’t read the other two yet.

Michael Crichton’s ‘Jurassic World’ -
Jurassic Park (1990)
The Lost World (1995)

Stephen King’s Rose Madder (1995)

There might be more that I can’t remember right now.

Started but didn’t finish. Plan to eventually get back to:
Mark Jacobson’s Gojiro (1991)
Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule (1994)

On my list of stuff I want to read:
Robert Jordan’s The Eye of The World (1990)
Clive Barker’s Imajica (1991), The Thief of Always (1992), Everville (1994), Sacrament (1996), and Galilee (1998)
Robert Sawyer’s Quintaglio Ascension books (1992-1994)
Jeff Noon’s Vurt books (1993-1997)
Wil McCarthy’s Agressor Six (1994)
Paul Kearney’s Hawkwood’s Voyage (1995)

Got any recommendations?
 
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As a rule, while I've read a bazillion books I have zero idea as to when each was written/published, so I cant really offer too much here.

But just looking at that last part, I will say, Thief of Always was pretty good. A bit short, if I recall, but good.
 
Misery said:
As a rule, while I've read a bazillion books I have zero idea as to when each was written/published, so I cant really offer too much here.

But just looking at that last part, I will say, Thief of Always was pretty good. A bit short, if I recall, but good.
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I’ve read a handful of Clive Barker’s short stories from the Books of Blood (Best ones are Skins of the Fathers and Rawhead Rex. The latter had a notorious movie adaptation.) and his novellas The Hellbound Heart, the basis for Hellraiser, and Cabal, the basis for Nightbreed. They influenced Berserk and are all worth reading.

Oddly, I’ve read that Thief of Always was considered an all ages story. Did it come off like that?
 
Markness said:
I’ve read a handful of Clive Barker’s short stories from the Books of Blood (Best ones are Skins of the Fathers and Rawhead Rex. The latter had a notorious movie adaptation.) and his novellas The Hellbound Heart, the basis for Hellraiser, and Cabal, the basis for Nightbreed. They influenced Berserk and are all worth reading.

Oddly, I’ve read that Thief of Always was considered an all ages story. Did it come off like that?
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Indeed, it's less... "intense" than his other ones, there's no blood or particularly horrifying descriptions so it's suitable for anyone really. Sort of. Still definitely has its disturbing moments though, the creep factor is still high.
 
Christopher Moore
Practical Demonkeeping
Island of the Sequined Love Nun
Lust Lizard of Meloncholy Cove

Tim Dorsey (Serge Storms is my favorite moral absolutist, vigilante, serial killer with a passion for Florida history)
Naked Came the Florida Man
Florida Roadkill
Orange Crush

Carl Hiassen
Native Tongue
Stormy Weather

Tony Hillerman
A Thief of Time (1988, but a great book)
Coyote Waits
Sacred Clowns
The Fallen Man
Hunting Badger

But, to wander farther afield, the most imaginative SciFi that I have read is from Cordwainer Smith in the 1950s - 1960s. I will let Fredrick Pohl Describe his work: "In his stories, which were a wonderful and inimitable blend of a strange, raucous poetry and a detailed technological scene, we begin to read of human beings in worlds so far from our own in space in time that they were no longer quite Earth (even when they were the third planet out from Sol), and the people were no longer quite human, but something perhaps better, certainly different." After reading The Ballad of Lost C"mell* and The Dead Lady of Clown Town, I was hooked. He has never been equalled.

*The first sentence hooked me: "She was a girly girl and they were true men, the lords of creation, but she pitted her wits against them and she won."
 
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Misery said:
Indeed, it's less... "intense" than his other ones, there's no blood or particularly horrifying descriptions so it's suitable for anyone really. Sort of. Still definitely has its disturbing moments though, the creep factor is still high.
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Even Stephen King has admitted Clive Barker’s fiction makes him sleep with the lights on.
 
Markness said:
I see Christopher Moore’s books at work. I’ll have to start reading them instead of just looking at them.
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If you enjoy his work, a more recent book of his I enjoyed is A Dirty Job. Humorous and surreal. Plus having worked in Emeryville for a bit, I enjoyed the San Francisco vibe.

Generally, I don't follow horror, but when things devolve into surrealism, like Eraserhead, it gets my queasy attention.
 
I recommend Underworld, published in 1997

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Not sure how strict you are about the time frame, but here are some suggestions by my favorite SciFi writer, Iain M. Banks:

1987, Consider Phlebas
1988, The Player of Games
1996, Excession
2000, Look to Windward​

It's a "shared universe", but not a series. If you read them: the order of the first two doesn't matter, but IMO you should read those two first.

Two more excellent SciFi books by the same author, but not in the "SciFi Universe" shared by the other four:

1993, Against a Dark Background
1994, Feersum Endjinn
​
Note: One of the characters in "Feersum Endjinn" speaks in a book-specific phonetic English invented by the author. e.g. Feersum Endjinn is actually Fearsome Engine. For some people it's hard work reading that part of the book.
 
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Has anyone on here read Glamorama? It's actually one of my favorite novels period. I'm not familiar with most of the books previously mentioned here so I don't know if this also applies to any of the other books mentioned yet but Glamorama is a novel specifically about the 1990s and how people back then were super obsessed with celebrity. Supermodels especially.

It satirizes the negative impact our collective worship of the famous has on ours lives by
portraying supermodels as terrorists secretly engaged in a international conspiracy.
 
BrokenBoy said:
Has anyone on here read Glamorama? It's actually one of my favorite novels period. I'm not familiar with most of the books previously mentioned here so I don't know if this also applies to any of the other books mentioned yet but Glamorama is a novel specifically about the 1990s and how people back then were super obsessed with celebrity. Supermodels especially.

It satirizes the negative impact our collective worship of the famous has on ours lives by
portraying supermodels as terrorists secretly engaged in a international conspiracy.
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I liked Less Than Zero, so it looks like another to put on my list. Ellis sure dissects our consumerist, hedonist, society.
 
Raggamuffin said:
I used to like adventure books back in the 90's in school. The Advanced Fighting Fantasy series were something me and a friend used to buy, and share with one another:

Advanced Fighting Fantasy - Wikipedia

Ed
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The adventure books I liked are:
Ambrose - Nothing Like It in the World (The transcontinental railroad)
Ambrose - Undaunted Courage (Lewis & Clark)
Alexandria - The Endurance (Shackleton's failed expedition and the fierce will to survive)
McPhee - Rising From the Plains (The History and Geology of the Wyoming Rockies. Reading this I understand why the hiking trails into these mountains start at 9,000 feet and go up from there.)
 
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