Indie SciFi/Fantasy Recommendations
Here are some SF/F recommendations by independent authors:
Worm – Wildbow https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
Superheroes and supervillians and a worlds-ending danger. The opening chapters are pretty rough but get past them and he finds his stride.
Pact – Wildbow http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/
Pale – Wildbow http://palewebserial.wordpress.com/
Fantasy with the viewpoint character dropped into things and having to figure them out to survive. I haven’t read Pale, the sequel, yet but Wildbow says that it was fun to write, so that’s a good sign.
Collective Thinking – Tower Curator https://www.towercurator.com/collective-thinking/
Is the world what it is or what we make of it?
Bitter – mooderino/V Moody http://royalroadl.com/fiction/10293 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078NK1GTV?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin
Isolated girl sneaks into a virtual world and levels up her life.
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis – mooderino/V Moody https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/5288/how-to-avoid-death-on-a-daily-basis
A group of young adults are pulled into a fantasy world. Main character is a jerk, but he’s a pragmatic, survivor jerk. My only complaint is that the tenth book, the series finale, isn’t finished. He started it, threw it away, restarted, threw it away, restarted, gave up. Still, it’s good through the nine completed books.
Mother of Learning – nobody103 https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHSJ19J9?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&sr=8-1
Dropped into a time loop. Make the best of it. Recommended. Very highly recommended.
Super Powereds – Drew Hayes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CDM25G?binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_ks_series_rwt_tkin&sr=1-1
Superhero also-rans, made good.
A Wand for Skitter – ShayneT https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-wand-for-skitter-worm-hp-complete.730018/
Fanfiction of Worm and Harry Potter. Very good, better than most original fiction. OK, I’ll admit that that’s damning with faint praise. Many Crowning Moments of Awesome, and a few humorous reactions to those moments.
Francis Porretto
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/fporretto
Couple dozen shortish novels, most of them vaguely tied together by reference to common characters. This hasn’t been a problem; just blerp over unrecognized names. Consistently high quality. Even with the couple that I didn’t much care for (romance genre just isn’t my thing) I could see the craftsmanship.
Bill Quick
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=william+quick&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3AW.T.++Quick&s=relevancerank&text=W.T.++Quick&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1
Good suspense/thriller books. I don’t much care for this genre but they’re well done. The older books are notable for predicting technology and social trends decades in advance. When I read Systems I kept going back to the copyright page to confirm that, yes, it was published in 1989. Just one example: After 9/11, Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor was pointed at as evidence that someone had thought of flying a plane into a building. Well, Bill beat Clancy by five years.
William Palafox
I’ve read only Sands of the Undead and started another (don’t recall why I stopped reading; busy with work, probably) and was impressed. Genre shifted a couple times, so what it’s about isn’t what you think it’s about.
PS Power
https://pspowerbooks.com/
I have mixed feelings about this. He’s wildly imaginative and was spitting out a short novel every month for years … but the little mistakes drove me up a wall, especially in the earlier works. Also, his series tend to converge into one big universe and you need to read all earlier works to follow what’s going on. Still, they’re creative and mostly enjoyable.
Sarah Hoyt
She’s gone indie so I’m including her here. No introduction should be needed.