Thanks Jean, putting these books on my list.

There's a similar but more pop culture and dragons and stuff, "There will be Dragons" by John Ringo.

I have to agree with the people who didn't like the books, Stirling is an irritating and mediocre author and he really, really needs to get over himself.

I don't give a d*mn what he thinks about christians and the part where the SCA guy beats two trained soldiers* and how America died was just stupid. And Stirling's bizzare S&M Lesbian fetish is just disgusting, but get this: From what I've seen and heard, he doesn't think very much of gay men.

* We were discussing this topic on another site and a guy who'd served in the US Army said that he and his buddies would have torn right through the SCA guys, especially if the SCA guys had been between them and food ;)

It also annoyed me how, people went: "Oh no, OMG, the lights are gone, let's all adopt fuedalism."

Well, I'm wishing Patrick saved me from myself earlier ... I'm 200 pages into the first book in the second trilogy, with barely the beginning of a plot, and we're back to the Bobsey-twins-speaking-'Elvish'-in-the-forest again ... (what was that about time that can never be got back?).

I think we need a *sigh* emoticon ...

Trying to analize the devices and conventions the author uses to move the story along is pretty pointles. You guys are starting to sound like Sci-fi geeks. "My fourth edition technical manual (with collectors edition hologram slip cover) cleary states the USS Pocket Protector gets its warp power from a plasma boosted flux capacitor in the 50,000 jigawatt range. Therefore there's no way Captain Awesome Hairdo and his crew could have outmanuvered the attacking poopy head class frigate in season two, episode twelve, scene eight. It's just not cannon."
:lol:

The only accurate thing I see in books like these is the value of community being emphasized. If our world were to truly breakdown as some of these fantasies portray, the only way to survive would be to pool your availble resources and abilities. The lone wolf road warrior type wouldn't stand a chance.

If you like alternate reality/fantasy type pulp then I'd recommend Robert Adams work, The Horseclans, etc. I read the first Horseclans book when I was bed ridden with pnuemonia as a child. He kept using very specific terms to describe bits of arms and armor and it actually gave me the motivation to educate myself, just so I could understand the terminology he was using.

Not that I've ever been guilty of such myself...........not me. ;) :p

Kaor!
The only books I have read are the Draka and Lords of Creation series with a few chapters from the Peshawar Lancers.You know that a writer can lapse and not all their works are equal to each other, Burroughs should have skipped some of his and concentrated on his core series instead.
Personaly I like science fiction but only the serious and mature kind. I have a good grounding in several areas of science and my eight years in the U. S. Army as an infantryman gives me a reasonable perspective on what I read within those subjects.
A lot of SF in the movies and television is nothing but mindless fantasy dramatic opera in my opinion, churned out by the entertainment media culture to the masses. I guess the best we can hope for are good writers that can maintain some level of integrity in their work and I admit being rather picky in what I like.

R.E. Howard ,Keneth Bulmer ( Dray prescot ) H.beam Piper , Tolkien , Frank Herbert , Larry Niven ,Brian Daley ( Coromonde series was interesting) , Moorcock , Lin Carter, H. G. Wells, Sprague DeCamp, Anne McCaffrey ( yes, her abuse of science is legendary but she had some entertaining work) John Norman ( his early Gor books were good) and several others.

Someone mentioned that they like sci-fiabout sending modern folks back in history, who actually know how to do stuff. To you I recommend the 1632 series (also known as The Ring of Fire). It's about modern Americans who get thrown back into the middle of Germany during the 30 Years War, and decide to make a new American republic in the middle of Europe, 150 years ahead of schedule. Some of the authors in the series are better than others, but most of them I found pretty entertaining. I think you can find the first two books free online (to get you hooked enough to find or buy the others).
I read the Dies the Fire series. A lot of it was pretty silly. Some of it was pretty interesting. The books did get progressively worse, though. The tone changed quite a bit after the third book, with a new protagonist and everything. Regarding religion, it was interesting that the author chose to have the Catholics and the Mormons survive rather than the Evangelicals. I always wondered if that was simply a comment on how well organized the author thinks the former two religious communities are versus the latter. (I'm always flattered when in post-apocalyptic fiction people assume that all Mormons are hoarding food and supplies. We are supposed to, but not all of us do it very well. And it's more for the personal hard times like losing a job than it is for preparing for the end of the world.) But then Wicca becomes a major world religion through quite a series of coincidences, and the Tolkienesque stuff was pretty over the top for me at least, even with the idea that society is rebuilt on earlier models of government.
I tried the Draka series, but didn't make it very far into the first novel. It just didn't grab me like I thought it might.