What are the best current and past SF Mysteries?

[seawasp]

Obviously I know about Asimov's work in the genre -- the Wendell Urth mysteries, the Robot Novels -- but I'm interested in both older and newer mystery novels with an SF (or possibly even fantasy) setting/major element.

These should be fairly classic mysteries -- i.e., the solving of a crime or mystery should be the major focus of the story, not merely an adjunct to some other plotline, and the solution should rely on the same kind of intellectual investigation and deduction/induction that we see in typical non-SF mysteries.

Comments

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

Randall Garrett, especially the Lord Darcy mysteries (fantasy, but with magic following natural laws) but some of his science fiction short stories are also mysteries.

Lois Bujold's _Memory_ is spectacular and the mystery elements actually take center stage for most of the book. Some of the rest of the series (_Cetaganda_, _Komarr_, _Diplomatic Immunity_ also have a lot of focus on figuring out what's happened.)

George Effinger, _When Gravity Fails_ -- cyberpunk, depressing, but good

I adore Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, but they're basically historical fiction mixed with mystery, with fantasy as a seasoning rather than a main ingredient.

Some of the Philip K. Dick books are mysteries. Philip K. Dick's style isn't really one of the ones I like, but I know people who think he's the best thing out there.

Hitting google for ideas yields two other people's best mystery/sf works:

http://io9.com/5526900/top-10-greatest-science-fiction-detective-novels-of-all-time
http://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-mystery-books/

And a lot of disordered lists, of which I like
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/307996-looking-for-sci-fi-mystery-crossovers
the best.

[djonn]

I'll second the Lord Darcy material.

Robert Sawyer's The Golden Fleece is, if memory serves, essentially a locked-starship mystery.

TSR, of all places, published a fascinating novel by Nick O'Donohoe called Too Too Solid Flesh involving a murder mystery taking place in conjunction with a robot-populated production of Hamlet.

On the fantasy side, Marshall Ryan Maresca has a novel recently out (A Murder of Mages, I believe), that's essentially a fantasy police procedural. Others mining that territory include Simon Green (the "Hawk and Fisher" novels) and Keith DeCandido (a series of stories beginning with "Dragon Precinct").

Edward D. Hoch, best known as an astoundingly prolific writer of short mystery stories, published a couple of SF/mystery novels -- The Fellowship of the Hand and The Transvection Machine, if my memory serves.

[seawasp]

I have Too Too Solid Flesh, as it happens. Been a long time since I remembered that one!

[q99.livejournal.com]

Memory is what I came in here to post, you beat me to it :)

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Seconding Memory and the earlier novella The Mountains of Mourning. In the classics category there's Asimov's Caves of Steel. More recently I've enjoyed autopope's Halting State and Neptune's Brood (though I got annoyed at Rule 43 too much to enjoy it.)

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Timothy Zahn's Night Train to Rigel, first in the Quadrail series. It's got quite a country house murder feel - cast isolated on a month-long train trip between stars - with systematic investigation. The succeeding books in the series become more espionage/conspiracy, but the first is a pretty good mystery.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Nobody's mentioned Larry Niven's Gil the ARM stories yet? Yes, we know you already know of them; I remain surprised that they weren't brought up as an ingrained knee-jerk style reflex.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime".

[shana.livejournal.com]

There's the bestselling futuristic police procedurals of J. D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts.) And at least some of Charlaine Harris' books involve mystery plots. (She started out as a mystery writer before going fantastical.)

[khavrinen.livejournal.com]

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Retrieval Artist" series is what comes to my mind for SF mysteries, and Daniel Hood's "Fanuilh" series on the Fantasy side. [ Although, admittedly, 20 years ago may not fit your definition of "current" in the case of the latter. Dang it, now I'm feeling old. ]

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

My guess is that you're already familiar with Hal Clement's Needle (1950). Symbiotic amoeba-like alien detective, hiding within teenager, must enlist his host's aid in tracking down symbiotic amoeba-like alien criminal, concealed within some other inhabitant of Earth.

Like Asimov, Clement was responding to John Campbell's assertion that writing a fair science-fiction mystery is impossible.

[kengr]

The sequel "Through the Eye of the Needle" if I recall correctly, isn't as good, but is still ok. In fact, I think I read it first.

[iskander9999.livejournal.com]

I strongly recommend Alastair Reynolds' The Prefect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prefect

A few of his other books might also qualify, for example Terminal World and Century Rain, but I don't think of them as pure police procedurals.

[gary-jordan.livejournal.com]

"Music and Murder" and the NCIS stories in the "Ring of Fire" series should count, yes?

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Damn, I thought I left a post here days ago.

Finder by Emma Bull is the book that leaps to mind out of the set of books books I adore and that haven't been mentioned yet.

Alas, necrothreadia!

[seawasp]

You can't call it "necrothreadia" unless the thread's been inactive more than a year. Preferably more than a decade.

Thanks!

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Sure I can. It's right up there in plain text. ^_^

For what it's worth, Finder is probably my favourite novel ever.

Urban fantasy (well) before it became a thing, real-feeling people making their way through some pretty trying events the best they can with what they have and what they know, wonderful banter before Buffy was any sort of thing.

Plus them dealing with the aftermath of those events, again, the best they can with what they have.

But then, I read it back in the early-mid 90s, and it may not have aged as well as it lodged itself in my head and my heart.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

I got to this late ^_^ ... but I am surprised no one has mentioned John Stith. Most of his novels have a decent mystery as part of the plot.

I would also recommend John Marshall's 'Yellowthread Street' series [starting with 'Yellowthread Street'] & set in Hong Kong. They are whimsical, fun, at times surreal and IMO worth seeking out. They are one of the few series I sought out in hardback, just for durability. Sadly, since they were written from the 70's through the 90's, they have not really made the jump to electronic media.

I also recommend Barry Hughart's 'Chronicles of Master Li', which is excellent fantasy, mixed with mystery in a well-designed world.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

Daniel Hood did a great series that started with Fanuilh . The series is fantasy based with a Roman feel to it. I really liked those books and should read them again at some point.

The Greg Mandel books by Peter Hamilton are the mystery ones I enjoyed but I can't remember just how heavy mystery they were.