Recommend me some sci-fi!

[malthaussen]

38. Lois McMaster Bujold, the Vorkosigen saga.

Lois has won the Hugo for best novel four times (and I have a suspicion she hasn't won it more because the Hugo committee has an unspoken rule to never award more than Heinlein won), and every other award in the business multiple times. The Vorkosigan Saga is space opera of the first order, and fits right into your criterion of "more lighthearted novels." There are over a dozen books in the series, starting with The Warrior's Apprentice. A caveat to that applies, however: the Vorkosigan Saga proper is about the misadventures of Miles Vorkosigan, but there is also a two-novel sorta-prequel that tells the story of his mother, and a couple of other novels in the universe which are only tangentially related to Vorkosigan. There are several omnibus editions that package several of the books in one volume.

Many of Roger Zelazny's other novels are humorous in the same vein in which the Chronicles of Amber are: ie, dark philosophical humor. Lord of Light, And Call Me Conrad (aka This Immortal) and Creatures of Light and Darkness immediately come to mind. Some of his other novels are pretty bleak, though. I personally think A Night in the Lonesome October is one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written, but I'm weird. A love story between a dog and a cat narrated by the dog which is a perpetual homage to the classic horror flicks of old and illustrated by Gahan Wilson is not, as it happens, everyone's cup of tea. Oh, it's also hilarious, however, with a horrible pun on virtually every page.

-- Mal