[HN Gopher] Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but d...
___________________________________________________________________
Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely
should read
Author : bwb
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-10-28 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shepherd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shepherd.com)
| bwb wrote:
| Author Brian Guthrie shares some of his favorites and happy to
| see that I have only read one of these.
| freetonik wrote:
| One of "you may never heard of" sci-fi books I can recommend is
| The City & the City by China Mieville. Perhaps not traditional
| science fiction, but so original and strange, it's beautiful.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Seconded. One of those books that gives you a crisp metaphor
| for something powerful you might not have noticed we all do,
| thereby letting you observe yourself do it and describe it to
| others. Best read _tabula rasa_.
| defrost wrote:
| Good book and one with a solid BBC adaption into a four part
| mini series (2018)
|
| https://thetvdb.com/series/345091-show
| freetonik wrote:
| It's remarkable that they decided to adopt it for TV,
| because it's one of those novels that's very hard to
| imagine to put onto a screen. The whole book felt, to me,
| like I'm in a dream.
| s-lambert wrote:
| Embassytown, also by China Mieville, _is_ traditional sci-fi
| and really good as well.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Weirdly, The City & the City reminds me of Martin Cruz Smith's
| books like _Gorky Park_ set in the Soviet Union (or more
| recently post-Soviet countries) in that it is a police
| procedural set in a culture the reader presumably doesn 't
| understand and so the reader is interested in learning how this
| society functions as much as they are interested in seeing the
| mystery solved. The difference of course is the societies in
| The City & the City are of course fictional.
| interludead wrote:
| What aspects of the culture in The City & the City stood out
| to you the most?
| jhbadger wrote:
| Mostly just the explanations of how the two cities could
| function as separate entities while physically occupying
| the same land through the use of legally mandated
| "useeing". The author goes into detail how this works --
| obviously at one level people see the people, vehicles,
| etc. from the other city or they'd run into them, but on a
| conscious level they act as if they don't exist.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I dislike both this and Mieville's Embassytown since in my
| opinion both set out to mislead me and then do a reveal which
| amounts "I misled you about what's really going on" and while
| that works for a stand up comic beat (e.g. Taylor Tomlinson "he
| cheated on me ... in my head") I don't want to read a whole
| novel this way.
|
| Perdido Street Station and Kraken I really enjoyed, but I
| almost threw the book across the room for Embassytown once I
| realised.
| Annual wrote:
| As someone who hated The City and The City to the point of
| never reading Mieville again, I appreciate the warning for
| Embassytown. I sometimes consider reading his stuff again but
| I was genuinely offended by the trick in City. Like... I paid
| money for this? No. It felt like contempt for his audience.
| Annual wrote:
| I hated it because it felt like a smug trick. Like, I know you
| ordered steak and paid for steak, but I'm serving you a salad
| because it's healthier for you, and if you complain it's just
| your lack of taste.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Greg Egan's _Permutation City_ is #1 for me. It 's not only a
| good read, it may be the most important work of late 20th century
| philosophy. (Among other things, it _completely_ anticipated
| Tegmark 's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, and totally obviates
| Bostrom's latest work.)
| netdevnet wrote:
| I am surprised there was no Egan book in the list. He's in the
| top 5 of hard sci fi authors you should definitely read
| freetonik wrote:
| The list starts with Project Hail Mary, which is as far from
| Egan as I can imagine on the science fiction spectrum.
| bwb wrote:
| We've got 10 lists with him as well:
| https://shepherd.com/search/author/1445
|
| You can see how they connected to him there too.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I think Egan is much better known than most (if not all) of
| the authors in the list. I've heard of Andy Weir and Hugh
| Howey, but not the particular books listed by them.
| Conversely I've heard about Permutation City quite often.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Reading Egan's works elevated my standard for what constitutes
| a truly great novel: "If you don't _change_ as a person after
| having it read it, it wasn 't that great."
|
| Permutation City especially made me see the universe and my
| part in it in a different light, or perhaps casting a shadow
| onto it. I'll never be the same person as I was before I had
| read it.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Roadside picnic is a favourite of mine. I'm currently learning
| Russian to reread it in the original Russian. But the translation
| is very good and done by the authors themselves.
| freetonik wrote:
| I didn't know they've translated the book themselves! I often
| feel like translations done by other people are missing
| something fundamental of the spirit of the original. I'm
| wondering if there is a list of books "translated into language
| X by the author" somewhere.
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| The same thing occured to me a while back. There is this
| wikipedia page about it but I didn't get much further than
| that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-translation
| jhbadger wrote:
| The problem is that translation isn't just about "capturing
| the spirit of the original" but realizing where to keep
| idioms and like from the original and where things need to be
| changed to make the translation less clunky. This isn't
| something just anyone can do. That's why people like Umberto
| Eco, who was more or less fluent in English, still preferred
| professional translators like William Weaver to translate his
| Italian books into English.
| wazoox wrote:
| It's really one of the most haunting books I've ever read.
| "Hard to be a God" is also very poignant.
| eatonphil wrote:
| The Dead Mountaineer's Inn is also good. A classic whodunnit
| with a twist.
| wazoox wrote:
| I found it not as good, and somewhat predictable. Its
| quirky humour didn't work on me, that's probably why I
| didn't like it as much.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Fair enough! It was my intro to the Strugatsky brothers
| and I was hooked.
| wazoox wrote:
| On the other hand it's not as soul crushing as the other
| two mentioned :)
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4711854-the-machine-stop...
|
| 35 page short story and eerily reminiscent of today's world.
|
| It was written in _1909_.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I keep on meaning to get around to a E. M. Forster _Short
| Fiction_ compilation for Standard Ebooks. Maybe this will tip
| me over the edge.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/th...
| hnmullany wrote:
| These are all painfully mid reads. (The alien in Hail Mary is
| about as alien as a rival fraternity brother.)
|
| If you want real alien aliens, read Blindsight (Peter Watts).
| berkes wrote:
| > the alien in Hail Mary is about as alien as a rival
| fraternity brother
|
| You put that as critique, and I understand that. But for me,
| this was actually the strength of the story. By making the
| differences smaller, they are more focused, stronger, and give
| opportunity to explore them in depth.
|
| Same thing I like about many of the Black Mirror stories: often
| they tweak, or magnify, just one parameter of our realistic,
| current (western) lives and then explore the differences that
| would bring.
| tialaramex wrote:
| But Black Mirror is _about_ us whereas the frustrating thing
| with depictions of aliens is that they 're not us, that's
| their defining feature.
| berkes wrote:
| Stories about aliens aren't meant to describe aliens as
| theoretically correct as possible. Obviously.
|
| Aliens are hardly ever more than a tool to get a
| perspective. To look at humans, societies, structures etc.
| They are also stories _about us_.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In a story like "The Day After the Day the Martians Came"
| sure, the purpose of the aliens (Martians in that case)
| is purely to tell us about us.
|
| But you don't really need aliens for that, there are
| several Black Mirror stories which do roughly the same
| perspective trick, particularly "Men Against Fire".
| Aliens offer an opportunity to explore something quite
| different and it's always disappointing to see them used
| as something less interesting.
|
| It's like FTL. FTL is actually exactly equivalent to time
| travel, and so it's disappointing, though commonplace to
| see SF which decides to do FTL but no time travel (or
| indeed vice versa though that's less common)..
|
| I like Culture novels just fine, I like Greg Egan's
| Amalgam setting (with aliens who are basically just us
| again, although a bit less obviously so than a Star Trek
| alien) just fine, but, in both cases I'm a little
| disappointed. If your aliens aren't even as weird as the
| _Octopus_ is (and we have no idea what the fuck is going
| on with an Octopus) then you 're not really trying are
| you?
| lynx23 wrote:
| Beware, you'll also get Vampires in space, which is so silly,
| it kills the book.
| AlphaAndOmega0 wrote:
| They're a better depiction of Vampires than most, with Watts
| doing everything he could to make them biologically plausible
| (that can only go so far).
|
| That being said, I found the way they were "shackled" to be
| ridiculous. If you've got superintelligent and _superstrong_
| predatory hominids running around, you have no reason to have
| them physically free even if you put the medical safeguards
| in place. Break their spines and sedate them when not in use!
|
| Spoilers:
|
| It seems weird to me that a society with other posthumans and
| intelligent AGI would be bowled over quite so easily by the
| vampires, but oh well.
| lynx23 wrote:
| They still killed the book for me. The underlying idea (no
| spoilers) is absolutely great sci-fi. All this useless
| blast-from-the-past did was make the story look silly to
| me. Such a shame. He could have written a great sci-fi book
| without superstition, alas, he apparently didn't want to be
| talken serious....
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| disagree, the vampires are mostly abstracted away with hand
| wavy "we couldn't possibly understand how they think",
| interesting concept, the aliens are more interesting
| though, and echopraxia was a bit of a dud.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I found suspension of disbelief very easy, just like most SF.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I read both of those. Peter Watts is a bit of an acquired
| taste. Not for everyone. I actually enjoyed it but it's a weird
| one. Genetically modified people that are effectively vampires,
| a main protagonist with severe brain damage, etc. There's a
| sequel to this too if you enjoy this.
|
| The Hail Mary project was actually enjoyable. Andy Weir peaked
| with the Martian his debut novel and this is kind of in the
| same style. Maybe not as good but enjoyable.
| interludead wrote:
| Peter Watts really explores the concept of alien intelligence
| in a way that challenges our perceptions
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Thanks! I really like it when authors shock my neurons with
| ideas they never even came close to entertain.
|
| Alien aliens are always rare in sci-fi books. Although I really
| struggled with the octopodes in Children of Ruin, so I'm not
| sure if I'm ready yet.
|
| Can someone please suggest books with novel, really alien forms
| of life, social structures, etc.?
| Zardoz89 wrote:
| Diaspora by Greg Egan.
| Annual wrote:
| I vaguely remember The Gods Themselves by Asimov being a
| strong contender here, but it's been decades since I read it.
|
| Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" series had a
| story towards the end that blew my tiny little teenaged mind
| back in the 90's.
|
| Octavia Butler, of course. Xenogenesis.
| ABraidotti wrote:
| I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two
| prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and
| they were all memorable but frustrating.
|
| Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments
| but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every
| page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which
| makes his books readable, but he has zero character
| development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli
| and solve problems, but don't change over time.
|
| Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot
| juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots
| were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to
| resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly
| confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came
| out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot
| elements.
|
| Watts Reddit AMA:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...
|
| Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is
| enjoyable if you liked that in his books:
| https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I loved both of those books and their depictions of 'alien',
| each for their own reasons.
|
| Project Hail Mary is more... warm and fuzzy, but then one
| doesn't read Peter Watts for warm and fuzzy...
| Annual wrote:
| Blindsight was the only sci Fi book I ever read that had
| citations used non-ironically.
| woleium wrote:
| Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is the most alien alien i have ever
| read. I read the old translation, but there is a new one now
| (2011 by Bill Johnston ) direct from polish rather than via
| french first
| tialaramex wrote:
| Golem XIV also gets at the fact that an artificial
| intelligence needn't be anything like us either. The titular
| Golem is capable of communicating with us but finds the
| experience very frustrating because we're so very stupid,
| while the perhaps even more intelligent Honest Annie doesn't
| communicate with humans and is postulated to treat them the
| same way we treat flies, a nuisance deserving no great
| thought.
| mariusor wrote:
| If you're able to look past the "hard-sci-fi" vampires. I know
| I wasn't.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley is a really great, and
| different read. Totally different world than a lot of sci-fi.
| themadturk wrote:
| It was a difficult book for me, but it was worth powering my
| way through it.
| _s_a_m_ wrote:
| The problem with Project Hail Mary is that the audio book is good
| but the book is not. First read the book and then listen to the
| audio book and you know what I mean.
| closewith wrote:
| That's interesting. I found Project Hail Mary to be once of the
| most disappointing second novels ever written and am surprised
| at its reception. Is the audiobook meaningfully different?
| _s_a_m_ wrote:
| Yeah I also didn't like the book at all, it read like a cash
| grab. However, just listen to a sample of the audio book,
| it's just hilarious how much effort Ray put into making the
| characters become alive. Certain significantly improving the
| lack of writing, of course it can't fix the writing.
| bwb wrote:
| Please be kind; being an author is an incredibly hard
| career, and people do it for the love of creating and
| sharing a story. It is not a cash grab, and if you don't
| like his writing style, just don't read his books. Books
| are deeply personal and no reason to make a personal attack
| because it isn't a match for your desired book style.
| bwb wrote:
| I liked it, he has his own style, and I love the
| "productivity porn" vibe of it. Sometimes I need that in this
| wild world.
| mariusor wrote:
| For pedantry's sake, "Project Hail Mary" is not Weir's second
| novel. I think "Artemis" followed after The Martian. It's a
| story set on the Moon with a strong female character, but I
| can't remember much else about it. :D
| lynx23 wrote:
| I am curious, is the audio book abridged and the book far too
| long? Or what else could it be?
| _s_a_m_ wrote:
| In my opinion Andy Weir is not a very good writer anyways, he
| is ok. When the story is interesting enough that is typically
| fine, like in The Martian. Hail Mary is too long certainly,
| characters a little flat, however, Ray can fix the flat
| characters in the audio book a little with his good voice
| acting.
| progbits wrote:
| Without getting into spoilers, the very high quality
| narration makes the story better.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I also found the film of _The Martian_ way better than the
| book. I got so sick of reading about concentrations of gases
| and stuff in painful detail. So yeah, good story, but not so
| good writing. If _Project Hail Mary_ is anything like that then
| I 'll give it a miss.
| dagw wrote:
| If you didn't like the 'painful detail' in The Martian, you
| will positively hate Project Hail Mary. Much more of the
| 'painful detail' as you call it with much less interesting
| characters. If you loved The Martian (like I did) and enjoy
| lots of random science-ish tangents and pseudo-engineering
| problem solving, you'll find stuff to like in this book. But
| it is a too long, worse written version of The Martian, with
| a less interesting protagonist.
|
| Weir tries to make the story more interesting by adding an
| extra mystery to solve (the main character wakes up with
| amnesia and has to piece together where he is and what he has
| to do), but to me it really didn't work.
| justinclift wrote:
| Can't really take the recommendation for Beacon 23 seriously
| after seeing the 1/2 half of the first tv episode. That was utter
| crap and nonsensical. :(
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I didn't know there was a tv series for this one. I read the
| book ages ago; pretty OK. I wouldn't judge it by any failed
| attempt to put it out on TV.
|
| The same author also wrote the silo series. He tends to push
| his books out in small portions but it's effectively a trilogy.
| The series on Apple TV for that is actually pretty good. I
| reread the books after completing season 1 a few months ago.
| justinclift wrote:
| Thanks. Tried to get into the series too, but end up just
| reading the summary of things and the whole series just
| sounds depressing. :(
| bwb wrote:
| Ya TV adaptations can fail for so many reasons that a book
| succeeds at. I've read so many books that when translated to a
| visual medium fail because of the people involved, see Wheel of
| Time as that one was so bad...
| justinclift wrote:
| A _good_ sci-fi book is Birds of Paradise by Rudolf Kremers, who
| was one of the developers for the PS3 game Eufloria back in the
| day:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8XVRQBC
| musha68k wrote:
| More modern / post cyberpunk maybe but would add Infinite Detail
| by Tim Maughan. I really liked the premise and the organic feel
| vs a lot of other science fiction.
|
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374175412/infinitedetail
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Another set is CS Lewis' Space Trilogy
|
| Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength
|
| Note that like a lot of CS Lewis, there is a very heavy Christian
| view.
| bwb wrote:
| We've had 5 authors actually pick that one as a favorite, and
| they connected it to some really interesting book lists:
| https://shepherd.com/book/that-hideous-strength/book-lists
|
| I love seeing something like this as it is awesome where their
| minds go for what other books they connect it with...
| Terr_ wrote:
| While not Sci-Fi, I found that _The Screwtape Letters_ could
| actually be enjoyed even from a fairly agnostic perspective, as
| an allegorical dive into human cognitive foibles.
|
| Though I suspect Lewis would be unhappy to hear that,
| especially since he wrote a fourth-wall-adjacent bit about
| devils preferring that humans don't believe in them.
| mrob wrote:
| Lewis was clearly intelligent and well educated in the
| humanities, but I don't think he ever cared much about science.
| IMO, the Space Trilogy is good writing but bad sci-fi.
| themadturk wrote:
| Of the three, I always loved _That Hideous Strength_ the most.
| The first two, which I think are good, were too much like
| travelogs, but the third had a pretty decent story.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Let me throw my hat in the ring. I'd recommend Grass by Sheri S
| Tepper. It felt fresh and original in a way few science fiction
| books are, the characters are really well done and it just stays
| with you. Despite being the first book of a trilogy, it works
| well on its own.
| ms_katonic wrote:
| Yes!!! I would also recommend anything by Zenna Henderson.
| hailpixel wrote:
| I love this genre, and there is such a plethora of interesting
| reads. I think one of the most interesting, in terms of
| presenting technology's role in varied societies, is A Fire Upon
| the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Great read if you are bored of the
| classic space opera.
| lapcat wrote:
| > A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
|
| It's a great book, but everyone has heard of it already.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I was talking to a fairly avid scifi reader who hadn't heard
| of the book before.
|
| It's always someone's day to be one of 10,000.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| globular-toast wrote:
| I really like that, but I definitely thought _A Deepness in the
| Sky_ was even better despite probably being considered
| "classic space opera".
| arethuza wrote:
| And the prequel _A Deepness in the Sky_ is even better with
| very alien aliens (and a neat way of hiding that alien-ness
| from readers) and some very nasty antagonists with truly
| terrifying technology in the form of "focus".
|
| Mind you, Vinge's _Rainbows End_ is also really good and set in
| the near future with what may be an emerging AGI as a key
| character.
| anotherpaul wrote:
| I really like the shepherd.com way of curating the
| recommendation. Browsing trough books and picking something to
| read has become much easier this way.
|
| One scifi book that was very impactful to me is the black cloud
| by Fred Hoyle. It's such a well thought out story and has held up
| remarkably well for a 50 year old novel.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks so much, that is super motivating for me :)
|
| I am working to really improve genre and topic accuracy this
| winter. Right now it is a mess. The data we pull in from
| publishers is so messy. They don't know how to use the BISAC
| classification system and they often mislabel sci-fi (among
| others). I have a big upgrade coming to improve both our
| systems (we use NLP/ML on the topic side).
| bwb wrote:
| hi all, founder of Shepherd here :)
|
| If you want to share your 3 fav reads of the year, you can do
| that here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads
|
| You get a cool page like this ->
| https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb
|
| Plus, it goes into our "best books of 2024" voting ->
| https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024
|
| I am slowly getting more into place on this website, I have been
| working on it for 3.5 years now.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The SF Masterworks series is a good source of forgotten classics
| in amongst the many super popular picks:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks
| daoboy wrote:
| The Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor.
|
| These books aren't anything that will change your life, but
| they're well written and a lot of fun.
| bwb wrote:
| This is one of my all-time favorite series. I laugh so much
| reading them, and the later books go heavy into really
| interesting alien species. Authors love them as well:
| https://shepherd.com/search/book/38814
|
| Have you read any Peter Hamilton? He is another fav of mine.
| daoboy wrote:
| I have not read Peter Hamilton, but always looking for new
| good books. Thanks for the recommendation!
| bwb wrote:
| I'd start with Pandora's Star, they are HUGE in scope, so
| its a big book but worth it IMO.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| I'd start with the Night's Dawn trilogy, I've read most
| PFH except for his last few and those are my ATFs.
| themadturk wrote:
| Night's Dawn was the first Hamilton I read...and I've
| read it once or twice since.
| alphan0n wrote:
| Just finished a very good audiobook, Fractal Noise by Christopher
| Paolini and started another, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by the
| same author.
| idoubtit wrote:
| It's strange to start a list of "books that you may never have
| heard of" with a novel which is a nominee to the 2020 Hugo
| Awards. I suppose that most of the regular readers of sci-fi
| haver heard of it.
|
| A nitpick about the third recommandation with "robots modeled on
| Karel Capek's designs". I suppose that they have not read Capek's
| novels. His robots were not pure machines, they were made from a
| biological substrate. In a way, they were closer to golems than
| to what we're now calling robots.
|
| If you want to read really different and lesser known novels,
| Karel Capek's are a good choice. I did not enjoy "R.O.R." much
| except for his surprising concept of robots, but I highly
| recommend "War with the newts".
| themadturk wrote:
| Yeah, _Project Hail Mary_ was the only one of the three I 'd
| ever heard of. Still, it was a great book (especially since I
| read it right on the heels of reading _Artemis_ , which was
| only "okay").
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| Credit for not assuming to know the reader by saying something
| like "Sci-fi books that you've never heard of!". I now routinely
| block youtube channels that do such things.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Actually I made a website that's mostly sci-fi books I've read
|
| https://mnky9800n.github.io/booklist/
|
| It uses a google spreadsheet as a database so you just need to
| update the spreadsheet and it adds a book to the website.
|
| I have a life goal to read every thing written by Phillip k dick
| as well as every book on David Pringle's 100 best sci-fi list.
| Some of the books are hard to find though. Like I've been
| searching for years for the peoples republic of Antarctica.
|
| I would suggest the following novels if you haven't read them yet
|
| Gene wolfe shadow of the torturer series aka book of the new sun
|
| A scanner darkly by pkd, this, imo, is his best book even though
| all his books are compelling. But I think also, yes we can build
| him, its amazing because it really shows off pkd ability to come
| up with a wild premise but that's simply the universe the
| characters live in and they don't really care about that premise
| they have other problems.
|
| Herovits world by malzburg, this book is hilarious and about how
| you must be a terrible narcissist to believe someone should read
| your fiction especially science fiction
|
| The Brian Daley series about Han Solo, these are super
| interesting because they were written in 1979 so before empire
| strikes back came out. So Daley basically only had Star Wars to
| go on to create a whole trilogy of novels starring Han Solo. I
| think these are probably my favourite Star Wars novels because
| they have such little constraints.
| bwb wrote:
| Nice, I like the photos, classic covers are so beautiful :)
|
| Added the Brian Daley series about Solo to my list, I'd never
| heard of those!
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I should reread them. They are so much fun. I'm the only
| person I know who has ever read them. Although that's not
| saying much I suppose haha.
| mariusor wrote:
| After I finished the two Frank Kittridge novels from S.J. Morden
| I was surprised I haven't heard of him until now.
|
| They start as a "The Martian" cribbed story, but the development
| arc takes in better places. It was less geek/efficiency porn and
| more character development and required less strain on my
| suspension of disbelief overall.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| > Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I've been
| fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and
| intriguing concepts.
|
| Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing
| concepts"? This sentence says nothing.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It's a stealth ad for the author's book. If you think the
| advertising copy was written by an llm, I'm pretty sure that
| says you won't like his book :-)
| bwb wrote:
| It's a way for new or unknown authors to authentically
| connect with readers by sharing five books they love on a
| topic, theme, or mood they are passionate about or experts
| in. Readers get fantastic personalized picks by super
| readers, and authors get to bump into some readers who might
| be more interested in them and their books.
|
| Authors face an immense battle to get noticed, and unless
| something is done, we will only have big brand-name authors
| who can afford to write full-time. The internet has really
| consolidated books into a winner-takes-all market, and I want
| to do what I can to help widen that so new authors have a
| chance.
|
| If you are curious, here are my goals for readers:
| https://build.shepherd.com/p/what-is-shepherds-mission-
| for-r...
|
| Here are my goals for authors:
| https://support.shepherd.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/4406508361617...
|
| And here is why I am building Shepherd for myself and others:
| https://build.shepherd.com/p/why-am-i-building-shepherd-
| ie-w...
|
| Hope that helps; happy to answer questions :)
| bwb wrote:
| Gosh, no, we have a strict anti-AI policy, and every author we
| work with agrees to an honor statement that they will always
| write everything themselves.
|
| I've caught a few dishonest authors, and they get banned from
| the website forever.
| larry314 wrote:
| Nunquam by Lawrence Durrell. Not generally heard of because you
| have to read Tunc first which is not science fiction. Both are
| great and stylistic masterpieces. Numquam is my favorite robot
| book along with Caves of Steel.
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