[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 : 214 points
Date : 2024-10-28 09:45 UTC (1 days 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.
| xarope wrote:
| Wow, must try to watch it. I remember reading The City &
| the City and thinking about how visually it would be...
| different clothes, overlapping murals?
| defrost wrote:
| I have zero idea how healthy these are .. but .. try
| https://ext.to/the-city-and-the-city-s9177/
|
| Best bet looks like: https://ext.to/the-city-and-the-
| city-season-1-complete-720p-...
|
| _If_ you 're in the UK you can watch d/load from the BBC
| hone site via iPlayer _when_ they rotate available again
| (currently not on iPlayer):
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061bd5l
| 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.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I hated PSS, and enjoyed Embassytown. I don't understand
| what's misleading about it.
| rkachowski wrote:
| What's the Embassytown mislead? I read that recently and felt
| it was pretty direct.
| 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.
| rfarley04 wrote:
| My thing about Mieville is that all the books of his I've read
| (Embassytown, Perdido street Station, and the one about trains
| that I didn't realize was pretty YA) felt like the endings
| dissol into B grade action (IMO Stephenson has the same
| problem). Everything starts off surreal and philosophical and
| beautiful and then just fizzles into stuff blowing up
| slothtrop wrote:
| iirc all the books you mentioned have action throughout and
| most of Stephenson is the same
| stormking wrote:
| A book that was even made into a TV miniseries does not fit my
| definition of "you may never heard of".
| rkachowski wrote:
| tbf the BBC does a lot of mid tv miniseries. I don't feel
| many people will know this adaptation outside of fans of the
| book.
| dcminter wrote:
| I too adore that one - when describing it to people I've found
| the term "headfuck police procedural" is the most fitting.
| 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.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Many 'you should read these lists' are just that lists.
| Usually by the author of the list and things they have read
| and think you should too. That they missed something is not
| surprising. Lists like this have an air of authority when
| they usually boil down to 'things I have seen/read and
| like/hate'. I use them as interesting things to go thru to
| see if there is anything I missed.
| 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.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Wow, I also thought of the work as deeply philosophical. I also
| read a bunch of other philosophy, and found that Egan's
| hypothesis overlaps significantly with both Advaita Vedanta and
| Buddhist concept of soul (pali: puggala). Did anybody else
| think the same?
| interludead wrote:
| That's a great pick! Permutation City is definitely a thought-
| provoking read. Egan's exploration of consciousness and reality
| challenges so many assumptions we take for granted.
| abecedarius wrote:
| What's the Bostrom work it obviates? I'd be kind of surprised
| if he never read the Egan -- it was part of the background to
| extropian culture back then.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| "Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World"
|
| A book about what to do with life in the face of boundless
| possibilities, and when just about everything important has
| been figured out. I recall that this was a significant plot
| point in _Permutation City_ -- and Egan answered the question
| more elegantly than Bostrom did.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Thanks. Could be, I haven't read that one.
| cubefox wrote:
| I'm also interested in that remark about Bostrom. What is the
| relation?
| 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 :)
| orbisvicis wrote:
| It inspired _Darker than Black_ which is quite good though not
| a book.
| 0x38B wrote:
| If you're learning to read it, I recommend listening as well. A
| quick Kagi search turned up a fantastic production read by
| Levashiov V. (1).
|
| I can't go without mentioning my favorite reader in Russian.
| Listening to Peter Markin read is unforgettable; his
| performance of Stanislav's "The Invincible" brought the massive
| machinery and energies to life before my eyes (2); Markin also
| read Hyperion by Dan Simmons and Frank Herbert's Dune (3).
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/IAD-ANTvs9Y
|
| 2: https://youtu.be/Ad32oH6Cg4Q
|
| 3: I've nearly memorized Dune in Russian because I love his
| narration so much. He also read The Lord of the Rings - as
| close as we'll get to a Russian Rob Englis, I expect.
| adelmotsjr wrote:
| I'm trying to find a legal copy of the original Russian book,
| but still could not find. Where did you get yours?
|
| That and the original Russian copies of the Metro series..
| dur-randir wrote:
| https://www.litres.ru/, but i'm not sure that you can pay
| with visa/mastercard there now.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I'm not interested in learning Russian at all, but if I ever
| was, I'd want to read Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko.
| 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.
| sevensor wrote:
| Forester's longer fiction is well worth it too. It's been
| years since I read _Howard's End_ and Leonard Bast still
| haunts me.
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| That was so good it convinced me that one correct way to make
| a good sci fi novel is to construct a world and then add one
| _insane_ thing and make it fit.
|
| FWIW, for calibrating recommendations, I tend to prefer
| literary sci fi and end up hating a whole lot of highly-
| praised-online sci fi novels. I really like that novel, and
| Watts' short story that retells _The Thing_. That's all I've
| read of his.
|
| [edit] For further calibration, I'd say the book's strengths
| are efficiency (above-average editing and/or author's taste
| of what to write and what not to); action writing that is
| very much to my taste, being quick and terse and requiring
| close attention to follow it (almost like action-poetry) but
| not actually being unclear; and an excellent core sci-fi
| concept, which I usually don't rate so important an aspect as
| (I think) a lot of sci-fi readers, but in this case it's _so_
| good that it overcomes my usual "well that's nice, but has
| almost nothing to do with whether it's _good_ " attitude
| toward that element. It's weak on characters, but is so busy
| with other things that it's hard to tell whether that's a
| general weakness of the author, or whether that simply didn't
| make it to the page in this case. World-building is
| sufficient, but also kind of not the focus of the story--
| there's plenty there to support the story, but no more.
| 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.
| bodantogat wrote:
| Check out Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
| alphan0n wrote:
| We're going on an adventure!
| 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
| hnmullany wrote:
| I also found Echopraxia extremely confusing and had to read
| that AMA to figure out what the hell I just read.
| 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.
| orbisvicis wrote:
| It would be a stretch to call _Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius_
| science fiction, but like many of Borge 's works is packed
| with references and footnotes.
| 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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The depiction of the alien is something I really liked about
| that book - the concept of having to cooperate with an alien
| species rather than with being subjugated or subjugating, was
| refreshingly new (for me).
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| If you liked that, may I suggest the Foreigner series by C.J.
| Cherryh, or, really, almost anything else by her. But
| especially the Foreigner series.
| 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.
| marliechiller wrote:
| The great thing about opinions, as youve pointed out with
| books, is that you can disregard them. Personally, I
| agree that PHM was not particularly good compared with
| The Martian, but to each their own.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I thought PHM was a fairly well crafted nerdy action
| book, like a classic B-movie catered to a more educated
| audience. It's good at tuning itself to its target
| audience and maintaining interest with pacing and
| interesting, fun ideas.
|
| What's frustrating is the number of people that list it
| as the best sci-fi of the last decade and try to elevate
| it as doing something truly groundbreaking. I don't
| really understand where that's coming from.
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I can understand people preferring to have things narrated
| to them, but I fail to see how narration can make a book
| from something you don't like at all into something you
| like. Ultimately no matter how good the narration is,
| either you like the story or you don't.
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| >worse written version of The Martian, with a less
| interesting protagonist
|
| That is actually impressive if true. Watney was by far the
| worst thing about the book.
| sevensor wrote:
| Weir doesn't write characters, or dialog to speak of, but he
| writes decent prose and well thought out engineering puzzles. I
| enjoy his books for the imaginative exercise.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >the audio book is good but the book is not
|
| I don't know how that can possibly make sense.
| redfern314 wrote:
| It's difficult to explain without spoilers... one of the
| characters feels significantly more fleshed out and real
| because of some artistic choices in the voice acting.
|
| I am not sure I'd go as far as GP and say that the book is
| not good, but this is one of the cases where the audiobook
| feels more like a "production" and not just a book in a
| different medium.
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| I found the audiobook to be a superior experience to reading
| the book as well. It think PHM is an excellent primer on that
| type of SF for someone who hasn't read something like it
| before. My daughter, who never reads hard SF, loved the
| audiobook.
|
| I once commented on Twitter that the Anansi Boys audiobook
| read by Lenny Henry was better than the book. Neil Gaiman
| responded, "I agree".
| tiltowait wrote:
| The performance can make a big difference. There are books I
| like more as audiobooks and books I like more as visual
| books.
|
| I read PHM and didn't love it; my friends who listened to it
| all loved it. Maybe I should give it a try.
| 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. :(
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It is. One of the sequels was one of the times that a scene
| in a book actually made me cry.
|
| If you don't like depressing novels, also stay away from
| Stephen Baxter; I love his novels, but most of them are
| wildly depressing.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Stephen Baxter
|
| Oh. I don't remember those being depressing though it's
| been years since I read any.
|
| Which ones do you remember being that way?
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| In "Of Other Worlds", in a conversation with Brian Aldiss and
| Kinsley Amis (or Martin Amis? Don't remember), he says that
| he had a rocket take Ransom to Mars, but he knew better by
| the time he wrote the second book, and had angels take Ransom
| to Venus. That is, he wasn't trying to write hard science
| fiction; he was trying to write stuff where you were
| confronted with "the unknown". Fantasy and science fiction
| were both aimed at that, but fantasy was better, because you
| didn't have to worry about the rules of actual science.
|
| He also said (quoting from memory): "If I were briefed to
| attack my own books, I would say that though the scientist
| has to be a physicist for the plot, his concern seems to be
| almost exclusively biological. I would also ask whether it
| was credible that such a gas-bag could invent a mousetrap,
| let alone a spaceship. But then, I wanted comedy as well as
| adventure."
| 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.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Now there's a name I hear very rarely...
|
| The best start is Pilgrimage: The Book of the People,
| _especially_ suitable for a moody teen girl...
|
| (And I wish I could know the story of the Bells of Couvron!)
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| Vinge is one of my favorite authors, but the rape-y torture-y
| subplot of _Deepness_ was difficult to endure.
| orbisvicis wrote:
| Huh, I think that features one of the protagonists from _Fast
| Times at Fairmont High_. Set in the early singularity age.
| 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.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I've found the Mandel Trilogy to be entertaining, too.
| Could be thought of as some world-building for the much
| later ND? But not as _epic_. Just three normal
| paperbacks.
| esperent wrote:
| I listened to this series as an audiobook and I enjoyed it a
| lot. I prefer reading to listening but this one worked really
| well and has a great narrator. It's a good series too, simple
| fun with decent jokes and a well paced plot.
| dartharva wrote:
| Seconded, Ray Porter is just too good of a narrator and
| whatever he does almost always tends to be entertaining.
| strofocles wrote:
| I wonder how much "well written" is a matter of taste (I
| thought it wasn't that much). I found "We Are Legion" very
| poorly written although I loved the premise and really wanted
| to read it but couldn't go any further then maybe a quarter of
| it. It also happened to me with Murakami's Kafka On The Shore
| but I blame that on the translation or some cultural impedance
| mismatch.
| 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.
| capecodes wrote:
| To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is my favorite of the last few
| years.
|
| I thought Fractal Noise was meh by comparison
| 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").
| Supermancho wrote:
| I heard there might be a movie adaptation of Project Hail
| Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.
| bwb wrote:
| oh wow, that could be cool! I love seeing more sci-fi come
| to the screen. I really liked The Expanse and wish they had
| kept that going...
| belter wrote:
| Nah, that was just news coverage...You Inners really
| think it was just a show?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It's hard for me to picture Ryan Gosling in the role of
| Ryland Grace.
| zem wrote:
| maybe he's the alien, then!
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| That I would be on board with.
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| It just completed filming, coming out in 2026.
| lancesells wrote:
| I didn't read Project Hail Mary because I read Artemis. Maybe
| I'll have to check it out. :)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| You should - it's significantly better.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I loved The Martian, actively disliked Artemis, and thought
| Project Hail Mary was all right. I liked it overall, but it
| never really clicked for me like The Martian did.
| Definitely worth a read, though! Most seem to have liked it
| more than I did.
| 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.
| bwb wrote:
| One of my hopes for the website is I could help books that
| are lesser known get noticed and "pop." Working on getting
| more to help in that capacity as there are so many good
| books that don't get enough notice. Aiming to come out with
| some features this Winter to help around that.
| tiltowait wrote:
| Though I wouldn't say A Scanner Darkly is my favorite PKD
| novel, I'd have a harder time arguing it isn't his _best_. I
| can see it; it was just too heavy for me to actually enjoy all
| that much.
|
| Ubik is probably my favorite, or (to be cliche) Androids.
|
| PKD says more in single paragraphs than many authors manage to
| say in entire books.
| 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 :)
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| I respect and appreciate what you're doing here, my
| flippant remark was critical of the author's writing style,
| not of your app or its structure.
| bwb wrote:
| Gotcha, and no worries :)
|
| I work with authors daily and know how hard they work to
| create a story for us. Most will never earn back the time
| they put into creating that book. Some books and writing
| are not a match for what we personally like. I just hope
| we can say, "It wasn't a match for what I like," rather
| than accusing an author of using an LLM. I loose my cool
| sometimes as well, and trying to remind myself to stick
| to this code (as I know I create plenty of bad writing
| that I inflict on readers of my blogs).
| 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.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Planetside by Michael Mammay
| bwb wrote:
| I love this series, just about to read the newest entry!
| okkdev wrote:
| Any recommendations for books with good made up
| technology/programming/cyberspace? I love alternate versions of
| the internet and ways to navigate it. I love hearing completely
| original but coherent technical babble with 0 connection to it's
| real world counterpart.
| m463 wrote:
| programming: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by gabrielle
| zevin is about game development.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I'm assuming you like this idea from having read Snow Crash,
| but if not that's exactly what you're looking for
|
| But recommending Neal Stephenson on HN feels a bit like telling
| people to try Dennys as a restaurant recommendation... it seems
| everyone on here has read him before
| lubujackson wrote:
| I recommend The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher. As a kid I
| read The White Mountains blind and the story unfolded in a
| fantastic way for me. It is YA sci-fi and a lot of the themes are
| well-trodden at this point, but the story is strong and clear,
| kind of a coming-of-age-amongst-aliens.
| 0x38B wrote:
| I read the Tripod Trilogy to my little brother and we both
| loved the story. It's one of my favorites to this day. Going
| further back, I also liked Wells's "The First Men in the Moon".
| stevekemp wrote:
| There was a TV series back in the 80s which I really enjoyed -
| I actually checked out the books from the local library after
| having seen the show at the time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods_(TV_series)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The audiobook is excellent.
| orbisvicis wrote:
| Here are some which, though perhaps not the best, haunt my memory
| through unique nostalgia.
|
| _Glory Season_ , David Brin. Ok, this is one of the best. A
| heartrending saga of epic scale.
|
| _Carve the Sky_ , Alexander Jablokov. Scifi feudalism.
|
| _All of an Instant_ , Richard Garfinkle.
|
| _Vita Nostra_ , Marina & Sergey Dyachenko. Though very
| different, it somehow reminds me of _Roadside Picnic_.
|
| _Spin_ , Robert Charles Wilson.
|
| _Schismatrix_ , Bruce Sterling.
|
| _Interstellar Pig_ , William Sleator.
|
| _The Carpet Makers_ , Andreas Eschbach
|
| The _Threshold_ series (Peter Clines) doesn 't really belong in
| this list, but it is excellent and from what I gather, commonly
| overlooked by fans of Lovecraft.
|
| I'd also throw in _The Sparrow_ , Mary Doria Russel, if it wasn't
| so well known already.
|
| In a different vein, if you seek good-old action-packed, kick-ass
| never-ending fun, pick anything by Larry Correia. Even if it
| appears fantasy, it might turn out to be scifi...
| stevekemp wrote:
| Interstellar Pig, was an unexpected addition there. I
| remembered that book immediately from hearing the title!
|
| (On that note I remember a book I read at a similar time, some
| kids took off in a hollow asteroid, for reasons, and there was
| a home-made aiming system for their weapon(s) which involved
| using a cat. I've no idea what it was called or who wrote it.
| But I guess similar young-adult fiction.)
| rsynnott wrote:
| > and there was a home-made aiming system for their weapon(s)
| which involved using a cat
|
| Truth is, of course, sometimes stranger than fiction:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
| dur-randir wrote:
| >Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko
|
| That's far from their best novel, but unfortunately most aren't
| translated into English - there're Polish and sometimes Deutsch
| translations only :(
| Suppafly wrote:
| >That's far from their best novel, but unfortunately most
| aren't translated into English
|
| It's so good, if their others are better it's insane that
| they haven't been translated yet.
| bodantogat wrote:
| Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
| Hospital Station by James White
|
| More recent read, you may have heard of it since it won an award
| - In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
| orbisvicis wrote:
| I find it disappointing how A.E. van Vogt has been almost
| completely forgotten. And to a lesser extent, Poul Anderson.
| ryandvm wrote:
| I want to do book recommendations from the other direction. I
| need to know which books to avoid based on the books people like.
|
| For example, if I hated _The Three Body Problem_ and you loved
| it, then I 'm probably going to hate the other books you love.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| True. I hated the three body problem in fact but I loved the
| expanse (yes both franchises I know from TV). But I read all
| the expanse books. I gave up on the three body problem halfway
| the second book, I just found the story too boring and
| hardball.
|
| Not saying the books are bad but preferences differ indeed.
| __rito__ wrote:
| That's a poor way to find good books?
|
| I liked 3BP, and I also liked Permutation City and
| Cryptonomicon. Yet I met a lot of people who didn't like 3BP,
| but liked the latter ones.
| romanhn wrote:
| Hah, and I liked 3BP but didn't care much for Egan's books
| (excellent ideas, poor writing IMO).
| OnionBlender wrote:
| Just because someone liked a book you hate, doesn't mean you
| will hate the other books they like.
|
| I hated "Sea of Tranquility". I can't stand stupid characters.
|
| "Furtuna" was so bad I made a note to avoid any other books by
| Kristyn Merbeth. The main character is stupid, selfish, and
| short sighted to the detriment of everyone around her.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Just because someone liked a book you hate, doesn't mean you
| will hate the other books they like.
|
| So much this, and it's why recommendation engines mostly
| don't work well, they really have no way to quantify why you
| liked or disliked something.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think it depends on _why_ someone disliked a book.
|
| I liked the first novel in the Three Body Problem series, but
| mostly because it exposed me to a culture I wasn't really
| familiar with; there was a lot about China I didn't know, and
| it was interesting to read about characters who lived and
| breathed that history.
|
| But the rest of the novel, and the sequels, mostly to me felt
| like re-treading ground that I'd already walked in other
| novels, which did a better job of exploring those ideas.
|
| (To be more specific, because I'm sure folks will ask - I think
| Stephen Baxter does a better job of building interesting,
| mostly-consistent-to-my-eye universe-wide physics puzzles,
| although nearly all of his books are depressing as hell. The
| closest thing to a happy ending in most of his novels is "it's
| not a complete genocide!")
| bwb wrote:
| Ya I am working on this :)
|
| Our new Book DNA review format has you pick why you
| disliked/loved/liked a book and I am going to use that data to
| help build a profile of similar types of readers.
|
| You can try it here by sharing your 3 fav books of 2024 ->
| https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads
|
| Next year I will roll it out for all books as we get more in
| place.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Project Hail Mary was good, but I thought Artemis (also by Weir)
| was amazing. I wish he'd make a sequel.
| randrus wrote:
| Samuel Delaney - Nova, Babel-17
|
| Clifford Simak - City
|
| Alan E Nourse - The Universe Between
| ajuc wrote:
| For me:
|
| - His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem
|
| - Permutation City (and the whole trilogy) by Greg Egan
|
| - Anathem by Neal Stephenson
| thegyppo wrote:
| Dungeon Crawler Carl is a rare gem that I've come across lately,
| very unique, paces well and I couldn't put it down -
| https://www.goodreads.com/series/309211-dungeon-crawler-carl
|
| The audiobook is also really well narrated.
| wilted-iris wrote:
| You may also enjoy the Expeditionary Force series. Totally
| different story, but it has a similar vibe.
| rfarley04 wrote:
| I was so skeptical when my recommended the series. It sounds so
| juvenile and low brow but is actually SO GOOD. Both funny and
| genuinely well written and structured. Love that it's doing as
| well as it is
| kamarg wrote:
| You may also like Will Wight's Cradle series. It's an american
| style of Xianxia/Cultivation novels but very good. The
| audiobooks are also highly praised.
| xeonax wrote:
| The Wandering Inn [1], Stories of an alternate world somehow
| connected to a certain innkeeper of the said inn.
|
| Features extensive world building, character building, Lots of
| fleshed out characters, contains humour as well as serious stuff,
| has dragons, fae, aliens, time travel, hiveminds, automatons,
| cute pets, cosmic horrors, history lessons, magic, alchemy and
| steampunk engineering.
|
| It's a bit longish and not finished yet, 2/3 done as of this
| year.
|
| [1]: https://wanderinginn.com/
| codetheweb wrote:
| I love the Wandering Inn but calling it "a bit longish" is
| quite an understatement.
| xeonax wrote:
| Ok it's a bit longer, only a little bit.
|
| See for yourself https://www.reddit.com/r/WanderingInn/commen
| ts/wil9pi/word_c...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| OT, but I'm legitimately surprised that WoT is longer than
| the saga of recluse.
|
| I'm also a very mildly annoyed that they included several
| era-spanning series on the list, but limited Dragonlance to
| the chronicles trillogy, despite that including followups
| by the original authors (Legends, Second generations).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm only on the second volume, but so far I wouldn't call it
| Sci-Fi; it's pretty much straight-up fantasy (specifically a
| portal-fantasy with string LitRPG elements) so far.
|
| I suppose there could be a "It's all a VR game" or "It's alien
| mind control" twist that I haven't gotten to yet.
| exar0815 wrote:
| If you liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary, two books I
| cannot recommend enough are Daniel Suarez' Delta-V and Critical
| Mass. Highly technical focused hard-sci-fi about asteroid mining
| and human dynamics in high-risk envrionments. I can't vouch for
| the absolute factual correctness, but it has an appendix listing
| the papers the author indirectly references for the book.
|
| https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Do you know any other hard sci-fi books like this? I loved the
| Delta-V series, and have been looking for hard sci-fi like it
| ever since.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Shipwreck by Charles Logan.
|
| Magnificent hard sci fi about an astronaut crashed on a distant
| world after their colony ship suffers a catastrophic accident as
| it reaches a distant star system.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Shipwreck-Panther-science-fiction-Cha...
|
| You will never feel more bleak and alone.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| I'd throw in _The Saga of Exiles_ by Julian May. Excellent
| exploration of psi power, set in Pliocene Europe (by way of time
| travel). Sounds mad, but May both grounds her characters and
| casts them archetypes, and it 's fantastically dramatic.
|
| One of the first books I read where the cumulative trauma and
| psychologies of the main characters inform their actions.
| marliechiller wrote:
| No mention of Peter Watts' Blindsight? That book changed all
| sorts of notions of first contact and consciousness for me. I'm
| still thinking about it to this day. Absolute must read for
| anyone concerned with such things
| block_dagger wrote:
| And evolutionary vampires!
| justusthane wrote:
| I loved that about this book. For the first like 75% of the
| book you're thinking, "Okay, these vampires must just be a
| metaphor or a name they've given to something else." Nope,
| just actual vampires.
| kranner wrote:
| With a novel and not-implausible explanation for why
| crosses incapacitate them.
| Vecr wrote:
| Yeah it's implausible. I mean, I don't think his genetics
| is right. So it's probably physically possible in some
| sense, but I don't it makes sense that it's that stable
| of a trait.
| kranner wrote:
| I think his explanation was that right angles don't
| appear in nature so the trait didn't get selected out.
| Vecr wrote:
| I watched the video and that's what the fictional
| presenter says. I don't think it really makes sense
| though, but maybe you can get passed that because the
| species coming into existence at all is so contrived and
| unlikely?
|
| The vampires appeared to have less of a gene pool and
| more of a gene cleanroom. Knife edge stuff there.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I think his explanation was that right angles don't
| appear in nature
|
| Which is weird, because they do.
| tmn wrote:
| My initial reaction to this was, only in approximation.
| But the cross would also only approximately be a right
| angle. So good point.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Lots of minerals break at right angles.
| dahauns wrote:
| It used the Chinese Room better than Searle ever managed to do.
| Vecr wrote:
| B. F. Skinner got there first.
| metaphor wrote:
| > _No mention of Peter Watts ' Blindsight?_
|
| It was a Hugo nominee and actively reprinted under Tor
| Essentials label; probably doesn't qualify as a book "you may
| never have heard of"...but to be fair, anything by Andy Weir or
| Hugh Howey probably shouldn't have made the list either.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >probably doesn't qualify as a book "you may never have heard
| of"
|
| That's most of the ones being mentioned in this thread. I
| think maybe they are scifi books you haven't heard of...if
| you also don't normally read scifi.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| You can read the whole thing on his website (that's where I
| stumbled upon it so many years ago):
|
| https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
|
| Likewise, this is one I'll never get out of my head. Fair
| warning to would-be readers: anticipate the rest of your day
| becoming unproductive.
| hhhAndrew wrote:
| Greg Egan. Agree with others in this thread that Permutation City
| is the most important. But Diaspora is not to be missed either.
| Egan's unique value prop is: crazy-thought-experiment sci fi (2D
| world with 2 time dimensions is his latest and is typical) but
| hard, harder than you can believe. Sci fi so hard, you don't find
| any cracks and are left thinking wait a minute ... This must be
| true then?
|
| Gene Wolfe. Book of the new Sun. Wolfe's unique value prop is,
| create an interesting sci fi or fantastical setting, and tell it
| through special narrators (unreliable, liar, child, amnesiac,
| etc) with wonderful skill, producing a puzzle with a lovely
| solution (that you will only partially solve).
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| > Sci fi so hard, you don't find any cracks and are left
| thinking wait a minute ... This must be true then?
|
| Egan must be one of the most intelligent people alive... or if
| not, is at least the highest level I am personally capable of
| recognizing. I am genuinely curious which is the case. Anyways,
| I haven't read Diaspora yet so will do so, thanks!
| Vecr wrote:
| Something being logically consistent doesn't mean it's
| correct. It's possible someone could make a fully logically
| consistent version of string theory including future
| gravitational predictions.
|
| They say "doesn't describe this universe", but that really
| just means it's wrong.
|
| Edit: replying to pavel_lishin:
|
| Yes, I'm sure Egan knows that, I'm partially replying to the
| statement "Sci fi so hard, you don't find any cracks and are
| left thinking wait a minute ... This must be true then?"
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Nobody here is claiming everything in Egans books is
| literally true... but part of the fun is thinking about the
| possibility that it could be
| Vecr wrote:
| Almost but not quite literally zero? It probably _is_
| zero, because he made mistakes, but maybe you could brush
| that off as a narrator error or something.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Like any book you have to bring an open mind, creativity,
| and some benefit of the doubt to enjoy it, or to learn
| anything of value... you seem to be coming from a
| perspective that would make that impossible.
|
| His books for the most part explore intentionally
| unlikely but interesting possible implications of
| legitimate, yet mostly unproven modern math and physics
| research. Some of it even comes from his own research.
|
| A case in point, I think some of the ideas in his books
| can help, e.g. a physics student realize where their
| assumptions about the nature of time and space may be
| cultural assumptions, not necessarily grounded in
| scientific evidence. Simply exploring alternate
| possibilities- even if untrue, is a powerful tool to
| break through other unfounded perspectives you never
| thought to question.
|
| I was at one point on the path to become a mathematical
| physicist but lost interest and pivoted to something
| else. I do believe if I had found Egans books sooner, I
| would have been inspired to continue.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Something being logically consistent doesn 't mean it's
| correct._
|
| Amusingly, this is a major plot point in one of his novels.
| cdiamand wrote:
| Seconding the Book of the New Sun - It's great as a standalone,
| and the series is rewarding if you keep reading. It's an
| excellent 'puzzle' of a story as OP stated.
| debo_ wrote:
| I read Permutation City with great anticipation and really
| disliked it. My favorite parts were when big ideas met the
| tedium of execution (like the avatars having to deal with the
| cost of spot instances, and running in lower-res slower-than-
| realtime environments.)
|
| I liked Book of the New Sun in a pulpy way. I'm a huge sucker
| for dying earth settings, and it was great to read one of the
| originals.
|
| I greatly enjoyed Zelazny's Amber series and have tried to get
| into some of his sci-fi, but failed. Perhaps it's time to give
| Lord of Light a third try.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| Besides Amber, I found Jack of Shadows to be an accessible
| road into Zelazny.
| zem wrote:
| I highly recommend the novella "home is the hangman"
| p2detar wrote:
| Egan is quite active on Mastodon. Toots about science and maths
| among other things and I gotta say, some of the math stuff he
| works on seems quite impressive (to me at least).
| TheCloven wrote:
| The Bobiverse series is one of my favorites, sense of humor meets
| Bob the von Neumann probe. Well written and plenty of theory
| explanations of technology. They even pull in Expeditionary
| Force's AI Skippy as a faction group, which is another good
| series if you like technical theory in detail explained mostly by
| the asshole AI.
|
| Murderbot has become a must listen at bedtime, the self
| deprecating, funny and lovey dovey killing machine. He loves his
| solitude and media, and has an emotion from time to time.
| 0x3444ac53 wrote:
| I read murderbot a few years ago and fell in love with it. It's
| funny, short, has good characters and they develop overtime.
| The world building is interesting enough but not drowning out
| the narrative<3
| dartharva wrote:
| GraphicAudio's adaptations of the Murderbot series are too
| good! I suggest anyone interested in the series to check that
| out.
| dartharva wrote:
| Most definitely, Ray Porter's performances are a masterclass in
| first-person sci-fi adventure narration.
|
| His Project Hail Mary audiobook is unparalleled.
| tombert wrote:
| Not a "book", but a short story: The Cold Equations by Tom
| Godwin.
|
| I read that story when I was pretty young, and it's shaped my
| opinion on cold, uncaring bureaucracies in a way that I'm not
| sure anything else could.
| hersko wrote:
| Looks like it's available for free here:
| https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equation...
| birabittoh wrote:
| Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.
|
| This guy figured out the meaning of life back in 1937.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| An old but excellent book (written in the 1920s in Soviet Russia)
| is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
|
| I also like Solaris though I suppose everyone has heard of that
| one.
| robterrell wrote:
| Re-reading Stanislaw Lem (i.e. The Cyberiad) in the era of LLMs
| has been a joy for me.
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| I read Solaris years ago and was unimpressed. The philosophy
| and science'ish elements were poorly described and it felt like
| a lit-fic attempt at trippy SF by someone ignorant of the
| genre.
|
| Then, a year or two ago, I read about how bad the early
| translations were, so I picked up a new English translation.
| Wow, what a difference. Now it's one of my favorites.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Hugh Howey is a tremendously talented author.
|
| I didn't love Beacon 23, but his Wool series (apparently now a TV
| series, which I haven't watched yet) is very, _very_ good. Sand
| is another great novel. Both feature humanity surviving in
| incredibly hostile environments, doomed to them by their
| predecessors.
| 05bmckay wrote:
| Red Rising is a pretty great one, I would have added it to my
| list.
| yaky wrote:
| Red Rising is often recommended in lists such as this, and that
| is how I discovered it too. Worth noting though that the 3/4 of
| the first book is Hunger Games on Mars, with barely any
| significance to the plot started in the first part of the book.
| duped wrote:
| _The Stars are Legion_ and _Alien Clay_ are the two best sci-fi
| books I 've read in the last year and I don't think they've shown
| up on any lists, although the latter is another first contact
| book by the author of _Children of Time_ which has gotten a lot
| of acclaim (although I didn 't care for it).
|
| FWIW Beacon 23 has an adaptation on Apple TV+ and Project Hail
| Mary has a film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling that's already
| finished shooting, so I don't know how long they'll stay in the
| category of "you may never have heard of"
| mstevens wrote:
| Random Acts of Senseless Violence - Jack Womack. See
| https://reactormag.com/randomacts/ for a great review by Jo
| Walton (also a great scifi author who deserves more attention).
| Larrikin wrote:
| Is Beacon 23 the book better than the show? I thought I was a
| general fan of sci-fi, but I realized that I was generally bored
| all through the first season and had begun hate watching it in
| season 2 before I stopped all together.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Project Hail Mary is soon to be a movie...
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt12042730/
| yaky wrote:
| The most unusual book I read this year is Radiance by Catherynne
| Valente.
|
| It's set in an Art-Deco "future" of our fully habitable Solar
| system (jungles and oceans on Venus, flowering fields on Pluto,
| etc), that started to be colonized in the 1860s. Of course, it is
| a play on early science fiction tropes, but somehow, it all fits
| together.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| Just because they're both books that are hard to stumble upon and
| are a bit out of the usual recommendations, and yet everyone I
| have recommended them to have /deeply/ enjoyed them:
|
| "Constellation Games" by Leonard Richardson (also known for the
| Beautiful Soup Python library!) https://constellation.crummy.com/
|
| "Happy Snak" by Nicole Kimberling
| https://www.nicolekimberling.com/happy-snak
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely
| should read
|
| HN thread is full of books I've heard of and that get recommended
| literally anytime books are mentioned.
| lavelganzu wrote:
| "Too Like the Lightning" by Ada Palmer. (First of four books
| called the "Terra Ignota" series.)
|
| It's one of the handful of books that genuinely changed my mind
| about serious questions -- in my case, relating to gender,
| politics, & religion. But it's definitely not coming from
| anywhere you'd expect.
|
| I compare it loosely to Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed".
| The author paints a picture of a utopia, and gradually we see
| deep human flaws tear it apart. It starts off with investigation
| of a puzzling criminal tresspass, which slowly spirals upward
| into greater and greater consequences -- and it intensely rewards
| careful reading, or a second reading, as major reveals are subtly
| foreshadowed early and often.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogy by Robert Thurston:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/488118.The_Legend_of_the...
|
| Legend of Zero quadrilogy by Sara King:
| https://www.goodreads.com/series/103017-the-legend-of-zero
| silexia wrote:
| The Nexus Trilogy is extremely entertaining fast paced sci fi you
| can't put down with very interesting ideas on upgrading humans.
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