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Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

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Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#51

Post by Nokinside »

nabla9 wrote: post #31

Stanislav Lem's Golem XIV published in his book Imaginary Magnitude https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Magnitude-Stanislaw-Lem/dp/... It might be more philosophy of AI than science fiction. It takes form of series of lectures that superintelligent (singularity level AI) gives to humanity before it goes away.

Is there a category for deep scifi? hardcore scifi? Golem XIV is the deepest scifi I have ever read.

It has many ideas that I have never seen expressed anywhere outside the book.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#53

Post by qbrass »

riffraff wrote: post #10
nrp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watts’ Blindsight and Echopraxia are excellent hard scifi too, though less focused on AI.

is blindsight considered hard SF? It's been a while since I read it, but I don't recall a big focus on science, and some things are pretty explicitly hand waved ("we are lucky they have that issue with right angles")

The ending was worse. It was basically deus ex machina with nukes.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#54

Post by dasmoth »

Greg Bear wrote a number of books (Slant comes to mind, but there are others) where “Thinkers” play an important role. Not sure how they’ve aged, but interesting in that they predicted AIs as mainframe-scale things with few individual instances, back when I was thinking firmly in microcomputer terms.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#55

Post by Udik »

mansr wrote: post #17
d-crane wrote: post #3

Greg Egan's Diaspora starts with the details of what it's like for a new AI to be brought into existence in a society of advanced AIs, and jumps off from there. Definitely one of the more original hard sci-fi novels I've read.

His Permutation City is also good.

Permutation City is probably the best hard sci-fi novel I've ever read.

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#56

Post by jpindar »

inetsee wrote: post #40
mabbo wrote: post #38

Andy Weir's "The Martian" is my favourite book. I've read it about 5 times, and I've never read a book twice before. The movie was a decent adaptation, but it's not near the quality that the book was.

"The Martian" is really good book, and I loved the movie. I am looking forward to Andy Weir's new book. But ... I wouldn't put "The Martian" in the scifi AI category.

Wouldn't it have been interesting if there had been a not-quite-AI chatbot as part of the hab's computers?

Re: Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?

#57

Post by moomin »

A novel that qualifies as hard SF in which every character is an AI? Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross. 100% not what you have in mind, though. (You'll enjoy it, though.)

OTOH, I always find "Hard SF" a self-defeating category. I mean, anything with humans living on a different planet is pretty definitionally not Hard SF. Even Solar System stuff like The Expanse has troubles with economic plausibility. That leaves us with... well basically a couple of Vernor Vinge novels.

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