The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#101

Post by alimbada » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #93

jonnathanson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something Dune accomplishes really well -- and which very few sci-fi books or movies have ever pulled off quite as effectively -- is weaving a lot of background, and culture, and esoteric terminology, into the story without disrupting the story's flow. There aren't lengthy, disjointed sidebars about what X means, or why Y exists. Instead, X and Y are woven into the narrative via context, allowing the reader to pick u…

"Harkonnen, in particular, has a James Bond Villain-esque penchant for such speeches" The Sci-Fi (pre-SyFy) miniseries runs with this and plays him as a flat-out monologuing villian, and I daresay it works pretty well. I actually recommend the miniseries. It gets panned by a lot of people, but you need to understand it less as a television miniseries and more as a filming of a dramatic theater play. It heavily uses t…

Agreed, the 2000 miniseries was pretty good as long as you keep in mind it's more theatre than film.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#102

Post by jasonkester » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

anatoly wrote: post #68

jonnathanson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something Dune accomplishes really well -- and which very few sci-fi books or movies have ever pulled off quite as effectively -- is weaving a lot of background, and culture, and esoteric terminology, into the story without disrupting the story's flow. There aren't lengthy, disjointed sidebars about what X means, or why Y exists. Instead, X and Y are woven into the narrative via context, allowing the reader to pick u…

I only read Dune last year (I'm in my thirties), and really disliked it. Your comment, however, emphasizes a virtue I did not sufficiently acknowledge at the time. It _is_ true that Dune was able to weave a lot of background into the story without resorting to technical infodumps. And at the time it was a rare and impressive achievement in SF, deserving of praise. But I don't think I'd agree that things haven't chang…

Try again in a year or so. Dune is one of those books that takes a few tries. I think it was my 3rd attempt before I really got hooked and made it through (and savored every page from there on out).

It's kinda like Lord of the Rings in that respect. If you're in the right frame of mind, it's awesome. If not, it's the most boring piece of dullness you've ever seen in print. But once you're in, you're in for good.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#103

Post by shrikant » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

_mayo wrote: post #76

I'm surprised Slaugher House Five wasn't on the list.

I think I can understand why it wasn't on the list - but I'd rather not explain the reasoning here for fear of spoilers. (...or has the statute of limitations on this book run out?)

FWIW, I loved Slaughterhouse Five, and had nightmares about it.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#104

Post by stralep » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

zavulon wrote: post #77

subwindow wrote: post #71

Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine. Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?) Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair…

Hear, hear. Any "Best of Sci-Fi" list that omits Solaris and includes Ender's Game is worthless.

I've read Solaris few years ago, and Ender's Game few months ago. I like both books and I do not see a reason for bashing EG.

Could you elaborate?

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#105

Post by ableal » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #62

How about more modern science fiction? I loved the Golden Age series by John C. Wright, published around 2004. It's refreshing to read sci-fi where computers and connectivity are ubiquitous, rather than the old masters who didn't foresee the internet. ( Stranger has flying taxicabs using magnetic tape for storage, a jarring juxtaposition to the modern reader.) Golden Age raises some real philosophical questions, as g…

Thank you. I believe Golden Age is the series I was trying to remember in a conversation a few weeks ago as an example of extreme use of augmented reality.

I'll toss in my recent favorite space opera: the Polity series by Neal Asher. Similar to Banks in that it has governing AIs, but less omniscient; good adventure stories, with a dash of horror in original hostile species, sentient and otherwise.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#106

Post by sgoraya » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #95

If anyone is interested, here is the list of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hu... I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next.

> I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next.

Likewise - This is how I recently found 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi; thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#107

Post by jerf » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #88

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you offer some examples? I was surprised by this statement.

So I think the fundamentalist christian thing is pretty self explanatory if you've been paying attention. In terms of Jewish culture, it's not really a secret that most of Hollywood, the media, and much of progressivism and culture in general is organized around liberal jewish values. I'm not really an expert on why this is, but from what I can see protestantism sort of hit its high water mark shortly after WWII. Aro…

While an interesting thesis, and I would never claim Japan has completely failed to influence the US, none of your examples strike me as evidence of Japan -> US influence rather than either convergent evolution, or things that just flat out come from different sources. High stakes testing is a result of the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy requires something to test and measure, and it will create it even if it's impossible, damn the consequences. The US is adopting it due to an increase in sclerotic bureaucracy, many Eastern cultures has histories of sclerotic bureaucracies longer than Western culture itself. Team building exercises and the term itself predate any conceivable Japanese influence. If "productizing abstract ideas", or perhaps rather, "productizing culture" flowed in any direction, it was from US -> Japan, not vice versa! See also the concept of "soft power".

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#108

Post by starwed » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:51 PM UTC

BillSaysThis wrote: post #100

This thread points out the problem with Top 100 lists, of SF or other large bodies of things judged subjectively, which is that there are far too many good ones to stop at 100. In the real world of course one would hope to have the time to read far more than 100 SF novels; fortunately for me I've read several thousand over the past 40 years. Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF n…

It also promotes the utility of such lists -- that they spark discussion! ;)

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#109

Post by wiredfool » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #10

Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…

Hyperion is Chaucer, updated. Took me embarassingly long to twig onto that.

Personally, I found the first and fourth Hyperion books to be my favorites, and the middle two less so, and nearly a separate story altogether.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#110

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

Everybody is going to have their own opinions. For Clarke I would have put The Fountains of Paradise way ahead of Childhood's End, for instance, but to each their own.