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Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#61

Post by agonmon »

spapas82 wrote: post #37

I've read a lot of scifi but I'd recommend only one to make sure you get the point: The "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas... ) which is more known as "the three body problem". All the books are great but my favourite by a large margin is "the dark forest" (part 2)

It says something terrible about the current zeitgeist that these books are as popular as they are.

I look forward to a day when the top scifi is unabashed optimism about humanity's future.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#62

Post by jillesvangurp »

Anything Neal Stephenson. I've read them all. Multiple times.

But some other stuff that people haven't yet mentioned that I enjoyed:

- Matt Haig: The Humans, How to Stop Time

- Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon trilogy

- Ramez Naam: Nexus Trilogy

- Hugh Howie: Silo series

- Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice

- Ernest Cline: Ready Player 1

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#63

Post by monkeydust »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #28
bergheim wrote: post #10

I read Snow Crash growing up. It is a wonderful weird cyberpunk novel that (metaverse aside, unfortunately) turned out to be kind of Nostradamusly. Easy read. Higly recommended!

With the recent advancements in LLM/AI, I've been thinking more and more about Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" (also titled "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"). One of the major plot points is the development of a sophisticated interactive book that patiently individually educates and entertains one of the characters; greatly positively impacting her life. We're much closer to being able to build that now than we wer…

Funny half way through it after it came recommended on one of the many LLM threads on HN a month or so ago

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#64

Post by wombatpm »

wombatpm wrote: post #59

City - Clifford D Simack All of Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh Stand in Zanzibar John Bruner Adiamante - LE Modesitt Jr Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen Known Space series by Larry Niven and ALL of his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle Midshipman’s Hope by David Feintuch Gateway - Fredrick Pohl Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg

And how could I forget Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#67

Post by rigmarole »

I’ve seen Greg Egan mentioned a couple times. I love most of what I’ve read by him, but “The Clockwork Rocket” trilogy stands far above for me. A multi-generational hard sci-fi story. Characters who are intelligent, curious researchers who set out to learn and unravel the nature of their universe to try to save their world, set in alternate physics.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#68

Post by anotherhue »

mbustamanter wrote: post #22

Two favorite books of mine I've seldom seen mentioned but I think are gems: The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Time out of joint , both by Philip K. Dick. The first plays with several layers of reality along the book. One time I found myself re-reading some passages because there were so many layers it was hard to follow, but it's worth it. The second is (if I recall correctly) the inspiration for a 90s pop mo…

I had a genuine mini existential crisis at the end of Palmer Eldritch.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

#70

Post by roninhacker »

jmclnx wrote: post #49

Outside of some of the ones listed here, here are a couple of others: * Alan Dean Foster -- Call to Arms, in this case the we are the strong ones. * Hal Clement -- Nitrogen Fix, replace Nitrogen with CO2 in your head and this could be rather current :) * An obscure one I liked, but I forgot the Author and Title -- Seems Interstellar Travel could be achieved with 15th Century Tech. So Aliens landed on late 20th Centur…

"The Road Not Taken," by Harry Turtledove

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_st...

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