1) Three-Body Problem series
2) Hyperion series (first two books especially)
3) Cryptonomicon
4) Cloud Atlas
5) Wandering Earth (collection of short stories)
Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
151–160 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#152I recommend: William Gibson, China Miéville, Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks
Neal Asher writes (mostly) about The Polity:
Which is similar in concept to Ian M Banks The Culture series. (which I also love).
Asher tends to be darker and more violent. I dont think he is for everyone.
I would start with GridLinked. His books are not a progressive timeline. Some take place in earlier times, some farther into the future of the Polity. I dont think it is intended så read them based on the timeline though.
(Cut and paste) The Polity is a far-future society run by artificial intelligences. In the early years of space travel, as we spread out into the solar system, the political make-up of humanity is a mixture of national and world (or moon) governments, and large corporations. However, these separate political entities – polities – employ AI for gain. During this time Iverus Skaidon, a scientist, directly links his mind to the AI Craystein Computer and invents underspace travel, just before his mind blows like a fuse. The invention of this faster-than-light travel results in a diaspora from the Solar System.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#153I getting thought anything by Kim S. Robinson. I read the Mars trilogy 20 years ago and plan to re-read it once I'm done. Recently went thought "Ministry for the future" from him. Weird mix of factual non fiction and SF. Read like a fan fiction of a iPCC Report. Outside of hard SF, Ursula K Leguin. Great world building.
Leguin was one of the most imaginative and skilled scifi writers ever. She also has fantasy series Earthsea which lots of Harry Potter was inspired from but it never got so popular even though it might be as good or better.
Oh. It’s better. I mean I vastly prefers it. More coherent and less excuse / deus in machina
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#154The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Avatar definitely was inspired by this one)
Avatar was actually inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_on_the_Slope
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#155I 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…
It's kind of wild how he guessed that we'd have generative stories before we'd have perfect human voice production.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#156Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you. My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists: Fiasco - Stanisław Lem This is ho…
I loved all of Seveneves, and hate Three Body Problem. The biggest difference in theme being, optimism that humanity can overcome any obstacle and flourish. If you want more in that vein, see: Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir Delta-V - Daniel Suarez
Have you read other non-American/non-Western Scifi?
It's not a universal assumption that the future is good and technology will make us better. I love Soviet sci-fi for the completely different perspective.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#157Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I adapted The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch for the stage many years ago, but was refused permission to perform it by P. K. Dick's estate. It is truly a masterpiece! We ended up using Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, since that was an existing adaption by a friend of Philip K. Dick's that they had no control over.
Oh man, is there any way you can send it to me? I would love to see how you adapted that story
Not sure I still have the stage play to be honest, it was done in the late 90s, I'd have to really dig back into my old backups.
The whole idea was to use multimedia, video projection, computer animation and live video mixed up with live performance to really mess with the audience's sense of what was real or not.
We managed to pull it off quite nicely with Flow My Tears though. A nice bit was cutting from a live feed of an actress apparently cutting her arm, to a pre recorded close up of the arm being cut and lots of blood. Audience always thought they were seeing what was happening on stage at that point :)
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#159Multiple re-reads: - Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth - Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it - Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too - The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and whic…
I second Hyperion and Neuromancer -- both are amazing book and a great representation of modern and classic sci-fi
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?
#160The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Avatar definitely was inspired by this one)
Avatar was actually inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_on_the_Slope
Source (i dont have one for my claim lol)? Thematically, Le Guin’s fits Avatar’s world mythos and some of the characters are extremely similar (the colonel from avatar is basically the same as one of the narrators of Word for World). Also, Le Guins book would have been much more available and popular than the Strugatsky brothers at that time