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Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
Stephen Baxter's books are along the same lines, start with one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelike_Infinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Baxter_novel)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My hot take: I think Gibson's non-fiction is much stronger than his fiction. Wow, that's spicy. Will def check those out though.
Here's an even spicier take: Although less prescient, Seveneves was a better read than Cryptonomicon .
I tried to find the citation online, but I found that Richard Stallman does not have a favorite book (https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html); anyway, it is a good book with good ideas to think about.
Just finished reading Exhalation by Ted Chiang, and can't recommend it enough. It's a collection of short stories - so easy entry point for beginners as well.
I love Ted Chiang, and enjoyed Exhalation , but personally I would recommend Stories of Your Life and Others as the first book of short stories. I found it had a higher percentage of home runs.
Fun to see this on HN today; I just finished it last night, on a recommendation from a friend. It was great, and left me full of unfinished thoughts -- just what you want from a good SF yarn. For folks who enjoyed the ideas in it I can heartily recommend qntm's short story Lena ( https://qntm.org/lena ), which explores some of the same ideas but with a hefty dollop of (implied, but all the more intense for it) psycho…
I haven't read Permutation City (on my list) but I really enjoyed Disaspora by the same author (Greg Egan). Similar themes from what I gather.
Egan's short stories are great. Luminous is an excellent collection. I've never been huge fan of his long form novels, and will remember forever the sex scene in one of them that ends with a cramped testicle. Why Greg, why?
That scene is from Permutation City. I thought it was a nice metaphor for that character’s strained relationship with his corporeal self.
Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
It’s not an easy read, but Blindsight by Peter Watts has some equally unique and compelling synthesis of scientific concepts into a big concept plot.
Egan is the only great Australian science fiction writer I’m aware of. I principally recommend Diaspora for far future post-human history with a strong focus on physics and maths, and Quarantine which is a sort of heist thriller with a unique quantum physics hook in a relatively near future Northern Australia setting where First Nations people have gained independence and positioned themselves as an Asian financial /…
It’s set in the “near future” so probably 2020 since it was published in 1998 and does a good job, I think, of talking about things that are happening now- third world empowerment, body augmentation, transgenders, precision pharmacy, biohacking.
And some things we don’t have yet- artificial island nations, self-autists, custom engineered plagues.
I like it because it’s one of those books that stuck with me for describing tech that “we should and one day will have” in that Egan described a “pharm” that compounds medication on the fly to precisely medicate us. For example, it will give you stimulants with your vitamix but have to counter it the next day based on how your body performs. I can’t wait for that and hate having to wait days to adjust meds. I feel similarly about Stephenson’s metaverse description and young lady’s illustrated primer, and nanodrones, and cryptocurrency. And Doctorow’s “comm” device that he described a few years before the iPhone.
Egan is the only great Australian science fiction writer I’m aware of. I principally recommend Diaspora for far future post-human history with a strong focus on physics and maths, and Quarantine which is a sort of heist thriller with a unique quantum physics hook in a relatively near future Northern Australia setting where First Nations people have gained independence and positioned themselves as an Asian financial /…
Greg Egan as great! Two other Australians you might try are: Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman, about what it's like to be colonized. Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen, about what it's like to be part of a computer.