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Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

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Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#41

Post by justinclift »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #28
justinclift wrote: post #17

Can't really take the recommendation for Beacon 23 seriously after seeing the 1/2 half of the first tv episode. That was utter crap and nonsensical. :(

I didn't know there was a tv series for this one. I read the book ages ago; pretty OK. I wouldn't judge it by any failed attempt to put it out on TV. The same author also wrote the silo series. He tends to push his books out in small portions but it's effectively a trilogy. The series on Apple TV for that is actually pretty good. I reread the books after completing season 1 a few months ago.

Thanks. Tried to get into the series too, but end up just reading the summary of things and the whole series just sounds depressing. :(

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#42

Post by lynx23 »

AlphaAndOmega0 wrote: post #27
lynx23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware, you'll also get Vampires in space, which is so silly, it kills the book.

They're a better depiction of Vampires than most, with Watts doing everything he could to make them biologically plausible (that can only go so far). That being said, I found the way they were "shackled" to be ridiculous. If you've got superintelligent and superstrong predatory hominids running around, you have no reason to have them physically free even if you put the medical safeguards in place. Break their spines…

They still killed the book for me. The underlying idea (no spoilers) is absolutely great sci-fi. All this useless blast-from-the-past did was make the story look silly to me. Such a shame. He could have written a great sci-fi book without superstition, alas, he apparently didn't want to be talken serious....

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#43

Post by eatonphil »

wazoox wrote: post #10
mnky9800n wrote: post #7

Roadside picnic is a favourite of mine. I’m currently learning Russian to reread it in the original Russian. But the translation is very good and done by the authors themselves.

It's really one of the most haunting books I've ever read. "Hard to be a God" is also very poignant.

The Dead Mountaineer's Inn is also good. A classic whodunnit with a twist.

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#44

Post by anotherpaul »

I really like the shepherd.com way of curating the recommendation. Browsing trough books and picking something to read has become much easier this way.

One scifi book that was very impactful to me is the black cloud by Fred Hoyle. It's such a well thought out story and has held up remarkably well for a 50 year old novel.

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#45

Post by lapcat »

hailpixel wrote: post #33

I love this genre, and there is such a plethora of interesting reads. I think one of the most interesting, in terms of presenting technology's role in varied societies, is A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Great read if you are bored of the classic space opera.

> A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

It's a great book, but everyone has heard of it already.

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#46

Post by interludead »

jhbadger wrote: post #25
freetonik wrote: post #3

One of "you may never heard of" sci-fi books I can recommend is The City & the City by China Miéville. Perhaps not traditional science fiction, but so original and strange, it's beautiful.

Weirdly, The City & the City reminds me of Martin Cruz Smith's books like Gorky Park set in the Soviet Union (or more recently post-Soviet countries) in that it is a police procedural set in a culture the reader presumably doesn't understand and so the reader is interested in learning how this society functions as much as they are interested in seeing the mystery solved. The difference of course is the societies in T…

What aspects of the culture in The City & the City stood out to you the most?

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#47

Post by bwb »

hi all, founder of Shepherd here :)

If you want to share your 3 fav reads of the year, you can do that here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads

You get a cool page like this -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb

Plus, it goes into our "best books of 2024" voting -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024

I am slowly getting more into place on this website, I have been working on it for 3.5 years now.

Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

#49

Post by globular-toast »

hailpixel wrote: post #33

I love this genre, and there is such a plethora of interesting reads. I think one of the most interesting, in terms of presenting technology's role in varied societies, is A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Great read if you are bored of the classic space opera.

I really like that, but I definitely thought A Deepness in the Sky was even better despite probably being considered "classic space opera".
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