Just finished a very good audiobook, Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini and started another, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by the same author.
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
#52I 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.
Thanks so much, that is super motivating for me :)
I am working to really improve genre and topic accuracy this winter. Right now it is a mess. The data we pull in from publishers is so messy. They don't know how to use the BISAC classification system and they often mislabel sci-fi (among others). I have a big upgrade coming to improve both our systems (we use NLP/ML on the topic side).
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#53Another set is CS Lewis' Space Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength Note that like a lot of CS Lewis, there is a very heavy Christian view.
While not Sci-Fi, I found that The Screwtape Letters could actually be enjoyed even from a fairly agnostic perspective, as an allegorical dive into human cognitive foibles.
Though I suspect Lewis would be unhappy to hear that, especially since he wrote a fourth-wall-adjacent bit about devils preferring that humans don't believe in them.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#54I 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.
And the prequel A Deepness in the Sky is even better with very alien aliens (and a neat way of hiding that alien-ness from readers) and some very nasty antagonists with truly terrifying technology in the form of "focus".
Mind you, Vinge's Rainbows End is also really good and set in the near future with what may be an emerging AGI as a key character.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#55The Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor. These books aren't anything that will change your life, but they're well written and a lot of fun.
This is one of my all-time favorite series. I laugh so much reading them, and the later books go heavy into really interesting alien species. Authors love them as well: https://shepherd.com/search/book/38814
Have you read any Peter Hamilton? He is another fav of mine.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#56Another set is CS Lewis' Space Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength Note that like a lot of CS Lewis, there is a very heavy Christian view.
Lewis was clearly intelligent and well educated in the humanities, but I don't think he ever cared much about science. IMO, the Space Trilogy is good writing but bad sci-fi.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#57It's strange to start a list of "books that you may never have heard of" with a novel which is a nominee to the 2020 Hugo Awards. I suppose that most of the regular readers of sci-fi haver heard of it.
A nitpick about the third recommandation with "robots modeled on Karel Čapek’s designs". I suppose that they have not read Čapek’s novels. His robots were not pure machines, they were made from a biological substrate. In a way, they were closer to golems than to what we're now calling robots.
If you want to read really different and lesser known novels, Karel Čapek’s are a good choice. I did not enjoy "R.O.R." much except for his surprising concept of robots, but I highly recommend "War with the newts".
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#58These are all painfully mid reads. (The alien in Hail Mary is about as alien as a rival fraternity brother.) If you want real alien aliens, read Blindsight (Peter Watts).
Thanks! I really like it when authors shock my neurons with ideas they never even came close to entertain.
Alien aliens are always rare in sci-fi books. Although I really struggled with the octopodes in Children of Ruin, so I'm not sure if I'm ready yet.
Can someone please suggest books with novel, really alien forms of life, social structures, etc.?
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#59The Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor. These books aren't anything that will change your life, but they're well written and a lot of fun.
This is one of my all-time favorite series. I laugh so much reading them, and the later books go heavy into really interesting alien species. Authors love them as well: https://shepherd.com/search/book/38814 Have you read any Peter Hamilton? He is another fav of mine.
I have not read Peter Hamilton, but always looking for new good books. Thanks for the recommendation!
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#60Roadside 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.
I didn't know they've translated the book themselves! I often feel like translations done by other people are missing something fundamental of the spirit of the original. I'm wondering if there is a list of books "translated into language X by the author" somewhere.
The same thing occured to me a while back. There is this wikipedia page about it but I didn't get much further than that.