Credit for not assuming to know the reader by saying something like "Sci-fi books that you've never heard of!". I now routinely block youtube channels that do such things.
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
#62The problem with Project Hail Mary is that the audio book is good but the book is not. First read the book and then listen to the audio book and you know what I mean.
I also found the film of The Martian way better than the book. I got so sick of reading about concentrations of gases and stuff in painful detail. So yeah, good story, but not so good writing. If Project Hail Mary is anything like that then I'll give it a miss.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#63Greg Egan's Permutation City is #1 for me. It's not only a good read, it may be the most important work of late 20th century philosophy. (Among other things, it completely anticipated Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, and totally obviates Bostrom's latest work.)
Reading Egan's works elevated my standard for what constitutes a truly great novel: "If you don't change as a person after having it read it, it wasn't that great."
Permutation City especially made me see the universe and my part in it in a different light, or perhaps casting a shadow onto it. I'll never be the same person as I was before I had read it.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Mostly just the explanations of how the two cities could function as separate entities while physically occupying the same land through the use of legally mandated "useeing". The author goes into detail how this works -- obviously at one level people see the people, vehicles, etc. from the other city or they'd run into them, but on a conscious level they act as if they don't exist.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#65Greg Egan's Permutation City is #1 for me. It's not only a good read, it may be the most important work of late 20th century philosophy. (Among other things, it completely anticipated Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, and totally obviates Bostrom's latest work.)
I am surprised there was no Egan book in the list. He's in the top 5 of hard sci fi authors you should definitely read
We've got 10 lists with him as well:
https://shepherd.com/search/author/1445
You can see how they connected to him there too.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
I'd start with Pandora's Star, they are HUGE in scope, so its a big book but worth it IMO.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#67These 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.?
Diaspora by Greg Egan.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#68Roadside 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 problem is that translation isn't just about "capturing the spirit of the original" but realizing where to keep idioms and like from the original and where things need to be changed to make the translation less clunky. This isn't something just anyone can do. That's why people like Umberto Eco, who was more or less fluent in English, still preferred professional translators like William Weaver to translate his Italian books into English.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#69These 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).
I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and they were all memorable but frustrating.
Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.
Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.
Watts Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...
Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is enjoyable if you liked that in his books: https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I found it not as good, and somewhat predictable. Its quirky humour didn't work on me, that's probably why I didn't like it as much.