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Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.
> Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts. Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.
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But Black Mirror is about us whereas the frustrating thing with depictions of aliens is that they're not us, that's their defining feature.
Stories about aliens aren't meant to describe aliens as theoretically correct as possible. Obviously. Aliens are hardly ever more than a tool to get a perspective. To look at humans, societies, structures etc. They are also stories _about us_.
But you don't really need aliens for that, there are several Black Mirror stories which do roughly the same perspective trick, particularly "Men Against Fire". Aliens offer an opportunity to explore something quite different and it's always disappointing to see them used as something less interesting.
It's like FTL. FTL is actually exactly equivalent to time travel, and so it's disappointing, though commonplace to see SF which decides to do FTL but no time travel (or indeed vice versa though that's less common)..
I like Culture novels just fine, I like Greg Egan's Amalgam setting (with aliens who are basically just us again, although a bit less obviously so than a Star Trek alien) just fine, but, in both cases I'm a little disappointed. If your aliens aren't even as weird as the Octopus is (and we have no idea what the fuck is going on with an Octopus) then you're not really trying are you?
Greg 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
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.
It's always someone's day to be one of 10,000.
Actually I made a website that’s mostly sci-fi books I’ve read https://mnky9800n.github.io/booklist/ It uses a google spreadsheet as a database so you just need to update the spreadsheet and it adds a book to the website. I have a life goal to read every thing written by Phillip k dick as well as every book on David Pringle’s 100 best sci-fi list. Some of the books are hard to find though. Like I’ve been searching fo…
Added the Brian Daley series about Solo to my list, I'd never heard of those!
> Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts. Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.
It's a stealth ad for the author's book. If you think the advertising copy was written by an llm, I'm pretty sure that says you won't like his book :-)
Authors face an immense battle to get noticed, and unless something is done, we will only have big brand-name authors who can afford to write full-time. The internet has really consolidated books into a winner-takes-all market, and I want to do what I can to help widen that so new authors have a chance.
If you are curious, here are my goals for readers: https://build.shepherd.com/p/what-is-shepherds-mission-for-r...
Here are my goals for authors: https://support.shepherd.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406508361617...
And here is why I am building Shepherd for myself and others: https://build.shepherd.com/p/why-am-i-building-shepherd-ie-w...
Hope that helps; happy to answer questions :)
> Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts. Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.
I've caught a few dishonest authors, and they get banned from the website forever.
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That's interesting. I found Project Hail Mary to be once of the most disappointing second novels ever written and am surprised at its reception. Is the audiobook meaningfully different?
Yeah I also didn't like the book at all, it read like a cash grab. However, just listen to a sample of the audio book, it's just hilarious how much effort Ray put into making the characters become alive. Certain significantly improving the lack of writing, of course it can't fix the writing.