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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

#181

Post by sumtechguy »

netdevnet wrote: post #18
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

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

Many 'you should read these lists' are just that lists. Usually by the author of the list and things they have read and think you should too. That they missed something is not surprising. Lists like this have an air of authority when they usually boil down to 'things I have seen/read and like/hate'. I use them as interesting things to go thru to see if there is anything I missed.

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

#182

Post by belter »

bwb wrote: post #149
Supermancho wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard there might be a movie adaptation of Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.

oh wow, that could be cool! I love seeing more sci-fi come to the screen. I really liked The Expanse and wish they had kept that going...

Nah, that was just news coverage...You Inners really think it was just a show?

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

#183

Post by tokai »

dagw wrote: post #78
globular-toast wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you didn't like the 'painful detail' in The Martian, you will positively hate Project Hail Mary. Much more of the 'painful detail' as you call it with much less interesting characters. If you loved The Martian (like I did) and enjoy lots of random science-ish tangents and pseudo-engineering problem solving, you'll find stuff to like in this book. But it is a too long, worse written version of The Martian, with a l…

>worse written version of The Martian, with a less interesting protagonist

That is actually impressive if true. Watney was by far the worst thing about the book.

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

#184

Post by Vecr »

_yb2s wrote: post #180
Vecr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being logically consistent doesn't mean it's correct. It's possible someone could make a fully logically consistent version of string theory including future gravitational predictions. They say "doesn't describe this universe", but that really just means it's wrong. Edit: replying to pavel_lishin: Yes, I'm sure Egan knows that, I'm partially replying to the statement "Sci fi so hard, you don't find any crac…

Nobody here is claiming everything in Egans books is literally true… but part of the fun is thinking about the possibility that it could be

Almost but not quite literally zero? It probably is zero, because he made mistakes, but maybe you could brush that off as a narrator error or something.

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

#185

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

marliechiller wrote: post #159

No mention of Peter Watts' Blindsight? That book changed all sorts of notions of first contact and consciousness for me. I'm still thinking about it to this day. Absolute must read for anyone concerned with such things

You can read the whole thing on his website (that's where I stumbled upon it so many years ago):

https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Likewise, this is one I'll never get out of my head. Fair warning to would-be readers: anticipate the rest of your day becoming unproductive.

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

#186

Post by abecedarius »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

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.)

What's the Bostrom work it obviates? I'd be kind of surprised if he never read the Egan -- it was part of the background to extropian culture back then.

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

#187

Post by TheCloven »

The Bobiverse series is one of my favorites, sense of humor meets Bob the von Neumann probe. Well written and plenty of theory explanations of technology. They even pull in Expeditionary Force's AI Skippy as a faction group, which is another good series if you like technical theory in detail explained mostly by the asshole AI.

Murderbot has become a must listen at bedtime, the self deprecating, funny and lovey dovey killing machine. He loves his solitude and media, and has an emotion from time to time.

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

#189

Post by _yb2s »

Vecr wrote: post #184
_yb2s wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody here is claiming everything in Egans books is literally true… but part of the fun is thinking about the possibility that it could be

Almost but not quite literally zero? It probably is zero, because he made mistakes, but maybe you could brush that off as a narrator error or something.

Like any book you have to bring an open mind, creativity, and some benefit of the doubt to enjoy it, or to learn anything of value… you seem to be coming from a perspective that would make that impossible.

His books for the most part explore intentionally unlikely but interesting possible implications of legitimate, yet mostly unproven modern math and physics research. Some of it even comes from his own research.

A case in point, I think some of the ideas in his books can help, e.g. a physics student realize where their assumptions about the nature of time and space may be cultural assumptions, not necessarily grounded in scientific evidence. Simply exploring alternate possibilities- even if untrue, is a powerful tool to break through other unfounded perspectives you never thought to question.

I was at one point on the path to become a mathematical physicist but lost interest and pivoted to something else. I do believe if I had found Egans books sooner, I would have been inspired to continue.

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

#190

Post by adelmotsjr »

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.

I'm trying to find a legal copy of the original Russian book, but still could not find. Where did you get yours?

That and the original Russian copies of the Metro series..

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