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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

#191

Post by debo_ »

hhhAndrew wrote: post #161

Greg Egan. Agree with others in this thread that Permutation City is the most important. But Diaspora is not to be missed either. Egan's unique value prop is: crazy-thought-experiment sci fi (2D world with 2 time dimensions is his latest and is typical) but hard, harder than you can believe. Sci fi so hard, you don't find any cracks and are left thinking wait a minute ... This must be true then? Gene Wolfe. Book of t…

I read Permutation City with great anticipation and really disliked it. My favorite parts were when big ideas met the tedium of execution (like the avatars having to deal with the cost of spot instances, and running in lower-res slower-than-realtime environments.)

I liked Book of the New Sun in a pulpy way. I'm a huge sucker for dying earth settings, and it was great to read one of the originals.

I greatly enjoyed Zelazny's Amber series and have tried to get into some of his sci-fi, but failed. Perhaps it's time to give Lord of Light a third try.

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

#192

Post by rkachowski »

stormking wrote: post #167
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.

A book that was even made into a TV miniseries does not fit my definition of "you may never heard of".

tbf the BBC does a lot of mid tv miniseries. I don't feel many people will know this adaptation outside of fans of the book.

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

#193

Post by rkachowski »

tialaramex wrote: post #35
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.

I dislike both this and Miéville's Embassytown since in my opinion both set out to mislead me and then do a reveal which amounts "I misled you about what's really going on" and while that works for a stand up comic beat (e.g. Taylor Tomlinson "he cheated on me ... in my head") I don't want to read a whole novel this way. Perdido Street Station and Kraken I really enjoyed, but I almost threw the book across the room f…

What's the Embassytown mislead? I read that recently and felt it was pretty direct.

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

#195

Post by hersko »

tombert wrote: post #188

Not a "book", but a short story: The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. I read that story when I was pretty young, and it's shaped my opinion on cold, uncaring bureaucracies in a way that I'm not sure anything else could.

Looks like it's available for free here: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equation...

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

#196

Post by pavel_lishin »

Vecr wrote: post #176
_yb2s wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sci fi so hard, you don't find any cracks and are left thinking wait a minute ... This must be true then? Egan must be one of the most intelligent people alive… or if not, is at least the highest level I am personally capable of recognizing. I am genuinely curious which is the case. Anyways, I haven’t read Diaspora yet so will do so, thanks!

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…

> Something being logically consistent doesn't mean it's correct.

Amusingly, this is a major plot point in one of his novels.

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

#198

Post by hnmullany »

ABraidotti wrote: post #69
hnmullany wrote: post #11

These 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…

I also found Echopraxia extremely confusing and had to read that AMA to figure out what the hell I just read.

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

#199

Post by insane_dreamer »

hnmullany wrote: post #11

These 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).

The depiction of the alien is something I really liked about that book - the concept of having to cooperate with an alien species rather than with being subjugated or subjugating, was refreshingly new (for me).

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

#200

Post by pavel_lishin »

Hugh Howey is a tremendously talented author.

I didn't love Beacon 23, but his Wool series (apparently now a TV series, which I haven't watched yet) is very, very good. Sand is another great novel. Both feature humanity surviving in incredibly hostile environments, doomed to them by their predecessors.

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