An old but excellent book (written in the 1920s in Soviet Russia) is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin I also like Solaris though I suppose everyone has heard of that one.
Re-reading Stanislaw Lem (i.e. The Cyberiad) in the era of LLMs has been a joy for me.
Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
201–210 of 317 posts
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, Project Hail Mary was the only one of the three I'd ever heard of. Still, it was a great book (especially since I read it right on the heels of reading Artemis , which was only "okay").
I didn't read Project Hail Mary because I read Artemis. Maybe I'll have to check it out. :)
You should - it's significantly better.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, Project Hail Mary was the only one of the three I'd ever heard of. Still, it was a great book (especially since I read it right on the heels of reading Artemis , which was only "okay").
I heard there might be a movie adaptation of Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.
It's hard for me to picture Ryan Gosling in the role of Ryland Grace.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#204I want to do book recommendations from the other direction. I need to know which books to avoid based on the books people like. For example, if I hated The Three Body Problem and you loved it, then I'm probably going to hate the other books you love.
I think it depends on why someone disliked a book.
I liked the first novel in the Three Body Problem series, but mostly because it exposed me to a culture I wasn't really familiar with; there was a lot about China I didn't know, and it was interesting to read about characters who lived and breathed that history.
But the rest of the novel, and the sequels, mostly to me felt like re-treading ground that I'd already walked in other novels, which did a better job of exploring those ideas.
(To be more specific, because I'm sure folks will ask - I think Stephen Baxter does a better job of building interesting, mostly-consistent-to-my-eye universe-wide physics puzzles, although nearly all of his books are depressing as hell. The closest thing to a happy ending in most of his novels is "it's not a complete genocide!")
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#205Greg 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'm also interested in that remark about Bostrom. What is the relation?
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't know there was a tv series for this one. I read the book ages ago; pretty OK. I wouldn't judge it by any failed attempt to put it out on TV. The same author also wrote the silo series. He tends to push his books out in small portions but it's effectively a trilogy. The series on Apple TV for that is actually pretty good. I reread the books after completing season 1 a few months ago.
Thanks. Tried to get into the series too, but end up just reading the summary of things and the whole series just sounds depressing. :(
It is. One of the sequels was one of the times that a scene in a book actually made me cry.
If you don't like depressing novels, also stay away from Stephen Baxter; I love his novels, but most of them are wildly depressing.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#207Red Rising is a pretty great one, I would have added it to my list.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#208Another 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.
In "Of Other Worlds", in a conversation with Brian Aldiss and Kinsley Amis (or Martin Amis? Don't remember), he says that he had a rocket take Ransom to Mars, but he knew better by the time he wrote the second book, and had angels take Ransom to Venus. That is, he wasn't trying to write hard science fiction; he was trying to write stuff where you were confronted with "the unknown". Fantasy and science fiction were both aimed at that, but fantasy was better, because you didn't have to worry about the rules of actual science.
He also said (quoting from memory): "If I were briefed to attack my own books, I would say that though the scientist has to be a physicist for the plot, his concern seems to be almost exclusively biological. I would also ask whether it was credible that such a gas-bag could invent a mousetrap, let alone a spaceship. But then, I wanted comedy as well as adventure."
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#209Greg 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.
"Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World"
A book about what to do with life in the face of boundless possibilities, and when just about everything important has been figured out. I recall that this was a significant plot point in Permutation City -- and Egan answered the question more elegantly than Bostrom did.
Re: Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World" A book about what to do with life in the face of boundless possibilities, and when just about everything important has been figured out. I recall that this was a significant plot point in Permutation City -- and Egan answered the question more elegantly than Bostrom did.
Thanks. Could be, I haven't read that one.