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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

#221

Post by mmcdermott »

debo_ wrote: post #191
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 Ze…

Besides Amber, I found Jack of Shadows to be an accessible road into Zelazny.

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

#223

Post by kranner »

Vecr wrote: post #219
kranner wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a novel and not-implausible explanation for why crosses incapacitate them.

Yeah it's implausible. I mean, I don't think his genetics is right. So it's probably physically possible in some sense, but I don't it makes sense that it's that stable of a trait.

I think his explanation was that right angles don't appear in nature so the trait didn't get selected out.

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

#224

Post by Vecr »

kranner wrote: post #223
Vecr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's implausible. I mean, I don't think his genetics is right. So it's probably physically possible in some sense, but I don't it makes sense that it's that stable of a trait.

I think his explanation was that right angles don't appear in nature so the trait didn't get selected out.

I watched the video and that's what the fictional presenter says. I don't think it really makes sense though, but maybe you can get passed that because the species coming into existence at all is so contrived and unlikely?

The vampires appeared to have less of a gene pool and more of a gene cleanroom. Knife edge stuff there.

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

#226

Post by yaky »

05bmckay wrote: post #207

Red Rising is a pretty great one, I would have added it to my list.

Red Rising is often recommended in lists such as this, and that is how I discovered it too. Worth noting though that the 3/4 of the first book is Hunger Games on Mars, with barely any significance to the plot started in the first part of the book.

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

#227

Post by BobaFloutist »

marliechiller wrote: post #160
bwb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be kind; being an author is an incredibly hard career, and people do it for the love of creating and sharing a story. It is not a cash grab, and if you don't like his writing style, just don't read his books. Books are deeply personal and no reason to make a personal attack because it isn't a match for your desired book style.

The great thing about opinions, as youve pointed out with books, is that you can disregard them. Personally, I agree that PHM was not particularly good compared with The Martian, but to each their own.

I thought PHM was a fairly well crafted nerdy action book, like a classic B-movie catered to a more educated audience. It's good at tuning itself to its target audience and maintaining interest with pacing and interesting, fun ideas.

What's frustrating is the number of people that list it as the best sci-fi of the last decade and try to elevate it as doing something truly groundbreaking. I don't really understand where that's coming from.

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

#228

Post by bwb »

ryandvm wrote: post #128

I 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.

Ya I am working on this :)

Our new Book DNA review format has you pick why you disliked/loved/liked a book and I am going to use that data to help build a profile of similar types of readers.

You can try it here by sharing your 3 fav books of 2024 -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads

Next year I will roll it out for all books as we get more in place.

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

#229

Post by BobaFloutist »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #199
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).

If you liked that, may I suggest the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh, or, really, almost anything else by her. But especially the Foreigner series.
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