Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 8:33 AM UTC

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…

It's a philosophic question. Some believe physics is mathematics. Roger Penrose believes the Mandelbrot set exists, because it's logically consistent and reproducible.

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

#282

Post by nobody9999 » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 8:43 AM UTC

I'd suggest The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

It's good stuff. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

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

#283

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 9:56 AM UTC

exar0815 wrote: post #148

If you liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary, two books I cannot recommend enough are Daniel Suarez' Delta-V and Critical Mass. Highly technical focused hard-sci-fi about asteroid mining and human dynamics in high-risk envrionments. I can't vouch for the absolute factual correctness, but it has an appendix listing the papers the author indirectly references for the book. https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html

Delta-V is also described as a "Technothriller" - i.e. in the grey area between action thriller and sci-fi, where the tech is current and cutting-edge, or possibly an inch beyond. I liked the first book, will try the second some time soon.

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

#284

Post by LordGrey » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

exar0815 wrote: post #148

If you liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary, two books I cannot recommend enough are Daniel Suarez' Delta-V and Critical Mass. Highly technical focused hard-sci-fi about asteroid mining and human dynamics in high-risk envrionments. I can't vouch for the absolute factual correctness, but it has an appendix listing the papers the author indirectly references for the book. https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html

I really enjoyed his Daemon novel, and I think it would appeal to the HN crowd. Interesting intersection of code and the real world, and it is set more-or-less in the current time.

Daemon is the first of a trilogy. The remaining two books are good, but not quite as good IMO.

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

#285

Post by omgmajk » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

belter wrote: post #182

bwb wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is really a reddit moment but I can't resist, username truly checks out.

To add something to the conversation I am reading the expanse right now and I really like it. It's the mix of goofy and dark that gets me.

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

#286

Post by Keysh » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 12:05 PM UTC

Suppafly wrote: post #240

kranner wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>I think his explanation was that right angles don't appear in nature Which is weird, because they do.

I remember reading this, and looking out my office window where the branches of neighboring tree (denuded of leaves because it was winter) made three or four near-perfect right angles in projection (along with intersections at other angles).

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

#287

Post by Keysh » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 12:13 PM UTC

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.

C.J. Cherryh's 1981 novel Wave Without a Shore has something vaguely similar, where the human inhabitants of a planet refuse to notice the non-human natives sharing their cities.

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

#288

Post by mnky9800n » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 12:22 PM UTC

bwb wrote: post #151

mnky9800n wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should reread them. They are so much fun. I’m the only person I know who has ever read them. Although that’s not saying much I suppose haha.

One of my hopes for the website is I could help books that are lesser known get noticed and "pop." Working on getting more to help in that capacity as there are so many good books that don't get enough notice. Aiming to come out with some features this Winter to help around that.

Are you asking for help because I will help you. I love to read sci-fi novels as well as discuss them.

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

#289

Post by Keysh » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 12:35 PM UTC

cmpalmer52 wrote: post #256

insane_dreamer wrote: post #197

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.

I read Solaris years ago and was unimpressed. The philosophy and science’ish elements were poorly described and it felt like a lit-fic attempt at trippy SF by someone ignorant of the genre. Then, a year or two ago, I read about how bad the early translations were, so I picked up a new English translation. Wow, what a difference. Now it’s one of my favorites.

Do you recall the name of the good translator?

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

#290

Post by Keysh » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 12:54 PM UTC

yaky wrote: post #231

The most unusual book I read this year is Radiance by Catherynne Valente. It's set in an Art-Deco "future" of our fully habitable Solar system (jungles and oceans on Venus, flowering fields on Pluto, etc), that started to be colonized in the 1860s. Of course, it is a play on early science fiction tropes, but somehow, it all fits together.

Amusingly, I have made three tries to read that book, and kept giving up (getting a little further each time). Partly it was the peculiar sense of aesthetics (e.g., the idea that of course audience would reject color movies) and partly it was the Looney Tunes solar system, which turned out to be something I could accept in a Daffy Duck cartoon but not in a novel.

(But then I'm an astronomer, so I'm primed to get annoyed by random mistakes and carelessness that other people wouldn't notice or care about. I mean, I could kind of momentarily accept the silliness of a habitable solid surface for Uranus, but when you describe the Sun as fainter than Jupiter seen from that location... and then we're told that wheat can't tolerate cold climates the way rice can, and I realize the botany is just as nonsensical as the astronomy...)

I've read most of one of her short-story collections and really liked it, so it's not a generic problem with her writing.