Snow Crash
edit : and Ambient, by Jack Womack
What are your favourite sci-fi books?
11–20 of 110 posts
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#12The three stigmata of palmer eldritch
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#13There are some excellent books in this thread (makes sense that the HN community would know their sci fi) - a short story addition to the list is "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster. Totally changed my opinion technology's impact on the modern world.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#14Neal Stephenson, Anathem
Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons
Greg Egan, Diaspora and Permutation City
Frank Herbert, Dune
Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars trilogy
Vernon Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
[Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#15One of the read-worthy books which immediately came to mind is Neverness [1] by David Zindell. It is actually the 'prequel' to a series ('A requiem for Homo Sapiens' [2]) which I have yet to read, but it stands by itself as far as I'm concerned.
If you like SF, mathematics and deep ideas, this might be a book for you.
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/968997.Neverness
[2] http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/399921.David_Zindell
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#16The Space Merchants
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#17Anything by Iain M. Banks. Start with "The Player of Games" and "Consider Phlebas". Anything by Vernor S. Vinge especially "Zones of Thought" series. "Daemon", "Freedom(tm)", "Kill Decision" and "Influx" by Daniel Suarez. "The Martian" by Andy Weir. Anything by Neal Stephenson, especially "Reamde: A Novel" and "Cryptonomicon". Anything by Hannu Rajaniemi, especially "The Fractal Prince".
I've just finished the first three Culture novels.
Consider Phlebas starts great, but loses a lot during the rest of the book.
The Player of Games is okay, but by far not as good as people told me.
Use of Weapons is excellent. I'll have to re-read it in a few months.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#18Stumbled across and started reading A. E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" last night. Super trippy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Null-A http://www.amazon.com/World-Null--E-Van-Vogt/dp/0765300974/
didn't expect anyone to mention this book... but it's been a long time favorite of mine. I first read it in my teens, when I was heavily into asimov, vance, dick and other classics :)
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#19I have strong opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" fi…
Once upon a time I would have agreed - but these days I find poor characterisation stalls my suspension of disbelief just as much as dodgy physics.
So my current favourite is Fiasco by Lem. The physics at least sounds convincing and the characters are all too human.
Re: What are your favourite sci-fi books?
#20Greg Egan - Permutation City
Peter Watts - Blindsight