Not one of Peter Watts' [1] books made it to the list.
The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
181–190 of 291 posts
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard Science Fiction is alive and well. See works by Greg Bear, David Brin, Vernor Vinge, and other authors in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction#Hard_SF I personally would add Charlie Stross to this list ( http://www.antipope.org/charlie/ ).
I'm a fan of Greg Egan (which is on there). Quarantine and Permutation City are really great books. Schildt's Ladder was good but a bit too hard for me to grok.
I agree with those titles, and would add Diaspora which I just finished. Truly mindblowing stuff, although it may be a bit too abstract and technical for some.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#183Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine. Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?) Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair…
Hear, hear. Any "Best of Sci-Fi" list that omits Solaris and includes Ender's Game is worthless.
The demise of any social website also seems to coincide with the first mention of Ender's Game. Could this be the end of HN as we know it?
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#184Probably the most surprising thing about this list is that whoever made it didn't insert Amazon affiliate links into it. Anyway, these lists always raise the question of what does "good" mean exactly? Inevitably they're dominated by books that were, in their time, incredibly significant. You see the same things in computing books. Someone will always recommend "Design Patterns" but (IMHO) it is the dullest, driest bo…
not a bad break down - I would say that ratings for me should not be based on nostalgic quality but rather on quality of ideas.
One of the best under rated in terms of "hard" and in terms of quality ideas for me has been Greg Egan (especially his short stories). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard Science Fiction is alive and well. See works by Greg Bear, David Brin, Vernor Vinge, and other authors in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction#Hard_SF I personally would add Charlie Stross to this list ( http://www.antipope.org/charlie/ ).
I'm a fan of Greg Egan (which is on there). Quarantine and Permutation City are really great books. Schildt's Ladder was good but a bit too hard for me to grok.
Quarantine had me running around in high school reading Quantum Physics books and mostly failing to understand them. Good book.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#186Sirens of Titan is on the list hence I feel the list is valid. The relative position might be wrong though...
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#187Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine. Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?) Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair…
Anathem is the second-best Stephenson after Diamond Age in my opinion.
I would mark Diamond Age as "OK" at best. Interesting ideas, terrible and rushed ending. If Anathem is worse than Diamond Age, it most definitely does not belong on the list.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#188IMHO Jack Vance should be in the list, be it the Tschai series or some other. Really loved it.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not really a secret that most of Hollywood, the media, and much of progressivism and culture in general is organized around liberal jewish values. Cross 'jewish' and that line make sense. There is nothing specifically 'jewish' about those values. If anything, they're Greek. We don't owe a lot to the pre-Socratic societies, apart from them inspiring the Greeks to their greatness. In Western civilization, everythi…
I think that what's uniquely jewish is the implicit model of spiritual development that's glorified in so much of modern culture. That is, in judaism spiritual development comes from fully engaging with the physical and secular world, and immersing yourself in all of its problems and opportunities. In protestantism, spiritual development comes from contemplative experiences (e.g. thoreau) that are set apart from ever…
I think this is rather accurate, and wanted to say so after attacking you yesterday in another topic.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#190I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.
If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.
Largely ignored in all these comments is the enormous legacy of Soviet SF. During all the years of SF's Golden Age and the decades after, the main ideological and technological competitor to the US was the Soviet Union.
We're so familiar with the tropes and concepts of US-centric SF, but imagine a whole new world of science fictional ideas - separated only by language! That's Soviet SF...
The finest series of translations was Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction in the 1980s. Some of the books are now very rare and expensive, but if you're a seeker of ideas, they're priceless (especially any stories by Genrikh Altov).
As an introduction, I particularly recommend World's Spring, edited by Vladimir Gakov. And one of the finest SF novels I've read is Self Discovery, by Vladimir Savchenko (freely available online here: http://lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_ok-en...).