211–220 of 291 posts
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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.
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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.
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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…
Most traditional religions treated the spiritual sphere as part and parcel of life in the physical world, rather than something to be segregated and distinguished from it. Only a handful of religions, mostly under the influence of Platonic philosophy, have deviated from this. But the concept is no more specific to Judiasm than it is to Catholicism, Hinduism, or Roman Paganism. The opposing trend, which you might say…
Probably 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…
Neuromancer isn't just pioneering (which it was), it's incredibly well-written. But like other commenters, I disagree that it's xenophobic, and I don't think its success is rooted in xenophobia in the audience. I also disagree that Gibson's work portrays a "takeover" of Western culture; the ethic ruling the world of Gibson's novels is the ethic of the international mega-corporation, which is hardly a Japanese thing. And also there are lots of non-asian cultural bits: the Turing cops are Swiss, there's the whole cultural slant of Count Zero (not to spoil it for any who haven't read it), the Tessier-Ashpools are French/Australian, etc.
Props for mentioning Cherryh, though. Cyteen is frigging fantastic. Indeed, Cherryh in general is fantastic, although some of her stuff is serious business and some of it is (good) fluff.
As others have commented, hard SF is so very very not dead.
If you've dismissed any of these based on your reading as a kid, try re-reading. I read Tolkien at 12, loved the wizards and orcs, but as an adult remembered it as nonsense. When I re-read it (to be able to discuss with my 11 year old son), I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Likewise the Dune books (all but the first are probably beyond any adolescent). Good fiction is complex, and readings fascinated wit…
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Um, hard sci-fi? Some handwavy "upload person to computer" stuff and then "we'll just rearrange the universe over here, don't mind us". I did read it a long time ago, but I don't remember anything that specific in it.
I'd re-read it, Greg Egan is perhaps the hardest Sci-Fi writer out there, everything is rigorously thought out. He used to be a software engineer and hacks on some of his more interesting flights of fancy - check out his website http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ for some interesting stuff, Quantum Soccer anyone? http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Soccer/Socce... . If NH should have an official Sc…
Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great. Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work. I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's…
Something Dune accomplishes really well -- and which very few sci-fi books or movies have ever pulled off quite as effectively -- is weaving a lot of background, and culture, and esoteric terminology, into the story without disrupting the story's flow. There aren't lengthy, disjointed sidebars about what X means, or why Y exists. Instead, X and Y are woven into the narrative via context, allowing the reader to pick u…
The Foundation series was a great read, I read it when I was young and it influenced a lot of how I viewed the world around me. Having just reread it, I must say that it shows that Asimov did not really want to write the last parts of the series (i.e. Prelude to the Foundation and Forward the Foundation). Forward the Foundation especially is just trying to tie everything together by whatever means necessary. That bei…
But ugh ugh ugh. Every single book thereafter gets worse and worse, and by the end it's so bad that I actually welcomed the blatant fanservice reappearance of you-know-who.
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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.
I second Diaspora; his vivid description of artificial intelligence is worth the read by itself. Egan's stuff divides evenly into near-future and distant future science fiction; the distant future stuff tends to be very abstract. His latest novel, Zendegi, is a very near-future setting, and coincidentally is a more accessible read than most of his other stuff. I'd recommend it to start with.
Probably 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…
Stranger in a Strange Land is perhaps the purest example of the former, because it's very meta: the thing Heinlein wanted you to think about is the very idea of preconceived notions and full understanding. He spends the first half of the book explaining that you can understand something intellectually without understanding it emotionally, and the last half systematically questioning more and more ingrained ideas (at least at the time) so that you think about them intellectually.
Most of the list is the other type. I'll pick on Dune, since it happens to be number one on the list. Herbert introduces you to a universe that's really completely unlike any other conceived: people fly around in spaceships and have enormous mental powers, but there are no computers (they are illegal), people still fight with bladed weapons (all others are rendered either useless or too dangerous), and universal government has become feudal in nature (for various reasons). People send messengers. A bioengineering project and a social engineering project (gray projects by the same faction, no less) collide, and turn the universe upside down.
As far as hard SF goes, I'd originally clustered that with the world-building type, basically because every good example I've read happens to be in that category. Now that I think of it, though, it's not strictly required. It's really just a question of how much effort they put into reasoning out the science.