Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

blamcast.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 291 posts

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#222

Post by iamscanner »

krasmark wrote: post #165
asymmetric wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another very valuable source of new material for me has been The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies[1]. Perfect for finding new interesting writers (Bacigalupi was one of the nicest discoveries) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_Best_Science_Fiction

Dozois has a knack for picking great stories. The saddest part is that it's tricky to get past editions; when I find an old edition I don't have at a used book store it's terribly exciting, especially since the quality has been so consistent over the years.

I've had pretty good success picking them up in digital formats - not sure if you prefer the paperback version, but if you're okay reading it on a screen you can get all of them digital.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#223

Post by r00fus »

pragmatic wrote: post #38

Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better. That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to li…

Agreed... I read Cryptonomicon first, then Diamond Age (my favorite from him) then Snow Crash, and I found the third book a lot less mature and dated (I read it in 2001, almost a decade after it was published).

Diamond Age painted a very deep and rich tapestry of future vision.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#224

Post by redcap »

betageek wrote: post #208
cletus wrote: post #47

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…

"Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) "takeover" of Western society. It's actually very xenophobic" This is a very weird statement to make, the architects of Cyberpunk (Gibson, Sterling etc.) are Japanophiles if anything, the opposite of Xenophobic. Do you have any evidence to back this statement up? Cyberpunk was just an extrapolation of the tech scene of the 80s,…

The zeitgeist of the 80s had a lot of concern about Japan becoming "number 1" - US manufacturing was falling behind and people thought that Japan was top of the world technologically.

So while the authors are Japanophiles, they certainly tapped into the mood of the time - that the future was strange and asian-influenced.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#226

Post by r00fus »

acabal wrote: post #54

While I thought Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space was just ok, I really loved his standalone book Chasm City . I picked it up randomly at a book exchange and was blown away. The universe is fiercely imaginative and colorful, the dialog is snappy, the characters are flawed and interesting, the science is just hard enough to be vaguely plausible, but on the whole there's enough silliness for the book to not take itse…

Chasm City is my favorite book, but not by far... The first book (Revelation Space) set a very nice backdrop for the character development and story in the 2nd book (Chasm City).

My only gripe with Chasm City is that there is an (not essential to story) interlude which breaks hard sci-fi canon (ie, superluminal travel).

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#227

Post by nazgulnarsil »

subwindow wrote: post #71

Obviously 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…

try Memoirs Found in a Bathtub if you haven't already. It's like The Man Who was Thursday meets Dr. Strangelove.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#228

Post by nazgulnarsil »

latch wrote: post #10

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…

strange, I found God Emperor the most interesting.

Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)

#229

Post by nazgulnarsil »

silvajoao wrote: post #161
dlikhten wrote: post #91

Some others I'd recommend: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Loved it. Flatland. o.O Isacc Asimov short stories collection (specially "Jokester" "The Golden Man" and "The Last Question")

The Last Question is perhaps the short story with the most mind-bending finale. Highly recommended. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

I prefer the last answer.
Post reply on HN