"Time enough for Love" belongs very close to the top.
The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
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Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#62How about more modern science fiction? I loved the Golden Age series by John C. Wright, published around 2004. It's refreshing to read sci-fi where computers and connectivity are ubiquitous, rather than the old masters who didn't foresee the internet. (Stranger has flying taxicabs using magnetic tape for storage, a jarring juxtaposition to the modern reader.)
Golden Age raises some real philosophical questions, as good mind-expanding SF should. Suppose you have an adversary in some endeavor, and you have the technology to perfectly simulate your adversary's mind and predict what he will do. Does that simulation have consciousness? Does it have civil rights? What if it's forked? Very interesting stuff, grounded in real science (no FTL travel.)
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#63Probably 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."
I would argue that this has largely already happened. There is sort of a battle between liberal jewish culture and fundamentalist christian culture for being the official US mythology, but on a day to day basis Japanese culture and values are largely what have filled the power void. I would argue that most of our mainstream institutions, from schools to jobs to pop culture, have become and are increasingly becoming largely Japanese in nature.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 up quickly on what they are. I feel Vernor Vinge has a good talent at this too. Apropos A Fire Upon The Deep (superb read) exposition is sparse and when required neatly woven into the story so that you almost never realize it's happening when it is.
I was actually surprised that A Deepness in the Sky didn't make it to the list when A Fire Upon the Deep did. Deepness had a lot of themes that satisfy hacker tastes (not just in terms of the technology but also the socio-political ramifications of it).
I had first heard of it when DanielBMarkham highly praised it (http://www.hn-books.com/Books/A-Deepness-In-The-Sky.htm, HN discussion here at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170579) and it's definitely one of the best sci-fi books I've read in years.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#65I missed Huxley's Brave New World in the list, and I noticed that the list contained only English writers. I wonder why the crowd the list was sourced from hasn't been exposed to writers of other nationalities.
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#66Probably 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…
What I noticed was what seemed to me a distinct space opera bias, combined with all the choices being the "obvious" ones. For example, two Asimov books are on there. Both are his two most famous books, and both are quite space opera-y. I would argue that End of Eternity was his best work and deserves a listing before either of those. Unfortunately, not as many people are aware of it.
In the case of Necromancer though I have to disagree with you. I think that it has held up incredibly well, the parts that were weak when it was released (totally screwy view of technology) are still the weak parts, but the strong parts (the vivid imagery for one) continue to be quite effective.
Then again, I have a strong cyberpunk/modern bias, I'd also recommend a few of Charles Stross's works :)
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#67If 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…
I don't get how Old Man's War makes all these best of lists either. It's simple, and not in a good way. It's the literary equivalent of Red Dawn—awesome to 14 year olds, but lacking in anything deeper than "Old man gets new body and has lots of sex."
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#68Dune 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…
I only read Dune last year (I'm in my thirties), and really disliked it. Your comment, however, emphasizes a virtue I did not sufficiently acknowledge at the time. It _is_ true that Dune was able to weave a lot of background into the story without resorting to technical infodumps. And at the time it was a rare and impressive achievement in SF, deserving of praise. But I don't think I'd agree that things haven't changed since; nowadays careful weaving of background isn't rare. The first two examples that pop into my mind are Banks' books (the Culture series or _Fearsum Enjinn_) in SF and Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire_ novels in fantasy. It may be reasonable to say, however, that Dune has been foundational in teaching later authors the necessity of doing this.
(Ultimately, I just couldn't handle how bad the writing was. All the characters are utterly cardboard flat. Cliched tags follow them around the book. One character has an inkvine scar on his jaw that eventually ripples in any scene he's in... and then again in the next scene... and again... I felt like instituting a drinking game based on the rippling of the scar. The main hero's mind is filled with a _terrible purpose_ whenever the author feels the need to emphasize a clue or a plot point. And the author just can't handle the flow of information (who knows what how, and whether the reader also knows that and how). This leads to the I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely-what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome you mention, but goes deeper than that, creating plot holes and distortions, and causing most of the characters to learn most of the important knowledge they need basically by staring into space and having a revelation).
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#69So hackernews is having a discussion about a blog post about sci-fi books that were recommended by a reddit discussion?
Re: The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)
#70This is a really interesting list! You've got the predictable ones, e.g. Snow Crash (man, did the conclusion of that one suck !) and juvenile SF, like Startship Troopers (an example of Heinlein's early phase), but really niche ones toward the end (not many would think Atwood as a SF writer). Two gaping holes: Any SF list that doesn't include Stanislaw Lem (e.g. Cyberiad ) is incomplete. Also missing is James Tiptree…
Indeed, I've been enjoying "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" (an anthology of Tiptree's short stories). I'm short on free time lately, so the short story format makes them feel more accessible.