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

My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

shepherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 179 posts

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#81

Post by thirtygeo »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #11
bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

For modern sci fi and fantasy, pretty much anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I also just discovered the short story collections of Rich Larson (Changelog and Tomorrow Factory are both recommended) Just published as well is There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm. You can read the original on SCP [1], but it's now out in book form. [1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm is a great read

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#82

Post by Lord-Jobo »

aduwah wrote: post #68

So many lesser known modern books to recommend. Memoires of an imaginary friend Dogs of war (Adrian Tchaikovsky one) The devil's detective Red rising The painted man

As a more casual sci-fi reader I highly recommend Red Rising as a series. This first book is a very straightforward mashup of hunger games and Galica which is quite fun and enjoyable, but the series as a whole immediately creates it's own identify after that and I adore it deeply.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#83

Post by Ekaros »

bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

I think it is mostly to differentiate it from other fiction genres. While there is some overlaps, there is much more common in those other genres.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#84

Post by bondarchuk »

triMichael wrote: post #60
bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

They really aren't all that different from each other. One is imaginary things that might one day be possible, and the other is imaginary things that won't ever be possible. And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which ca…

If the criterion is that it's to some extent imaginary, we already have a word for that: Fiction.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#86

Post by y0eswddl »

devilbunny wrote: post #79
triMichael wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really aren't all that different from each other. One is imaginary things that might one day be possible, and the other is imaginary things that won't ever be possible. And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which ca…

It's not on the quality level of these books, but the Off to Be the Wizard series of books are humorous programming-as-magic tales that skirt the sci-fi/fantasy line. [The fulcrum of the story is that there is a computer file "out there" that reflects reality; those who find it can edit it to do all kinds of "magic". Hilarity ensues.]

this sounds intriguing, thanks!

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#87

Post by tetris11 »

jerf wrote: post #76
tetris11 wrote: post #26

John C Wright wrote a nice short story set in William Hope Hodgson's "The Night Land" Awake in the Night https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenig... In the side panels are users/readers who drew up their own maps on what they think the Nightscape is. It has all the romantic mystery of a fantasy tale, whilst still being firmly grounded in reality. I remember when London's Shard was going up, and I'…

It's four stories in the complete set: https://a.co/d/gEdBkYR Wright also has an extended paen to the mentioned Voyage to Arcturus: https://a.co/d/hubUM05 which neither I, nor the author, recommend unless you have read and deeply love Voyage to Arcturus, but I mention it because the overlap reading this list was quite uncanny. That is a very, very specific point of overlap. Should the original author ever read this t…

> Voyage to Arcturus

The blurb reads like a Gene Wolf story, surreal in its landscapes and interactions.

I will give it a try, and follow up with Wright's book.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#88

Post by edanm »

bondarchuk wrote: post #84
triMichael wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really aren't all that different from each other. One is imaginary things that might one day be possible, and the other is imaginary things that won't ever be possible. And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which ca…

If the criterion is that it's to some extent imaginary, we already have a word for that: Fiction.

That's inaccurate. SF/Fantasy contains elements which are not possible under the laws of physics, not anything imaginary. Literary fiction is also imaginary, but taking place in "our world".

(The lines get blurrier when talking about imagined historical fiction, or even things like alternative fiction.)

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#89

Post by edanm »

bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

Practically speaking, they're lumped together for a few reasons:

1. Many people who like one genre also like the other.

2. Many authors write in both genres.

3. There's a lot of similarity in the genres, and lots of things that are hard to categorize. More true lately btw.

Just as an aside though, I personally was an avid almost-only-SF reader for the first 30-ish years of my life, but lately have been reading a lot of fantasy as well. I highly recommend trying, especially more modern fantasy - I feel like the lines are even blurrier between them today, and a lot of the best work today has shifted from SF to fantasy. (I still love SF and there's a lot of great SF as well, to be clear.)

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#90

Post by tessellated »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #49
bwb wrote: post #2

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

I'm into Neal Stephenson and PKD. Currently reading Nexus by Naam. Near-future post-cyberpunk tends to be a hit for me, but I'm hoping to find a good space opera. I thought the first Culture book was basically a Schwarzenegger space-adventurism movie in book form, which is nice but not what I wanted.

I also didn't like Consider Phlebas.

Space Opera's not really my genre but I enjoyed Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton some years ago.

Read by myself and the rest in audiobook read by boring John Lee walking the dog. But I finished it and several conceptes have stayed with me since.

Post reply on HN