Science Fiction Stories with Good Astronomy and Physics: A Topical Index | Hacker News Reader

Science Fiction Stories with Good Astronomy and Physics: A Topical Index

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219 pointsfirebaze70 comments

Basically anything by Greg Egan is great.

His early short stories have a lot of "drugs can let your brain talk to other dimensions" and "your mind literally makes reality" (though some of those are also really good, "The Infinite Assassin" is a great read and it's only like 15 pages), but his later full books are basically all hard (if speculative) physics stuff.

Dichronauts is difficult to get your head around, but very rewarding. It's about cartographers who work in a universe with essentially 2.5 dimensions of space and 1.5 dimensions of time.

The Orthogonal trilogy is about a species living in a toroidal universe where all 4 dimensions are identical and interchangeable.

The universes of Diaspora, Schild's Ladder, and Incandescence are set in a future when most intelligent life in the galaxy lives in a network of space-computers and interact with the outside world via robots and programmable matter.

Oh and I almost forgot the Bobiverse series. Not by Egan, but still good. Some guy gets stuck in a brain-computer and sent off in a self-replicating space probe to prepare other planets for human colonization.

Bobiverse has lots of _good_ physics, especially around astromechanics, but also lots of questionable, bad, and unexplained physics. Specifically the FTL communications and the clone personality differences exist entirely for plot reasons, have very little explanation, and cause significant amounts of disbelief that must be suspended.

Sure, but I find most interesting science fiction takes liberty at least somewhere. I'm willing to let the author play a little loosely with a few things, which are hopefully explained as "additional input we don't quite understand alter known theories" instead of "ignore this well accepted thing", if it adds significantly to the story.

FTL communication? Eh, there's both enough new stuff to discover in physics and it provides such a massive boost to most stories that I'm generally willing to allow it, if treated well.

The clone personalities diverging almost immediately? Kinda torn. On the one hand, I think they would diverge significantly eventually anyway (take anyone at age 40 and give them a couple hundred years of experience being a martial protector, trying to unite nations, an R&D head, or a explorer of the wondrous, and you're bound to come out the other side with large differences), so I'm not sure how important it was to have it immediately if the plot points it helped could have been achieved in some other manner.

I rather like the explanation for the lack of FTL travel/communication around here in Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought books (first two are some of the best SF novels ever written, third one is pretty awful).

Edit: Added "around here" - which is quite important.... ;-)

The engines also seem to be perpetual motion machines of some sort or at least pull massive amounts of energy out of nowhere. The fact they can do that at absurd scales becomes a large plot point so it's kind of hard to ignore.

I thought the original generators were fusion and powered some kind of ion engines?

The ostensible explanation for the later casimir generators was that they were pulling energy from vacuum fluctuations in a similar way that armature-linked buoys can generate power from ocean waves, but they were pretty vague on how that could provide more than a minuscule amount of power. Instead it was portrayed as being able to supply orders of magnitude more energy than fusion, which seems implausible. But at that point we're like 2 books in and already pretty invested...

the power on self test includes a check to determine if he’s a copy. failing that check is so traumatic the only coping mechanism is to create a new identity. each new identity extends some prototype that was known to bob prime. it’s like how smashing the same cup again and again would break in similar but different ways.

I loved Dichronauts. It was a tough read but like you say, very rewarding. But I'm really struggling with Diaspora. I think I just find the concept of life living within computers.... kind of dull? It just doesn't seem that far-fetched to me, it seems self-evidently obvious, so his exploration of this isn't really holding my interest.

I agree with you about that, but if you persevere into the second half of the book it becomes really wonderful because of other plot points that I won't spoil for you :-)

Keep going! It's worth it, the second part is great, though the ending is a little flat.

I rather liked the ending :-)

Agreed. My favorites are Diaspora, Distress and Permutation City. I like his short stories and I also liked Quarantine which got a mention in this list but its certainly not the only one with with really solid science in it.

Not sure if it is on the same level of realism as those listed for evertyhign, but "The Expanse" series by James S. A. Corey for me was a breath of fresh air.

The book really considers things like the time it would take to go from Earth to Mars, or the edge of the Solar System, and also take into account gravity forces in battles and other events.

It still has a lot of very sci-fi things in some areas, but it was very interesting to see that going from Earth to somewhere after Neptune really took 8+ months for the passengers, including some of the psychological stress of spending that much time together on a small ship.

The TV Series is also good but misses a lot of those little things that the books explicitly deal with. It became my favorite book series because of that.

No magically going to another galaxy in the blink of an eye. Going to another planet always required planning, sacrifices, time, etc. In addition it also has some pretty nice politics compared to other space stories.

> No magically going to another galaxy in the blink of an eye.

Spoiler alert. They do though, kinda. Thousands of systems but all in the Milky Way.

I tried to keep all examples very, very general not to spoil anything.

As a good sci-fi, the books will use some magic here and there, but it is very discrete, in my opinion. Not even close to what most popular space stories do for convenience.

I gladly accept that part you are talking about since it came with a very good balance in other areas.

In my opinion it's better to know that not strictly hard sci-fi.

Let me explain, since I think this is an aspect of writing that's not widely appreciated. The beginning of a book essentially sets up "promises" for what the rest of the book is going to be like. In the case of Leviathan Wakes, I think it's entirely reasonable to see the book as making a promise that it's hard sci-fi, given that it's trying so hard to be. All of the little details, like you say, are made very obvious in the beginning.

And then, you get a good ways into the book, and suddenly you realize that it's not really hard sci-fi after all. It can be a serious let-down since the book was leading you on to believe it was fully hard sci-fi.

Now I'm not actually a huge fan of hard sci-fi per se, but this did irritate me that I didn't bother to pick up any of the sequels. Maybe I'll get back to it some day, since I do think some of the almost-hard details are nice, and now that I know to set the right expectations.

This was me with the TV series. Most of the first and second season are hard sci-if in the strictest sense. Just what the protomolecule is remained a mystery, but but it was a tiny alien enigma within a realistic near-term hard sci-fi universe that was and still is unlike anything else on TV.

Then the big reveal happened (in season 3, I think?) and it’s like the bottom dropped out. I legit stopped watching at that point, although I’m considering giving it another chance now. Had I known upfront I think I would have been more forgiving, but instead I felt deceived.

All that said, the Epstein drive is nearly as magic as the usual hyperspace trope. Even in the beginning The Expanse isn’t as hard sci-fi as it purports to be.

Leviathan Wakes would not be nearly as good if the exact nature of what comes later was broadcast early on, though the prologue does make it quite clear that the central mystery is going to lead somewhere outside of established science fact. That’s the promise it makes: that there’s something strange going on, and that by the end of the book you’re going to know more about it, and about what happened to the point-of-view character.

IMO, straying out of the lane of the subgenre that someone going in with no foreknowledge happened to sort a story into without reading the whole thing first is pretty low on the big list of literary sins. On the contrary, I think a genre switch-up executed well is a delightful thing, mostly because complications and reversals are critical elements of most good plots and genre is completely arbitrary and artificial. All other things being equal, a story that tiptoes around genre conventions is never going to be more interesting than one that goes where it wants.

There are so many things the author got right throughout the Expanse books - physics, politics, character progression, character impact. He just added a pinch of sci fi to make things interesting and different, but in a good way.

It starts as a bit of duex ex machina yes, but its never inconsistent. Any new progression seems logical from the old, so its easy to follow and doesn’t break the world view you develop for the series.

Also one of the best things the book got right for me is the scale of character’s actions. You don’t have mega heroes. The good guys just try to survive in the big universe and do good, but it doesn’t always work out the way they want as the world is big and you have unintended consequences. It felt very real.

It does have mega villains though, which were a bit _too_ powerful in my opinion, but not without historical precedent I’m afraid.

Haven't read the books, but enjoyed the series... one of the first series set in space where g-forces and the physiological effects of zero-g play prominent roles in the story

I can't recommend the Expanse series. The first two books are interesting. The next two are loaded with boring human conflict that slowly progresses with lots of filler. The big bads do crazy pointless shit just to drive the thin plots. It is essentially Game of Thrones in space. The authors are deliberately stretching the stories to milk the series.

I just recently finished all of the books.

The third and fourth books are the weakest by far and are actually done much better by the TV series than the books.

The TV series version of Ashford is an actual deep character and not just a 2d caricature. Equally, all of the schoolgirl romance stuff in Cibola Burn is removed.

The rest of the books are pretty decent though I thought, so if you stopped at Cibola Burn I'd recommend Nemesis Games and the rest.

A surprising omission: Blindsight, Peter Watts (2006).

A group of transhuman researchers make first contact with an unusual object of extraterrestrial origin. Light on exposition but hard on its science, with extensively researched (and annotated!) details ranging from astrophysics to biology and psychology.

Available online: https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

I'd add Neal Stephenson's Seveneves to the Space Travel and perhaps comet sections. There was some excellent physics that dealt with issues like inertia, delta-V, orbital parameters, simulated gravity and complex dynamics (bolos etc) in great detail. As well, it handled long-term day to day life in space as a first class element of the book.

Agree - strongest book I've read in that category.

Anathem for the QM section? Maybe a stretch!

If nothing else, I love the way that Anathem presents an alternate nomenclature for a whole range of scientific and philosophical concepts, ranging from the Hylian Theoric World (Platonic ideals) and Gardan's Steelyard (Occam's Razor) to Saunt Bucker's Basket (Faraday cage). While Stephenson's practice of inventing alternative names met with some derision (like https://xkcd.com/483/), it adds something to the work that wouldn't come through the same way with familiar names.

"it adds something to the work that wouldn't come through the same way with familiar names"

I think it would have been too close to Earth if there hadn't been some sense of "foreignness" created by the different words. Of course, the similarity of Arbre to Earth is an important part of the plot so its not like he could make the environment wildly different.

I was expecting to see Arthur C. Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" (where I first heard about space elevators), but it looks like this isn't aimed at technological ideas, more straight science. Though "telescopes" is one of the categories.

Glad to see Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero" on the list - that made a big impression on me when I read it back in the 70s.

Fun that Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" shows up in 3 different categories. Stunning story. I would have included his "Tower of Babylon" story as well - in cosmology <g>.

From an excellent list, I'm going to hightlight a couple of lesser known works

> Sheckley, Robert "Specialist" in Keyes, N., ed. Contact. 1963, Paperback Library. Proposes the idea that life in the universe is all specialized by function, except on Earth.

Scheckley's short stories are uniformly excellent.

> Clement, Hal Mission of Gravity. 1962, Pyramid. Life on a massive, rapidly rotating planet. Clement is a high-school science teacher. . (A new edition of all his stories about this planet was issued in 2002 by TOR, under the title Heavy Planet.)

Fantastic book.

I have to say... good physics and astronomy... does it lead to a good story?

Is it just that some people can't "suspend their belief" without an explainable-in-present-day backdrop?

Some of my most fun scifi stories are NOT explainable using current science.

just off the top of my head

"And He Built a Crooked House" by Heinlein

"Little Black Bag" Kornbluth

(both findable in one web search)

the Gateway series by Pohl

or basically anything with time travel or ftl.

The thing is - the real world can be BORING. With present-day physics and astronomy - we are alone in the universe with real difficulty escaping our planet, let alone our solar system, galaxy or more.

I think the answer to real-world physics and astronomy in science fiction is -- better character development :)

I just finished the very nice Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, that mixes time travel with magic.

Another novel that I really recommend, which mixes fantasy with social critique and science in one very interesting way, is "Soldiers of Paradise" by Paul Park. Its description of a world with seasons which last for generations and a caste-bound theocratic society that blends magic and touches of the modern world has a certain stark beauty to it.

One of the most well-plotted time travel novels ever. The breadth of Powers’ creativity is a thing of wonder. There were ideas in that book which were just bits of throwaway color, which I still think about years after having read the book.

That being said, his other books were a slight let down after Anubis Gates.

Major agreement with you there, and glad i'm not the only one. After reading the incredibly rich, beautifully rendered world of The Anubis Gates, I expected more of the same from his other books, but no, not quite as good, oddly. That book however remains the single best time travel fantasy novel I've ever read to this day.

The blend of nearly phantasmagoric horror, fantasy and a touch of science fiction is unique too. If anyone knows of any similar novels from other authors, i'm all ears.

Thank you for the recommendation :)

I would say no, accurate science does not lead to a good story. But I would also say a lot of people who are into writers like Greg Egan really are not there for the story. I just want to see some excellent and plausible speculative science.

Good science does not lead to a good story, but can lead to a good read, for those who are interessted in this. Different people have different fun.

Thanks to the poster for submitting this.

I'm just now reading the last of the Culture Series[0] by Ian Banks (not included in the list, and for good reason) and will be looking for something new soon.

I didn't see Nightfall[1] in the list (although I just skimmed, so it may be there), which (indirectly) addresses orbital dynamics in a system with multiple stars. Perhaps it should be included?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_an...

I've been a Banks fan for a long long time - if you liked the Culture series you might like the Neal Asher Polity series. They aren't quite as well written as Banks - but they do make up for it with a lot of action and some superbly crafted scary beasties (Hooders being particularly terrifying).

Thanks for the recommendation!

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson comes to mind not necessarily because of truly realistic physics or astronomy, but that the physics of the situation are a sort of puzzle that come to make a lot of sense as things progress.

This is still my all time favorite Sci Fi book. I just started the sequel last night, and I'm very excited to get sucked back into that world.

Alastair Reynolds is just amazing to me.

As a side note, I absolutely love the intro The Expanse show because of the all the orbital mechanics.

> Alastair Reynolds is just amazing to me.

His earlier stuff, definitely yes (eg The Inhibitor series).

His more recent works (eg Revenger series) is pretty average if not outright bad.

I'm on the third book of the Revenger series now, and it's just... crap. :(

If you haven't read it yet, avoid it. Major foundation sections of the third books' plot are completely nonsensical, the characters do outright idiotic things to move the plot along, etc. It's not good reading. :(

Honestly that’s how I felt about Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap too. His writing got bad when he was just tying up loose ends towards the end.

Loved Revelation Space, Chasm City, and all the short stories in that universe though. Diamond Dogs is one of my favorite novellas.

I think the Revenger series is intended to be more Young Adult level stuff. The Revelation Space series has a lot of good stuff, but also takes pains to not overly explain every tech advance. Diamond Dogs is my all time favorite, even if it's absurd.

Revelation Space was amazing as were some of the short stories. I just wish they weren't all so pessemistic. I loved the demarchists and the conjoiners.

That's a great list, thanks for posting! There's lots of stuff there I haven't read, but want to now.

On the same topic, another good resource is the Atomic Rockets Seal of Approval: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval.... - an award given by the Atomic Rockets site for works of fiction that get the physics right.

The literature in high impact science journals also makes for great science fiction stories.

Also the most boring ones.

can you explain a bit more ?

Nature at least used to publish a single-page science fiction story at the back of every issue. They still publish online, though they've dropped it from the print edition.

edit: https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures

While true, I think the grandparent post was making a snarky comment about peer review quality and the replication crisis.

They got "Redshift Rendezvous"! Great!

For those who haven't read it, spaceships create an environment where the speed of light is much slower - the write-up says 30 m/s; my memory is that it's more like 10 m/s, because people were able to sprint moderately close to the speed of light. In this world, you experience relativistic effects just walking around. It does a great job letting you experience what that would be like.

There's a video game (maybe more of a tech demo?) called A Slower Speed of Light that is set in a universe where the speed of light is just a smidge faster than walking pace. It's fun seeing the redshift and lorentz transformation from a 1st person viewpoint

Hmm, no mention of Alexis Gilliland, "Revolution from Rosinante" and two sequels, ~1980.

Recommended. Still current (modulo pocket supercomputers).

David Weber's "Honorverse" series of novels - which starts with On Basilisk Station - has the most believable science fiction "false science" approach I've yet seen in fiction.

There's a catch - you have to be OK with long-winded exposition - but the stories are really good, with a fascinating look at technology and culture of a not-too-distant future.

> There's a catch - you have to be OK with long-winded exposition

Saying Weber has long-winded exposition is a little like saying “Blade Runner” has the occasional sweeping visual. In his later Honorverse novels, especially the most recent, it really feels like our author is getting paid by the word. He has...a lot of story background he feels the need to fill in. If you’ve ever made it to the end of a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode and thought “wow, I wonder how that civilization came to be and what happened after our heroes left,” this is the series for you.

They’re good stories and I like the middle of the arc in particular but, yes, I hope future readers like very detailed backgrounds on the technology or in-universe history of the societies in question.

This list looks amazing. Anyone know of a similar curation for the quantum domain? I’d imagine the list to be ... smaller. /rimshot

I don’t think the books go into it but here’s an attempt to explain the seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire.

https://www.tor.com/2011/05/04/how-seasons-qworkq-in-a-song-...

They only mention Indistinguishable from Magic by Robert L Forward once. But it belongs in a bunch of these categories.

Basically what it does is pick a variety of topics of interest to science fiction, has a science fact essay about it, then a short story with theoretically possible technology based on that topic.

Highly recommended.

Just finished “Camelot 30K” also by Robert L Forward. Humans meet aliens out in the Kuiper belt. Interesting ideas for alien life at very cold temperatures. Similar style to Dragon’s Egg (Mentioned in list) and equally enjoyable.

Absolutely horrible characterization in Camelot 30K. I ended up skipping through the book and skimming past dialogue as it was so bad that it hurt to read. But the idea of the book was utterly fascinating, and I still think about it now and then, years after reading it. Definitely worth reading (or skimming) if you are the type that likes science fiction for the big ideas.

"From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne. The scientific description of how to launch a "rocket" (well, projectile really) and ultimately get stuck in lunar orbit (spoiler) is surprisingly accurate given its publishing date of 1865.

This is amazing. Thanks firebaze for posting!!

How is Three-Body Problem not in here? Otherwise, good list to look at.

Whatever else you might say about The Three-Body Problem, its physics and astronomy are pretty implausible (the sequels drastically more so).

I am surprised that Dark Forest is not on the list given they have a whole section on alien life. I now judge all first contact stories against Dark Forest.

It does have Gateway on the list which had implausible black holes - so I don't think the plausibility bar is high.

Yup I would have expected to see Dark Forest because it has such a plausible universe of life and its dynamics, and a believable solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Its physics and astronomy are laughably bad.

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