I have just started reading Seveneves, really enjoying it so far.
This is my first (proper) science fiction book. I have been told that Foundation series is a must read. Any recommendations will be appreciated!!
This is my first (proper) science fiction book. I have been told that Foundation series is a must read. Any recommendations will be appreciated!!
It's a hard-sci-fi story about how various societies, human and alien, attempt to assert control & hegemony over centuries of time (in many ways thinking of this as a distributed systems and code documentation problem!), and how critical and impactful the role of language translation is in helping people to understand foreign ways of thinking. At the novel's core is a question very akin to that of philosophical antipositivism [1]: is it possible (or optimal for your society) to appreciate and emphasize with people wholly different from oneself, without interpreting their thoughts and cultures in language and description that's familiar to oneself, even if this is more art than science? There's a meta-narrative to this as well about how the reader should interpret the book with that question in mind, though to say anything more would delve into spoilers. And lest you think it's just philosophical deepness, it's also an action-packed page-turner with memorable characters despite its huge temporal scope.
While technically it's a prequel, it works entirely standalone, and is arguably best read first without knowing character details from its publication-time predecessor. Content warnings for mind control and assault (though they're handled thoughtfully IMO). Highly, highly recommend.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536...
Rendezvous With Rama is one of my favorites.
I’d also recommend Children of Time and Children of Ruin by adrian tchaikovsky. It was one of those random ones I picked up with low expectations, and it turned out to be amazing. It’s well regarded now, but this was when it first came out.
Dune is one I recommend reading even if you’re aware of the story or the movie. It’s an amazingly creative work that lays the foundation of many modern science fiction concepts.
I’d also highly recommend Fire Upon the Deep.
Last ones I’ll recommend are the space odyssey books. I’m a huge fan of long timelines (if you couldn’t already tell) and this series spans 1000 years.
It's a sci-fi book that made sense of PTSD for me.
Which ones? :)
Now, I grant you, some of the challenge might be in a) lacking Chinese historical and cultural background, and b) the nature of the translation itself. But I simply could not get into this series.
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are must reads. Anathem is a beast that I just couldn’t get into, though I tried several times.
Fall, had some interesting and vivid passages, but the whole "Dodge wakes up in a simulation with a brain injury" bit, and really the rest of the book from there to the end could have been cut. That would leave us with a much better 350 page novel about the near future instead of yet another Stephenson -- much longer than the original! -- attempt at retelling the Book of Genesis.
As with all fiction books, my usual advice is to read it for pleasure, and put it aside if you don’t like it or it doesn’t live up to expectations. You don’t have to finish a book just because you started it.
Cryptonomicon is very good too. Should be a must read for people who want to make another Tor :)
Incomparison, Reamde is slow and boring.
Cryptonomicon is fun, I re-read that recently. I wouldn't really call it sci-fi, though. More like historical fiction..
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past
Some fans of the book put together a short teaser trailer for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM
Greg Egan, Robert Forwards are on the hard edge with universe driven plots. Robert Hamilton does space opera like nothing else.
Military SF is its own world, with Hammers Slammers maybe the best. Be warned: the author doesn't do gore but the horrors of modern, impersonal mechanized combat is conveyed as much as words can be.
The Terra Ignota series is fantastic.
This book looks like it might be a bit in the same spirit in the sense that our home planet is abused a bit. Part three of Seveneves is about the aftermath of essentially terra forming Earth in the distant future after it gets destroyed in part 1.
People think about other planets when it comes to terra forming but of course our home planet might be the easiest one to practice on and doing so might get a bit urgent as we seem to be destroying it. Great premise for a near future science fiction novel.
If you are looking for recommendations. Ian Banks can be a bit hard to read but can be very entertaining. Arthur C Clarke wrote some awesome science fiction. More recently, The Martian (Andy Weir) was great. And Andy Weir just published another book that's on my list to read soon. The expanse series of books (James S. A. Corey) is a good read. 2312 (Stanley Robinson) is also worth a look.
And of course if you at all enjoyed Seveneves, you might want to read the rest of what NS wrote. Anathem is great. Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon are classics at this point.
What it has is some fun ideas, and one really interesting character who informs lots of similar characters that came after him in the writing of other authors.
Anathem was by far my favorite discovery of the whole year in any genre, highly highly recommended. (I much preferred it to Cryptonomicon actually.) I found it beautiful and deep and entertaining on every level.
I love the foundation series, but it was written in a very different time. Don't expect well developed characters.
I haven't read Seveneves, but other stephenson novels tend to be him nerding out on some really big idea. If you like that sort of thing (and are ok with the author really going into the tech side of the idea) greg egan is really good.
Science fiction is a pretty broad field, with lots of different types of books that concentrate on different things, so its going to vary depending on what you like. At the same time, without more to go on, this thread will probably just be a list of every famous sci-fi novel ever (if that's what you're looking for, may i suggest picking some novels at random off the nebula award winners list? There are some exceptions, but most are quite good and its a little bit of everything)
- The Culture series by Banks
- Dune, at least the first book
Psycho paranoia classics:
- Anything by Philip K Dick, especially Ubik
- Solaris by Lem
1000+ pages of terraforming epic: Mars trilogy by KS Robinson
Hardest sci fi ever, a HN classic whenever cellular automata are discussed: Permutation City by Greg Egan
I read almost everything Egan published. While I love his work dearly, I've had very poor success with introducing people to his "alternative physics" stories (where he takes some law, flips a sign somewhere and rolls with the consequences [])... it's TOO hard. Not everyone likes a sci fi book that requires readers to follow along with pen and paper. So I always first recommend Permutation City, or maybe the short story collections such as "axiomatic"...
I would also recommend Dune, but unlike some of the other commenters, I would recommend the entire series. At the very least, read Dune and Dune Messiah together. (I found the first 100 pages or so of Dune a bit tough going, but once you get into it, it's fantastic.)
The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin, if you like to explore different social systems and its implications. Great, but might not be everyone's taste.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, obviously, which is half dry British humor and half nerd humor. I probably missed half of the British humor part, but even so it's really great. Recommended if you want to spend a weekend laughing.
[1]: https://www.amazon.de/Chasm-City-English-Alastair-Reynolds-e...
Neuromancer is a must read, a true masterpiece.
Tales of Pilot Pirx is another type of sci-fi, also very enjoyable.