The Realism of Our Times: Kim Stanley Robinson on how science fiction works
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His 2312 brought me back to reading hard sci-fi after too long not really reading much fiction at all for a long time. The ideas presented in it reminded me of a sense of wonder at the scope of future possibilities that had previously been lost under an ever increasing pile of marital, parental, and financial responsibility.
The problem I have now is, he somehow seems to write 'em faster 'n' I can read 'em (the responsibility pile still exists and is as demanding as ever)
Anyway, thanks KSR.
(Mostly off topic, but I'm currently reading Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander, the first in a series of 20 nautical-historic fiction novels, and it's incredibly tough going with O'Brien's detailed and accurate nautical terminology, of which I know nothing - I just loved the movie. A challenging read - and I've covered The Mars Trilogy and some lighter Pynchon).
One terminology that particularly struck me was what's now referred to as a "cut splice"[0]. The use that particular word was jarring, in that it's not the type of novel to have cursing scattered through it. The reason for its usage is historical accuracy.
More recently I tried reading Aurora (2015), but the book is a downer and a slog. Not recommended. Didn't finish it.
I really liked it.
Read the mars trilogy and Rice and Salt as well. I like his optimism in humans' ability to actually make radical political change. I suppose this is what I mean by his being both optimistic and grim -- severe outcomes aren't avoided in his books, but in the end societies do change before the absolute worst comes to pass. A "hard optimism" I suppose, which I find valuable.
Unfortunately we don't see that when we're in the centre of the storm.
It's my first KSR book. I wish I'd started with the Mars trilogy as previously planned.
In what way? (if that's practical/possible to answer)
I suppose that the cultural background (Old World here) might play a role here - I can imagine an American thinking "of course you can just get rid of the people exploiting your kind, we did that before already".
I liked “Blindsight” and “The Freeze-Frame Revolution”
I would also appreciate any recommendations for hard sci-fi authors with a biology focus, I’m sure there are many more I don’t know.
Hard sci-fi / biology crossover: https://www.gregegan.net/TERANESIA/TERANESIA.html
I like most of his novels, particularly "Learning the World" - which I guess is a reverse first contact novel.
Here in the UK his name is spelled “Adrian Tchaikovsky”, as well as his account on Twitter (@aptshadow), where aside from writing novels he’s insanely productive creating digital artwork (often including insect characters).
Rainbows End explored a society which went full AR, but in my opinion most of the shots if fired missed the target.
I find most of his works to be good musings on humanity with a bit of alien horror.
I think his other works are good, but in my view Pushing Ice is an usually good stand alone work.
The Wikipedia page says “Egan invents several new theories of physics”, and that to me is not hard sci-fi.
At the time many of Greg Egan's early books from the 90s/00s were written, there were a lot more competing ideas or theories in quantum mechanics compared to now. In his books he basically explores some of those ideas, and pushes the boundaries.
The best sci-fi to me inspire future scientists or engineers to explore novel approaches.
And they're not bible sized tomes like some of PFH's later space operas (some of which I own, but am too intimidated by their size to have considered starting the journey).
Upon re-reading your question, I don't think this recommendation exactly fits, but, damn, it's a good book anyway and Neal Stephenson doesn't do things by halves: Interface by Neal Stephenson (under a pseudonym and in conjunction with another author also using a pseudonym). This book only becomes more relevant with each presidential campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)
But the scope of the series is just breathtaking, I don't think I've read anything that spanned as much in space or time, and made it believable too, highly recommended.
* Children of Time / Children of Ruin (both really good)
* Remembrance of Earth's Past (even the fan fiction one is good)
* A lot of stuff from Alastair Reynolds (House of Suns being my favorite)
* Classics like Tau Zero, The Forever War etc.
* A Deepness in the Sky / A Fire Upon the Deep
Although not all of these are strictly considered hard scifi, I guess.
Btw, I love it when somebody asks this question every now and then on HN. Lots of stuff for one's (ever growing) reading list.
BUT, I enjoyed the 2nd half as well. The 1st book is already obsolete technologically in some ways (launch technology has progressed a lot in the last 5 years)[0], although very interesting. Which is one reason I like the 2nd part in that it extrapolates from the sociocultural/technological developments of the first book to see what the ultimate consequences could be.
The book is also a sharp commentary on the destructiveness of social media...
[0]side note: the speed of progress that SpaceX is achieving with Starship in Boca Chica is comparable to a pace you'd want in the first book... They're going so fast in Boca Chica, as if the Moon fell apart and they only have a couple years left before the Hard Rain to make humanity a multiplanetary species...
The one other author I’ve seen pull it off was Brandon Sanderson in his Mistborn trilogy, though he does it 2 times (once for each book) where the previous one becomes “the legends” for the next one, with all the misunderstandings that this usually entails.
"A Deepness in the Sky" was REALLY good. The Forever War was good for the concept.
In short, yours looks like a great list I will come back to, thank you.
However, I do strongly dislike Remembrance of Earth's Past / The Three Body Problem - it's vastly overrated in my opinion and the characters make no sense. The best part of it was the intro to the first book which gave an interesting glimpse at history.
Jack Shaftoe is one of my favourite fictional characters!
I couldn't even get through Cryptonomicon, and Jack Shaftoe did not strike me as a believable genius, nor his story. Anathem kind of strafed the line - it had SOME character development, and SOME action, but was mainly world-building / intellectual exploration. Stephenson's other books fall too far on that spectrum for me.
But I think it was incredibly interesting for me to see the Asian perspective on the west. I’ve read it more as an allegory of the different peoples of the world, shown from a perspective totally different than my own.
I do think though that you have to be a bit of a hard sci-fi fan to finish it, but the science-y ideas are very interesting. I think it changed how I view the vast cosmos, at least a little bit.
I think Diamond Age was my favorite overall Stephenson story in terms of both story and neat scifi concepts, but all of them were enjoyable. I agree on Seveneves chars all being forgettable. Dodge (The most recent one) had perhaps the dullest start, but I really liked the Dodge, Corvis, and Daisy characters.
> Yes, the novel ends and it's obvious that the characters' lives keep going. Lots of authors do that. Real life often doesn't have endings or clear resolutions.
The characters lives do end with the end of the book (unless there's a sequel). You can certainly imagine how their lives might proceed, but a satisfactory ending doesn't preclude that either. Drawing together the elements of a story, completing the arcs, creating some kind of resolution: these are part of the storytellers craft.
With Seveneves I thought he just ran out of steam. It felt like leaving a film ten minutes before the end and stumbling out into the daylight. Pretty dissatisfying at the end of a long book.
He also did a scifi take on magic, in The Magic Goes Away.
I see Vinor Vinge's AFUTD and ADITS as the closest thing to Niven.
Other than that, it used to be a trusted resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel
When I started reading grown-up SF decades ago it was with Bear, Bova, Niven, Pournelle, and the like. Back then Eon, Blood Music, and Ringworld (for example) were mind-blowingly vast concepts.
As an aside (and purely because it's probably my turn for some hefty downvotes) I'd definitely agree with the comment elsewhere in this thread about the Foundation books being overrated. Almost unreadably dull and feeling more like any concept of 'plot' is just a carrier for a couple of mediocre ideas.
- Hugh Howey. His Silo series is worth a read. He published it in some episodic form. However, I'd recommend just getting the whole thing. Beacon 23 is a bit shorter and also nice.
- Ramez Naam. His nexus series is a decent series. Not the best written but I enjoyed it.
- James S.A. Corey, the expanse series. Makes you appreciate the tv series more.
- Authors others already mentioned: Neal Stephenson & Peter Watts.
Other authors that go more in the direction of space opera: Iam M. Banks, Ernest Cline, John Scalzi, Ann Lecky, Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon).
Anything by Greg Egan is probably going to be the hardest sci-fi you've ever read. Dude wrote a book where he considered the ramifications of a universe built on a positive-definite Riemannian metric, and another one where the universe has 2 time dimensions.
Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg explores what life might look like if it evolved on a neutron star.
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time and Children of Ruin explore the evolution of other earth species if they were given a kick towards sapience.
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep is half space adventure (not very hard) and half an exploration of a lifeform which only achieves sapience in small groups. A Deepness in the Sky is generally harder and explores a lot of things, including the power of focused human attention, the difficulty of galactic scale civilization, and alien life evolved in a star system where the star periodically dims.
Steven Baxter and Clarke collaborated on The Light of Other Days, which explores the technical and sociological consequences of a device which allows you to see the past.
With a broad interpretation of 'hard' I can highly recommend Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, which have soft science but hard humanity.
Similarly The Long Earth series, a collaboration between Pratchett and Baxter, where it seems Baxter handles the sociological and technological consequences of the science while Pratchett handles the characters and philosophy.
Asimov's I, Robot is an exploration of what happens when you try to constrain intelligence with rules.
Asimov's Foundation Trilogy gets a lot of hype, but it isn't very hard and I also found it utterly mediocre. Instead I recommend The God's Themselves, which is so good it's like Asimov was channeling a much better writer to get his ideas down. It explores the limited interaction of our universe with one that has slightly different physical properties.
Also perhaps stretching the definition of 'hard', but I want to recommend it because it's relatively unknown, is Leonard Richardson's Constellation Games, in which an incredibly advanced multi-species anarchic alien civilization makes first contact with humanity, and the protagonist really just wants to play their video games. It's actually harder sci-fi than it sounds.
Contact by Carl Sagan. It's a nice tale about a passionate SETI scientist, by an author known more commonly for nonfiction and TV.
Recently began a fiction kick after starting my full-time job for the first time, nice way to break screen-time instead of gaming. There's something nice about visualizing worlds instead of seeing worlds built by someone else.
Currently reading the first Dune book and love it. Reminds me of GOT on Mars.