The Sci-Fi Book Thread

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Ukerric

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At the time, I did enjoy those books. But I wouldn't recommend them today, except for the fact that cyberpunk seems to be a dead genre in SF...
 

khorum

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I have read other stephenson stuff, snow crash and diamond age, but not that one. He wasnt bad, tho diamond age takes awhile to get going and then falls off a cliff in craziness, but like i said its not specifically 'cyberpunk' that i like. I used to think thats what it was, but there are quite a few books in the genre that ive read and didnt like, or only liked a little bit. I like the advanced technology stuff.

Anything set in 'current day' is unlikely to be what im really looking for, unless its an alternate reality of some kind with advanced technology. Not that i dont also enjoy those books when they are good, just want to find certain things first.
Cyberpunk has more or less graduated to near-future "Singularity" fiction.

Of those I'd recommend Vernor Vinge's Hugo-winning Rainbows End.... which has proven amazingly prophetic. It's about a celebrated poet who had long ago fallen to dementia and alzheimers but as a cure is discovered, he gets his memory and consciousness back. It plays out like a rip van winkle as the poet doesn't remember the intervening 20+ years but emerges into a world at the cusp of the Singularity where there are weaponized memes and an emerging Super AI fighting a culture war.

Then I'd say give Charles Stross' Halting State series a try too. It's a fun near-future heist novel about cybercrime in virtual worlds but has ramifications for a future with competing virtual currencies. Stross is a hardcore SJW (he's Paul Krugman's favorite sci-fi author) so be wary of that, but it's definitely entertaining.

More recent books are After On by Rob Reid (founder of Rhapsody and the algo model behind spotify/itunes etc)--it's about the emergence of a super-AI from the social monetization space. He's a light touch but the ideas are tremendous.
 
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Luthair

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So lately I was reminded of a book I read likely ~20 years ago and I'm hoping someone else knows the name:

There is an alien(?) tower found on a planet, each floor has a puzzle once they enter the floor they cannot leave, the puzzle is timed and failure or being too slow resulted in maiming / death.

My recollection is the person whose PoV you read from realizes that one of the team members had been there before.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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I was going to say "can't be that if it's around 20 years old"... except that fuck, Reynolds has been putting books for that long!
 

TJT

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Cyberpunk has more or less graduated to near-future "Singularity" fiction.

Of those I'd recommend Vernor Vinge's Hugo-winning Rainbows End.... which has proven amazingly prophetic. It's about a celebrated poet who had long ago fallen to dementia and alzheimers but as a cure is discovered, he gets his memory and consciousness back. It plays out like a rip van winkle as the poet doesn't remember the intervening 20+ years but emerges into a world at the cusp of the Singularity where there are weaponized memes and an emerging Super AI fighting a culture war.

Then I'd say give Charles Stross' Halting State series a try too. It's a fun near-future heist novel about cybercrime in virtual worlds but has ramifications for a future with competing virtual currencies. Stross is a hardcore SJW (he's Paul Krugman's favorite sci-fi author) so be wary of that, but it's definitely entertaining.

More recent books are After On by Rob Reid (founder of Rhapsody and the algo model behind spotify/itunes etc)--it's about the emergence of a super-AI from the social monetization space. He's a light touch but the ideas are tremendous.

I really love Charles Stross stuff but he's becoming more SJW lately. It is cringey levels in the Merchant Princes series two. But I soldier on as its mostly good.
 
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khorum

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I really love Charles Stross stuff but he's becoming more SJW lately. It is cringey levels in the Merchant Princes series two. But I soldier on as its mostly good.
Stross has always been SJW. He basically set out to be the anti-Richard K. Morgan.

If you were looking for a less adorkable/boing-boing crew modern cyberpunk that is the opposite of Stross’ SJW shit, go read Black Man (titled Thirteen in the US) right now. It’s by Altered Carbon author Richard K Morgan and it is his superior book by far.
 

velk

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I really love Charles Stross stuff but he's becoming more SJW lately. It is cringey levels in the Merchant Princes series two. But I soldier on as its mostly good.

While I wouldn't disagree with that characterization of Stross, I'm honestly curious what you found offensively SJW in Dark State ? It didn't strike me as particularly preachy.
 
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dimstar

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Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
I just finished this and I loved Diamond Age, Snow Crash but this was just okay. Maybe I am just worn out on HORAH humanity triumphs books.

The interesting part was the zero-g chain mechanics, asteroid mining, and bots.
 

Luthair

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Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
I just finished this and I loved Diamond Age, Snow Crash but this was just okay. Maybe I am just worn out on HORAH humanity triumphs books.

The interesting part was the zero-g chain mechanics, asteroid mining, and bots.

For me it was one of the few books I've never bothered to finish, I found Snow Crash to be merely OK and Anathem to be total garbage though I still finished reading it.
 

Ukerric

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For me it was one of the few books I've never bothered to finish, I found Snow Crash to be merely OK and Anathem to be total garbage though I still finished reading it.
As an aside, it appears that Snow Crash is going to be developed as a show by Amazon.
 
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Blitz

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So I just burned through Hyperion & The Fall of Hyperion. I loved them. I felt the technology held up well, the characters were solid enough, and The Shrike is the definition of Grendel.

A few questions: Is the next two Endymion books as good/worth reading? How is Simmons' Ilium & Olympos books?

At the end of the second book, it hasn't been made clear yet, what exactly The Shrike is? Correct?? Or did I completely miss it? It's my understanding the future Human/Ouster societies & the Techno-Core/AI are still unsure exactly where it originated, or what it's exact purpose is?
 

Ukerric

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A few questions: Is the next two Endymion books as good/worth reading? How is Simmons' Ilium & Olympos books?
I don't really remember the Endymion books, it's been soooo long. I do remember slogging thru them, far more than Hyperion. Ilium was good, Olympos less so. If you liked Hyperion, odds are you're going to like Ilium (I loved the climactic end).

A number of readers at the time thought that Ilium was basically "Hyperion again".
 
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Ukerric

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Time to resurrect this thread.

Just finished The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams. He's one of the veterans of the genre... of all kind of genres (he does milfi, he does "real SF", he does fantasy. Everything and well).

After a couple novellas that are not entirely necessary (but still very, very useful to read), WJW returns to the Praxis universe, in which a species of super-aliens created an empire devoted to ensuring technological and social stability. Scientific research is forbidden, technology is so mature that no one does any improvement anymore, and the social order is locked into a rigid aristocratic order.

Since the last of the aliens passed away just at the opening of the first trilogy, the Dread Empire is breaking up slowly. The previous trilogy was fighting a civil war against the Naxids trying to usurp their master's power. This one shapes up as a new civil war pitting the Humans against the rest of the Empire (which of course means we will probably win, unlike the Naxids). It's also funny because you don't often see the subprime crisis (slightly disguised) sparking an interstellar civil war with possible genocide behind.

The usual cast of characters is still there, with a handful of new ones. And now that both Caroline "Gredel" Sula and Gareth Martinez are back at the helm, we can expect good space battles in the coming books.

Oh, and heavily recommended, of course.
 
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Rime

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For me it was one of the few books I've never bothered to finish, I found Snow Crash to be merely OK and Anathem to be total garbage though I still finished reading it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Seveneves until the last section of the book. Total trash.
 
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slippery

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I thoroughly enjoyed Seveneves until the last section of the book. Total trash.

Same. It was still worth the read, but the first and second parts way outclass the third part. The different evolution stuff is interesting, but the story part is meh.
 
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Rime

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It is a shame, as well. I enjoyed the first part and I loved the second part. If the third part would have been at least reasonable or made some tiny amount of possible sense, I would have been fine with it overall. But it did not and it ruined an otherwise amazing book.
 

Cukernaut

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I read through this entire thread looking for recommendations and found that I’ve never read Hyperion series so I’m going to check that out. One glaring omission on this thread for my space opera friends is no mention of the works surrounding the vorkosagan saga. Amazing probably my favorite end to end set of books space opera wise.