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SF recommendations
Not exactly an original first post, but as a life long avid SF fan, I'm always on the lookout for recommendations.
According to Google Play, my reading (and re-reading) this year has been ...
Iain M Banks, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, China Miéville, Vernor Vinge, Peter Watts, Neal Asher, Richard K Morgan, Corey Doctorow, C.J. Cherryh, Karl Schroeder, Ann Leckie, Hannu Rajaniemi, Yoon Ha Lee, Greg Bear and James S.A. Corey.
So I guess that sums up my current taste, which would seem to tilt towards space opera and "hard" SF.
Check out the Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin, translated by a couple people. Lots of cool ideas and extremely hard as far as scifi goes. The middle book of the trilogy was my definite favorite.
I've read the first, the next two are on my list. I found it a little, I dunno, stilted? Almost certainly a result of the translation from Chinese. I'm definitely going to read the next one, though. I'm just sort of waiting for a rainy day.
I'm currently working through the last of the series. I've really enjoyed all of them so far, but totally agree about the prose being a little stiff/odd. I think translation accounts for the worst of it, but the style also kind of reminds me a bit of the verbose/explicit style of dialogue I notice from some anime. It's one of the weaker areas of the book in my opinion, but I got used to it and haven't noticed it as much later on in the series.
The sense of scale and unfolding problems and solutions though have been fantastic, and I've loved seeing the progression of philosophy and technology over the course of the series.
Thanks. I'll bump them up the list a bit. I definitely enjoyed the first one. It was interesting reading SF from what is as close to an alien culture as it gets on this planet.
I like Robert Sawyer's works, and I think they count as "hard" SF. His 'Neanderthal Parallax' trilogy starts with the premise that we can travel to a parallel universe where the Neanderthals survived instead of Homo Sapiens but, beyond that, it's based on a lot of actual archaeological and biological research about Neanderthals.
There's Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy which is about as hard as it gets.
For space opera, you could try Julian May's Galactic Milieu trilogy, about humanity being invited to join an interstellar civilisation based on mental powers - and causing quite a disruption.
There's also David Brin's Uplift Trilogy.
There's always the original space opera: the Lensman series by E.E. Smith - if you don't mind your space opera seasoned with a dash of old-fashioned sexism!
Sawyer's Calculating God was one of the earlier SF books I read and had a big influence on me. It was also the first time I encountered Conway's Game of Life and some other really interesting ideas. I still love the idea of first contact being some alien just casually strolling up to a museum receptionist and saying "Take me to your paleontologist."
I think I've read at least one of his, perhaps The Terminal Experiment. I just downloaded the free sample of Calculating God, I'll give it a go. Thanks.
I also recommend the... prequel? The Golden Torc trilogy - time travel, psionics, slavery, and space elves!
Actually, the Pliocene Saga (a tetralogy!) came first. The Galactic Milieu is a sequel (of sorts).
Yeah, I know. It's one of the most memorable reads of my childhood... for years I'd look at random jewelry with wishful suspicion and I'm fairly sure the series had an impact on my adult mindset.
I read pretty much everything of May's early stuff, back when it came out, the Many Colored Land, etc. Haven't read the 90's stuff yet.
Read most of KSM's stuff, it's OK.
Read a lot of Brin prior to "meeting" him on Google+, where Brin kind of turned me off of Brin.
Yeah, Doc Smith. A staple of my very early reading, in the 70's, along with the rest of the Golden Age pantheon. Some of whom, it must be said, have not aged as well as others. I have similar ambivalence about RAH and some of the others these days. A product of their time.
Thanks! I'll give the Galactic Milieu a go.
Sorry. I picked authors who weren't on your list. I didn't know you'd already read most of the works I was suggesting.
That's OK! That list is just my recent history from my Google Play library. I've been reading SF for about 45 years, starting at age 10. My "read that" responses are just to help calibrate any other suggestions. I appreciate any and all suggestions.
I would heartily recommend Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy which certainly ticks the box for epic space opera.
I enjoyed The Reality Dysfunction and The Neutronium Alchemist (the first two books in Night's Dawn), but I suspect that Hamilton wrote himself into a corner in The Naked God.
There'a certain passage that I won't quote because I haven't figured out how to tag spoilers here, but when I first encountered it I showed it to my wife and called it a "deus ex machina with extra cheese".
Despite this, I'd say the whole trilogy is worthwhile because of Al Capone. You'll see what I mean.
I gave Hamilton my best shot, but for whatever reason just didn't get on with his stuff. Although I guess I only tried the Commonwealth stuff - Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained, etc. I just found them a little too dark. But I'll give the Night's Dawn a try. Thanks.
Late reply - sorry. I can understand not getting on with his stuff. It takes a lot of reading just to set up the many different threads of the opera. And then it takes some time for all of those threads to really get rolling.
Night's Dawn is probably just as dark, if not more so that the Commonwealth series.
Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse Trilogy is great; and so is the Audible narration by Ray Porter. I just today started The Singularity Trap by them. I wouldn't call it hard SF like Hyperion. But Bobiverse has really cool tech while maintaining a fun story. You do have Scalzi in your list...
You mentioned Vinge, so check out Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Especially if you liked A Fire Upon the Deep.
Fire Upon the Deep was one of my favorite Vinge, so I'll try Children of Time. Which is why I love the free samples on Google Play. :)
Thanks.
Oops, turns out I already read it. Went to download the free sample, and apparently I read it soon after it came out. I shall start the Bobiverse Trilogy instead. Definitely haven't read that!
LOL Ok. Bobiverse is different than Fire Upon the Deep and Children of Time. There's a lightheartedness to it and even some nostalgic elements (nothing like the blatant pandering of Ready Player One). The tech side was pretty detailed too.
EDIT: I'm not sure, but I think the Bobiverse Trilogy is an Audible exclusive. Hopefully not. Its great and worth being read/heard everywhere.
The ebooks are available on Kindle, I've started the free sample of the first one.
I have a love hate relationship with audio books. I mostly read before going to sleep - in fact, I can't sleep unless I have a book to read. And the problem with audio books is, they carry on playing after I drift off, and finding where I tuned out is a big problem. I do enjoy them on long drives, through.
I've tried a variety of readers with "sleep timer" features, but none seem to work quite right for me. I'd like to be able to reset it by just nudging the phone, without having to operate any kind of control or having the brightness crank up, as that usually wakes me up again.
I know what you mean. I doze off during audiobooks and lose my place too. I usually set a bookmark right when I lie down to listen, even if I'm not planning on going to sleep. Audible's sleep timer is nice, because it doesn't just have time. It also has end of chapter and end of section. There is also a button free mode that lets you just tap, swipe, and long press anywhere on the screen to play, pause, ffwd, rewind, and set bookmark. But even with all that sometimes I still gotta hunt back to where a left off.
If you use Voice (previously known as Material Player) to listen to your own mp3 audiobooks, its sleep timer has a "shake to reset" feature to add more time to the timer. I believe it automatically sets a bookmark for your too.
I haven't tried Audible, I'll give it a go. As I get older, I'm finding that a) it's harder and harder to get to sleep (more stuff piled up for one's brain to insist on spinning it's wheels on) and b) my eyes get too tired to read before my brain is ready to turn off. My go-to for the last couple of years has been stand up comedy, so when I can no longer read, I kick some of that off ... but I've pretty much run out of source material. I've tried a variety of podcasts, but my brain tends to get too engaged in anything worth listening to. Whereas for whatever reason, my brain is happy to drift off to an audiobook.
I used to get my audiobooks through, err...more nefarious means (which is what the Voice app was for). But I switched to Audible. Hunt on SlickDeals for a good sale. At least once a year they do the full year subscription for half off. Between the tokens from that, and the sales (where I don't spend my tokens because the sale books are under $5) my Audible backlog has gotten HUGE in the last 2 years.
I do most of my listening while I drive. As long as I know where I'm going, the part of my brain that listens to audiobooks isn't needed for driving.
Yeah, I'm the same way with driving. A good audio book can make the miles fly by. I regularly do long drives, as I loathe everything about flying, so anything less than 1000 miles I'll always drive, and if there's no time crunch, I'll do more. Last year I drove 1600 miles (each way) to see my son in a play in Salt Lake City, and "Abaddon's Gate" lasted me from about Nashville to half way across the Rockies. I don't even remember most of Kansas and the flat bit of Colorado, I was somewhere out in the asteroid belt. :)
It's got that same concept of two separate alien civilizations thrust together, being told through 2 different story lines. I personally like Children more. But both were great.
Not space opera, so maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I really really enjoyed The Flicker Men (by Ted Kosmatka).
I just finished 'The Broken Earth' trilogy my N.K. Jemisin. A hard science fiction lover myself, this series was one of world building and an engrossing read although I can't say it is 'hard' science fiction.
I'm also a fan of Gregory Benford who does write hard science fiction, some of his older works still standup today well, much like the classics of Clarke and Asimov.
My list of current faves pretty much matches yours exactly, but one of the critical omissions is anything by Ian McDonald - I think you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of the Luna series, as well as Chaga, Brasyl, River of Gods, and the rest of his earlier works.
If you're interested in non-Anglophone slants on possible futures, I'll also throw in Aliette de Bodard's Xuya novellas - The Tea Master and the Detective, On a Red Station, Drifting, and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls.
Lavie Tidhar is both a great anthology editor and novelist, well worth reading anything he's touched. The Violent Century is one of the best novels I've read in a while (not specifically hard SF, but a morality play with superheroes).
For the non Anglophone futures, have you tried Thomas Harlan's "Sixth Sun" series?
Are you me? You read almost the same things as me.. (although I cannot stand Dan Simmons so maybe you're not me)
About all I can add to that list is Peter F Hamilton - start with The Night's Dawn; Stephen Baxter - Xeelee sequence, which has multiple suggested reading orders; and the brilliant, brilliant Becky Chambers - start with A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. Chambers isn't hard space opera, but it's absolutely delightful and wonderfully written.
I've read pretty much all of Baxter's stuff. The list in my OP was just this year's crop from my Google Play library. And I've read Small Angry Planet and Closed Common Orbit, need to check if she's got anything else out. Read some Hamilton, didn't really get on with it, never finished Judas Unchained, but as per a post up ^^ there somewhere, I may give it another good old college try with Night's Dawn.
So yeah, I guess I probably am you. Which Dan Simmons have you tried? Took me a while to get in to, kind of like CJ Cherryh, in that it's a commitment. :)
There was a new Xeelee book out earlier this year, but I haven't read it yet. New Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few, is out either this week or next, it's another Wayfarers book and I'm quite excited about it.
I read the first one and a half Hyperion books and really didn't get on with them. I loved the Canterbury Tales conceit he was going with but that seemed to fall by the wayside fairly quickly, then the plot just fell apart as far as I could tell. Funnily enough I didn't like CJ Cherryh either, I didn't even make it more than a few chapters into Downbelow Station before the politics put me off (Heinlein tends to do that to me as well).
The Night's Dawn sequence is one of my favourite space operas. It's a little bit of a slow starter but once it gets going it's really great. Hamilton can be a bit of work to get into but once he's up to speed he's has some fantastic ideas. Like with Ancillary Justice - the first third of that book I almost didn't make it through but I'm so glad I did. Leckie is probably my favourite living sci-fi author (I don't particularly count Meiville as sci-fi) and the best since the incomparable Iain M Banks.
I only discovered Leckie, last year, after posting a request for recommendations on Another Social Site. Devoured the Ancillary trilogy in about a week.
Yeah, the Foreigner series is an acquired taste. I just love that kind of deep diving into cultural differences.
Something I would suggest to myself if I hadn't already read it all is anything by Sean McMullen, and in particular the Greatwinter and Moon Worlds series. He's on my Top 10 list, and IMHO much underrated.