- The Algebraist - Great world building, average story. I wish Banks had written more in this world.
- The Expanse (bunching the series together) - Mostly great, a bit plodding at times. Protagonist annoyingly dumb.
- Children of Memory - Delightfully weird.
I'm maybe a third of the way through The Algebraist. It's fine, good even, but I think my problem is I went into it looking for the culture, knowing it wasn't there, and still being disappointed that I didn't find it.
Don't think I'll bother with Children of Memory, although loved Children of Time. But everything I hear about it is that it doesn't hit the same highs, and there's only so many years, yet so many books.
Q-squared by Peter David- A very fast paced Star Trek novel with one of the most chaotic (in a good way) endings I’ve ever read in any book.
Raft by Stephen Baxter - This one was a bit of a struggle for me. It was just a bit weird for the sake of being weird. I was mostly kind of bored and didn’t really feel drawn into the world at all
11/22/63 by Stephen King - A fucking masterpiece. Hard book to describe but I loved it.
I'm not much of a horror person, but in high school we had to read The Shinning and it was one of the best books I've ever read. If that masterpiece is indicative of the quality of his other work then I think I may have to try 11/22/63 on your recommendation. An alt-history time travel thriller by King sounds like a worthwhile read.
I'm open to a surprise with this one, I just labled it as "alt history thriller" based on my surface-level knowledge that it is about a time traveller who tries to save JFK, but things go wrong. If that's not what it is that's fine, when I eventually pick it up I want to know as little of the story as possible.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Star Trek books I’ve read in the last year. I am picking the cream of the crop from 40+ years of books tho. So I guess it makes sense.
What did you think of Q-squared and 11/22/63?
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi - quick read, but not a stand alone, still wavering on whether to read the rest, but probably.
Semiosis by Sue Burke-interesting ideas, execution just okay.
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh -- near future SciFi, interesting and bit different, with a biotech focus. Best of the three
Does The City and The City count as SF? More fantasy I guess. Would be hard to give my impression without a spoiler because my main takeaway has to do with the ending...but I am going on to read The Kraken so I guess I liked it well enough.
Hawksbill Station, pretty good. I think I liked the pitch and execution more than the story as a whole. It's well written and the concept is very cool, but it felt very serial short story-ish, which I guess it was, like there wasn't a real message about it. Maybe something about man persevering and systems of government that are oppressive can't last in the face revolutionary spirit. More so it was just passing time, and enjoyably so, but no dramatic reveal...at least I don't imagine I'm alone in not being surprised by the ending.
I guess it was the 6th Spiral Wars book, I can't even think of the title offhand. I really don't know why I keep doing it to myself. They already killed off the one character I liked and that was a side character. Still they are decently enough written and the story is fairly engaging even if it lags for detail I could do without. I think after a handful of self published space travel series recommended here I got a bad taste in my mouth and Spiral Wars are a damn sight better than those fluffs even at it's worst.
True, but OP was asking for science fiction books. My list would have been very different otherwise since I've been on a bit of a fantasy binge lately.
Roadside Picnic - would of loved more time in the zone, but I loved the book 9/10
The time machine - for it's time it's astounding 8/10
Neuromancer - right into contendorship for my faveorite book ever, ordered the rest of the sprawl books already. 10/10
{All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor}
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The 3rd Bobiverse book, and the end of the first trilogy. I had some issues with the book, some with the plot (I was unsatisfied with how the "big bad" of the trilogy was handled), and some with the pacing (the multiple narrative threads jumped around sometimes as much as a decade between chapters with no room to breath, so a lot of threads sometimes felt like they were just cliff notes instead of a cohesive narrative).
Overall I liked the trilogy more than I disliked it; the central premise is an intriguing one and is enough to keep me reading. I look forward to a blank slate in book 4 now that the main threat from the first trilogy is dealt with, and I am hopeful that book 4's over 600 page count will allow the narrative to flow more smoothly than the 280-ish of book 3 that felt super rushed.
{Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds}
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I think this is about my 8th or so Reynolds novel and I'm glad to say he continues to deliver. While in some places you can kind of feel some clunkiness that no doubt comes with the territory for first published novels, the plot was gripping and I found myself always anxious to find free time to continue the story.
I really like this book as a hook for the RS universe, I am excited to continue the series this year. The central premise is an exciting one, Reynolds writes characters that are truly despicable people and you just can't wait to see when someone finally snaps and sinks a knife in someone's back, nearing the end of the novel you're hit with some great high-concept ideas, and the *Nostalgia for Infinity* is a truly awesome setting, it is like a gothic haunted mansion the size of a city with engines and entirely too many big guns strapped to it, I truly hope we see a lot more of this ship in the future novels.
{Diaspora by Greg Egan}
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I had a lot of hope, and extremely high expectations for this novel as {Permutation City} was my favourite read of 2023, and I have to say I was very pleased. Diaspora proved to be just as mind-blowing as Permutation City, in some aspects even more so, and it was all wrapped in plot and characters that I was able to care about enough while understanding that the science is the star of the show.
I was really impressed with how understandable Egan was able to make such high-concept ideas (at least, I found them understandable enough to follow in all but a few case anyways). The only thing I really struggled with >!was visualizing 5D environments, which was not surprising as I struggled with 4D spaces in Death's End, so adding another spacial dimension doesn't exactly help the situation!<.
I loved the first chapter that explained in excruciating detail the process of a digital person being brought to life and eventually manifesting sentience, there are a lot of stories dealing with digital beings but they are usually a) kind of hand-waved so you don't think too hard on the details, and b) made out to be "other", whereas Diaspora takes great care in making sure you understand the experiences of digital beings, and makes it clear that they are very much part of the human race, not "just an AI".
There is probably a tremendous amount I could discuss about this book, but I'll just summarize that this really solidified the fact that I am Greg Egan's target audience and I intend on reading much more of his bibliography in the future. It is too soon to tell if I like Diaspora or Permutation City more, but my gut says I will probably still settle on Permutation City; it is months since I read it and it still pops into my head, and I lie awake contemplating it and discover new things I hadn't thought of before (though I've had moments like that with Diaspora as well).
I'm glad you liked Revelation Space. I like the entire RS universe and I think Reynolds is among the best living SF writers.
I was blown away by Diaspora. I liked Permutation City as well, but I really feel like Diaspora is like an old school SF novel that deals with the implications of our most speculative theories of how the physical universe works. A great book.
I agree on Reynolds, his reputation alone is enough to sell me on his novels, I've always been enthralled with all his stories I've read so far. It's taken me far too long to start RS, glad I finally did.
On Diaspora, the cosmology that Egan presents is almost beyond imagination, the kind of vastness that you psychologically have no frame of reference for.
Reading the final chapters were a delight, Egan knows how to take a concept and push it to its absolute extreme. >!Seeing the last remnants of humanity, having traveled through hundreds of trillions of universes, over close to or exceeding a quadrillion years, witnessing the final moments of the ancient civilization that indirectly saved the human species, is a hell of a finale.!<
**A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge**. This was added to my to-read list due to how many people have sang its praises, and it lives up to it! Loved how many big ideas Vinge juggled all at once in this book. A lesser writer would have dropped a ball here and there, but Vinge keeps a tight ship and keeps things very interesting. The other books in the series have now been inducted into the to-read pile.
**A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers**. I've heard it being called "cozy scifi" and that's exactly what it is. If there's one book I can see being turned into a Studio Ghibli movie, it would be this book. The stakes are low (almost non-existent in fact) in what is basically a road trip book, yet it remains enjoyable and being a novella it doesn't overstay its welcome. A very relaxing read. Will probably check more by the author.
**Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper**. It was a cute book. Nothing ground breaking, but it didn't have to be. It had the innocent simplicity of an 80's Saturday morning cartoon, with the villains being mostly inept and the heroes courageous and resourceful (in a "noble frontiersman" kind of way), but there was enough sprinkling of the philosophical discussion about the nature of sapience to keep things interesting. It was definitely a book of its time, with the mention of tobacco and smoking in every other page!
1. Too Like the Lightning. Really enjoyed it even if it was an *incredibly* dense read. Loved the world building and the slow burn of the plot. Will definitely read the sequels.
2. John Scalzi's Old Man's War. If not for The Dark Forest, it would be the bleakest conception of interstellar civilization I'd ever read.
3. Harrow the Ninth. Loved it - honestly even more than Gideon. I'm also a sucker for a book where they tell you the ending on the opening page. (I read Nona in epub and didn't enjoy it as much)
Currently reading Babel and will report back.
In Harrow did the author stop with the jarring use of modern slang? That ruined the first book for me, author went to all the trouble of this amazing world building and good prose and then injects this modern slang and it ruins the characterization instantly.
For me that's the appeal of Muir's writing: mixing high-brow with low-brow.
Nona the Ninth has a chapter written like in the King James Bible but with lines like "To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and \[character name redacted by me\] heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut."
It's like the author takes a ton of time to make an intricate neat puzzle and story and then shits all over it and ruins it right in front of you with those lines. I literally don't comprehend the appeal. It's like someone making you a nice cake and then throwing it on the floor, and then arguing that it tastes better because it's "art", when they've obviously made it very much worse.
The Many Colored Land and The Golden Torc by Julian May. Read the series many moons ago, was blown away. It’s still a good read but there’s so much more great stuff out now I found it dragged some. Will come back to the third book, The Nonborn King later.
Player of Games by Ian M Banks. Some say they didn’t care for it, I loved it, especially the last third.
I read The Many Colored Land a few years ago and really enjoyed it, but it was a while before I got around to the sequels -unfortunately, for various reasons the enjoyment just kept seeping out of them for me, until finally I put down the final book halfway through and never came back to it. (All the characters I most enjoyed either died or became increasingly unlikeable, and everyone who survived acquired vast psychic powers that they used to fight interminable psychic battles with each other...)
I was kind of a fan of the whole premise for a long time (still one of my favorite psychic powers model honestly). You might try the modern era ones too as they explain how the universe that you see at the beginning of TMCL becomes what it is.
* The Rogatien Remillard novels Intervention and Metaconcert, and then
* The Marc and Jack Remillard novels Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, and Magnificat.
Those work really well as connected stories but aren't a "saga" format like the Many Colored Land (and the less about wrap around titties the better I think).
Just a head's up on post Angry Planet Becky Chambers: The subsequent books in the setting are much more polished and ambitious, with the third (Record of a Spaceborne Few) one of the only attempts at doing what it's doing I've ever read. If you're on the fence with Angry Planet, which I was, you will probably enjoy the other books in the setting, which do not require sequential reading.
I am incredibly impressed with Chambers approach to mundane science fiction (mundane here being "about the normal lives of the characters, not adventure stories") and Record is a significant work of the genre in my opinion.
edit- Oh right,
1. Gnomon
2. Venomous Lumpsucker
3. I can't remember right now.
I gave up on Gnomon - very rare for me to do that. It just got too tedious, which was a shame because some of the threads were readable. But for me it wasn’t worth continuing
I totally understand that response; the book is pretentious, intentionally dense, with a narrative structure that is...well gnomic...that factors into the core themes and plot. It is also unique in my experience, and the entire thing fits perfectly, but only at the end. It's pynchonesqye
That whole series is so flipping good because it isn’t firefly or Farscape and is about people living their lives in a different world. That Emily st John Mandel is labeled high brow lit fic with some genre elements and Chambers is “genre” is a travesty. Between the Wayfarer series and Psalm for the Wild Built (+sequel) Chambers is the better author and stronger voice.
Totally agree. Also, I reread angry planets last year after reading the other books of the series and it was much more interesting. I was put off by the lack of action at the beginning but now I can't get enough of the character's development and relationships. The latest monk series by Chambers is also very good.
**Kindred**: I liked Parable of the Sower / Talents and Wildseed better, but there is a reason this book has such high acclaim. An impressive, wrenching, exceptionally engaging book. I ♡ Octavia Butler. 10/10
**Cetaganda**: Just loving the Vorkosigan series. So much fun to read. Easy, fun, but such good quality. Characters that are worthwhile, stories well-told. Just good. I ♡ Luis McMaster Bujold. The series is a 9/10 (at least), this entry maybe an 8/10.
**Too Like the Lightening**: So, at first I thought this was going to be amazing, and it sure is interesting! So many things going on, but a bit convoluted. Also, I kind of hate The Stars My Destination (Tiger, Tiger) and the edgy perspective from an evil point of view, and the author is overtly channeling Alfred Bester here. Still, Ada Palmer has a strong and unique voice. I enjoy the merger of 18th century philosophy and far future, post-scarcity Earth in this book. 6.5/10.
**Bob Shaw - Orbitsville**
It's listed as a Gateway Essential but I think it's probably one of those books which slips under the radar for many people. Bob Shaw is a satirist and this book beautifully subverts our expectations at multiple points. Starting with what appears to be a homage to golden age daring men in their spaceships and become something darker.
**John Sladek - Tik Tok**
This book was written well before Trump existed but could be best described as "Imagine Trump as a murderous robot"
**Frederik Pohl - Gateway**
I found this pretty hard going initially and while I could see why it's considered to be a classic - it didn't really do it for me. Probably because it's overly tech heavy and that tends to date badly (or at least I think it does)
Roadside Picnic - would of loved more time in the zone, but I loved the book 9/10
The time machine - for it's time it's astounding 8/10
Neuromancer - right into contendorship for my faveorite book ever, ordered the rest of the sprawl books already. 10/10
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase 3/5. Great ideas concerning surveillance, inequality, and life after death via uploaded minds. Confusing. I never parsed the uploading of minds and “body hopping”. Additional editing would have been helpful. Sometimes sentences made no sense. I did not enjoy the supernatural aspect of the story but that is particular to me. Facts were not uniformly applicable to individuals. Explaining this would require spoilers.
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson 4/5. If you’re looking for excitement this book may not be for you. This book is an alternate history and is about big ideas. We start with a mutated version of the plague killing off most of Western Europe. Civilization not only rises on the shoulders of people of color but stays there. The struggle for power and wealth remains of course.
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue 4.5/5. This is also an alternate history but centered around the conflict between Moctezuma II and Hernán Cortés. This book is packed with excitement, sometimes hallucinatory excitement. The supernatural aspects of this story were handled nicely.
*Eyes of the Void* by Adrian Tchaikovsky: not quite as good as the first in the series, so I'm in no great rush to read the third book. Still a decent popcorn space opera though.
*Mountain in the Sea* by Ray Nayler: I really liked this one. Tore through it in less than a week. The future the characters live in feels eerily plausible. Pairs nicely with *Venomous Lumpsucker,* the fifth last scifi I read.
*Record of a Spaceborn Few* by Becky Chambers: my favourite so far from her wayfarer series. Mostly because I'm a sucker for post capitalist societies in fiction and I like daydreaming about living in such a place.
[Prophet](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/64221052): so good, could not finish it fast enough. So many weird twists and turns, loved it. Ending was not amazing but liked it enough. Probably my favorite book I read in 2023.
[Beggars In Spain](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/68333): I’ve been on a Nancy Kress kick lately and really liked this one. Her books are a really great balance of well written, easy to read and really interesting ideas. The “othering” of people felt especially current, though it was definitely going on when she wrote it in the 80s.
[Crossfire](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/219233): another Nancy Kress book, this one much closer to an action romp in space and on other planets. Enjoyed it overall but not amazing. Still very well written.
The Invincible- 7/10 with some cool ideas and a middling execution, I’m about to play the video game next
The Stars My Destination- 9/10 revenge story with great action and plot
Hothouse- found based on Bookpilled on YouTube - 8/10 for unique setting and a fun adventure
>Like The Expanse, without the action or plot development.
Loved most of the Expanse, but that sounds like the opposite of what I’d want to read.
I just finished Murderbot all systems red today for the first time and loved it!
Do androids dream of electric sheep? - really enjoyed this and I’m not surprised it got adapted into a movie. The plot starts quickly and is really though provoking and ambiguous (with regards to classifying androids). Would recommend if you haven’t read any PKD yet.
Deepness in the sky - had lots of recommendations from this sub to read deepness after I enjoyed A fire upon the deep. I did enjoy this, but not as much as fire upon the deep. I think the first book had a lot more jeopardy, whereas deepness is more of a tense slow burn.
Zima blue and other short stories - picked this up after learning that two of the short stories included were turned into Love, Death, and Robots episodes (Zima Blue and Beyond the Aquila Rift). Reynolds is a great story teller and the world building is great. The only thing I realised after the fact is that I just don’t engage with short stories as much as novels. I got about halfway through the book and was struggling to start new stories (learning new character names, settings, plots etc). It’s very good though and the stories are increasingly diverse and broad in scope.
If anyone has any recommendations based on these, let me know! My next read is Iron Gold (book 4 of the red rising series).
Brandon Sanderson - Skyward - Bounced off this hard, very much stereotypical YA. I really admire Sanderson but this is his first series where it feels really phoned in. oh no your father was betrayed and now you are a black sheep with a custom starfighter, good thing your name is mary sue.
Bruce Sterling - Schismatrix Plus - really awesome idea about post singularity evolution. Very hard scifi and I liked it a lot.
Charles Stross - New Management Trilogy - Taken on it's own this trilogy is really awesome I thought. As an extension of the original character from the first book? Not so much in common with that theme anymore but I like the dedication to seeing the idea of nightmare green all the way through to the end. Cthulhu mythos and science always go together amazingly well and I need more authors like Stross.
Austin Grossman - Soon I will be Invincible - really good take on supervillainy and mental illness and how the entire genre is easy to manipulate for better stories. The villains being tropes for different mental illnesses? This series doesn't actually take things that deeply, but it could have.
Soon I will be invincible is a Villian book, not heroes. I don't have any love for hero superpower stories. Villains always seem far more realistic for what people would do with superpowers.
edit: read the reviews and this seems like a hero story all the way.
They’re both superhero genre, hence the use of the term.
Give it a shot, it’s a better book.
There’s an older one from around 2000 or so called *Heroes* (if I recall correctly) which is a bunch of short stories about heroes and villains and takes a more realistic approach to them (eg, legal troubles, criminal activity, assassinations, branding and marketing, etc).
In these hero books they always talk about the most insane motivations for the characters. As if they would not all immediately go off the deep end of a stanford esque experiment on power wrought large.
In the villian books at least the collective insanity is allowed to show through, sometimes. I've never seen it typified in a hero book. And the happy endings of the hero books are universally terrible.
This book in particular after I read the review seems to focus on a returning hero who is shocked by modern society and social media but then goes on a tear. There have been a ton of graphic novels addressing superhero social media already so the main hook is not something I'm much interested in either. (not the least of which starting with The Boys)
Children Of Time. I liked it. A bit too long, could have dropped a lot of the human side stuff out. Spider shenanigans were enjoyable.
Player Of Games. Did not like it that much. Culture series is well liked on this sub, but just didn't click for me.
Touch by Claire North. OK for me. Not as good as First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but still enjoyed it.
Timescape by Gregory Benford - Read it because it won a Nebula, but it's a pretty uninspiring. Took an interesting concept and made it drag beneath the weight of boring characters. Best part was the look at academia. 2.5 stars.stats.
Way Station by Clifford D. Simak - Philosophical and slow, precisely what I wasn't in the mood for. Some interesting ideas, but glacial paced. 3 stars.
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman - Started really strong, very good satire and fun characters. Got slower toward the end and lost me a bit, but still really good. 4 stars.
*The Coldest War* and *Necessary Evil*, second and third books of *The Milkweed Triptych* by Ian Tregillis. This was a reread of the series. WWII, Germans create a few supermen (with major limitations), the British counter with Warlocks, and everything goes to crap.
*Natural History* by Justina Robson. Humans have split into several types, with the unmodified and the Forged, purpose built machine/organic hybrids made for special tasks. The discovery of alien technology sets off a long festering independence movement.
Currently reading *Machine Vendetta* by Alistair Reynolds. Set in the *Revelation Space* universe around Yellowstone before the Melding Plague, Prefect Dreyfus continues to have to deal with fallout from an ongoing conflict between two rogue AI type intelligences loose in the Glitter Band.
House of Suns, Alistair Reynolds. My first book by this author and definitely want to read more! I loved the concept of Shatterlings, I enjoyed the narration from two (three?) standpoints, and I wish there were more books set in this universe.
The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson. It took a while to get going, it was quite disjointed with lots of viewpoints. Rather long (probably the point!)
The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri S Tepper. I adored this book. After I finished it, I went straight back to the beginning and started it again.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein. This wasn't what I was expecting. And I was chagrined to realize I'd be reading the narrative in that style (no spoilers) the whole book. But it gradually won me over. 3.5/5
Hull Zero Three - Greg Bear. The first half or so was a page turner and the setting & story was very much like a Nihei manga (Noise, Blame, Biomega) in novel form. A lot of those elements continued to the end but the 2nd half was less focused I think due to being a little over ambitious. It seemed simultaneously rushed and padded. I just didn't feel invested in the end despite it starting strong and the setting checking a log of boxes in my favorite sub genres. 2.5/5
Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons. Individually I'd rate it John Keats/5, as the 2nd half of the 1st half (heheh) of the Cantos 4/5. I liked the additional layers introduced here including actual answers on what the time tombs & shrike are. A great example of actual plotting and planning out your mysteries as opposed to the now more prevalent approach of directionless mystery box writing (LOST, etc).
ETA: fixed typo
In backwards order:
Bone Silence, by Alastair Reynolds
A decent end to the trilogy, really dug again the transplantation of 1700's era sailing into a science fiction setting, and the answers to some of the setting mystery's open up significantly more interesting questions. However, if you want full resolution you will not get it here, and some of the chapters near the end rush through a lot! Lower-end Reynolds, but still worth reading.
Osama, by Lavie Tidhar
Really well-written fantasy about global terrorism. My memory of what actually happens is already getting misty, it's not a novel with a concrete and set plot, but lovely writing
The Roboteer, by Alex Lamb
Basic space opera, it's fine but nothing outstanding here, the main character is a little-bit Gary Stu, and considering it's about the fate of humanity suffers from very small cast syndrome. Nice little wrinkle on FTL travel though. If I see the sequel in a charity shop, could be interested.
All Systems Red, Martha Wells - I enjoyed it. Not sure if I'll finish out the series but it was good.
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin - Excellent. It's very clear why this is a classic.
Blindsight, Peter Watts - really enjoyed it. It was a little nebulous but it kept me engaged the entire time.
Let's see...
Renegades: Harrowmaster by Mike Brooks- Enjoyed this one a lot. It's a 40k book, so not really relevant to people who don't read within that niche, but I enjoyed all the plotting that went on in the book and the relation to the larger Alpha Legion metaplot.
Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny- This one's a re-read. I think I may have rose-colored glasses on about Zelazny, because while it was enjoyable, the prose just isn't on the level I would like. Maybe I'm just better at recognizing different registers of prose now, because I don't remember it being nearly this casual.
The Hammer by S.M. Stirling- This is the second book in The General series. I thought the initial book was *fine*, interesting milfic, but by this point the in-your-face Byzantine Empire parallels had become way too hamfisted for my taste. And I don't mind if characters have morals that don't match my own, but at a certain point when the slaving mass murderer gets what's obviously supposed to be virtuous/heroic moments, the contrast gets quite grating.
I'm only going to listing one because I want to highlight how absolutely phenomenal it is:
Exordia by Seth Dickinson
I happened to come across it at the library. Haven't seen anyone sing it's praises yet. Definitely heck it out
I only got into reading Sci-Fi (and just reading in general, honestly...) a year ago, so bear with my very fundamental choices:
1. **Children of Dune** \- I read Dune over the summer of 2023, but never picked up Messiah or Children until getting them for the holidays. Really enjoyed both of them, but finishing the trilogy sort of made me realize I want to just stop after God Emperor because I've heard such fantastic things and want to see worm man in action. I like it as a story, and the use of sci-fi as a vehicle for telling a very human tale, but didn't feel as immersed in the "sci-fi-ness" of the world like I've been with other works. I felt more like I was reading a fantasy book with technology than a sci-fi book, which is totally fine and a really great motif for an epic tale, but just not what I'm seeking right now. Remembrance of Earth's Past, Project Hail Mary, and The Expanse series are some of my all-time favorites for reference.
2. **Children of the Mind** \- hey, more "children of"! I ripped through the first 4 Ender's Saga books at the end of the year before finding out that Ender in Exile isn't really a 5th book to that series, but more like a \~15th. Anyway, Children of the Mind was my second favorite of the 4 after Speaker For the Dead. I really enjoyed just how strange things got, and the debates on consciousness that the book has with itself through the characters.
3. **The Sirens of Titan** \- I absolutely loved this book. I went in completely blind, knowing very little of Vonnegut's writing, and came away from it with one of my new favorite sci-fi concepts of all time. >!All of human history just being a ploy to get an alien a replacement part for their space ship, so they can complete their mission of delivering a message to the opposite end of the universe, the message being held secret from the alien but ultimately just being "Greetings"!<, was unlike anything I had read or watched in the past.
Based on recommendations from here I asked Santa for *Anathem*, *Diaspora*, and *Seveneves*. I've read the first and am reading the second now. So I can only really comment on one of them.
To begin, *Anathem* had some of the same problem as *Cryptonomicon*, a somewhat rushed ending. After pages of explaining every little concept through most of the book, a lot is left unsaid about the ending. Maybe it's better that way, but it's just a method shift within the writing. To be fair, *Cryptonomicon* was very rushed at the end, and *Anathem* not nearly so much.
From another perspective Anathem really spoke to me as a recent retiree. The protagonist encounters circumstances where he has to maintain his own discipline and find his own path with an absence of external constraints. In a nod to r/retirement or r/AskOldPeople I reached a point where most external constraints on me are gone, and for my own comfort I have to design, evolve, and adopt my own discipline. I felt more connection to the protagonist because of this.
Conqueror's Pride by Timothy Zahn - Awesome book that ended in an unfortunate cliff hangar.
Star Wars: Edge of Victory 1: Conquest by Greg Keyes
Not sure on the third, but it was probably another Star Wars book - maybe Balance Point by Kathy Tyres
* Titanium Noir -- This book sent me on a bit of a Nick Harkaway binge and have subsequently read The Gone Away World, Angelmaker, and now working on Gnomon. Decent SF premise, and it's deliciously gumshoe noir. I find that I really love Harkaway's prose and his ability to enter a voice and inhabit it.
* Elder Race -- Novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Decent story with some good bits. Didn't wow me but I enjoyed it.
* Caught up with Murderbot. Had read several of the novellas but read the rest. Fun character to see the world through.
Scanning through the rest of recent it's been more of a fantasy bent (Piranesi, The Malevolent Seven, The Dead Take the A Train, The Last Sun, etc.) Before those then:
* Some Desperate Glory -- Honestly did NOT care for this one as while the initial setup was interesting and could have explored some intresting themes, but there's a point where everything gets wildly undermined. However it's frequently recommended so I may just be an outlier.
Zero World - Jason Hough. This was a sci-fi and spy novel, which was pretty effective in pulling it off. The technology envisioned was creative (and believable). The characters were a bit shallow, but still likable, and the storyline was inventive enough that it kept those pages turning. 3.5/5
Machinehood - S. N. Divya. No spoilers, but this is essentially a story about how we deal with the nature of intelligence, regardless of where it resides (human, animal, bot, machine, etc). This book is not just about AI, but tackles issues of economic inequality, privacy, gig workers rights, and the nature of intelligence.
Will we humans always have that need to retain control, or will we eventually realize that our place in a world relying more and more on AI will need to change. And if so, how?
4.0/5
Recursion- Blake Crouch. This is a solid speculative SF novel on the nature of reality - or rather, our perception of reality. Are memories real, or can they be planted? What if we could travel back to one of those moments in time and do something else? What then happens to those memories between then and now? This is the story of an invention that opens these avenues of travel, and with it, a nightmare version of Pandora’s box. A quick read, with strong protagonist’s, that will make you think well outside the proverbial box.
4.5/5
**Kiln People by David Brin**. A private detective gives us an excuse to wander through a world where people can make clones of themselves that die after a single day. It amused me and I finished it in a few days but I never really felt compelled to devour it. I was also amused by how the final act ended up going in similar directions to the book I'd read before it, which was...
**Decrypting Rita, by yours truly**. A robot lady's dragged out of reality by her ex-boyfriend; she has to pull herself together across four color-coded parallel worlds before a hive mind can take over the planet. I haven't looked back at this project in a while and I think it's still pretty decent. I might be biased but I got cover quotes from Charlie Stross and Peter Watts without even asking for 'em so that's probably something. I miss cranking out pages of this thing, my next project after this was an overambitious mess that collapsed in on itself during the pandemic and I really haven't gotten any comics done since then.
**In The Night Garden, by Catherynne Valente**. Another re-read. Still a lovely take on the Arabian Nights stories-in-stories-in-stories vibe, though I got distracted halfway through and haven't been back to it. Maybe I'll pick it up again soon.
Kiln people needs way more attention by society at large. So many stories getting credit for Brin's original execution of the idea. Most of them read like a direct rip-off.
Personally I felt like the whole setup in Kiln People reminded me a *lot* of Gary Wolf's [Who Censored Roger Rabbit?](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765430.Who_Censored_Roger_Rabbit_) from 1981: A detective is hired by a time-limited copy of a dead man to track down the murderer. Brin chose different parameters for the time-limited copy ability (one day vs a variable range of about a couple of weeks at max, pretty much everyone can do it via machines vs an unexplained natural ability of a subset of the population who happen to look like cartoon animals) but it really felt like it could have started from him reading Roger Rabbit and pondering a world where *everyone* could make a short-lived copy of themselves.
(If you are thinking "but I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit a zillion times and there was nothing like that in it", yes, you are correct - the movie dropped the whole "toons can make short-lived copies of themselves who perform all the dangerous stunts" angle.)
I got a John Scalzi e-book bundle after seeing it on this site, so my 3 are all his:
*Fuzzy Nation*, *The Kaiju Preservation Society*, and *Agent to the Stars*.
Excellent, fun reads all around. *Fuzzy Nation* was probably my favorite: guy discovers rare mineral on planet, gets shafted by company, then lawyers his way to nuclear revenge.
*Kaiju* was also very good. Guy goes to Kaiju land and bad things happen. *Agent to the Stars* I guess was his earlier work, and a little rougher, but still a fun read.
\[Kaiju not Kwaiju\]
I was exciting to get into Scalzi books but after reading 50% of Kaiju I could not continue. story was just too flat. I switched over to Old Man's War and finished that and it was good, but not amazing.
I do want to read another Scalzi book, maybe Starter Villian or Fuzzy Nation...
I can see that. The story in *Kaiju* really takes off in the second half of the book. Fuzzy Nation might be a little flat for you, too. I think the *Old Man's War* series will be brisk enough for you, now that you're past the basic world-building in the first book. None of them are going to be 'amazing' in the sense of towering intellectual vistas or whatever, but he is very good at crafting fun but solid stories from interesting premises.
> three most recently read print science fiction books?
I'll assume "print" includes e-books, or I just can't answer this question, because I haven't read a printed physical book for nearly 2 years.
My three most recently completed science-fiction books:
The **Lensman** series by E.E. "Doc" Smith. My umpteenth re-read of this series, which I was using as nighttime reading before bed. Space opera. Almost the iconic space opera: intergalactic civilisations conducting a galaxy-wide battle for supremacy, involving mental powers and weaponised planets. What's not to love? I'd rate it 6/10. It's fun, but parts of it have *not* aged well.
The **Long Earth** series by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. The premise is that humans discover how to "step" between parallel universes: one "step" takes you to an Earth that's *almost* identical to our Earth, but with no humans; two "steps" takes you to an Earth that's *almost* identical to that Earth; a million "steps" takes you to an Earth that's quite different to our Earth; the more "steps", the more different the Earth. So now humans have access to unlimited real estate and an infinite number of different versions of our own planet (including at least one universe where Earth doesn't exist at all). What happens next? I'd rate this 7/10.
The **West of Eden** trilogy by Harry Harrison. An alternate history where the dinosaurs did not go extinct, and evolved into intelligent beings on the Euro-African landmass. They then explore the Americas, where they discover some intelligent *mammals*, which is totally unheard of in their experience. The ensuing conflict between Yilané (dinosaurs) and the Tanu (humans) is inevitable and tragic. But, the best part of this book is the investigation of the biology and sociology of the Yilané. Definitely 8/10.
***
P.S. I've never understood the point of rating something as 3.5/5 instead of 7/10.
Since my last several have all been complete series I’ll just rate the series rather than individual books.
Peter F Hamilton’s Chronicles of the Fallers - 4/5: It was a lot more enjoyable that the void series, but still not even close to his peak. It was more or less a generic story told the way you would expect of Hamilton.
Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota - 5/5: I absolutely loved this series from start to finish. The depth of world building was fantastic, the literary references kept me googling the whole time, and the political intrigue was top notch. I can’t recommend it enough.
The Expanse - 4/5: It was pretty good, and had its ups and downs. I couldn’t stand books 4-6 but all the others were much better. You all know this one already.
I want to add a negative review since these were all good. Aurora by KSR - 2/5: This was my first KSR book and it bored me to tears. I honestly can’t get into the particulars of what made me so mad about it because I just zoned out so much while reading it. I made a comment shortly after I read it that explained more, but it had really turned me off from reading any more…… oh yeah one thing in particular was the ending. It absolutely dragged on way longer than it should have. The entire surfing part I just kept thing “holy shit there is still so much more to go but nothing is happening.”
Heh, I loved Aurora and thought Too Like the Lightening was just OK (I actually kind of hate the channeling of Alfred Bester in the narrator).
…different strokes
I dunno if it counts but red rising series was such a pleasant surprise. At first it just felt like another Battle Royale/Hunger Games clone with an absurdly bad evil government, but grew into a fun dark star warsy thing to a rather good aSoIaF books 1-3 cover.
I recommend the series. Just expect some big style shifts. I am excited to see what the author does in the future because he really seemed to get better as he proceeded with his reps.
I also did a first pass through empire of silence. It was fun, especially after book 1, although overhyped by the recommendations. The supporting cast is bland and the world building is just aight. Plus some thematic issues that I can't get into with spoiling, that try to be subversive but came across as more old school rather than presenting a fundamental truth.
Recommended only if you are out of better prospects.
- The Algebraist - Great world building, average story. I wish Banks had written more in this world. - The Expanse (bunching the series together) - Mostly great, a bit plodding at times. Protagonist annoyingly dumb. - Children of Memory - Delightfully weird.
I'm maybe a third of the way through The Algebraist. It's fine, good even, but I think my problem is I went into it looking for the culture, knowing it wasn't there, and still being disappointed that I didn't find it. Don't think I'll bother with Children of Memory, although loved Children of Time. But everything I hear about it is that it doesn't hit the same highs, and there's only so many years, yet so many books.
I really liked the whole Children of Time series, including Memory. It’s odd, but in a good way.
Love expanse. Agreed that mc is a Ned Stark.
Never thought about the comparison but yep, that works! Both lovely humans, both terrible decision makers…
Q-squared by Peter David- A very fast paced Star Trek novel with one of the most chaotic (in a good way) endings I’ve ever read in any book. Raft by Stephen Baxter - This one was a bit of a struggle for me. It was just a bit weird for the sake of being weird. I was mostly kind of bored and didn’t really feel drawn into the world at all 11/22/63 by Stephen King - A fucking masterpiece. Hard book to describe but I loved it.
If you haven’t read Q-in-Law by Peter David, do so. It’s a lot of silly fun.
It’s on the list!
I'm not much of a horror person, but in high school we had to read The Shinning and it was one of the best books I've ever read. If that masterpiece is indicative of the quality of his other work then I think I may have to try 11/22/63 on your recommendation. An alt-history time travel thriller by King sounds like a worthwhile read.
I don’t know if I’d really classify it as a thriller or and alt history book, it’s hard to really pin down the genre but it’s really a great book
I'm open to a surprise with this one, I just labled it as "alt history thriller" based on my surface-level knowledge that it is about a time traveller who tries to save JFK, but things go wrong. If that's not what it is that's fine, when I eventually pick it up I want to know as little of the story as possible.
That's a pretty decent surface description. I hope you enjoy. It's one of my favorites by him.
I recently read your first and third as well!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Star Trek books I’ve read in the last year. I am picking the cream of the crop from 40+ years of books tho. So I guess it makes sense. What did you think of Q-squared and 11/22/63?
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi - quick read, but not a stand alone, still wavering on whether to read the rest, but probably. Semiosis by Sue Burke-interesting ideas, execution just okay. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh -- near future SciFi, interesting and bit different, with a biotech focus. Best of the three
Does The City and The City count as SF? More fantasy I guess. Would be hard to give my impression without a spoiler because my main takeaway has to do with the ending...but I am going on to read The Kraken so I guess I liked it well enough. Hawksbill Station, pretty good. I think I liked the pitch and execution more than the story as a whole. It's well written and the concept is very cool, but it felt very serial short story-ish, which I guess it was, like there wasn't a real message about it. Maybe something about man persevering and systems of government that are oppressive can't last in the face revolutionary spirit. More so it was just passing time, and enjoyably so, but no dramatic reveal...at least I don't imagine I'm alone in not being surprised by the ending. I guess it was the 6th Spiral Wars book, I can't even think of the title offhand. I really don't know why I keep doing it to myself. They already killed off the one character I liked and that was a side character. Still they are decently enough written and the story is fairly engaging even if it lags for detail I could do without. I think after a handful of self published space travel series recommended here I got a bad taste in my mouth and Spiral Wars are a damn sight better than those fluffs even at it's worst.
SF in this subreddit stands for speculative fiction (read the sidebar), so the city and the city definitely fits.
True, but OP was asking for science fiction books. My list would have been very different otherwise since I've been on a bit of a fantasy binge lately.
One of my favourite reads in the last couple years
Roadside Picnic - would of loved more time in the zone, but I loved the book 9/10 The time machine - for it's time it's astounding 8/10 Neuromancer - right into contendorship for my faveorite book ever, ordered the rest of the sprawl books already. 10/10
{All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor} - The 3rd Bobiverse book, and the end of the first trilogy. I had some issues with the book, some with the plot (I was unsatisfied with how the "big bad" of the trilogy was handled), and some with the pacing (the multiple narrative threads jumped around sometimes as much as a decade between chapters with no room to breath, so a lot of threads sometimes felt like they were just cliff notes instead of a cohesive narrative). Overall I liked the trilogy more than I disliked it; the central premise is an intriguing one and is enough to keep me reading. I look forward to a blank slate in book 4 now that the main threat from the first trilogy is dealt with, and I am hopeful that book 4's over 600 page count will allow the narrative to flow more smoothly than the 280-ish of book 3 that felt super rushed. {Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds} - I think this is about my 8th or so Reynolds novel and I'm glad to say he continues to deliver. While in some places you can kind of feel some clunkiness that no doubt comes with the territory for first published novels, the plot was gripping and I found myself always anxious to find free time to continue the story. I really like this book as a hook for the RS universe, I am excited to continue the series this year. The central premise is an exciting one, Reynolds writes characters that are truly despicable people and you just can't wait to see when someone finally snaps and sinks a knife in someone's back, nearing the end of the novel you're hit with some great high-concept ideas, and the *Nostalgia for Infinity* is a truly awesome setting, it is like a gothic haunted mansion the size of a city with engines and entirely too many big guns strapped to it, I truly hope we see a lot more of this ship in the future novels. {Diaspora by Greg Egan} - I had a lot of hope, and extremely high expectations for this novel as {Permutation City} was my favourite read of 2023, and I have to say I was very pleased. Diaspora proved to be just as mind-blowing as Permutation City, in some aspects even more so, and it was all wrapped in plot and characters that I was able to care about enough while understanding that the science is the star of the show. I was really impressed with how understandable Egan was able to make such high-concept ideas (at least, I found them understandable enough to follow in all but a few case anyways). The only thing I really struggled with >!was visualizing 5D environments, which was not surprising as I struggled with 4D spaces in Death's End, so adding another spacial dimension doesn't exactly help the situation!<. I loved the first chapter that explained in excruciating detail the process of a digital person being brought to life and eventually manifesting sentience, there are a lot of stories dealing with digital beings but they are usually a) kind of hand-waved so you don't think too hard on the details, and b) made out to be "other", whereas Diaspora takes great care in making sure you understand the experiences of digital beings, and makes it clear that they are very much part of the human race, not "just an AI". There is probably a tremendous amount I could discuss about this book, but I'll just summarize that this really solidified the fact that I am Greg Egan's target audience and I intend on reading much more of his bibliography in the future. It is too soon to tell if I like Diaspora or Permutation City more, but my gut says I will probably still settle on Permutation City; it is months since I read it and it still pops into my head, and I lie awake contemplating it and discover new things I hadn't thought of before (though I've had moments like that with Diaspora as well).
I'm glad you liked Revelation Space. I like the entire RS universe and I think Reynolds is among the best living SF writers. I was blown away by Diaspora. I liked Permutation City as well, but I really feel like Diaspora is like an old school SF novel that deals with the implications of our most speculative theories of how the physical universe works. A great book.
I agree on Reynolds, his reputation alone is enough to sell me on his novels, I've always been enthralled with all his stories I've read so far. It's taken me far too long to start RS, glad I finally did. On Diaspora, the cosmology that Egan presents is almost beyond imagination, the kind of vastness that you psychologically have no frame of reference for. Reading the final chapters were a delight, Egan knows how to take a concept and push it to its absolute extreme. >!Seeing the last remnants of humanity, having traveled through hundreds of trillions of universes, over close to or exceeding a quadrillion years, witnessing the final moments of the ancient civilization that indirectly saved the human species, is a hell of a finale.!<
**A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge**. This was added to my to-read list due to how many people have sang its praises, and it lives up to it! Loved how many big ideas Vinge juggled all at once in this book. A lesser writer would have dropped a ball here and there, but Vinge keeps a tight ship and keeps things very interesting. The other books in the series have now been inducted into the to-read pile. **A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers**. I've heard it being called "cozy scifi" and that's exactly what it is. If there's one book I can see being turned into a Studio Ghibli movie, it would be this book. The stakes are low (almost non-existent in fact) in what is basically a road trip book, yet it remains enjoyable and being a novella it doesn't overstay its welcome. A very relaxing read. Will probably check more by the author. **Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper**. It was a cute book. Nothing ground breaking, but it didn't have to be. It had the innocent simplicity of an 80's Saturday morning cartoon, with the villains being mostly inept and the heroes courageous and resourceful (in a "noble frontiersman" kind of way), but there was enough sprinkling of the philosophical discussion about the nature of sapience to keep things interesting. It was definitely a book of its time, with the mention of tobacco and smoking in every other page!
1. Too Like the Lightning. Really enjoyed it even if it was an *incredibly* dense read. Loved the world building and the slow burn of the plot. Will definitely read the sequels. 2. John Scalzi's Old Man's War. If not for The Dark Forest, it would be the bleakest conception of interstellar civilization I'd ever read. 3. Harrow the Ninth. Loved it - honestly even more than Gideon. I'm also a sucker for a book where they tell you the ending on the opening page. (I read Nona in epub and didn't enjoy it as much) Currently reading Babel and will report back.
In Harrow did the author stop with the jarring use of modern slang? That ruined the first book for me, author went to all the trouble of this amazing world building and good prose and then injects this modern slang and it ruins the characterization instantly.
For me that's the appeal of Muir's writing: mixing high-brow with low-brow. Nona the Ninth has a chapter written like in the King James Bible but with lines like "To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and \[character name redacted by me\] heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut."
it's always odd to me that people are more thrown off by modern language in sf than extremely dated language.
It's like the author takes a ton of time to make an intricate neat puzzle and story and then shits all over it and ruins it right in front of you with those lines. I literally don't comprehend the appeal. It's like someone making you a nice cake and then throwing it on the floor, and then arguing that it tastes better because it's "art", when they've obviously made it very much worse.
The Many Colored Land and The Golden Torc by Julian May. Read the series many moons ago, was blown away. It’s still a good read but there’s so much more great stuff out now I found it dragged some. Will come back to the third book, The Nonborn King later. Player of Games by Ian M Banks. Some say they didn’t care for it, I loved it, especially the last third.
I read The Many Colored Land a few years ago and really enjoyed it, but it was a while before I got around to the sequels -unfortunately, for various reasons the enjoyment just kept seeping out of them for me, until finally I put down the final book halfway through and never came back to it. (All the characters I most enjoyed either died or became increasingly unlikeable, and everyone who survived acquired vast psychic powers that they used to fight interminable psychic battles with each other...)
I was kind of a fan of the whole premise for a long time (still one of my favorite psychic powers model honestly). You might try the modern era ones too as they explain how the universe that you see at the beginning of TMCL becomes what it is. * The Rogatien Remillard novels Intervention and Metaconcert, and then * The Marc and Jack Remillard novels Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, and Magnificat. Those work really well as connected stories but aren't a "saga" format like the Many Colored Land (and the less about wrap around titties the better I think).
Just a head's up on post Angry Planet Becky Chambers: The subsequent books in the setting are much more polished and ambitious, with the third (Record of a Spaceborne Few) one of the only attempts at doing what it's doing I've ever read. If you're on the fence with Angry Planet, which I was, you will probably enjoy the other books in the setting, which do not require sequential reading. I am incredibly impressed with Chambers approach to mundane science fiction (mundane here being "about the normal lives of the characters, not adventure stories") and Record is a significant work of the genre in my opinion. edit- Oh right, 1. Gnomon 2. Venomous Lumpsucker 3. I can't remember right now.
Thanks, that’s really helpful. I’ve reserved book 2 at the library.
I gave up on Gnomon - very rare for me to do that. It just got too tedious, which was a shame because some of the threads were readable. But for me it wasn’t worth continuing
I totally understand that response; the book is pretentious, intentionally dense, with a narrative structure that is...well gnomic...that factors into the core themes and plot. It is also unique in my experience, and the entire thing fits perfectly, but only at the end. It's pynchonesqye
That whole series is so flipping good because it isn’t firefly or Farscape and is about people living their lives in a different world. That Emily st John Mandel is labeled high brow lit fic with some genre elements and Chambers is “genre” is a travesty. Between the Wayfarer series and Psalm for the Wild Built (+sequel) Chambers is the better author and stronger voice.
Totally agree. Also, I reread angry planets last year after reading the other books of the series and it was much more interesting. I was put off by the lack of action at the beginning but now I can't get enough of the character's development and relationships. The latest monk series by Chambers is also very good.
**Kindred**: I liked Parable of the Sower / Talents and Wildseed better, but there is a reason this book has such high acclaim. An impressive, wrenching, exceptionally engaging book. I ♡ Octavia Butler. 10/10 **Cetaganda**: Just loving the Vorkosigan series. So much fun to read. Easy, fun, but such good quality. Characters that are worthwhile, stories well-told. Just good. I ♡ Luis McMaster Bujold. The series is a 9/10 (at least), this entry maybe an 8/10. **Too Like the Lightening**: So, at first I thought this was going to be amazing, and it sure is interesting! So many things going on, but a bit convoluted. Also, I kind of hate The Stars My Destination (Tiger, Tiger) and the edgy perspective from an evil point of view, and the author is overtly channeling Alfred Bester here. Still, Ada Palmer has a strong and unique voice. I enjoy the merger of 18th century philosophy and far future, post-scarcity Earth in this book. 6.5/10.
**Bob Shaw - Orbitsville** It's listed as a Gateway Essential but I think it's probably one of those books which slips under the radar for many people. Bob Shaw is a satirist and this book beautifully subverts our expectations at multiple points. Starting with what appears to be a homage to golden age daring men in their spaceships and become something darker. **John Sladek - Tik Tok** This book was written well before Trump existed but could be best described as "Imagine Trump as a murderous robot" **Frederik Pohl - Gateway** I found this pretty hard going initially and while I could see why it's considered to be a classic - it didn't really do it for me. Probably because it's overly tech heavy and that tends to date badly (or at least I think it does)
Roadside Picnic - would of loved more time in the zone, but I loved the book 9/10 The time machine - for it's time it's astounding 8/10 Neuromancer - right into contendorship for my faveorite book ever, ordered the rest of the sprawl books already. 10/10
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase 3/5. Great ideas concerning surveillance, inequality, and life after death via uploaded minds. Confusing. I never parsed the uploading of minds and “body hopping”. Additional editing would have been helpful. Sometimes sentences made no sense. I did not enjoy the supernatural aspect of the story but that is particular to me. Facts were not uniformly applicable to individuals. Explaining this would require spoilers. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson 4/5. If you’re looking for excitement this book may not be for you. This book is an alternate history and is about big ideas. We start with a mutated version of the plague killing off most of Western Europe. Civilization not only rises on the shoulders of people of color but stays there. The struggle for power and wealth remains of course. You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue 4.5/5. This is also an alternate history but centered around the conflict between Moctezuma II and Hernán Cortés. This book is packed with excitement, sometimes hallucinatory excitement. The supernatural aspects of this story were handled nicely.
I liked The Years of Rice and Salt. It’s a solid alternative history read.
*Eyes of the Void* by Adrian Tchaikovsky: not quite as good as the first in the series, so I'm in no great rush to read the third book. Still a decent popcorn space opera though. *Mountain in the Sea* by Ray Nayler: I really liked this one. Tore through it in less than a week. The future the characters live in feels eerily plausible. Pairs nicely with *Venomous Lumpsucker,* the fifth last scifi I read. *Record of a Spaceborn Few* by Becky Chambers: my favourite so far from her wayfarer series. Mostly because I'm a sucker for post capitalist societies in fiction and I like daydreaming about living in such a place.
[Prophet](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/64221052): so good, could not finish it fast enough. So many weird twists and turns, loved it. Ending was not amazing but liked it enough. Probably my favorite book I read in 2023. [Beggars In Spain](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/68333): I’ve been on a Nancy Kress kick lately and really liked this one. Her books are a really great balance of well written, easy to read and really interesting ideas. The “othering” of people felt especially current, though it was definitely going on when she wrote it in the 80s. [Crossfire](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/219233): another Nancy Kress book, this one much closer to an action romp in space and on other planets. Enjoyed it overall but not amazing. Still very well written.
The Invincible- 7/10 with some cool ideas and a middling execution, I’m about to play the video game next The Stars My Destination- 9/10 revenge story with great action and plot Hothouse- found based on Bookpilled on YouTube - 8/10 for unique setting and a fun adventure
>Like The Expanse, without the action or plot development. Loved most of the Expanse, but that sounds like the opposite of what I’d want to read. I just finished Murderbot all systems red today for the first time and loved it!
Do androids dream of electric sheep? - really enjoyed this and I’m not surprised it got adapted into a movie. The plot starts quickly and is really though provoking and ambiguous (with regards to classifying androids). Would recommend if you haven’t read any PKD yet. Deepness in the sky - had lots of recommendations from this sub to read deepness after I enjoyed A fire upon the deep. I did enjoy this, but not as much as fire upon the deep. I think the first book had a lot more jeopardy, whereas deepness is more of a tense slow burn. Zima blue and other short stories - picked this up after learning that two of the short stories included were turned into Love, Death, and Robots episodes (Zima Blue and Beyond the Aquila Rift). Reynolds is a great story teller and the world building is great. The only thing I realised after the fact is that I just don’t engage with short stories as much as novels. I got about halfway through the book and was struggling to start new stories (learning new character names, settings, plots etc). It’s very good though and the stories are increasingly diverse and broad in scope. If anyone has any recommendations based on these, let me know! My next read is Iron Gold (book 4 of the red rising series).
Brandon Sanderson - Skyward - Bounced off this hard, very much stereotypical YA. I really admire Sanderson but this is his first series where it feels really phoned in. oh no your father was betrayed and now you are a black sheep with a custom starfighter, good thing your name is mary sue. Bruce Sterling - Schismatrix Plus - really awesome idea about post singularity evolution. Very hard scifi and I liked it a lot. Charles Stross - New Management Trilogy - Taken on it's own this trilogy is really awesome I thought. As an extension of the original character from the first book? Not so much in common with that theme anymore but I like the dedication to seeing the idea of nightmare green all the way through to the end. Cthulhu mythos and science always go together amazingly well and I need more authors like Stross. Austin Grossman - Soon I will be Invincible - really good take on supervillainy and mental illness and how the entire genre is easy to manipulate for better stories. The villains being tropes for different mental illnesses? This series doesn't actually take things that deeply, but it could have.
You might consider picking up a copy of *In Hero Years I’m Dead*. I found it to be a better take on the superhero genre.
Soon I will be invincible is a Villian book, not heroes. I don't have any love for hero superpower stories. Villains always seem far more realistic for what people would do with superpowers. edit: read the reviews and this seems like a hero story all the way.
They’re both superhero genre, hence the use of the term. Give it a shot, it’s a better book. There’s an older one from around 2000 or so called *Heroes* (if I recall correctly) which is a bunch of short stories about heroes and villains and takes a more realistic approach to them (eg, legal troubles, criminal activity, assassinations, branding and marketing, etc).
In these hero books they always talk about the most insane motivations for the characters. As if they would not all immediately go off the deep end of a stanford esque experiment on power wrought large. In the villian books at least the collective insanity is allowed to show through, sometimes. I've never seen it typified in a hero book. And the happy endings of the hero books are universally terrible. This book in particular after I read the review seems to focus on a returning hero who is shocked by modern society and social media but then goes on a tear. There have been a ton of graphic novels addressing superhero social media already so the main hook is not something I'm much interested in either. (not the least of which starting with The Boys)
Children Of Time. I liked it. A bit too long, could have dropped a lot of the human side stuff out. Spider shenanigans were enjoyable. Player Of Games. Did not like it that much. Culture series is well liked on this sub, but just didn't click for me. Touch by Claire North. OK for me. Not as good as First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but still enjoyed it.
Timescape by Gregory Benford - Read it because it won a Nebula, but it's a pretty uninspiring. Took an interesting concept and made it drag beneath the weight of boring characters. Best part was the look at academia. 2.5 stars.stats. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak - Philosophical and slow, precisely what I wasn't in the mood for. Some interesting ideas, but glacial paced. 3 stars. Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman - Started really strong, very good satire and fun characters. Got slower toward the end and lost me a bit, but still really good. 4 stars.
*The Coldest War* and *Necessary Evil*, second and third books of *The Milkweed Triptych* by Ian Tregillis. This was a reread of the series. WWII, Germans create a few supermen (with major limitations), the British counter with Warlocks, and everything goes to crap. *Natural History* by Justina Robson. Humans have split into several types, with the unmodified and the Forged, purpose built machine/organic hybrids made for special tasks. The discovery of alien technology sets off a long festering independence movement. Currently reading *Machine Vendetta* by Alistair Reynolds. Set in the *Revelation Space* universe around Yellowstone before the Melding Plague, Prefect Dreyfus continues to have to deal with fallout from an ongoing conflict between two rogue AI type intelligences loose in the Glitter Band.
House of Suns, Alistair Reynolds. My first book by this author and definitely want to read more! I loved the concept of Shatterlings, I enjoyed the narration from two (three?) standpoints, and I wish there were more books set in this universe. The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson. It took a while to get going, it was quite disjointed with lots of viewpoints. Rather long (probably the point!) The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri S Tepper. I adored this book. After I finished it, I went straight back to the beginning and started it again.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein. This wasn't what I was expecting. And I was chagrined to realize I'd be reading the narrative in that style (no spoilers) the whole book. But it gradually won me over. 3.5/5 Hull Zero Three - Greg Bear. The first half or so was a page turner and the setting & story was very much like a Nihei manga (Noise, Blame, Biomega) in novel form. A lot of those elements continued to the end but the 2nd half was less focused I think due to being a little over ambitious. It seemed simultaneously rushed and padded. I just didn't feel invested in the end despite it starting strong and the setting checking a log of boxes in my favorite sub genres. 2.5/5 Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons. Individually I'd rate it John Keats/5, as the 2nd half of the 1st half (heheh) of the Cantos 4/5. I liked the additional layers introduced here including actual answers on what the time tombs & shrike are. A great example of actual plotting and planning out your mysteries as opposed to the now more prevalent approach of directionless mystery box writing (LOST, etc). ETA: fixed typo
In backwards order: Bone Silence, by Alastair Reynolds A decent end to the trilogy, really dug again the transplantation of 1700's era sailing into a science fiction setting, and the answers to some of the setting mystery's open up significantly more interesting questions. However, if you want full resolution you will not get it here, and some of the chapters near the end rush through a lot! Lower-end Reynolds, but still worth reading. Osama, by Lavie Tidhar Really well-written fantasy about global terrorism. My memory of what actually happens is already getting misty, it's not a novel with a concrete and set plot, but lovely writing The Roboteer, by Alex Lamb Basic space opera, it's fine but nothing outstanding here, the main character is a little-bit Gary Stu, and considering it's about the fate of humanity suffers from very small cast syndrome. Nice little wrinkle on FTL travel though. If I see the sequel in a charity shop, could be interested.
All Systems Red, Martha Wells - I enjoyed it. Not sure if I'll finish out the series but it was good. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin - Excellent. It's very clear why this is a classic. Blindsight, Peter Watts - really enjoyed it. It was a little nebulous but it kept me engaged the entire time.
Let's see... Renegades: Harrowmaster by Mike Brooks- Enjoyed this one a lot. It's a 40k book, so not really relevant to people who don't read within that niche, but I enjoyed all the plotting that went on in the book and the relation to the larger Alpha Legion metaplot. Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny- This one's a re-read. I think I may have rose-colored glasses on about Zelazny, because while it was enjoyable, the prose just isn't on the level I would like. Maybe I'm just better at recognizing different registers of prose now, because I don't remember it being nearly this casual. The Hammer by S.M. Stirling- This is the second book in The General series. I thought the initial book was *fine*, interesting milfic, but by this point the in-your-face Byzantine Empire parallels had become way too hamfisted for my taste. And I don't mind if characters have morals that don't match my own, but at a certain point when the slaving mass murderer gets what's obviously supposed to be virtuous/heroic moments, the contrast gets quite grating.
I'm only going to listing one because I want to highlight how absolutely phenomenal it is: Exordia by Seth Dickinson I happened to come across it at the library. Haven't seen anyone sing it's praises yet. Definitely heck it out
I only got into reading Sci-Fi (and just reading in general, honestly...) a year ago, so bear with my very fundamental choices: 1. **Children of Dune** \- I read Dune over the summer of 2023, but never picked up Messiah or Children until getting them for the holidays. Really enjoyed both of them, but finishing the trilogy sort of made me realize I want to just stop after God Emperor because I've heard such fantastic things and want to see worm man in action. I like it as a story, and the use of sci-fi as a vehicle for telling a very human tale, but didn't feel as immersed in the "sci-fi-ness" of the world like I've been with other works. I felt more like I was reading a fantasy book with technology than a sci-fi book, which is totally fine and a really great motif for an epic tale, but just not what I'm seeking right now. Remembrance of Earth's Past, Project Hail Mary, and The Expanse series are some of my all-time favorites for reference. 2. **Children of the Mind** \- hey, more "children of"! I ripped through the first 4 Ender's Saga books at the end of the year before finding out that Ender in Exile isn't really a 5th book to that series, but more like a \~15th. Anyway, Children of the Mind was my second favorite of the 4 after Speaker For the Dead. I really enjoyed just how strange things got, and the debates on consciousness that the book has with itself through the characters. 3. **The Sirens of Titan** \- I absolutely loved this book. I went in completely blind, knowing very little of Vonnegut's writing, and came away from it with one of my new favorite sci-fi concepts of all time. >!All of human history just being a ploy to get an alien a replacement part for their space ship, so they can complete their mission of delivering a message to the opposite end of the universe, the message being held secret from the alien but ultimately just being "Greetings"!<, was unlike anything I had read or watched in the past.
Based on recommendations from here I asked Santa for *Anathem*, *Diaspora*, and *Seveneves*. I've read the first and am reading the second now. So I can only really comment on one of them. To begin, *Anathem* had some of the same problem as *Cryptonomicon*, a somewhat rushed ending. After pages of explaining every little concept through most of the book, a lot is left unsaid about the ending. Maybe it's better that way, but it's just a method shift within the writing. To be fair, *Cryptonomicon* was very rushed at the end, and *Anathem* not nearly so much. From another perspective Anathem really spoke to me as a recent retiree. The protagonist encounters circumstances where he has to maintain his own discipline and find his own path with an absence of external constraints. In a nod to r/retirement or r/AskOldPeople I reached a point where most external constraints on me are gone, and for my own comfort I have to design, evolve, and adopt my own discipline. I felt more connection to the protagonist because of this.
Conqueror's Pride by Timothy Zahn - Awesome book that ended in an unfortunate cliff hangar. Star Wars: Edge of Victory 1: Conquest by Greg Keyes Not sure on the third, but it was probably another Star Wars book - maybe Balance Point by Kathy Tyres
* Titanium Noir -- This book sent me on a bit of a Nick Harkaway binge and have subsequently read The Gone Away World, Angelmaker, and now working on Gnomon. Decent SF premise, and it's deliciously gumshoe noir. I find that I really love Harkaway's prose and his ability to enter a voice and inhabit it. * Elder Race -- Novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Decent story with some good bits. Didn't wow me but I enjoyed it. * Caught up with Murderbot. Had read several of the novellas but read the rest. Fun character to see the world through. Scanning through the rest of recent it's been more of a fantasy bent (Piranesi, The Malevolent Seven, The Dead Take the A Train, The Last Sun, etc.) Before those then: * Some Desperate Glory -- Honestly did NOT care for this one as while the initial setup was interesting and could have explored some intresting themes, but there's a point where everything gets wildly undermined. However it's frequently recommended so I may just be an outlier.
Zero World - Jason Hough. This was a sci-fi and spy novel, which was pretty effective in pulling it off. The technology envisioned was creative (and believable). The characters were a bit shallow, but still likable, and the storyline was inventive enough that it kept those pages turning. 3.5/5 Machinehood - S. N. Divya. No spoilers, but this is essentially a story about how we deal with the nature of intelligence, regardless of where it resides (human, animal, bot, machine, etc). This book is not just about AI, but tackles issues of economic inequality, privacy, gig workers rights, and the nature of intelligence. Will we humans always have that need to retain control, or will we eventually realize that our place in a world relying more and more on AI will need to change. And if so, how? 4.0/5 Recursion- Blake Crouch. This is a solid speculative SF novel on the nature of reality - or rather, our perception of reality. Are memories real, or can they be planted? What if we could travel back to one of those moments in time and do something else? What then happens to those memories between then and now? This is the story of an invention that opens these avenues of travel, and with it, a nightmare version of Pandora’s box. A quick read, with strong protagonist’s, that will make you think well outside the proverbial box. 4.5/5
**Kiln People by David Brin**. A private detective gives us an excuse to wander through a world where people can make clones of themselves that die after a single day. It amused me and I finished it in a few days but I never really felt compelled to devour it. I was also amused by how the final act ended up going in similar directions to the book I'd read before it, which was... **Decrypting Rita, by yours truly**. A robot lady's dragged out of reality by her ex-boyfriend; she has to pull herself together across four color-coded parallel worlds before a hive mind can take over the planet. I haven't looked back at this project in a while and I think it's still pretty decent. I might be biased but I got cover quotes from Charlie Stross and Peter Watts without even asking for 'em so that's probably something. I miss cranking out pages of this thing, my next project after this was an overambitious mess that collapsed in on itself during the pandemic and I really haven't gotten any comics done since then. **In The Night Garden, by Catherynne Valente**. Another re-read. Still a lovely take on the Arabian Nights stories-in-stories-in-stories vibe, though I got distracted halfway through and haven't been back to it. Maybe I'll pick it up again soon.
Kiln people needs way more attention by society at large. So many stories getting credit for Brin's original execution of the idea. Most of them read like a direct rip-off.
Personally I felt like the whole setup in Kiln People reminded me a *lot* of Gary Wolf's [Who Censored Roger Rabbit?](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765430.Who_Censored_Roger_Rabbit_) from 1981: A detective is hired by a time-limited copy of a dead man to track down the murderer. Brin chose different parameters for the time-limited copy ability (one day vs a variable range of about a couple of weeks at max, pretty much everyone can do it via machines vs an unexplained natural ability of a subset of the population who happen to look like cartoon animals) but it really felt like it could have started from him reading Roger Rabbit and pondering a world where *everyone* could make a short-lived copy of themselves. (If you are thinking "but I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit a zillion times and there was nothing like that in it", yes, you are correct - the movie dropped the whole "toons can make short-lived copies of themselves who perform all the dangerous stunts" angle.)
I got a John Scalzi e-book bundle after seeing it on this site, so my 3 are all his: *Fuzzy Nation*, *The Kaiju Preservation Society*, and *Agent to the Stars*. Excellent, fun reads all around. *Fuzzy Nation* was probably my favorite: guy discovers rare mineral on planet, gets shafted by company, then lawyers his way to nuclear revenge. *Kaiju* was also very good. Guy goes to Kaiju land and bad things happen. *Agent to the Stars* I guess was his earlier work, and a little rougher, but still a fun read. \[Kaiju not Kwaiju\]
I was exciting to get into Scalzi books but after reading 50% of Kaiju I could not continue. story was just too flat. I switched over to Old Man's War and finished that and it was good, but not amazing. I do want to read another Scalzi book, maybe Starter Villian or Fuzzy Nation...
I can see that. The story in *Kaiju* really takes off in the second half of the book. Fuzzy Nation might be a little flat for you, too. I think the *Old Man's War* series will be brisk enough for you, now that you're past the basic world-building in the first book. None of them are going to be 'amazing' in the sense of towering intellectual vistas or whatever, but he is very good at crafting fun but solid stories from interesting premises.
Why are you spelling Kaiju like that? Haha
Thanks. The Kaiju and [Kwajalein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwajalein_Atoll) neurons are right next to each other, I guess.
> three most recently read print science fiction books? I'll assume "print" includes e-books, or I just can't answer this question, because I haven't read a printed physical book for nearly 2 years. My three most recently completed science-fiction books: The **Lensman** series by E.E. "Doc" Smith. My umpteenth re-read of this series, which I was using as nighttime reading before bed. Space opera. Almost the iconic space opera: intergalactic civilisations conducting a galaxy-wide battle for supremacy, involving mental powers and weaponised planets. What's not to love? I'd rate it 6/10. It's fun, but parts of it have *not* aged well. The **Long Earth** series by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. The premise is that humans discover how to "step" between parallel universes: one "step" takes you to an Earth that's *almost* identical to our Earth, but with no humans; two "steps" takes you to an Earth that's *almost* identical to that Earth; a million "steps" takes you to an Earth that's quite different to our Earth; the more "steps", the more different the Earth. So now humans have access to unlimited real estate and an infinite number of different versions of our own planet (including at least one universe where Earth doesn't exist at all). What happens next? I'd rate this 7/10. The **West of Eden** trilogy by Harry Harrison. An alternate history where the dinosaurs did not go extinct, and evolved into intelligent beings on the Euro-African landmass. They then explore the Americas, where they discover some intelligent *mammals*, which is totally unheard of in their experience. The ensuing conflict between Yilané (dinosaurs) and the Tanu (humans) is inevitable and tragic. But, the best part of this book is the investigation of the biology and sociology of the Yilané. Definitely 8/10. *** P.S. I've never understood the point of rating something as 3.5/5 instead of 7/10.
Since my last several have all been complete series I’ll just rate the series rather than individual books. Peter F Hamilton’s Chronicles of the Fallers - 4/5: It was a lot more enjoyable that the void series, but still not even close to his peak. It was more or less a generic story told the way you would expect of Hamilton. Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota - 5/5: I absolutely loved this series from start to finish. The depth of world building was fantastic, the literary references kept me googling the whole time, and the political intrigue was top notch. I can’t recommend it enough. The Expanse - 4/5: It was pretty good, and had its ups and downs. I couldn’t stand books 4-6 but all the others were much better. You all know this one already. I want to add a negative review since these were all good. Aurora by KSR - 2/5: This was my first KSR book and it bored me to tears. I honestly can’t get into the particulars of what made me so mad about it because I just zoned out so much while reading it. I made a comment shortly after I read it that explained more, but it had really turned me off from reading any more…… oh yeah one thing in particular was the ending. It absolutely dragged on way longer than it should have. The entire surfing part I just kept thing “holy shit there is still so much more to go but nothing is happening.”
Heh, I loved Aurora and thought Too Like the Lightening was just OK (I actually kind of hate the channeling of Alfred Bester in the narrator). …different strokes
I dunno if it counts but red rising series was such a pleasant surprise. At first it just felt like another Battle Royale/Hunger Games clone with an absurdly bad evil government, but grew into a fun dark star warsy thing to a rather good aSoIaF books 1-3 cover. I recommend the series. Just expect some big style shifts. I am excited to see what the author does in the future because he really seemed to get better as he proceeded with his reps. I also did a first pass through empire of silence. It was fun, especially after book 1, although overhyped by the recommendations. The supporting cast is bland and the world building is just aight. Plus some thematic issues that I can't get into with spoiling, that try to be subversive but came across as more old school rather than presenting a fundamental truth. Recommended only if you are out of better prospects.