Universe Today Book Club discussion
Book Recommendations: Sci-Fi
I strongly recommend Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.
revelation space, dune, expanse, best sci fi on the list
I’m waiting Project Hail Mary to be published in Spanish. Loved the Martian.
I got, Audible, a couple years ago, and my reading has leveled up a bit. I even read actual books more, when I have time. These are some of the books I found enjoyable.- Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon , by Robert Kurson. This is a great book about the astronauts of Apollo 8, and their mission.
- The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses, by Peter Brannen. I thought it was fascinating to think of all the planets Earth used to be, and how they ended.
- The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens – and Ourselves, by Arik Kershenbaum. This was great to game out what aliens would be like.
- Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler. This is actually a scifi novel, unlike the others. I actually read the whole Xenogenesis Trilogy. Basically; people get a second chance after messing up the planet. However, there are some strings attached. A great way to examine human nature from the perspective of the humans and aliens in the book.
Sly wrote: "I strongly recommend Solaris by Stanislaw Lem."Agree! Great recommendation
A couple of my favorites:Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang, Ted
Chiang's short stories are like intricate clockwork.
If you enjoy this book, also try his The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
The Stars My Destination, Bester, Alfred
I found this unusual and especially captivating
some others that I highly recommend to SF fans:
Einstein's Dreams, Lightman, Alan
This is an offbeat book, that captures the beauty of the universe seen through the eyes of a scientist
(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...)
The Dreaming Void, Hamilton, Peter
That's the first book of an unusual and captivating series: The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, The Evolutionary Void
The Beast of Cretacea, Strasser, Todd
This was a recommendation from an Astronomy Cast book recommendation episode, and I highly enjoyed it. It's sort of a "Moby Dick on Another Planet"
Outland, Taylor, Dennis E. *
Another page-turner by the author of the Bobiverse
The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction
Dozois, Gardner
I can second a number of books people have already recommended previously: "Contact", "The Martian" and "Project Hail Mary" as well.
Fraser, if you have not already, please consider Peter F. Hamilton's "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained." These are part of the Commonwealth Saga and can be treated as Parts 1 and 2 with a huge cliffhanger at the end of Pandora's Star. The Dreaming Void series, mentioned above, are the continuation after these two.
The book that sparked my interest in astrology and the future of humanity in space was All tomorrows by C.M. Kösemen.
Hi Fraser. I think you might like (nonfiction) Nick Lane's _The Vital Question_. It presents his theory of abiogenesis, among others, and I think he makes a strong case. He goes slightly into technical details but it's not too hard or too dry a read.
A short story called "Long Shot" by Vernor Vinge. That's probably the one that jumps to mind the most when I'm watching Fraser's videos.
I also think you might like (fiction) _The Cyberiad_ by Stalislaw Lem. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... It's not just a collection of sci-fi fairy tales. Lem said that the best use of a sci-fi story was to make an argument, and he does it better than anybody in _The Cyberiad_.
One I read a bit ago that could be interesting to discuss:Lockstep
It was decent, not great to the point that I'll ever really re-read it, but the premise was really interesting. Basically, throw out the usual conceit of allowing FTL travel. Instead, society has agreed to periodically go into long swaths of cryogenic hybernation so travel from location to location only feels like one "day" to everyone.
Marcelo wrote: "3-Body trilogy"Read the first book of the 3-body trilogy. Everything was fine until the last 10 pages, when the trisolarians decide to send a bunch of protons to Earth at close-to light speed and have their entangled pairs close to Trisolaris. The author's justification was that "they could instantaneously communicate and thus get information from Earth". As a physicist, this smacked me in the face harder than Mohammad Ali on one of his good days. No faster than light communication is possible in physics. Furthermore, it is absolutely impossible to use quantum entanglement exclusively, for communication. This is the reason why ALL quantum computing and quantum communication algorithms use both a quantum channel (entanglement) and a classical communications channel. It baffled me that the author could make such a grave error. This really ruined the book for me and I have not gone on to read the rest.
Three of my faves that I think would be awesome to read in the club are:1. “Spin” by Robert Charles Wilson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
2. “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
3. “The Fall of Hyperion” is the second book of the series and might be even better than the first, so I have to recommend that one as well.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
The first book that came to mind was Eon by Greg Bear. Loved that when I read it way back.
"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. LeGuinA veteran entry on the list, but an interesting, introspective and genre breaking discussion of Gender Identities loooooong before the "Woke" mentality of our world today...
I enjoyed the Interdependency Series by John Scalzi:The Collapsing Empire
The Consuming Fire
The Last Emperox
Short story 'The Ruum' by Arthur Porges 1953...an ancient alien, species collecting probe encountered in the mountains by a uranuim prospector with a chase and a twist
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card* Scientists have developed a means of viewing the past (kind of like a medium-resolution camera view of of any time in the past). Pastwatch is the organization of historians that use the tool to perform research. One becomes obsessed with why Christopher Columbus was so sure of sailing west and and what precipitated the change to wanting to do so. Another woman is obsessed with slavery and encounters a woman in the past who appears to be able to detect that she is watching her. Probably my favorite book.
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell
* First Contact story. Humanity has spread across the galaxy using "wormholes" that link star systems with nearby ones. Every star has one. The "Moties" are aliens that develop a lot of technology, but then "crash" back to the dark ages. They developed the drive to use the "wormholes," but no one every returned. (Their sun's only connection was to a red giant and the point was within the outer portion of it.) They launch a solar sail with lasers to propel it to a nearby star system, where humans encounter it.
The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin. I read it when I was in the Navy in the early 80s. Plot line really stuck with me. Someone did a revision of it in 2010 to keep it, "fresh".
This thread is great, and the comments here and context can't be replaced by a list. However, a group bookshelf of recommendations automatically displays reviews from anyone in the group automatically, to augment this discussion.So, I created a "science-fiction-recommendations" bookshelf, which anyone in the group can add to. If you click on "view activity" for a book on the shelf from the group bookshelf page, you will see the ratings from everyone in this group for the book: https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...
If you want to add a book to the science-fiction-recommendations shelf:
1. navigate to the group bookshelves
2. enter a title or keyword in the "add books" search field and click "Search"
3. Click "Add to Group" for one of the search results
4. Click "choose shelves" and tick science-fiction-recommendations when adding.
I recommend the following:1. K3+ by Erasmo Acosta (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...)
2. Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...).
Mod
Just did. Thanks for that pointer Fraser.
I would recommend any Science Fiction from Adrian Tchaikovsky. His books and novellas are very original and varying. As an example, I put Children of Time on the list. This is about a partly failed terraforming attempt that let to a race of intelligent spiders - this is mostly their history (it is a standalone book, even if there is a follow-up).If you are interested in first contact book, I can recommend Peter Cawdron, he wrote a lot of books with different scenarios of a first contact, all based on actual theories and papers. I have only read three of them so far (will add one of them to the list), and so far they are all quite good.
One of my favorite science fiction books I've read in the last decade was Exo by Steven Gould. It's actually his 4th novel in his Jumper series. Jumper was turned into a visually beautiful film directed by Doug Lyman that dropped the novel's story for a much stupider one (in my opinion). There are no "Paladins" in the novels out to kill jumpers. Criminal conspiracies, yes, Paladins no. In the original novel an abused teen discovers he has the power to teleport. In Reflex his wife develops the ability. The third novel is about their 16-year-old daughter Cent. She has been raised in a remote location and home schooled because of people out to get her parents (but not Paladins!). When she discovers she can teleport they have to let her go to high school. As the story progresses she discovers that because jumpers automatically match the momentum of wherever they jump to (for instance jumping from the Arctic to the Equator), they actually have the power to come out of a jump with whatever momentum they like. That's true even if they jump to the place they already are.That brings us to Exo in which a now 17-year-old Cent starts her own space program. She gets a little frostbite when jumping to high altitude and ends up teaming up with the designer of a mechanical counterpressure suit and starts a business delivering low mass satellites to orbit with a promise to deorbit 3 KG of debris for each KG she puts up. She even builds her own space station. Aside from the teleporting, the book is full of hard science. If 17-year-old girls could teleport, I believe they could do everything Cent does. I highly recommend it.
Reposing in the proper thread. Wasn't paying attention :)If you like dark forest type books a great read is Greg Bear's The Forge of God and the sequel Anvil of Stars
- Recursion, by Blake Crouch. I found this book to be very engrossing. The protagonist spends her life creating a way to alleviate age-related memory decline. But, in the process actually lifts the veil on the nature of reality. Just because you created something for a good purpose doesn’t mean that there won’t be any negative consequences. Can humanity deal with the power that is now in their possession?
The Draco Tavern, by Larry Niven.Bartender on Earth turns his establishment into the main hub for the menagerie of visitors from other worlds. Each story is like a fun episode, where a new alien viewpoint is explored, or a mind-bending surprise is revealed.
Niven strikes a balance between relatable characters, unusual perspectives, and fun, that reminds me of the SF that captivated and inspired me as a kid.
Mod
Thanks Randy, I just read this in the last couple of days. It was a fun light read with Groundhog Day taken to the extreme.
I recently read the book “One Second After” by William R. Forstchen and its two sequels, “One Year After” and “The Final Day”. The first book deals with the immediate after effects of nuclear devices being used to create an EMP over the United States. I felt like it was very well written and a believable series of events following the loss of essentially all electronics.
The two sequels are follow ups on the original story and mainly deal with trying to rebuild the country after serious devastation.
I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do.
If you are a fan of hard science fiction then I would recommend anything by Brandon Q. Morris. Maybe start with The Enceladus Mission.
Mod
Thanks Tom, I just read it and recommended it in my latest QA.
RecommendationDragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Really got me into the hard SciFi genre.
Permutation City would be a great choice to read after Accelerando. I know Accelerando has a sequel (Glasshouse) but you might want to read the synopsis for that first.
Chris wrote: "The Draco Tavern, by Larry Niven.Bartender on Earth turns his establishment into the main hub for the menagerie of visitors from other worlds. Each story is like a fun episode, where..."
I'm glad you liked it. It would probably be a great beach read for Summer!
Randy wrote: "I'm glad you liked it. It would probably be a great beach read for Summer!"Agreed!
I'm looking for another Niven book that strikes a similar balance between clever concepts, and entertaining characters, but haven't found it. It seems his writing varies quite a bit in terms of characterization, possibly over the course of his career.
Critical Mass it's book 2 of 2, the first book isn't necessary. Book one deals with the first mission to mine an asteroid. Book 2 is about what you can do with those materials in a lunar orbit.
Hansemrbean wrote: "If you are interested in first contact book, I can recommend Peter Cawdron, he wrote a lot of books with different scenarios of a first contact"I liked Wherever Seeds May Fall - Teaser: there's an Alex Jones-like character.
I second critical mass, super inspiring. book one (Delta v) is good too
A Fire Upon the Deeps - Vernor VingeHas one of the most interesting alien species ever. Its old school, but still fantastic.
Red Rising - Pierce Brown
1st book is beyond epic. They go down hill from there but each book has its moments. Audible required. One of the greatest audio performances in history by the legendary Tim Gerard Renyolds. This performance can't be overstated.
Armor - John Steakley
This is THE combat armor book. It's not a slugfest story with no purpose, an ecstasy of violence and action, though it has those in plenty. Its a story of the human experience in a harsh uncaring, unknowing, machine in which individuals are lost in the details. How the psyche defends itself and copes in such a situation is the main story. It will suck you in at chapter 1.
Anything by Alastair Renyolds
House of Suns is beyond epic. Its the essence of epic distilled into word form. Everything he has written defies description. Pushing Ice. The Revenger Series. Nuff said. Avoid Audible for most titles. John Lee performs most of Renyolds' titles for some reason and I hate it.
Illium - Dan Simmons
The Hyprion Cantos series has been recommended and for good reason, book 1 is one of the greatest sci fi's ever written imo. His Illium series is almost as good and quite a bit more unique.
14 - Peter Clines
Classic detective type novel with a Lovecraftian monster plot. It's smart, fun, and hillarious. Audible required. Ray Porter delivers his greatest performance in a book tailored for his voice.
Redshirts - John Scalzi
Fun. So much fun. Super short but every minute is a blast. Scalzi is one of the few authors to do humor well, and the plot of the book is so perfect for any fan of sci fi.
Oryx and Crake - Margarett Atwood
One of the most atmospheric sci fi's I've read. This is Atwood's masterpiece. Her other stuff is meh, but this is book is special. Audible required, Campbell Scott performance is perfection, his gravelly voice adds to the grit of the world.
Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan
Surprised this wasn't recommended before me. Its a Netflix series now, and they did a decent job at it. The book, as always, is better.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A Heinlein
Classic Sci Fi. Heinlein is a legend. This is one of my favorites. Heinlein, Asimov, Frank Herbert, do we really need to suggest these titans? They should be obligatory to all sci fi fans.
The way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson
This is only technically a sci fi in that all Sanderson's books are set in a sci fi universe. But the story itself is high fantasy. I recommend it because it's among the greatest stories ever told. Sanderson has reached the pinnacle of his style and this is his best work. Audible required. Kate Reading and Michael Kramer are a match made in heaven and reading the book with your head voice would do them a disservice.
Name of the Wind - Patrick Routhfuss
This is straight up not sci fi. It is, however, the greatest story to ever come out of fantasy imo. I, but a humble peon, ungifted in the art of word, am not capable of describing its contents with any justice. The only negative thing involved with this two book series is that its a trilogy and the third book was due for completion more than 10 years ago. The Goodreads page explains it all, its a story in and of itself. The first two books are so good that if in 20 years the third book still hasn't released my heart will feel the pain of it's absence, my soul will never be whole until it's finished.
I would like to recommend the Saga of the pliocene exile series by Julian May. It really seeks the border between sci-fi and fantasy, my two preferred genre, where people from our far future go to our distant past.I hope you'll enjoy the read!
When you've finished The Culture series, there's another non-Culture book of his called The_Algebraist that was my introduction to Iain M. Banks. It's about gas giant dwellers in a universe without FTL (but does have wormholes). A really good book.
I will second (or third, fourth, etc.) "Revelation Space". Great "hard" scifi, mostly based in science with very little "magic." Light is slow, time dilation happens, and this book does a fantastic job of exploring what the knowledge or experience does to people.
Universe Today Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Slow Time Between the Stars (other topics)The Art of War (other topics)
Learning the World (other topics)
Excession (other topics)
Wherever Seeds May Fall (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Adrian Tchaikovsky (other topics)Peter Cawdron (other topics)
To start with I'm going to just list a bunch of books I expect you would receive a flood of recommendations for considering their popularity.
If you were going to pick one off the list, i would go with the first, bobiverse. its sci-fi but modern and a ton of fun without getting too silly on the science side of things.
Some books i expect you will get plenty of recommendations for:
Bobiverse book 1: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
The Martian (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...)
The Expanse book 1: Leviathan Wakes (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...)
Artemis (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
The Three-Body Problem (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
Ender's game (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Expeditionary Force book 1: Columbus Day (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Revelation space (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...)
Altered Carbon (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...)
Project Hail Mary (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...)
Seveneves (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Ringworld (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...)
Dune (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...)
Foundation (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
Ready Player One (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...)
Contact (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...)
Outside of the really popular books i would personally recommend:
Commune (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Its a post apocalypse book set after a really bad CME and plague. I would like to make a warning that it does use strong language and adult themes being set in a world of desperate people and where some bad people just don't have society limiting them anymore.
it is character driven and **doesn't** include the more silly aspects of many post apocalypse series: zombies, incompetent military, constant unrealistically lucky people, extreme focus on preppers/politics.