Disappointed this is just a list, with no information, ranking or anything else. I'm always on the hunt for good sci-fi, but unfortunately this isn't helpful.
Well the ones he really liked are underlined, that's a form of ranking. Not sure you need to know the nuance between #1 and #2, but knowing that there's 15 must reads on that list is a convenient way of showing that.
Just fyi, a great many of these books are award winners or otherwise considered classics, so if you're looking for good sci-fi, you could do worse than just randomly picking a book from this list. Though as other commenters have mentioned, modern sci-fi is rather under-represented.
I like that Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red, Blue, Green Mars) are in red. That is my absolutely favourite Sci-Fi series of all time. It has aged amazingly well. He did an amazing amount of research for that book. It's very believable and the characters are incredibly complex.
So is "The Years of Rice and Salt" from him, though it's only one book, not a trilogy.
I feel like I actually learned something while reading it, but that is because I've read it on screen, while having Wikipedia and Google-maps open in the background while reading it, pausing to look up things there.
> Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.
If you read 100 books in 2 years, is it a goal or are you still reading for the enjoyment of it?
Also a side question, I love reading but I'm very slow. I don't want to learn a lot of the 'fast' reading techniques because I have tried them and don't really retain much. Is there some low hanging fruit to reading just a little faster? (like, read in a good chair or use a kindle or something)
I set a goal of 50 books in 2018 and once I got into the habit it was purely for enjoyment. I ended up doing 86 in 2018, and upped my goal to 75 for 2019... then ended up doing 122 books that year. I'm somewhere in the 50s or 60s for 2020 right now.
I retain audio much better for most things (unless it's data-heavy), so getting into habits of keeping my headphones on me and actually starting a book when I had the brain-space to listen helped increase the quantity. No idea on tips for physical reading (though getting the room lighting right and using one of the paperwhite-or-better Kindle screens makes a big difference for me, anecdotally).
Also, is that sort of what people do nowadays for reading? Meaning, when people say they read 100 books, they are also referring to have listened to audiobooks? Not judging, just curious if I'm not understanding the meaning of 'read'
Most people include that now, yeah. I think it makes sense, even if it's an evolution from the strict sense of the word. I certainly retain as much as those who read physical books, and if someone asks me if I've read a book, it seems needlessly pedantic to say "no, I listened to it."
100 books in 2 years comes out to about a book per week, which isn't too many to enjoy for someone who reads a lot.
But also, many of the classic sci-fi novels are actually very short, possible to get through in a couple days, even if you don't read particularly fast.
I don't know if this is your problem, but I'm a habitual rereader. I'll go over the same passage repeatedly to double check if I understand it. It doesn't actually help, I usually end up tired and the passage starts to, if anything, lose meaning due to semantic satiation. What I've learned to do is just let go, keep reading and eventually I'll figure out what that passage meant. Kind of like how when you watch a movie in theaters, you may not catch every line of dialogue, but you'll still understand the movie.
I have started reading more in the last few years, and much of it comes down to using goodreads - I hate the app & site, but I like keeping track of what I've read and whether I liked it. And you set a "reading challenge" every year. I've been aiming for 20-26 books per year, and the little nudges it gives me help me keep on track - I only missed one year since I started, and that was because I got bogged down in the fall reading a 1000 page book that I didn't like.
all that to say: I've been enjoying reading MORE since I've increased the amount I read - everything stays fresh, and I just devote a bit of time to reading each day and a bit less time to (the internet, mainly)
113/120 by men (and all four women from the "sf canon", one from the plain old canon - nothing modern, nothing independent). 116/120 originally in English, and one of those is Lem and two others Verne. I won't bother graphing the years but it definitely feels like the past, idk, 20 years is tremendously under-represente (and then 3 spots given to Hugh Howey).
"What I learned about the future reading mid-century white men" I guess.
Come on guys, I know HN hates women and anyone who reminds them that women exist and do things, but I thought y'all at least hated bland content marketing almost as much?
I have in the past and it was flagged, based on the comments I assume for being uninteresting or perhaps mistaken for content marketing. I guess I should have been more explicit!
More likely because of your condescending, rude, and hysterical tone. If today’s performance is any indication. I’m sure it feels good to be so strident, but you’re not going to change anyone’s mind. Generally one needs to choose between being vituperative, or persuasive.
Yeah, this is a pretty conventional list. Unfortunately unless one puts in an active effort, it's hard to break out of reading the canon, which is inevitably dominated by white men. For one, most of these books are in the standard nerd culture lexicon. Reading them allows entry into an in-crowd of sci-fi references. Plus these books are recommended constantly. The author likely chose their reading material from the top recommended sci-fi books.
There's also this odd phenomenon that I'd call "the diverse undiverse". Sure, a lot of these books are written by white men. But when you're reading them, they come from an incredible spectrum of styles, politics, world views, settings, etc. that they feel diverse. By going from Asimov to Gibson, it's quite easy to get the illusion that you're reading a wide variety of fiction. However you're still reading white men, just a particularly diverse set of white men.
If you were to ask a film buff whether they watch a diverse set of movies, they'd probably say yes. I'd also bet that the majority of the movies they cite were directed by white or maybe Asian men (Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi maaaybe).
Not excusing the list, but it's not surprising that it's strictly conventional and therefore undiverse.
I don't even really agree here - there are a few that stand out, but I'm reminded of something I read in an interview with Samuel R. Delaney recently:
> Understand that, since the late ’30s, that community, that world had been largely Jewish, highly liberal, and with notable exceptions leaned well to the left. Even its right-wing mavens, Robert Heinlein or Poul Anderson (or, indeed, Campbell), would have far preferred to go to a leftist party and have a friendly argument with some smart socialists than actually to hang out with the right-wing and libertarian organizations which they may well have supported on principle and, in Heinlein’s case, with donations.
(from "Discourse in an Older Sense" included in "The Atheist in the Attic".)
SF writers up through basically the New Wave (and the context of Delaney's quote is Pohl's infamous excoriation of the New Wave) were a largely insular social and philosophical group, even though they had strident political differences. And even some the more modern authors in this list - e.g. Crichton, Howey - still fit firmly within that world view. Regardless of whether they lean left or right they're positivist, technocratic, Enlightenment-focused, often leaning towards scientism, etc. That's why something like "Dangerous Visions" was such a provocative title - the idea that the future would be maybe not great and advanced technology probably wouldn't help was a "dangerous" idea for the sf culture at the time.
I don't disagree that the writers are not indeed diverse. The phrasing of "diverse set of white men" was purposefully oxymoronic. It's just that the selection of writing gives the illusion of diversity which can be quite dangerous.
FWIW, I didn't downvote you for pointing this out. I think it's valuable to keep this in mind when selecting books to read. I downvoted you because you were super rude while you pointed it out.
I even think the rudeness could have been forgiven if the author of the list had called it "Authoritative List of Best Sci-Fi," but it was literally a list of books he remembered reading.
I agree that this is an awfully conventional list. I don’t intend to argue the author’s taste here, just provide another counterpoint.
If you look at their favorite books, the ones in red, they are almost all standard space opera written decades ago. That’s a narrow slice of possibility. Writers from the canon are wildly over-represented, IMHO — Asimov has 8 books on the list, at least, but most circles I’ve run in consider him well surpassed even by his contemporaries. Even the LeGuin they include is old, before her shift to (in her own words) writing like a woman, rather than a fake man.
(By “circles I run in” I mean a degree in English literature with an emphasis on science fiction, and many geeky and literate friends in the ensuring 25 years. That’s not a judgement, just where I come from.)
They include no Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Ian McDonald — and those dudes are only “modern” from the perspective of the 80s. They include no James Tiptree Jr (a woman, for those not in the know), Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress — and again, those are old-skool, established.
So I agree. This is a greatest hits list of popular and conventional science fiction over the last 100 years. As a reading journal I have no argument with it. As a way of understanding or modeling human diversity in the future, which is what they appear to claim in the followup article, it does feel like a small echo chamber.
In the last couple years I've been trying to branch out to read more scifi written by women. I tend to be picky in what I read anyway and often give up looking for things and just read old comics books so trying to find works by women has been tough. Add to that the fact that there are so many self-published multi-book series on Amazon now that it is really difficult to decide.
There were a few scifi books by women that I read and didn't like but here are some I did like:
I've read a few Ursula K. Le Guin books and they were decent. All I knew about Left Hand of Darkeness was the stuff about sex and the midevil-ish setting surprised me.
I read a couple entries in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells and I might go back to read more.
I really liked Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The two sequels were good but less thought provoking than the first one. I think there is another story in the same universe that I haven't read yet.
Of recent laureates I really loved This Is How you Lose The Time War as well as Binti (this is a trilogy, but combined form something novel-length). Becky Chambers's recent novella To Be Taught, if Fortunate was a major step up imo, and the more utopian view of space exploration (less SpaceX hype machine, more cooperative citizen science) is incredibly welcome for me. (I also liked her previous novels, but level of prose did not match the high-quality world-building - but if you are an sf fan you are probably used to this.) I'd suggest Aliette de Bodard's Xuya universe to anyone who likes The Culture, Immersion is often recommended but the one that's stuck most with me is The Shipmaker. If you like Douglas Adams, Catherynne Valente's Space Opera is in a similar vein but also beautifully extra. If you like your sf humor darker and more muted, try Johanna Sinisalo's The Core of the Sun.
Other than Binti none of these are a multi-novel series, which I agree is way too common. ("Thanks" for that among many other terrible directions in sf literature, Robert Jordan.)
Personal all-time favorite, read it twice: Accelerando by Charles Stross
Set in three parts, exploring a future where people can upload themselves to computers, create digital copies, recombine, run minds faster than real-time, re-enter the non-digital world, travel to alien destinations, etc.
Amazon has this weird algorithmic automated price setting going on when books are out of print and only available second-hand or from leftover stock. It probably makes sense to whoever implemented the algorithm.
Usually the prices stop somewhere around the €75 mark though.
To me it's Alastair Reynolds, and then everybody else.
When I read "Revelation Space" it was, er, a Revelation.
In addition to the many books R.S. universe (spanning across great swaths of time) there is also the fun Revenger series, and several non-canonical short stores, etc.
I also enjoyed what I read of Revelation Space. I really liked how not having faster than light travel played a role. I kind of lost interest when so many of the books revolved around that same planet. There is a whole universe out there that I want to learn more about. I don't care about the rust belt or whatever it was called.
FWIR the R.S. universe wasn't planet centric and the books literally span one side of the universe to another, with timescales from one lifetime to entities measuring their lives in galactic rotations. Are you talking about Chasm City maybe? Anyway, it's about time for me to re-read -- I've been holding off as a treat - it's been 18 years since I read that first book!
I think “house of suns“, which is not R.S. is maybe one of the best sci fi books I’ve ever read. I’ve only also read chasm city by him but I thought “House of Suns” was leaps and bounds better
I've read enough of the list that I think I'll hang onto it to check out stuff that I haven't read.
Obviously it's down to personal preference which of these are the best, but I'm curious how other readers feel about a couple of these (potentially contrarian views):
1. Speaker For the Dead is my favorite of the Ender stuff.
2. I like Endymion duo better than Hyperion. (maybe my favorite ever, actually)
3. The Stand is also an all-time great to me, especially in light of current events.
4. I think the author should read more Niven - I guess he didn't really like Ringworld, which is another of my favorites.
> 2. I like Endymion duo better than Hyperion. (maybe my favorite ever, actually)
Strong agree. The technical term for the advantage the Endymion books had is "a coherent plot". Also, using human reconstitution as a way to get around the acceleration constraints of space travel is awesome.
Simmons' Ilium and Olympos (SF interpretations of the Iliad and [sort of] the Odyssey) are also super well-conceived.
I personally liked the Hyperion duo better, but found all 4 books to be incredible.
As for Ringworld, I didn't enjoy it, but would be willing to give Niven another try if given a strong and specific recommendation. Maybe something that has more of a plot. Wandering around a big empty construction in space where nothing happens didn't really do it for me.
The author of this list and I seem to have very similar tastes. Most of his favorites are mine as well. The only favorite of mine that comes to mind as being left off this list is Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's also striking that he hasn't listed any of the Culture series by Iain Banks.
People seem really divided on the Hyperion Cantos in terms of which books or book pair stands out for them. I am thoroughly in the 'all four of them combine to form an impressive epic'-camp. I found it pleasing how Rise of Endymion closes the last strands of the story begun in Hyperion.
Good call on Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Ringworld didn't do much for me either, but I do indulge in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-offs as a sort of guilty pleasure.
I put off reading The Three Body Problem because I wanted to make sure I was good and ready to be amazed.
I've read Cixin Liu's short stories and thoroughly enjoyed them. He comes up with some amazing ideas. I even really liked the movie based on Wandering Earth, despite how it converted the story to more action.
I barely made it through 3BP and I don't have much excitement for the sequels. The story just did not grip me at all.
The sequels have some big and original ideas that I don't regret being exposed to, but they were painful to get through. Especially the 2nd book. It took me months to finish because I just couldn't stay interested.
I am surprised he likes some of the classics as they hold up really poorly IMO. The Foundation books especially just... are not good viewed through a modern lens. I hate to pull the misogyny card, but I think there is only one woman in Foundation and she has no lines, just models a necklace for some space trader types. They also suffer from the classic sci-fi conundrum where a spaceman is flying at light speed while reading a newspaper and listening to a tape. It's not really excusable for me when people consider this like... the greatest sci fi book. Other authors were able to confront our social and technological future in a much more realistic and interesting way, not like, cowboys in spaceships.
Bradbury & Vonnegut if you are gonna stay in the same time period. Delaney, PKD and Gene Wolfe are my favorites of all time, they are 10-20 years later but I think they raise social and philosophical issues that resonate to this day.
I liked the foundation books its just always been a pet peeve that Foundation, Enders Game, and Hitchhikers Guide are always listed as greatest of all time. They are super enjoyable books but not like... what I would choose to represent the genre.
You're missing the point. Sci-fi isn't about technology, it's about imagining life and existence from a non-earth non-human perspective. Also, Bayta Darell is a very central character with a significant role.
I wasn't arguing about what sci-fi is, its fairly amorphous. More just highlighting the laziness of creating a novel based around future tech and then having someone just reading a paper, its fine but not GOAT material imo. It is a space western/drama which is totally fine.
Books that have become dated can sometimes be quite interesting when read with the period they were published in in mind. Not just for the retro-effect they invariably invoke, but also to see how the thought experiments encapsulated in them would have appeared to people then.
Sci-fi classics are like any other classic books; you have to read them in the context of the author and his times. You can't read Conrad's Heart of Darkness ignoring the cultural and historical context either.
And honestly, sometimes a Heinlein juvenile makes for a nice change of pace between heavier works (either sci-fi/fantasy or any other genre).
I totally agree, I think Foundation is a fun book, it just does not deserve the accolades it receives. Same thing with Heinlein, can be kinda fun, but an alien sex cult with the leader hovering naked women into his lap is not that interesting. I just read Ubik and you can see some of these amazing time travel sci-fi concepts playing out, conversely in Heinlein's 'Time Enough For Love' the protagonist goes back in time, sleeps with his own mom, and tells her he is her son from the future. It just feels dumb to me.
wholeheartedly agree. A female friend wanted me to recommend some classic sci-fi since it had influenced me so much. I knew they were going to have aged badly on social issues but, my god, they are unreadably awful. Even Bradbury whom I considered a good writer, not just a creative thinker - and it's the same problem. Same issue finding classic video games - pervasive, unavoidable, and utterly unnecessary biases that ruin the works.
I also didn't really get the love of Foundation. I like a lot of Asimov's short stories but just found Foundation to be kind of dry.
While reading it I also noticed that there were no female characters in the book. Since I didn't like the book I haven't read any of the others in the series but I seem to recall someone saying that when the lack of women was pointed out to Asimov that he made women central to at least some of the prequels?
Yeah, same here. I tried to read old American science fiction, the so-called western classics and the so-called eastern classics. All of that stuff is racist, sexist and bigoted. After many unsuccessful tries I decided that reading anything from other times and cultures is just too regressive to be worth it. After all, what can someone as bigoted and outdated as Asimov really teach us about society and technology in 2020? What can Jane Austen with her internalized misogyny tell us about human nature? I will stick to modern and progressive literature, thank-you-very-much.
And so should you. In fact, those old books can be downright dangerous and normalize regressive behaviors that will cause real harm. I mean, today we are rightfully worried about individual bigoted tweets and messages, but imagine someone reading an entire book of that stuff?
>I decided that reading anything from other times and cultures is just too regressive to be worth it. . . What can [they] tell us about human nature
Are you serious? You don't think there is any insight into human nature in the works of anyone, ever, except the exact values of the culture you happen to live in at this particular point in time?
Edit: ugh, I had to go look at your other comments to tell if this was sarcasm. It seems it was, and satire and reality have converged too much for me to differentiate.
Are we already at the point where a suggestion to read nothing outside your own cultural bubble can be interpreted as a serious comment? If we are, this is seriously disturbing.
Great Sarcasm. I said 'I hate to play the misogyny card' and I do, because I knew people would hone in on that and ignore what I was trying to say, such is our political climate.
> I knew people would hone in on that and ignore what I was trying to say
You were forcing your reference frame onto a science fiction novel and presenting that as critique. Complaining about newspapers and tapes in space is actually more of the same thing, except explaining why it's not a good way to treat fiction would take way longer.
"Well actually" there's TWO (2!) women. One has one line, and she's talking to a man, so it still fails the Bechtel test. The other, like you said, models a necklace, and has no lines.
Two books I would highly recommend for their idea density and enjoyment are
Deamon - Daniel Suarez and follow on book Freedom.
Old Mans War - John Scalzi and really the whole series.
I didn’t care for Old Man’s War. I really liked the writing and characters, but found that the bleakness of a future that’s a War of All Against All bummed me out for several days after I finished.
At a glance, I can't spot anything by Ken MacLeod, nor Iain Banks. Both are masters of hard SF. I read most of Ken MacLeod's work, some several times (yes, I really enjoyed them that much), and I am reading Iain Bank's Culture series these days.
I was reading a scifi book the other day, and it just seemed to tickle something familiar. I eventually realized I must have read it long ago and totally forgotten it.
I've read thousands of books, but I never kept a log and have no way of remembering them all.
The standout in my mind, however, is "War of the Worlds" by Wells. It is the first scifi book I ever read, picking it out at the library because it had a cool illustration of the tripod on the cover.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and like the purported first hit of heroin, the rest of my life I've looked for something that good again :-)
I reread (Audiobook version) the Hyperion Cantos a year ago and I was floored at how well it aged in the past 20+ years.
as a sidenote, I picked up on stuff on the rereading and am wondering how much of that is due to my increased maturity and how much is due to the format (paperback vs. audiobook).
As a result I'm rereading a lot of my favorites from the past . Not all have aged as well.
I'd shelve The Stand in horror, not scifi. It uses post apocalyptic scifi tropes, but ultimately the driver of the story is occult, not technological. There may not be a fundamental difference between a rogue AI and a demon as an antagonist ... other than where the book gets filed.
Nice to see a recommendation for one of John Varley's works (The Golden Globe). There is one sci-fi author who is underappreciated. His writing has touches of Heinlein. His Gaea Trilogy is really creative too.
I understand what he means. He’s sorted alphabetically by author. Then has two categories. He probably doesn’t want to compare books beyond that. Their either okay, great, or his absolute favourite.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadI feel like I actually learned something while reading it, but that is because I've read it on screen, while having Wikipedia and Google-maps open in the background while reading it, pausing to look up things there.
> Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.
Also a side question, I love reading but I'm very slow. I don't want to learn a lot of the 'fast' reading techniques because I have tried them and don't really retain much. Is there some low hanging fruit to reading just a little faster? (like, read in a good chair or use a kindle or something)
I retain audio much better for most things (unless it's data-heavy), so getting into habits of keeping my headphones on me and actually starting a book when I had the brain-space to listen helped increase the quantity. No idea on tips for physical reading (though getting the room lighting right and using one of the paperwhite-or-better Kindle screens makes a big difference for me, anecdotally).
Also, is that sort of what people do nowadays for reading? Meaning, when people say they read 100 books, they are also referring to have listened to audiobooks? Not judging, just curious if I'm not understanding the meaning of 'read'
But also, many of the classic sci-fi novels are actually very short, possible to get through in a couple days, even if you don't read particularly fast.
Alas, I don't have any tips to read faster...
all that to say: I've been enjoying reading MORE since I've increased the amount I read - everything stays fresh, and I just devote a bit of time to reading each day and a bit less time to (the internet, mainly)
"What I learned about the future reading mid-century white men" I guess.
There's also this odd phenomenon that I'd call "the diverse undiverse". Sure, a lot of these books are written by white men. But when you're reading them, they come from an incredible spectrum of styles, politics, world views, settings, etc. that they feel diverse. By going from Asimov to Gibson, it's quite easy to get the illusion that you're reading a wide variety of fiction. However you're still reading white men, just a particularly diverse set of white men.
If you were to ask a film buff whether they watch a diverse set of movies, they'd probably say yes. I'd also bet that the majority of the movies they cite were directed by white or maybe Asian men (Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi maaaybe).
Not excusing the list, but it's not surprising that it's strictly conventional and therefore undiverse.
I don't even really agree here - there are a few that stand out, but I'm reminded of something I read in an interview with Samuel R. Delaney recently:
> Understand that, since the late ’30s, that community, that world had been largely Jewish, highly liberal, and with notable exceptions leaned well to the left. Even its right-wing mavens, Robert Heinlein or Poul Anderson (or, indeed, Campbell), would have far preferred to go to a leftist party and have a friendly argument with some smart socialists than actually to hang out with the right-wing and libertarian organizations which they may well have supported on principle and, in Heinlein’s case, with donations.
(from "Discourse in an Older Sense" included in "The Atheist in the Attic".)
SF writers up through basically the New Wave (and the context of Delaney's quote is Pohl's infamous excoriation of the New Wave) were a largely insular social and philosophical group, even though they had strident political differences. And even some the more modern authors in this list - e.g. Crichton, Howey - still fit firmly within that world view. Regardless of whether they lean left or right they're positivist, technocratic, Enlightenment-focused, often leaning towards scientism, etc. That's why something like "Dangerous Visions" was such a provocative title - the idea that the future would be maybe not great and advanced technology probably wouldn't help was a "dangerous" idea for the sf culture at the time.
I don't disagree that the writers are not indeed diverse. The phrasing of "diverse set of white men" was purposefully oxymoronic. It's just that the selection of writing gives the illusion of diversity which can be quite dangerous.
I even think the rudeness could have been forgiven if the author of the list had called it "Authoritative List of Best Sci-Fi," but it was literally a list of books he remembered reading.
Yeah or you could not participate in the context collapse of this marketing charade.
> these books represent what we consider the best (or at least the most interesting) ideas out there.
> Here is the future we are headed for, as predicted by our greatest sci-fi writers.
If you look at their favorite books, the ones in red, they are almost all standard space opera written decades ago. That’s a narrow slice of possibility. Writers from the canon are wildly over-represented, IMHO — Asimov has 8 books on the list, at least, but most circles I’ve run in consider him well surpassed even by his contemporaries. Even the LeGuin they include is old, before her shift to (in her own words) writing like a woman, rather than a fake man.
(By “circles I run in” I mean a degree in English literature with an emphasis on science fiction, and many geeky and literate friends in the ensuring 25 years. That’s not a judgement, just where I come from.)
They include no Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Ian McDonald — and those dudes are only “modern” from the perspective of the 80s. They include no James Tiptree Jr (a woman, for those not in the know), Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress — and again, those are old-skool, established.
So I agree. This is a greatest hits list of popular and conventional science fiction over the last 100 years. As a reading journal I have no argument with it. As a way of understanding or modeling human diversity in the future, which is what they appear to claim in the followup article, it does feel like a small echo chamber.
Also a marmalade brand. She borrowed her pen name from a jar of Tiptree's Jam. :)
Agreed on the missing women (Le Guin is there though). I've recently started with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, and haven't regretted it.
I've read a few Ursula K. Le Guin books and they were decent. All I knew about Left Hand of Darkeness was the stuff about sex and the midevil-ish setting surprised me.
I read a couple entries in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells and I might go back to read more.
I really liked Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The two sequels were good but less thought provoking than the first one. I think there is another story in the same universe that I haven't read yet.
Other than Binti none of these are a multi-novel series, which I agree is way too common. ("Thanks" for that among many other terrible directions in sf literature, Robert Jordan.)
Set in three parts, exploring a future where people can upload themselves to computers, create digital copies, recombine, run minds faster than real-time, re-enter the non-digital world, travel to alien destinations, etc.
Free from the author: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17863.Accelerando
https://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Stross-Charle...
Usually the prices stop somewhere around the €75 mark though.
Of course, Ian Banks (RIP) is also great fun.
Obviously it's down to personal preference which of these are the best, but I'm curious how other readers feel about a couple of these (potentially contrarian views):
1. Speaker For the Dead is my favorite of the Ender stuff.
2. I like Endymion duo better than Hyperion. (maybe my favorite ever, actually)
3. The Stand is also an all-time great to me, especially in light of current events.
4. I think the author should read more Niven - I guess he didn't really like Ringworld, which is another of my favorites.
Strong agree. The technical term for the advantage the Endymion books had is "a coherent plot". Also, using human reconstitution as a way to get around the acceleration constraints of space travel is awesome.
Simmons' Ilium and Olympos (SF interpretations of the Iliad and [sort of] the Odyssey) are also super well-conceived.
As for Ringworld, I didn't enjoy it, but would be willing to give Niven another try if given a strong and specific recommendation. Maybe something that has more of a plot. Wandering around a big empty construction in space where nothing happens didn't really do it for me.
The author of this list and I seem to have very similar tastes. Most of his favorites are mine as well. The only favorite of mine that comes to mind as being left off this list is Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's also striking that he hasn't listed any of the Culture series by Iain Banks.
Good call on Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Ringworld didn't do much for me either, but I do indulge in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-offs as a sort of guilty pleasure.
I've read Cixin Liu's short stories and thoroughly enjoyed them. He comes up with some amazing ideas. I even really liked the movie based on Wandering Earth, despite how it converted the story to more action.
I barely made it through 3BP and I don't have much excitement for the sequels. The story just did not grip me at all.
I liked the foundation books its just always been a pet peeve that Foundation, Enders Game, and Hitchhikers Guide are always listed as greatest of all time. They are super enjoyable books but not like... what I would choose to represent the genre.
Sci-fi classics are like any other classic books; you have to read them in the context of the author and his times. You can't read Conrad's Heart of Darkness ignoring the cultural and historical context either.
And honestly, sometimes a Heinlein juvenile makes for a nice change of pace between heavier works (either sci-fi/fantasy or any other genre).
While reading it I also noticed that there were no female characters in the book. Since I didn't like the book I haven't read any of the others in the series but I seem to recall someone saying that when the lack of women was pointed out to Asimov that he made women central to at least some of the prequels?
And so should you. In fact, those old books can be downright dangerous and normalize regressive behaviors that will cause real harm. I mean, today we are rightfully worried about individual bigoted tweets and messages, but imagine someone reading an entire book of that stuff?
Are you serious? You don't think there is any insight into human nature in the works of anyone, ever, except the exact values of the culture you happen to live in at this particular point in time?
Edit: ugh, I had to go look at your other comments to tell if this was sarcasm. It seems it was, and satire and reality have converged too much for me to differentiate.
No.
Are we already at the point where a suggestion to read nothing outside your own cultural bubble can be interpreted as a serious comment? If we are, this is seriously disturbing.
You were forcing your reference frame onto a science fiction novel and presenting that as critique. Complaining about newspapers and tapes in space is actually more of the same thing, except explaining why it's not a good way to treat fiction would take way longer.
Anyways, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Currents_of_Space there is this: https://www.9novelsread.com/read/the-currents-of-space/30353...
and more.
(just sayin')
also really enjoy anything by Vernor Vinge
I've read thousands of books, but I never kept a log and have no way of remembering them all.
The standout in my mind, however, is "War of the Worlds" by Wells. It is the first scifi book I ever read, picking it out at the library because it had a cool illustration of the tripod on the cover.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and like the purported first hit of heroin, the rest of my life I've looked for something that good again :-)
as a sidenote, I picked up on stuff on the rereading and am wondering how much of that is due to my increased maturity and how much is due to the format (paperback vs. audiobook).
As a result I'm rereading a lot of my favorites from the past . Not all have aged as well.
[0] https://varley.net/excerpt/the-phantom-of-kansas-full-text/
Furthermore at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chanur_novels from C.J.Cherryh.
For me they were a blast to read. I fevered/longed for the next book to be in print.
Similar thing for the "Company wars" and "Hinder Stars" listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh_bibliography#The... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance%E2%80%93Union_univers...
Go get this!
What does that even mean? What's the cutoff for best and great and favorite?
Does anyone else find the language over the top? Like we've watered down our superlatives.
Maybe I'm being super picky, but why make a numbered list of the best things across a spectrum of their greatness and not use the numbers?