Cassie - Sci Fi Reading list please

[CaptainWacky]

I just read Spiderlight, also by Adrian Tchaikovsky. A totally different kind of book than Children of Time (this one is classic Tolkien fantasy, but with a lot of humour) but like Children of Time it also prominently features spiders. I guess he has a thing for spiders!

I'm reading Alan Partridge's Nomad now but that's not sci-fi or fantasy so legally I can say no more.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I read Redshirts by John Scalzi.

How the fuck did it win the Hugo? Like, it's not bad but it's DEFINITELY not award worthy. It's a comedy "what if we were all living in a tv show!" thing which I'm sure must have been done before. There are some clever ideas, yes, and it does explore that concept quite indetph, but nothing that made me think "WOW THIS IS SUPER ORIGINAL AND AWARD WORTHY." No memorable characters and the last 25% of the book is mastrubatory blog posts about what it's like to be a writer. Is that why it won? Because writers like reading about what it's like to be a writer? OR MAYBE I'M JUST A DICK.

(Headvoid please come back and tell me if I'm a dick.)

 

[CaptainWacky]

Neil Stephenson - Seveneves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves

Fuck me, this is a good book. The writer of Snow Crash has delivered an extraordinary book. Some criticisms of it being "An engineering manual in space" because of the depth of technical detail involved. This is about as hard science fiction as most average readers can take. It is, however, a compulsive page turner that feels a lot like a book version of Apollo 13 and the Sandra Bullock "Space" movie.

Basic plot is that the moon is exploded into many pieces, everyone is looking at the wonderful lunar show but they suddenly realise that there is about 2 years before the moon turns into asteroids and lands on earth destroying everything and everyone. This process will last 5000 years. Bit of a downer. There then follows a frantic space programme designed to get as many people up into space to survive.

At first the science is a little bewildering but the fact it is set in near future allows you to be brought along. There is an Elon Musk type character, one of the other main characters is basically Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Dr Doob). This gives you quite a convenient frame of reference in amongst the apogees and perigrees.

Fantastic book.

I read this book. I'll admit I had a hard time in the first half keeping track of what was going on. Sometimes the scientific descriptions took up so many pages that I'd forgotten what they were describing by the the time I got to the end of them. But it was definitely a good and compelling book. I never felt like stopping. The second half was really a lot better and I admired the massive scale of it. Actually wish we'd spent more of the book in the final setting though and the ending seemed pretty random. I assume there will be a sequel!

Would like to ask you some science questions about it.

(Maybe headvoid will come back if I reply with quote.)

 

[CaptainWacky]

I'm reading (nearly finished) The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. It's the first book in the Broken Earth series and won the Hugo last year. It's very good, I would recommend it to anyone who still reads books! Its sequel also won the Hugo so I'll read that too sometime!

The new Expanse book is out now, I'll read that next. I hope some stuff actually happens in this one, unlike the last.

 

[headvoid]

I haven't read redshirts - and tend to read all the Hugo nomineee, never mind winners - I trust your judgement though wacky.

Happy for questions on science, I can pretend I know stuff after googling it.

Spiderlight will be on my list.

OOOOH BLUE PLANET IS ON AND I HAVE A NEW TELLY. (Back soon)

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I’m still half way through Nemesis Games in the Expanse series. Shit really went down, but it’s still gone off the boil. The tv show is a lot better written, or maybe it distracts with all the pretty visuals, I dunno. But I find it hard to care about what’s going on. Amos is the only interesting character in it.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

Oh and I’m reading Darran Anderson’s Imaginary Cities, which is a non-fiction book, but references sci-fi quite a lot. It’s a potted history of imaginary cities, in the sense of planned cities that were never built, ones that were lost to time and can only be imagined and ones from fiction. It’s quite interesting if you like that sort of thing.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Happy for questions on science, I can pretend I know stuff after googling it.

It's been a while but I THINK my question was about the part where they restart the human race with just the DNA of the seven women (the Eves.) Weren't there still a couple of men with them right up until the end? Couldn't they take DNA from the dead men and, like, mix that with the woman DNA to create more diversity? SEE WHAT AN INTELLIGENT QUESTION THIS WAS.

 

[headvoid]

Yeh, the DNA bit was a bi fudgy. The scientist worked out "stuff" and they could all choose the characteristics of their races.

Far enough advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic etc.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I want "bi fudgy" to be a thing.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I’m a longtime Blade Runner fan (and short time Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams non-fan), but I had never got around to reading the actual book. A copy came free with the 2049 Blu-ray (which has BLADE RUNNER in massive type with the actual title as the smallest text on the cover), so here I am.

It’s interesting reading a book which was adapted so much to form a movie, rather than the more or less direct copies that most are. There are quite a few characters, plot points and features of the universe which were completely scrapped for the movie.

There’s a whole religion based on the worldwide transfer of emotions, for one. There’s much more emphasis on the importance of keeping live animals, in the first instance as a way of helping to keep the planet’s ecosystem alive and as a derivative of that they become a symbol of your status and communal spirit. And there’s a weird subplot about how the replicants have taken over half the city which is never properly explained.

One idea it’s a shame wasn’t used in the movie was that Pris and Rachael are the same model. One to kill and one to live.

It’s got a lot of interesting ideas and it keeps you guessing, but I do wonder how it got picked to be adapted. It doesn’t feel totally finished in some ways.

 

[Charlemagne]

Okay, having re-read this thread for the first time in fucking forever, I have another recommendation for this list.

"Prey", by Michael Chrichton.

Basically, it's about a nanotech disaster (rampaging nanite swarms, you know the drill), but has some unique twists.

The first, is that the nanites begin "domesticating" life-forms that prove useful to them (mostly bacteria and worms - the former, since modified E. coli were used as the "factories" for the nanites, the latter because their waste provided food for the E. coli).

The second, is that the nanites can assemble themselves into human-replicas, perfectly capable of blending in to society until the time is right.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I'm reading Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. It's good but LONG. I feelt hesitant to ever start another epic fantasy series as I might not finish it in my lifetime.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I went through a phase of reading Michael Chrichton books but got a bit frustrated by how he always wraps up the story in a couple of pages. It’s like he suddenly realised he’d run out of pages and hit the emergency brakes on the story. I’m sure I’ll read the rest, though, as they are full of interesting ideas.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I just started the eighth Expanse book.

 

[Fuddlemiff]

I haven’t read any since the one where Earth got hit. I didn’t feel like I was getting much out of them anymore... just reading for the sake of it. I should try and pick up where I left off.

 

[CaptainWacky]

The middle trilogy (books 4 to 6) were definitely the weakest. The pacing got really weird and a lot of the time it felt like they were spinning their wheels and just recapping stuff we already knew. The latest boook, so far, feels much better paced. Big things are happening without them holding stuff back, probably because book 9 is going to be the last one.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I am reading 'Cage of Souls' by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

I read the Tchaikovsky Children books this year and liked a lot.

I'm reading The Testaments rn I think that counts?

 

[CaptainWacky]

I'm reading Children of Ruin now, it's very good.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Read 'Gideon The Ninth' by Tamsyn Muir, was very good. Recommended!