I'm currently reading the Wool omnibus by Hugh Howey. It's pretty decent I've been making very rapid progress as it's been too hot to sleep here recently now the summer has arrived.
I haven't seen the Apple show, but maybe I'll watch it in the future when I've finished all the books (I had Shift and Dust as well).
Man, I read that and all the crazy notes in all different directions. Quite a trip. I personally think it could have been a bit shorter and deliver the same effect, but it really is pretty neat and original. I hope they make it into a film or show someday - it deserves the treatment and the author deserves the $$.
Love that book! First read through was unsuccessful as I got stuck in an appendix reading a bunch of letters. On my 2nd attempt I avoided that dead end and really enjoyed it.
I actually just got this delivered recently. Haven't had the chance to dive in yet, but its reputation really precedes it. Every video essayist I follow on Youtube has talked about this book at some point. Very much looking forward to it.
The reading of the book becomes part of the experience of the book in a way that feels unique and engaging. If you like the format being part of the story I have to recommend S by Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams and to a lesser extent the Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.
I sold Seveneves to a friend by saying it is like Neal Stephenson wrote The Martian. Well, at least the first 2/3 of it. It talks a lot about the science how how an event like the one described in the book might happen but with the kind if granularity and verbosity you would expect from NS.
I finished Seveneves a few weeks ago. If I wasn't reading it with a friend I wouldn't have finished. I am glad I did, I loved the last 1/4 of the book.
I started this book series that begins with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It’s a space sci-fi series and the author did a great job with creating different societies and species and thinking about things like different methods of speech and communication, mobility, how do multi-species societies work, etc. But she did a good job of focusing less on the world building with a focus on how the characters navigate the world and situations they’re in.
One of the author’s parents worked for NASA as an astrophysicist or something, the other was a biologist, and she’s a huge DnD nerd, so that all seems to check out haha.
I’m reading The Best Of World SF Vol 2 compilation, edited by Lavie Tidhar. There are some phenomenal short stories in this and the first one, and I really enjoy hearing voices from outside the English-speaking bubble that I usually read
I really loved the first book in the series, A Memory Called Empire, but I find the second one harder to get through. The writing really gets into the protagonist’s head, and with all the stress she’s in, it gets… claustrophobic, I guess, for me. I wish there was a bit more focus on the plot about the cool mysterious aliens.
I’m currently nostalgia-reading Robert Rankin’s Dance Of The Voodoo Handbag but that’s more far fetched fiction than sci-fi. Silly, entertaining and lots of tall tales. I’m also reading The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken. I was hoping for it to be the start of a good series of books to read over the summer but it’s not very good. I will probably not bother with the rest of the series.
Django Wexler's Shadow Campaigns seris. Fantasy more than sci fi but I'd describe them as hard fantasy. I'm on book 2 of 5 and glory be to whatever library God is watching over me but all 5 are available as E-books from our library system, haven't had to wait except for the first one.
I read The Player of Games and it was good. I also read Consider Phleblas and while it was very different to Player Of Games I didn't think it was as bad as some people say.
Apparently Use of Weapons is also really good so I should go back to that series. The whole Culture thing is really interesting.
Do people dislike Consider Phlebas? The story is a bit more straightforward than the others, but it does a good job introducing the setting. And that train battle at the end
I’m halfway through Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. I didn’t know anything about this book other than it was about a generation ship but I’m really enjoying it. Every time I pick up one of his books I can’t believe how good the science is, dude really digs into everything
Currently reading Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. It's the sequel to Pandora's Star.
Imagine if humans developed wormhole technology to travel to other states systems instantly and abandoned space travel. Very fun read. It has a wide spread of characters and settings so it can get a bit confusing at times.
I recently finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and Wool by Hugh Howey, currently reading Shift. We had the Silo trilogy in our bookshelf for years, but it was only after watching the Apple TV show I decided to read it.
I have a somewhat newfound love for hard sci-fi and would love any recommendations folks have.
I started watching the TV show, but didn't really get into it. That said, I took me three tries to get into The Wire so I wouldn't hold that against it.
Maybe I'll have better luck with the book series, will check it out.
The expanse is the best Sci fi I’ve read in a VERY long time. Read the first book and see if you change your mind. I haven’t met anyone who read the books who didn’t love it.
The writing style felt like it was written by a high school student and the characters were really two-dimensional with no believable motivations for their actions. Also the whole premise was stupid and unrealistic. There were few interesting concepts but they were ruined by the crappy presentation.
Really? I loved the first book, but felt the translator for the second had a different enough style that it was hard for me to stay engaged. Maybe I’ll have to give it a second try
Yeah, it's not that first book is bad. I just found it a bit of slow burn and it's bit confusing, not due to any problems with translation or writing, initially.
The second and third book is where the story really goes hard and it becomes massively expansive I found.
Probably only relevant to German readers, I'm currently enjoying "Sanctum" from a series by Markus Heitz. He made a trilogy about werewolves and one about vampires, both are great if you're into spooky stuff, action and a bit of fictional violence. ;) Personally, I think that the Judas trilogy (the one about vampires) is written slightly better and a more fluent story arc, so if you only would give one of them a try and you're not an absolute werewolf fan, I'd start with "Kinder des Judas".
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