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).
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Was a recommendation on the R site.
Complex, eon spanning, hard sci-fi. I’m loving it!
How far in are you?
Just moved on to Kath Two. After all the fun with Izzy and The Cannibals ;-)
Izzy and the what?! 👀😵
Can’t reply too much - spoilers!
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.
If you could, what other sci-fi works would you compare it to? I am wrapping up the Children of Time series and could use something else.
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.
Not sure. Tried a couple of Adrian Tchaikovsky and couldn’t really get on. Could be because they were audiobooks.
Have been ‘off’ of reading for a while, but have realised a new found love for my Kindle.
Andy Wier’s Hail Mary might fit your bill.
Or Iain Banks’ Culture series.
I’m rereading Asimov’s complete saga in “internal story chronological order”:
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I, Robot / The Complete Robot (except ‘Mirror Image’!) [ROBOTS]
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The Caves of Steel [ROBOTS]
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The Naked Sun [ROBOTS]
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Mirror Image (short story) [ROBOTS]
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The Robots of Dawn [ROBOTS]
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Robots and Empire [ROBOTS]
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The Stars, Like Dust-- [EMPIRE]
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The Currents of Space [EMPIRE]
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Pebble in the Sky [EMPIRE]
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Prelude to Foundation [FOUNDATION]
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Forward the Foundation [FOUNDATION]
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Foundation [FOUNDATION]
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Foundation and Empire [FOUNDATION]
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Second Foundation [FOUNDATION]
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Foundation’s Edge [FOUNDATION]
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Foundation and Earth [FOUNDATION]
I’m currently on “Forward the foundation”
The Foundation series is absolutely amazing, and I am jealous of you if this is your first reading. One of my formative series growing up. You’re inspiring me to do the whole Asimov read through like your doing, because I don’t believe I ever read the Empire books and never read Robot beyond I, Robot.
Honestly, has to be my favourite series. There’s just so much to it.
I’m surprised The Caves of Steel is so early as it seemed really futuristic compared to most of The Complete Robot, but I read it a long time ago so maybe I’m not remembering correctly.
Well all short stories in The complete robot are with “normal humans” and their interactions with the first “robots” on earth when there was no faster than lights spaceships.
The Caves of Steel instead is the first of the robot saga where humanity is divided between human from earth that lives inside the big underground cities and the “spacers” which lived on several different planets and are almost a new spieces because they have been separated from earth for several centuries.
I did this last year. It’s quite amazing to read through.
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I listened to the 2nd and 3rd books of the Murderbot series on a car ride recently. I had read them before, but it was the first time that he did. I really enjoyed laughing with him.
Not science fiction, but I’m loving Carl Sagans “The Demon-Haunted World”. He really was a brilliant dude.
Yeah, I really liked that book. Pale Blue Dot is really good as well and he reads part of the audiobook himself, although unfortunately not all of it as he was already quite ill by that point. He was taken far too young.
I’ve been working through The Expanse books, and have just started Leviathan Falls.
I’m about halfway through Persepolis Rising. That prologue was one hell of a jolt!
How do you like the expanse? I’ve heard they are awesome!
Not the person you replied to, but I have read the series and watched the show. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend both.
I’m really trying to read Three Body Problem, but I’m having a hard time following
Stick with it. I loved the series, but the first book is unfortunately the most confusing and, in my opinion, the worst of the three.
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
There is a YouTube series that has adapted the book really well amazing https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMX26aiIvX5rFSYPXtcqda3tWd6pGVD5Q
I hated 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.
I don’t understand why it got the Hugo award.
Just finished The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin and going to look for a library where I can buy the next book in the Hain cycle !
Working my way through some Hugo winners past— reading A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller.
I really liked Canticle, but I really felt like it suffered from being a fix-up novel. It’s three acts are not equal and don’t totally fit together in my opinion. It really starts off strong though! Hope you like it!
I’m enjoying it! I love a solid premise and the references to modern science appearing as obscure archeological nuggets are perfect. There are some bits I’m guessing that I’m missing some symbolism or something (I’m not an expert in Catholicism).
For what it’s worth, several Catholics I know have also had to read the book with notes open on the side. Monastic culture and tradition isn’t exactly common knowledge anymore, though I’m not sure if they would have been in the 50s, or if Miller just trusts that his reader is smart enough to catch on.
If you like Canticle, consider looking into the works of Gene Wolfe. He also writes very re-readable sci-fi that expects much of the reader, and delivers much in turn.
Thanks! That does make me feel a bit better! Will look into Wolfe.
Currently I’m reading the Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clark
Removed by mod
I’m reading Nemesis by Isaac Asimov, slow (not much time to read) but steady.
I just finished up a first time read of Wheel of Time series. Solid 8 months of reading but 100% worth it. Mat Cauthon is my second favorite character ever written I think.
I could never keep the “chosen” straight. Some die, then get reincarnated, but as someone else that you kinda new. Maybe If O had crushed the series im 8 months instead of book by book as they were released if would have been easier to follow.
And yes, Mat is GREAT, which made Perrin super unlikable for me, just due to the unintentional comparison.
Honestly, same with Perrin for me. By the end of the series I wanted to skip Perrin chapters. He’s just so…Perrin.
As for the Chosen I couldn’t keep them straight at all. I had to look them up on the WoT wiki and try to keep from spoilering myself.
Who is your first favourite character ever written?
Teft from the Stormlight Archive.
Currently reading “The Exiled Fleet” by J. S. Dewes. This is the second in her “The Divide” series. It is pretty good. I picked up the first book because she did a release event with Scalzi during that time we were all locked in our homes and the story sounded interesting. The first one was compelling enough for me to see the series through although she has not announced the publication of the third book yet and has just released a standalone novel unrelated to the series.
“The complete robot” by Isaac Asimov.
Those are some of my favourite stories. Although if I remember correctly, it contains the short story version of The Bicentennial Man and you may wish to read the novella version instead which he wrote later, having developed the story some more.
I’m planning to read it when I get opportunity to buy it.
Just ended with ‘Children of Time’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky and will now start ‘Children of Ruin’ (the second in the series). I liked it a lot,… the gist of it:
- Humans terraform planets
- Humans want ‘crispr’ intelligent apes
- Humans kill each other
- Crispr can’t find apes,… uses spiders instead
- Other Humans come eons later and find intelligent spiders
The story is told through the eyes of the spiders and the surviving humans and how they try to communicate, think in different terms, fight for the last habitable planet,…
I liked the idea, but felt it feared losing the readers and kept over explaining the spider point of view in human terms. I would have liked the spider society be more “other” and more to be left for the reader to figure out and experience the otherness. In contrast Quantum Thief is set in a human society, but it felt actually foreign and more fascinating since the reader is the only fish out of water and the characters don’t go out of their way to explain aspects of the word obvious to them.
We’re going on an adventure!
The second one was also “funny”… My wife just finished the third…
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine.
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.
