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    • CommentAuthorENGINE
    • CommentTimeSep 18th 2008
     (1268.1)
    I'd say Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise. Larry Niven's Ringworld series...I never actually finished, because my interest in it was piqued by the Halo game, which it is nothing like.

    @jcfiala
    I'm actually rather interested in that bobble thing now.
    •  
      CommentAuthorLucifal
    • CommentTimeSep 18th 2008 edited
     (1268.2)
    Interzone had out an issue recently of mundane science fiction which I took to mean hard sf - but I didn't feel it was . . . thankfully. In fact one story was nearer fantasy.
    • CommentAuthorearl
    • CommentTimeSep 18th 2008
     (1268.3)
    I think Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is worth reading. He really created a view of what a colonization of Mars might look like. I don't think the plot or characterization of the novels is the best science fiction I ever read, but his look into a future Mars was really incredible. I will eventually read at least the first book again, which I thought was the best one, just to imagine people colonizing another planet which is something I have dreamed about since I was a little kid.

    Greg Bear's Blood Music would be considered hard scifi and his look into nanotechnology written in the 80s is really interesting. I'm kind of surprised no super hero comic book has nicked his story for an origin.

    I also love William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy and Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix. Those are some of my favorites.
    • CommentAuthorENGINE
    • CommentTimeSep 19th 2008
     (1268.4)
    Oh man, I read Greg Bear's EON and didn't understand what was going on half the time!
  5.  (1268.5)
    Might it be as easy to point out authors as specific titles?

    Larry Niven, 'Ringworld'; I feel like pointing to it is a little blatantly obvious, but hey; The sequel was literally spawned because of the questions in regards to the soundness of the science involved.
    • CommentAuthorearl
    • CommentTimeSep 19th 2008
     (1268.6)
    I get what you are saying about Greg Bear's EON. I liked the front half when they are exploring the ship, but when they go through 'the way'. the book totally changes and gets really confusing.
    • CommentAuthorENGINE
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2008
     (1268.7)
    By the third appearance of the word "flawship" I had completely lost the thread, science-wise.
    • CommentAuthorjayverni
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2008
     (1268.8)
    @Val

    I think the "tree of life" and the whole Pak Protector/aided evolution story in Ringworld is one of my absolute favorites. One I still pull out and use to try to explain my fascination with science fiction.
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      CommentAuthoreDave
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2008
     (1268.9)
    i got bumped somehow while composing my post, so this time I'll just list titles before i forget them:

    Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling, Consider Phlebas, Use of weapons, Player of games, Ian m Banks, Time considered as a helix of semi precious stones, Samuel r Delaney, and the short story collections 'untouched by human hands', Robert Sheckley, 'Heatseeker', John Shirley and Bruce Sterling's 'mechanist/shaper'.

    all great, all show what sf/scifi/fantastika/speculative fiction can be in the hands of masters.
    • CommentAuthorKradlum
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2008
     (1268.10)
    Having just finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem I would consider it Hard Sci-fi, in the literal definition,and due to the fact it can be a bit hard on the brain at times. It's a very good read, I would compare it with the best of Greg Egan.
    • CommentAuthormlpeters
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2008
     (1268.11)
    "Space Opera originally meant metal bikini chicks on sweaty Venus"
    I haven't read any Burroughs except the first three or four each from his Tarzan and John Cater of Mars books, so I don't know about Venus (Carson of Venus, right? The one Kaluta drew for comics?), but Deja Thoris pretty much ran around Barsoom (Mars) naked. The metal bikinis were an invention of editors and cover painters to get around the nudity.

    That one guy I think Kosmopolit, cited from the OED -- the one from the 1983 definition -- sounds a bit condescending about some of the genres he attempted to pin down. Genres are fluid creatures and their shallow areas can hide unexpected depths and vice versa.
    • CommentAuthorarau
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2008
     (1268.12)
    One of the other sci-fi categories I have seen used is Science Fantasy. Something of a pejorative but a useful descriptor.

    Have not been reading as much as I would like recently but Ken MacLeod's Star Fraction, and Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds both stuck with me. In a fit of nostalgia I also re-read The Stars My Destination which has held up very well despite its age.
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      CommentAuthorFerburton
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2008
     (1268.13)
    My experience in sci-fi books is rather limited to only a few stories I read in school that I could not begin to recall. I've always meant to pick up some Asimov or some of other authors I've heard of. Just not nearly enough time to read all the books I'd like to.
  14.  (1268.14)
    @ remotepush
    i'd suggest anything by greg egan. he used to regularly break my head. and he has a new novel out this year, which is good news.
    Yay for Greg Egan. I just found his short stories collection Luminous in a box today, and re-read "The Planck Dive" (readable online, in full, here) which is slightly too much for my brain to follow, and therefore I love it.
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      CommentAuthorFoamhead
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2011
     (1268.15)
    I don't know if anyone will even notice this, seeing as it's almost 3 years since the most recent post appeared but here goes.

    I read a book as a pretty young kid which I can remember neither the title or author. The plot centred on characters mysteriously becoming suspended as "silver statues" for a period of time, "unfreezing", seeing how the world has changed before returning to their silver statue state, repeatedly for an increasingly long time over billions of years.

    I know it's a long shot to hope this might ring a bell with anyone but the ideas of the story have stuck with me for 30-plus years even if the specific, useful details have long since faded. I've been trying to rediscover the book for years, with no luck.
  16.  (1268.16)
    As far as hard SF goes, one of my all time favourites is "Blood Music" by Greg Bear. It deals with nanotechnology. It's absolutely brilliant.
  17.  (1268.17)
    @The Mighty Foamhead: I'd say 'Marooned in Realtime' (first published in '86), but the term 'silver statues' is never used in that one. Otherwise the basic framework of people being suspended in time for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, coming out, and then going back in, over the course of billions of years is the same.
  18.  (1268.18)
    I am pretty sure china mieville's Embassytown is hard sci-fi. dont read too much hard scifi.
    • CommentAuthorTalesin
    • CommentTimeJun 12th 2011 edited
     (1268.19)
    @The Mighty Foamhead: google is your friend :) Sounds like "The Walking Shadow" by Paul Heisenberg (1979). Heres the blurb from amazon:

    "It is the year 1992. Paul Heisenberg, guru and leader of a new religion combining faith with metaphysics, freezes into a deep trance whilst on stage in front of 80,000 people. He appears to have turned into a silver statue. Where has he gone? Will he return, and if so, when? Thousands of his followers find a way to make "the jump" and follow him into the stream of time. For his strange state is not so much a trance, as a form of time travel! Unfortunately the time jumps cannot be controlled, and the jumpers wake up at widely varying times. Heisenberg's name becomes a legend, as people expect him to wake up and put the world to rights"

    edited
    • CommentAuthorTalesin
    • CommentTimeJun 12th 2011
     (1268.20)
    Also cheers for re-posting on this thread, I hadn't seen it before and now have a whole bunch of new titles to check out.

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