What is /lit/s favorite science fiction?
le Guin
Lord of Light
>>7484871
Dune is the GOAT science fiction
ted chiang
>>7484871
Game Of Thrones.
Greg Egan and PKD.
Sirens of Titan
Harry Potter
Isaac Asimov, fundation, and Diary of stars from Stanislaw Lem
Book of the New Sun
Some good mentions here already
Peter Watts' Beyond the Rift & Blindsight (Starfish is also good, but the rest of that story turns out not so great, and Echopraxia was also not super great)
Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life and Other Stories (haven't been as big of a fan of the other stories that he's written since "Exhalation" and "Lifecycles of Software Objects" but they're still good)
Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress and Cyberiad (people will probably mention Solaris, but I'm not as big a fan as others)
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic
Greg Egan's Quarantine and Permutation City (both great for exploration of ideas, but some extremely bad writing at times)
PKD's Ubik, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (in that order)
China Mieville's Embassytown (good so long as you can tolerate Mieville's passive protagonists)
will post more as i think of them
>>7484871
The Martian obviously. Nothing else can quite compete with it.
>>7484871
Le Guin' s Hainish cycle
Period Street Station
Lincoln's Dreams and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Hyperion series
Lots of stuff that I've read and forgotten over the years...
A Door Into Ocean...
>>7485844
*Perdido
What was that one that sets up a libertarian/collectivist dichotomy through two planets?
>>7485844
wouldn't exactly call perdido street station sci-fi. even "new weird" or whatever label he uses is more suited
>>7484871
The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games and The Martian
>>7484871
Just 1: "The Screwfly Solution" by Raccoona Sheldon
>>7485895
the dispossesed by Le guin
Alfred Bester
>>7484871
alastair reynolds
solaris
>>7485931
kekington avenue
>>7485795
I actually liked Echopraxia. I'm looking forward to the 3rd book.Humanity is fucked. All hail Portia
Gene "The Meme" Wolfe
>Genre fiction
>>7485795
>>7486262
I liked Echopraxia as well, and it also seemed like the prose had improved, so I'm very much looking forward to the third book as well.Also, I feel like a total fag for this, but I kind of fell in love with Valerie and I was really sad when she died... I even wrote an e-mail to Peter Watts complaining about it.
>>7485815
what is so great about this book if youre not trolling
>>7486395I actually thought they were going to get along just fine, especially after that kiss (though we all knew he had cancer from going to Icarus). But once I figured out why she was acting so nice, it made me wonder whether or not she would ever have seen him as any more than prey anyhow. Ah well, I hoped.
Dark Eden, rather obscure book series but absolutely great book, please go look it up everyone
>>7486409
He's trolling
>>7484878
mah nigga
>>7486628I just wasn't expecting it. I mean, sure vampires are asshats and super superior to humankind and all that, so they deserve to die for treating us like the prey we are. But the MC was totally headtripping at the end there. He didn't even know WHY he killed her, just kinda floated through the last dozen pages before finally realizing what was going on.
It's taken me some time to come to terms with the fact that the series is basically detailing future humankind's downfall and complete and utter destruction to a vastly superior opponent. But its an interesting ride down the drain, I'd say.
"Tuf Voyaging" George R.R. Martin
Seems like a good thread to ask this
I don't read very many books, but I'm looking for a science fiction novel that deals with the topics some of Chairman Yang's quotes from SMAC:
>Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
>We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?
>I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain.
>My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?
SMAC devs already stated the were inspired by a lot of existing sci-fi literature. Anybody know of a book that would inspire them to make these quotes?
>>7486697I think you've got it wrong. It's not about humanity's downfall, it's about humanity's ascendance. "His is the blood of the covenant" - Brüks is basically Jesus, sent from God to liberate humanity from an evolutionary dead end.
The Golden Oecumene
>>7486890
While not science fiction, the only apropos response to those points is Stirner.
>>7487656
thanks, doesn't have to be science fiction, just the material said quotes came from was.
>>7486890
>My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?
reminds me of Brave New World (if you haven't read that alrdy)
>>7486350
I bet you wear cargo shorts
Blindsight without a doubt.
>>7486928Yeahhhhh that's cool and all, but there's no sapience left over to even gloat about how superior you are. The whole point is about questioning if you would even want that kind of ascension, evolutionary dead end or not. And considering the fates of Theseus and Icarus, I'd say we want to fucking live, not be exterminated like rats.
>>7484871
Almost anything by Heinlein
I'm only a fraction of the way through his works though
Joe Haldeman
>>7489887But in order to live, sapience must die. That's basically the message I got from it. It's an unnecessary energy expenditure holding us back from our true destiny :3.
The Mote in God's Eye
>>7486174
2nded
Revelation Space
>>7486305
>Gene "The Meme" Wolfe
Explain?
The Machine Stops EM Forster
Neuromancer William Gibson
The Island of Dr. Moreau H. G Wells
Embassytown - China Mieville
Excession
>>7490818
He's written loads of great sci-fi.
My favorite is Book of the Long Sun. Its such a fascinating and mysterious setting.
>>7490860
And Consider Phlebas and Player of Games
John Michael Greer's "Star's Reach" is my favourite science fiction novel, mainly because it refuses to fall into the main settings of most sci-fi novels: that of a utopian future throughout the interstellar realm, or that of a dystopian post-apocalyptic wasteland here on Earth. Instead, it is set within a world very similar to what we might experience after a slow collapse of industrial civilization, with ravaged ecosystems that still sustain some hope for renewal, a paradigm shift in societal consciousness, and a salvage culture that has come to terms with its new cosmologies. Definitely check it out if you're interested in my description. The characters could probably use a bit of work, but Greer is king when it comes to worldbuilding.
dick
>>7490651But we don't want to die, anon. That's why we invented Heaven. Optimal is almost never ethical. Even if ethicality is something we invented due to the massive tumor on our CNS, we still have feelings and we still care. We don't want to die ;_;
>>7490670
Revelation Space is good, but the two sequels kinda suxxed.
>>7491155
Very interesting description. Do you have an ebook copy for it? I don't seem to find it anywhere
>>7484871
Short Story: The Last Question
Novel: Childhood's End
Movie: Silent Running
TV Show: V (the original one)
Dune, but I read more Fantasy than SF.
Any suggestion about god tier SF ?
>>7486796
Nice! The 1000 worlds series is pretty based.
>>7493584
dune is closer to fantasy than sci-fi
>>7484871
The bible
>>7493584
The only two sci-fi novels I’ve really liked were Solaris and Earthlight.
>>7496294
/thread/
