What Are the Top Sci-Fi Books of the 21st Century?

[OscarCP]

I cannot comment on these books, as I have not read much by Brin, but in case this is of interest:
The six books of the "Uplift" are not all out of print. For example, the novels are available from Amazon, four new ("in stock"), the other two used, the complete collection from someone selling it through Amazon. I imagine the books would be available from other places as well.

 

[chaszz]

I am struggling through Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. A good exciting idea, but I find the reams and endless reams of descriptions of hardware, spacecraft , orbital mechanics, and docking maneuvers very boring. The interaction among the characters is also boring. am skipping far more than I’m reading. Male writers who create female characters — of course everybody has to write with women leads now, it’s de rigueur — usually create goody-goody smart women who do all the right things and are proper bores, and Ida and Dinah are just that. Ugh. And it is like reading the telephone book when he starts on his endless inventories of hardware in the medium and small craft and his long classical physics lectures. I also recently started and abandoned The Forge of God out of boredom. In between I read Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads and loved it. Maybe I need to finally give up SF already and just read regular fiction. This is not working,

 

[BWV]

Been reading more literary fiction as well, this year discovered Gerald Murnane (The Plains)- sort of an Aussie Borges, Zama by Argentine writer Antonio de Benedetto, and All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski - all excellent. Currently about halfway through 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Thomas Pynchon is a good writer for SF fans, read the underrated Vinland again last year

 

[OscarCP]

Been reading more literary fiction as well, this year discovered Gerald Murnane (The Plains)- sort of an Aussie Borges, Zama by Argentine writer Antonio de Benedetto, and All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski - all excellent. Currently about halfway through 2666 by Roberto Bolano

Thomas Pynchon is a good writer for SF fans, read the underrated Vinland again last year

Aussie Borges, eh? That is an amazingly high praise to bestow on any writer of fiction. But why not?
There is nothing in the air or water to make extraordinary, one-in-any-century writers to be invariably from Argentina. A citizen of the later and born in the former and living in the USA, I am interested in god books coming from any of these countries. A few snippets of his work I've come across remind me of Borges, but also of Poe.

According to Wikipedia:
"Gerald Murnane is an Australian writer, perhaps best known for his novel The Plains. The New York Times, in a big feature published on 27 March 2018, called him "the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of" "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Murnane

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...-review-an-elegiac-but-cantankerous-swan-song

 

[OscarCP]

I am struggling through Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. A good exciting idea, but I find the reams and endless reams of descriptions of hardware, spacecraft , orbital mechanics, and docking maneuvers very boring. The interaction among the characters is also boring. am skipping far more than I’m reading. Male writers who create female characters — of course everybody has to write with women leads now, it’s de rigueur — usually create goody-goody smart women who do all the right things and are proper bores, and Ida and Dinah are just that. Ugh. And it is like reading the telephone book when he starts on his endless inventories of hardware in the medium and small craft and his long classical physics lectures. I also recently started and abandoned The Forge of God out of boredom. In between I read Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads and loved it. Maybe I need to finally give up SF already and just read regular fiction. This is not working,

Not every writer is for everyone. If you find Stephenson boring, have you read anything by John Scalzi? That is definitely not boring, or with ideas explained at great length. Another possibility would be Robert Sawyer. Or the Polish author Stanislaw Lem. And Poe and Wells, of course.

 

[chaszz]

Thank you for that. I have read Scalzi and enjoyed him. Will explore further. And thanks to those who recommended some other literary fiction writers.

 

[chaszz]

I am reading another book by Blake Crouch -- excellent. Once again I will recommend him without naming a book, because everything I've read by him has been full of imagination and thrills. Try anything he has written.

 

[gmax137]

Trolling for more reading material, my list:

Alastair Reynolds: Pushing Ice, House of Suns
Neal Stephenson: Seveneves
Peter Hamilton: Commonwealth Saga
Cixin Liu: Three Body Problem

Thanks, I just finished the 3 body problem, well the first book. What an unusual plot. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[psikeyhackr]

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez

This is a single story spread over two books. Computer gaming genius creates Daemon that murders people after his death and begins taking over corporations. Lots of economics and social commentary.

Gotta have computers as a major part of the story. They are what is really changing this century.

 

[OscarCP]

I have been very impressed by the latest work, as of this writing, by Kim Stanley Robinson: "The Ministry for the Future" ("for" as "in favor ", or "in defense of"). That in the story is the unofficial name of an organization set up under the aegis of the United Nations to fund research on how to take proactive action to help mitigate and, as much as possible, reverse the effects of CO2 and other pollutants on the one planet we all have no choice but to live on, whatever Mr. Elon Musk might think about Mars as a viable alternative.

There is also a group of Indian origin, calling itself "The Sons of Kali", the Hindu Goddess of Death, who attacks and destroys through sabotage and terrorist acts those responsible for activities that cause most of those emissions and profit most from doing this.
And the Ministry itself might have a secret and perhaps rogue "Black Wing" that takes care of things the hard way.

It starts very dramatically in India with a grim climate catastrophe -- told from the point of view of a survivor that will become one of the important and most problematic characters of the novel -- caused by a monstrous heat wave there that goes on for days and days and kills twenty thousand people. The upshot of this is the start of deep political changes there and elsewhere, as well as the gathering of an international conference prompted by such a disaster, where the creation of the Ministry is decided, to be funded to the tune of several billion dollars a year.

Not only I recommend this long book for being very well written and with many passages that are actually page-turners and characters one can sympathize with and that grow on one as the pages go by, interspersed with serious and also interesting ideas and information well researched by the author. Robinson has long been active in leading organizations dedicated to understanding and helping understand the problem of climate change, and this shows.

The bottom line is that the only good thing about global warming I can think of is that it has prevented an otherwise likely new Ice Age from getting started. But if jumping from the fridge into a hot frying pan is what we have been doing, that is not a wonderful thing to our credit.
Wished we had a Ministry for the Future right now, working full-tilt towards getting us and the future generations out of this mess we live in, one of our mostly innocent and ignorant own making.

But Robinson probably is right: only an unprecedentedly horrible catastrophe is what might finally push the Powers That Be of this world to move from empty gestures and declarations to actual positive and sustained action. Color me pessimistic. For now.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...binson-review-how-to-solve-the-climate-crisis

"Kim Stanley Robinson, who wrote the classic Red Mars trilogy of novels about geoengineering the red planet to be habitable by humans, now offers a story about whether we can geoengineer Earth back into Earth."

 

[jedishrfu]

I read this book recently Sundown: Derailing Dystopia and enjoyed the ghetto-like NYC backdrop of the story. It’s a police procedural with a science fiction twist set in a future NYC of 2057.

 

[OscarCP]

I read this book recently Sundown: Derailing Dystopia and enjoyed the ghetto-like NYC backdrop of the story. It’s a police procedural with a science fiction twist set in a future NYC of 2057.

Thanks. Who is the author?

 

[jedishrfu]

Thanks. Who is the author?

Carl Mitchell

 

[harborsparrow]

I, my spouse and several friends ended up loving most of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. For the first book Cordelia's Honor, you have to plow through dozens of pages of background and world building before the storyline can really take off. 20 plus books with interlocking characters and still good if read in any order.

You might also check out James H. Schmitz. Older, and some with psionics.

 

[GLC]

Trolling for more reading material, my list:

Alastair Reynolds: Pushing Ice, House of Suns
Neal Stephenson: Seveneves
Peter Hamilton: Commonwealth Saga
Cixin Liu: Three Body Problem

Just finished a book called Where Worlds Avoid by Dan Treacy. Rumours are doing the rounds that it is a pseudonym but its hilarious. Very Pratchett-esque and definitely worth a read

 

[DaveC426913]

I just finished read Semiosis by Sue Burke and am now reading the sequel Interference.

It's a colonization/survival story, fleeing a corrupt Earth.

What an incredible premise! The moment the protag expressed it I wondered why no one had thought of it before:

Animals live, learn and die, taking with them all the knowledge that they couldn't pass on. Each new generation starts virtually from scratch.
Plants do not die. They can live for centuries, spread themselves across the land, and have a continuous connection with their own history.

It makes perfect sense that plants - once they evolve a nervous system - can rapidly catch up to and outpace animals in sentience. Semiosis is a story of symbiosis between broken-down, stranded colonists, who will surely die on a hostile planet - and the local plant life, who exchanges nutrients and resources in-kind. But are they equals? Or are the humans effectively well-treated servants?

 

[jedishrfu]

I’ve heard that when authors switch genres in their writing they will use a pseudonym so as not to confuse readers who follow their name in the genre buying every book they write. It also means their books won’t automatically get placed with their usual genre in the bookstore or cataloged online.

 

[BWV]

Not recent, but enjoyed Ian Banks first two Culture novels, sort of Star Trek (godlike tech, FTL, Federation-like space empire) for adults

 

[sbrothy]

Not recent, but enjoyed Ian Banks first two Culture novels, sort of Star Trek (godlike tech, FTL, Federation-like space empire) for adults

Yeah, Banks had a good run there. Sad how it's always the good ones who trip over life.

I may have mentioned this before but Bruce Sterling's "Crystal Express" contains as the first story "Swarm" which is one of my all time favorites.

[EDIT: I was pretty sure that the antology was free or public domain or something but as Im not sure I removed the link. It'll be easy to find if you really want to though. [/EDIT]

 

[Grelbr42]

Trolling for more reading material, my list:

Alastair Reynolds: Pushing Ice, House of Suns
Neal Stephenson: Seveneves
Peter Hamilton: Commonwealth Saga
Cixin Liu: Three Body Problem

I noticed that there is another book in the Three Body Problem world.
The Redemption of Time: A Three-Body Problem Novel Paperback – Aug. 4 2020
by Baoshu (Author), Ken Liu (Translator)

I have not read it yet, so I have no idea. It's the same translator that Cixin Liu used. And the author listed as Baoshu has only this one book listed on Amazon right now.