Hard Sci-Fi Lovers discussion
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It's small and quiet because I created the group only a few months ago, didn't spend that much time working on it (since it was a group of one at the time) and didn't advertise it at all. Now I see we have 5 members!
Yes, exactly. I think the most difficult thing for authors about the genre is trying to make things actually seem interesting when they also must bog themselves down into some technical rabbit hole. I'm reading through the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy at the moment and see that Robinson did exceptionally well to that end about half the time, otherwise he was far too dry.
Jules Verne: I have many of his books but haven't got around to reading anything more than The Time Machine. Story wise, it was enjoyable, although I don't remember it being all that rooted in a science basis. Of course, that's a bit difficult to critique for a book published in 1895. So you could indeed have a point with that! How are his other books? Which do you recommend to read next?
Another good anecdote that is perhaps timely (although not in the hard sci-fi context): John Bradley (the actor who plays Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones) was once asked why his character was still so fat after running around in the winter fighting white walkers with barely any food. His response: "In a show where there are dragons, zombies... there's a woman who gives birth to a cloud! And the one thing that you can't buy and don't get is me being a bit podgy!"
In the spirit of an ice breaker, perhaps everyone could share a bit about themselves?
I live in Stockholm, Sweden, but come from Melbourne, Australia. PhD in Physics, currently working as an Earth Systems researcher on global climate / biosphere / society interactions and policy. Favourite hard sci-fi: I've added a few to the groups bookshelf already. Mostly anything by Greg Egan that would fit into the category: Schild's Ladder and Diaspora mostly. Stephen Baxter's Time (the rest of the Manifold is not as good). Would be interested to hear your recommendations, and feel free to add your favourites to the bookshelf too!
Hi Tim,huh, it's already been 10 days since you posted this! Tells you how much time I can afford to spend on Goodreads...
Verne: The Mysterious Island, by far his best work, the one I had in mind when citing him (when I read The Martian, I thought of it a lot) - as long as you wrap your mind around the condescending racism. You may also find entertaining From the Earth to the Moon or Voyage to the center of the Earth.
Good one on GOT, though I stopped watching, I can't stand HBO and won't pay them money even though this means missing Westworld or GOT.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm an engineer at Intel, I'm a sucker for science and sci-fi (yes, I have a subscription to Scientific American) though I tend to dislike flying saucers of all sizes, especially in fleets - the so called "Space Opera" trend. Oh, and I am Italian.
I will add my favorites to the shelf
Hi! Can anyone make a list of the best hard sci-fi novels out there? Thanks!
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Hello everyone, this is great, thank you for making this group!
Here's a question I haven't quite nailed down. Where does Hard SciFi end and Space Opera begin? Is there, as I suspect, a big overlap?I started reading a lot of Hard SciFi then kinda realised that Space Opera was a thing and I was probably reading it without knowing. Basically for me there needs to be some scientific basis behind stuff otherwise it's not SciFi, it's fantasy, and that kinda bores me a bit. Space Opera seems to spread across both.
I basically read through all of Ian M Banks and Alastair Reynolds, both of which I love, with a splattering of other authors in between. currently working through Kim Stanley Robinson, Peter F Hamilton and Kevin J Anderson. Kinda like Pohl, Loved Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series. Loved Greg Bear's Eon and Eternity, although haven't liked his other stuff. Read a few Stephen Baxter books but not sure they were my thing, a bit whacky perhaps. Found Greg Egan a bit too hardcore.
I have read quite a few of the old school authors but I definitely prefer the newer stuff.
Hi Nik. Banks, Reynolds... you are right that the definition of hard sci-fi is not as crisp as one would think... there is a lot of overlap with space opera, dystopia (or utopia in the case of Banks), and even Fantasy. It is fiction after all. You seem to have an impressive bookshelf, you may want to share it in this group! Back on hard sci-fi, I personally prefer stories rooted in plausible science, but also not too far out in terms of the plot - for example I find the Culture series a bit too "Star Wars" for my taste. Have you read any of the Cixin Liu works? I would highly recommend them, they are the closest I can think of in terms of hard sci-fi in recent years
I've heard of The Three Body Problem, while not on my target list I might pick it up if I see it. I think with space opera, I really enjoy it, providing it has enough depth and is grounded in enough plausible future science.
Hello all. Being a hard sci-fi lover I was happy to find this group. I really like the idea of the best hard sci-fi novels list because I find that I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a few really good ones. I have made a note to check out those listed on the bookshelf that I haven’t read yet. I am adding just a few of my favourites to start with: A Deepness In The Sky by Vernon Vinge, The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, Dragon’s Egg by Robert Forward and The Integral Trees by Larry Niven.I have also written a hard sci-fi novel myself just recently, Peregrinus Orior (Latin for The Wanderer Rises). I agree with Tim that it is a real challenge in hard sci-fi to balance keeping the story interesting and fast paced while baking in enough technical detail to be authentic. I know in a few places I let the technical background go on a little long. I would welcome feedback if any of you care to read it.
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John: your book seems like something I'd be into reading. I'll try to check it out at some stage soon. Glad to have some bona fide authors in our mix too!
I was thinking about what else we could do with the group in the near future. A few things that come to mind at the moment:
1. Add a discussion section that connects purely to books on our bookshelves. We can add in our own personal reviews of each and/or field questions, generate discussions about the themes and science within.
2. Discuss scientific concepts that you would be interested in exploring in a sci-fi context, but so far have not come across any work that does so. Hopefully other members can point you in the right direction, or seed ideas for our resident authors.
3. Answer questions about possibly tricky to understand concepts in books that members are reading. Not everyone who is a sci-fi fan is working in a science related field - so there is always the possibility of not quite grasping a concept in a story that may end up being crucial to enjoying the book. Looking at the bios of a number of our members, we have a good selection of scientists and other technical specialists already, so I think we could cover most questions that come up.
What do you think about those points? Do you guys have any other ideas we could do as a group?
Hello everyone, I joined this group some months ago but had not the occasion to write anything, but I am starting to use goodreads more often, so I tought about contributing to this discussion. First of all, I would like to thank Tim for preparing the book shelf: I noticed many interesting titles there. I have always been curious about Greg Egan's books, unfortunately I could not get my hands on a copy yet.
A book which is pretty hard sci-fi and presents some very interesting concepts is Blindsight. Highly recommended. I especially liked how he devised the alien species and his exploration of some transhumanist concepts.
Another extremely good book, which I consider to be the most hard sci-fi book ever written, is Contact by Carl Sagan (maybe you have watched the movie adaptation). If you have an interest about astronomy, you will surely know who Carl Sagan is. The book rather than a novel might be considered a scientific speculation about a hypothetical first contact with an extra terrestrial intelligence (Carl Sagan himself worked quite a lot on the search of extraterrestrial life). It is also rich in philosophical and theological dialogues.
For last, I think all the four points proposed by Tim are good ideas which can help in developing the group further.
Other groups on goodreads propose monthly readings: a poll is created and a book is chosen, and at the end of the month a discussion about the book is opened where people can express their opinions.
This probably requires a certain amount of commitment, but I find it a good idea, which can be adapted and made more flexible according to the preferences of the group's members (we are still few, so it should be more manageable).
Greetings from New Mexico, USA. I’m Mark. Ph.D. in computing tech for education and learning, MS in info resources management (blend of info systems management, quantitative management, and organizational behavior), other grad work in systems science, BA in psych with minors in natural science and philosophy. I’ve worked in government IT (primarily) since 1986. Before that, I was a factory worker, carpenter, illustrator, commercial greenhouse worker, etc. I like hiking, camping, learning languages (at the travel survival level) from apps, and noodling with an acoustic guitar. My immediate interest is to identify and read the exemplars of hard/technical sci-fi, both for pleasure and to improve my craft as a sci-fi story maker. My most recent sci-fi read was Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Who but she would include an epilogue solely to explain the intricacies of her fictional planet’s physical year and day; its moon; and the resulting calendar its hermaphrodite humans created? Loved it.
As a reader and writer I am fine with speculations that are at least marginally feasible within what’s known (the body of validated knowledge) or defensible extrapolations from what’s known or not yet ruled out by what’s known. I am not obsessive about explicating every minute detail of every technology but I don’t want to read or write glaring errors that would bump a well-informed reader out of the ‘fictional trance.’ I do want to experience and create that trance—it’s the joy of immersion in a story—but I hope to avoid avoidable mistakes. For example, self-assembling, self-replicating nanofactories have not been ruled out by any demonstrated scientific principles (despite much debate by people far smarter and more well-informed than I) but if I read or write about this I want to avoid invoking particular methods that have been proven impossible or are violations of known constraints (thermodynamics, universal constants, etc.).
I’m not a quant or physical scientist, so I’m limited in how deeply I can dive before hitting the ‘math(s) wall.’ There I must defer to experts. Where experts’ conclusions conflict, I feel free to choose a side that better suits my creative objectives.
Necot wrote: "Hello everyone, I joined this group some months ago but had not the occasion to write anything, but I am starting to use goodreads more often, so I tought about contributing to this discussion.I agree about Contact. Thanks for recommending Blindsight. I’ll add it to my list. I’m in three other reading groups. My bandwidth is nearly full now, regarding a reading/discussion group, but I’m interested in learning how this group might evolve.
Tim wrote: "Great to see our little group growing! Welcome to everyone new."Tim, thanks for creating the group. I like your three focus areas. Regarding item three, I’ll put myself forward as a brain, mind, consciousness, and AI junkie. I’m not a true professional expert, but I’ve consumed a lot of related info and facilitate a relevant discussion group (https://albuquirky.net) that meets in Albuquerque.
John wrote: "Hello all. Being a hard sci-fi lover I was happy to find this group. I really like the idea of the best hard sci-fi novels list because I find that I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a few reall..."I hope to reduce the frequency of frog kissing. I like the little slimers but...
Congrats on completing a novel! Writing well is HARD. Is your book published yet?
Nik wrote: "I've heard of The Three Body Problem, while not on my target list I might pick it up if I see it. I think with space opera, I really enjoy it, providing it has enough depth and is grounded in enoug..."I’ve read Three Body and Dark Forest. Both were excellent. The writing is competent. There are some very interesting concepts. I suspect I missed some nuances that would require familiarity in Chinese culture but this didn’t diminish the reading experience. There are also some speculative technologies I don’t have the physics background to assess. I didn’t allow these to hold up my reading.
Nik wrote: "Here's a question I haven't quite nailed down. Where does Hard SciFi end and Space Opera begin? Is there, as I suspect, a big overlap?I started reading a lot of Hard SciFi then kinda realised tha..."
For me, the quality of the story parallels its ‘reality rigor.’ No matter how speculatively feasible a story’s sci-tech details may be, if the work isn’t a cohesive, coherent, well-crafted story it’s a flop.
"What, then, is entertaining about stories? What is it that hooks us when we read, if not the beautiful language or the dramatic events? If curiosity is the key, if that’s what gets the dopamine flowing, what is it that we’re curious about? What is a story? In a nutshell: A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how that person changes internally as a result." (Lisa Cron, Story Genius)
My muddle of Cron’s definition: A story consists of a person (human or human-like) striving to achieve a difficult, personally high-stakes goal, and encountering escalating opposition through a cause-and-effect (decision/action/reaction) sequence that culminates in a decisive conflict. The story’s focal person succeeds, fails, or—in an ironic ending—both, on different levels of meaning.
I guess this outs me as being in the camp of not seeing avant-garde fiction as storytelling. True.
M. wrote: "Nik wrote: "Here's a question I haven't quite nailed down. Where does Hard SciFi end and Space Opera begin? Is there, as I suspect, a big overlap?I started reading a lot of Hard SciFi then kinda ..."
Oh, and I agree with Cron’s insistence that the protagonist must change. (If not, the story must be about why the person doesn’t change, given the whole cause-and-effect plot chain would/should have changed them.)
Tim wrote: "Hi Massimo! It's small and quiet because I created the group only a few months ago, didn't spend that much time working on it (since it was a group of one at the time) and didn't advertise it at ..."
I’ve read Eon (Bear) and Manifold Time (written during a period of sci-fi fascination with cephalopods, which I enjoyed) and loved both.
BTW, in 1983-84 I did a year of grad research with the U.S. (University of Louisville) campus of the Systems Science Institute, whose main presence was in Stockholm. Unfortunately, I was dirt poor and didn’t visit Sweden. I think the SSI was absorbed into other institutions in the 1990s.
Massimo wrote: "Just wanted to break the ice... this group is small (which is good) and very quiet (why?)Generic comment: hard sci-fi is ... well, hard! Difficult to write something exciting, and also scientifica..."
Gravity was special effects and a self-confirming woo woo storyline. I managed to enjoy it anyway. Solaris remake was a better Clooney film and, I bet, was why he came to mind for Gravity. (The original Solaris is worth a watch too.)
I find writing fiction well is hard, period. Writing a compelling story that also conveys a lot of technical concepts multiplies the difficulty. I’ve come to regard story effects, especially hooking and keeping the reader immersed, as primary. That said, readers like us—who have a greater appetite for well-integrated scientific and technical concepts—don’t mind (even enjoy!) slogging through KSR’s orbital mechanics or Le Guin’s mega-chapters on two guys traversing a volcanic ice continent in The Left Hand of Darkness. That said, the existence of sci-tech nerd readers is not a valid excuse for a writer to infodump. There are still ways (I’m told) to integrate essential or story-enhancing worldbuilding details into stories more dramatically. I’m finding this a hard challenge.
My name is NJ Paige. Greetings Everyone. Would you mind if I added my own book: Operation Safe Zone? Tim wrote: "Hi Massimo!
It's small and quiet because I created the group only a few months ago, didn't spend that much time working on it (since it was a group of one at the time) and didn't advertise it at ..."
I enjoy reading Science Fiction in general. However, I lean more towards human interactions, emotions, and real human situations with a touch of Hard Science. I'm not so much into the space aliens and oxygen fueled spaceships.M. wrote: "Greetings from New Mexico, USA. I’m Mark. Ph.D. in computing tech for education and learning, MS in info resources management (blend of info systems management, quantitative management, and organiz..."
Hi guys, nice to meet you all. I'm a hard sci fi lover who seems to have a hell of a time finding books that cut the mustard. I guess it's just my luck to fall in love with a genre that's notoriously difficult to get right. I can only assume it's the same for everyone else, and like me you're all here looking for recommendations. I think the bookshelf is our best friend here. If everyone can add a couple of their favourites that'll give us all a high quality reading list to reference at a glance.My personal favourites are EON (GREG BEAR, congrats whoever added that you're a god among insects, stellar taste) and EATER (by GREGORY BENFORD, not yet on the shelf but I'll be adding it momentarily and highly recommend it). I really love the themes of first contact, and human civilization in the near and distant future (esp involving ETs and of course plausible).
Please do throw some recommendations my way, I really feel like I've only skimmed the surface of what's out there hard sci-fi wise and I'll love you forever if you put me onto a new favourite. And don't forget to put your personal picks on the shelf for others to discover!
Hello, All -- Bill DeSmedt here!I’ve spent my life living by my wits and my words. In my time, and as the spirit has moved me, I’ve been: a Soviet Area expert and US/USSR exchange student, a computer programmer and system designer, a telecommunications consultant, an Artificial Intelligence researcher, a son, a husband and lover, a father and grandfather, an omnivorous reader with a soft spot for science fiction and science fact, and now, Lord help us, a novelist. I’ve tried to pack as much of that checkered history as I could into my “Archon Sequence” hard sf technothrillers Singularity, Dualism, and the forthcoming Triploidy.
CalTech physicist (and Interstellar science advisor) Kip Thorne was kind enough to say of Singularity that "Bill got the vast majority of the physics right." A couple more such accolades can be found here: http://archive.billdesmedt.com/. What can I tell you? I try! :)
Listening to Kip Thorne on Mindscape Podcast talking to Sean Carroll, the physics is sometimes boring even in Interstellar. Kip is OK changing it for dramatic effects! But hey that is a great endorsement!! BTW You can get a sample of Singularity through Apple and even the audio book. All the best Bill with the writing and getting your deserved audience.
Bill wrote: "Hello, All -- Bill DeSmedt here!I’ve spent my life living by my wits and my words. In my time, and as the spirit has moved me, I’ve been: a Soviet Area expert and US/USSR exchange..."
Just finished Singularity.... a cracking read! Plenty of Black Hole physics and mystical speculation on the foundations of quantum mechanics, all wrapped up in a slick Cold War Thriller
Slightly off-topic perhaps, but I just posted the first two installments of my mini-blog on “The Why of Stories” — you can find them here: http://www.billdesmedt.com/bills-blog/.Hope you like it! Also, you can sign upon the above page to be notified each time a new blogisode posts (maybe once a week for the next few weeks).
Hard Sci-Fi Lovers
Books mentioned in this topic
Singularity (other topics)Dualism (other topics)
Blindsight (other topics)
Contact (other topics)
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Bill DeSmedt (other topics)Bill DeSmedt (other topics)
Generic comment: hard sci-fi is ... well, hard! Difficult to write something exciting, and also scientifically acceptable. Jules Verne was the closest to a hard sci-fi writer that I can think of: any thoughts?
I'll share a joke I heard last weekend from (of all people) Jay Leno: "A friend of mine was upset because in the movie Gravity at some point some space junk moves in completely wrong direction according to the laws of gravity; I told him that the astronauts are Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, what the heck was he expecting?"
Feel free to chastise me if you dislike sharing jokes on a discussion topic like this :)