Nominations?

[Username, SF Techgod]

Does anyone have anomination for March?

Rehashing past nominees we have in the list right now:

The Golden Age
Weapons of Choice
The Prefect
The Android's Dream
Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D.
Souls in the Great Machine
Consider Phlebas


Any more suggestions?

[Scott]

I have one more - how about an old one that I've been meaning to read: The Crucible of Time by John Brunner?

[David]

Although I like Brunner, I don't think this meets the group's requirement for availability of the book. (It seems to mostly be available as used copies.)

David

[Username, SF Techgod]

I think it does fulfill the availability requirement, since Amazon lists a hundred copies available for a few cents a piece... I'm adding it to the (LATE, LATE!) poll.

[Username, SF Techgod]

I think it does fulfill the availability requirement, since Amazon lists a hundred copies available for a few cents a piece... I'm adding it to the (LATE, LATE!) poll.

[Username, SF Techgod]

The poll is open now at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hardsf/...
Sorry for the lateness of this: we won't have a March book until Friday...

[Username, SF Techgod]

The poll for APRIL is now open http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hardsf/...

[Username, SF Techgod]

We need nominations for June now...
We can recycle the old ones, but it's kind of tiring...

The Crucible of Time
Nova (I don't think it's hard sf)
The Sands of Mars
Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D. (I have no clue about this one)
The Android's Dream (sounds mre like comedy than hard SF)
Forever Peace Could be interesting after Forever War....

So here is what I'll do. If you want any of those to show up in the poll for June say so. Otherwise they'll be forgotten. We need some new stuff, or a lively discussion of why shold we choose one of those...

[Scott]

Is Stephen Baxter's Flood considered hard SF?

[Tamahome]

I can vouch for the first 188 pages of Infoquake :) :

[Username, SF Techgod]

Nominations for June:
The Sands of Mars(my nomination)
Flood (Baxter usually delivers hard sf)

The windup girl is not available yest as mass market paperback; Infoquake we did in October 2008.

[Al "Tank"]

Nominations for June:


The Fighter King (My nomination for a new book)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (my nomination for a "golden oldie")

[Richard]

Al wrote: "Nominations for June:
The Fighter King (My nomination for a new book)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (my nomination for a "golden oldie") "

The Fighter King looks okay, but doesn't seem likely to be "hard scifi". But The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is definitely hard-scifi (well, spontaneous emergence of AI is kinda unlikely, but gotta love those rail guns!)

I've found these on my TBR list:
☢ Permutation City by Greg Egan — U4 gave it five stars, however we've read three of Egan's books previously;
☠ Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson — very little scifi has so-far dealt with the possible effects of climate change, Windup Girl being a notable exception;
☣ Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan — Jude at Borderlands books recommended it as extremely good hard-biotech.

[Al "Tank"]

Thanks Richard.

I assure you that The Fighter King is about as "hard" as you can get. No spontaneous intelligent computers. Just interstellar war using lasers, missiles, and even slug guns (20th century rifle technology). Not even any cute (or not so cute) aliens, just human beings with a vast difference of opinion and the usual territorial and power aspirations.

Marines swear, get dirty, and get dead. Pilots get to go home to a nice warm ship after a mission. And civilians are caught in the middle as usual. People fall in love, fornicate, hate, and screw up their lives as humanity has done since God created Adam.

The only difference is the setting and the level of technology (including FTL travel).