New scientist readers list their best.
http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=dn14478
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Find this book
Slow Train To Arcturus
Thu Oct 02 09:02:12 BST 2008 by Baboon
Slow Train to Arcturus - Eric Flint and Dave Freer. In the tradition of Clarke, Clement, and Heinlein's 'Universe' rather than the later FTL stories, this takes the line of colonising space (not planets) with a slower-than-light generation ship that never slows down,(thereby reducing travel time to multiple star systems) dropping modules at each star. The internally layered modules (to increase surface area and carrying capacity) are isolated from each other giving environmental redundancy, and societal redundancy. With echoes of Clarke's Rendezvoux with Rama, the ship is spotted and visited by Aliens after 300 years of travel from earth. While it is an adventure story through a series of environments and social systems which have endured the long journey (with a strong element of social satire) it is also solid, near-future plausible science, written in an easy accessible style.
Thu Oct 02 09:02:12 BST 2008 by Baboon
Slow Train to Arcturus - Eric Flint and Dave Freer. In the tradition of Clarke, Clement, and Heinlein's 'Universe' rather than the later FTL stories, this takes the line of colonising space (not planets) with a slower-than-light generation ship that never slows down,(thereby reducing travel time to multiple star systems) dropping modules at each star. The internally layered modules (to increase surface area and carrying capacity) are isolated from each other giving environmental redundancy, and societal redundancy. With echoes of Clarke's Rendezvoux with Rama, the ship is spotted and visited by Aliens after 300 years of travel from earth. While it is an adventure story through a series of environments and social systems which have endured the long journey (with a strong element of social satire) it is also solid, near-future plausible science, written in an easy accessible style.
Book to find
Contact
Thu Oct 02 00:58:47 BST 2008 by Adam Vs
Contact has inspired so many of us and is worthy of a vote. Written by Carl Sagan this novel clearly is iconoclastic and cuts a deep edge. Utilizing his scientific background, experience and beliefs, a tantalizing story is told about a long scientific search and the reception of a message from outside earth. Geeky but with the all scrapes of scientific reality, the search turns up a signal that ruptures into a voyage of discovery with a healthy mix of skeptical inquiry and science fiction. For me Contact is a great novel, even if SETI doesn't produce in my lifetime.
Thu Oct 02 00:58:47 BST 2008 by Adam Vs
Contact has inspired so many of us and is worthy of a vote. Written by Carl Sagan this novel clearly is iconoclastic and cuts a deep edge. Utilizing his scientific background, experience and beliefs, a tantalizing story is told about a long scientific search and the reception of a message from outside earth. Geeky but with the all scrapes of scientific reality, the search turns up a signal that ruptures into a voyage of discovery with a healthy mix of skeptical inquiry and science fiction. For me Contact is a great novel, even if SETI doesn't produce in my lifetime.
Book to find
A Fire Upon The Deep
Wed Oct 01 22:20:55 BST 2008 by Walt Leipold
By Vernor Vinge
Galaxy-spanning 'sense of wonder', fascinating concepts, likable characters, wonderful pulse-pounding pacing, good writing. What's not to like? It even won the Hugo Award.
Wed Oct 01 22:20:55 BST 2008 by Walt Leipold
By Vernor Vinge
Galaxy-spanning 'sense of wonder', fascinating concepts, likable characters, wonderful pulse-pounding pacing, good writing. What's not to like? It even won the Hugo Award.
Book to find
The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod (Orbit, 2008)
MacLeod, on his website, says: "The Night Sessions is a crime novel set in 2037. It's also an SF novel that asks the question: what if we finally got fed up with the influence of religion on politics, education, and law, and decided to drive it out of these areas for good? The book also has robots, space elevators, presbyterian terrorists, a creation science park and a gothic lolita secret policeman. And Russians. Sinister Russians. In Leith. These are some of the reasons why I think you might like this book."
MacLeod, on his website, says: "The Night Sessions is a crime novel set in 2037. It's also an SF novel that asks the question: what if we finally got fed up with the influence of religion on politics, education, and law, and decided to drive it out of these areas for good? The book also has robots, space elevators, presbyterian terrorists, a creation science park and a gothic lolita secret policeman. And Russians. Sinister Russians. In Leith. These are some of the reasons why I think you might like this book."
Would Like to read
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
NEAL STEPHENSON's latest novel is a smorgasbord of high adventure, quantum physics and musings on the nature of consciousness.
On the planet Arbre, young Fraa Erasmas is a member of one of the many enclosed communities of intellectuals who are only allowed contact with the rest of the world once every decade or century. This arrangement was set up thousands of years before after a series of unspecified Terrible Events. Back then, theoreticians, computer scientists and practical engineers worked together to produce the fearsome Everything Killers, and now the three groups are kept strictly apart. The theoreticians, or "avout", live in walled "concents" and pursue theoretical research and astronomical observation, while the outer world ebbs and flows around them in waves of civilisation and decadence.
Erasmas's settled life is shattered when access to the concent's observatory is barred and his mentor, Orolo, is banished to the "saecular" world ...
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
NEAL STEPHENSON's latest novel is a smorgasbord of high adventure, quantum physics and musings on the nature of consciousness.
On the planet Arbre, young Fraa Erasmas is a member of one of the many enclosed communities of intellectuals who are only allowed contact with the rest of the world once every decade or century. This arrangement was set up thousands of years before after a series of unspecified Terrible Events. Back then, theoreticians, computer scientists and practical engineers worked together to produce the fearsome Everything Killers, and now the three groups are kept strictly apart. The theoreticians, or "avout", live in walled "concents" and pursue theoretical research and astronomical observation, while the outer world ebbs and flows around them in waves of civilisation and decadence.
Erasmas's settled life is shattered when access to the concent's observatory is barred and his mentor, Orolo, is banished to the "saecular" world ...
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Iain M Banks
All books great so far.
Books read so far are ...
Consider Phelbas
The Player of Games
The Algebraist
Matter
Use of Weapons
Look to windward
Yet to read...
The state of Art (i think I have read it. It may be the short story book)
Against a dark background.
Feersum Endjinn
Excession
Inversion
Books read so far are ...
Consider Phelbas
The Player of Games
The Algebraist
Matter
Use of Weapons
Look to windward
Yet to read...
The state of Art (i think I have read it. It may be the short story book)
Against a dark background.
Feersum Endjinn
Excession
Inversion
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Joe Haldeman Marsbound
Good Book. Too many ideas for one book though. Colonist go to Mars. Discover Aliens. And lots more.
John Brosnan Mothership
Great Book. Generation ship held deliberately in medievil state so technology will not ruin ship. Elite control ship. Something goes wrong with elite. Price and Jester have to fix ship, of only they knew how.
Elizabeth Moon Remnant Population
Great Book. Ursula Leguin like. Little people win. Colony ordered to disband. One old lady decides she is going to stay to die there but fate and intellegent aliens hold more instore.
Kage Baker Mendoza in Hollywood.
OK Book. Formulaic time travel piece. Does not have solid plot line. More like episodes.
Alan Dean Foster Sagramanda
Great Book. Intertwining stories in near future India. Main story is Scientist discovers something woth millions and has to sell it before he is killed for the secret.
Joe Haldeman Camouflage
Great book. Two opposing super beings inhabit earth. Artifact found. Race to uncover meaning.
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