I’m reading this on my lunch breaks:
Rice Cooker by Russell Hobbs
A classic.
Nice! I just finished The Crippled God the other day!
We should make a malazan fedi
Haha! That cover is kinda ass. Great book, though. Maybe my favorite in the series.
Great book—really looking forward to the film. Hope they do the book justice!
Oh it really is, I had to remind myself everytime I have work in the morning to stop reading and go to sleep lol
If you liked Project Hail Mary, then you should read the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. The premise is as follows:
Bob is dead. Long live Bob.
Software engineer Robert Johansen uses his share of the money from the buyout of his company (the rest having been split amongst the employees) to start a trust to support his end-of-life maintenance needs. But Bob’s idea of “end-of-life” is being cryogenically frozen until such a time as whatever killed him can be fixed. What he wasn’t counting on, however, was getting hit by a car later that day and waking up over a hundred years later. Finding that, not only has he not been revived, but instead digitised, but also that the christofascist government doesn’t recognise him as a human or worthy of rights, he is surprised to also be informed that the reason they instantiated his consciousness was to become the guiding intelligence of a Von Neumann Probe, and that Bob is going to the stars… At least, he should be, as long as none of the opposing factions in the government or any of the other countries also building their own probes nuke him first.
Bobiverse is an example of hard science fiction, with similar limitations to what PHM uses. The primary conceits that go beyond what’s currently assumed to be possible are:
- the assumption that it is possible to simulate consciousness using electronic media
- the existence of some method of interacting with the fabric of reality to warp spacetime through a reactionless drive (here called “subspace theory”). This assumption allows for interstellar travel over reasonable time scales (but not superluminal travel) and, later, communications. Think a combination of the “Ansible” and the Bussard ramjet from “Tau Zero”
- the fantasy that most people have comprehensible reasons for their actions.
They never do, so I’m not hopeful. But I’m still gonna watch it
Preparing for the movie I see 🙃 I love this, read several times over.
Girl dinner
peam
Post-apocalyptic tale of tech-priests, kind of. It starts slow, and then you get used to it.
It only starts slow if you don’t appreciate the unique humour of a world that has forgotten itself completely misinterpreting archeological artifacts in hilarious ways. This is one of my favourite books ever, in large part because of the description of Brother Francis’ reactions and reasoning upon reading the words “fallout shelter”, and other such examples of the beautifully dry and matter-of-fact humour present throughout the book.
Yeah, I’m also enjoying that. I’ve been working my way through Catch 22 as well, and the humor has a bit of the same dryness, but I wonder if this book has a little more humanity to it.
I think that you’ll find that it does, by the end. Its a shockingly hopeful and beautiful book, for a story whose primary lesson is “humanity never learns from its mistakes, people die, and the uncaring world moves on”
First Contact, exploration of consciousness, sentience/intelligence (and their relationship), Transhumanism, Hard Sci-fi, not challenging but it will not hold your hand through the book.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the book has vampires, but explored in a reality where vampires are an extinct offshoot of homosapiens, resurrected for specific purpose. The explanation of vampires is fascinating, grounded in evolution and actually… believable? This is not a vampire book at all but their presence is not only plausible, it’s core to the themes of the book. Highly recommended.
The most depressing scifi!
Loved it, but omg what a psychological load to wrestle with. Feels like Asamov took a bad acid trip
Also recommend, excellent book.
Hate vampire books, but love this book. It’s not a vampire book, but the vampires in it are handled in a crazy cool way. Highly recommend.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. Central thesis is absolutely mind-blowing, it’ll unfold in your mind like a horrible realization. 10/10 would get existential dread from again
Just re-reading my favorite fantasy series for the umpteenth time
I just started reading book one, the world building is absolutely fantastic. I feel most high fantasy books are really hit or miss for me, but I understand now why Sanderson is considered top tier. Looking forward to the rest of the books, and also the Mistborn series!
It’s amazing worldbuilding but fair warning, many consider the Stormlight books to drop considerably in writing quality for the last entries. Take them slow and enjoy the ride without burning yourself out on the (huge) amount of pages.
Mistborn on the other hand, you can feel that they’re somewhat older books of his, with a few more awkward/obvious character elements but they stay fantastic throughout.
The payoff in Mistborn made the series for me. Really stuck the landing.
If anything, it could have used more meat at the center. Book one as a high fantasy heist was great. Two and three felt like a sprint through what should have maybe been another hundred pages each.
But it’s still my favorite Sanderson work to date, not including the last three books of Wheel of Time
Honestly, I really liked the last couple of storm light books. They definitely feel different than the first three, but I still really enjoyed them.
Audiobook while I drive, but still
Such an excellent series. Once you finish it, if you like it, check out his books “earthside” and “outland”. Honestly, just read his entire oeuvre. Even his short stories are amazing.
Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. LeGuin, just finished it, it’s a pretty quick read. I started with The Dispossessed and decided to go back and read her sci-fi novels in the order they were written. Not quite as much social commentary in this one which is what I liked most about The Dispossessed, but still enjoyable, and an interesting blend of fantasy and sci-fi.
LOL, I’m very tired right now and read, “book checkpoint,” and thought, “…do they mean a fucking bookmark?”
Working through the Three Body Problem trilogy. Absolutely loving it so far and open to recommendations if you’ve got em.
Planning to read Ball Lightning next and potentially pivot to Mistborn next.
I’m at the start of the second of the trilogy. Planning on moving to the Dune series next
I wonder what tankies think of the opening of Three Body Problem
Probably the same thing an American Patriot thinks about Washington owning slaves or Lincoln aiding in the genocide of American natives.
The whole series struggles with righteous people making horrible choices.
Presumably: “The three body problem is not praxis. The fact that it is so popular among the imperialist libs is evidence that it is all propaganda!”
I’m trying to give Lemmy MLs the benefit of the doubt that they’re not just groupthink tribalists but only a couple of people seem to defy that
In case you’re into this type of thing, I can highly recommend the youtube channel called Quinn’s Ideas, where a super-nerd deep dives books he loves. He used to exclusively cover A Song of Ice and Fire before moving on to covering Dune, Lovecraft and a few other books, but he also began covering The Three Body Problem before it was turned into a TV series and he is - in my opinion - very pleasant to listen to. He always captures my attention when I click on one of his videos.
You also HAVE to watch this fan made video depicting on the Waterdrop in case you haven’t seen it already. It is mesmerizing.
Thanks for the recs. Will check em out!
🤗❤️
Wow! One of my least favorite Discworld books, but that cover is fantastic!
👀
Miss so much reading to my kids, different happy times now but still miss that. They love books because we put the time to read them and they saw us reading, all winning all around.
Indeed! Proud of my little one, she doesn’t know how to read yet, but she’ll still grab as many books as she can carry to her bed and flip through them all 😅
A bit of light science I see!
It’s a good read, the author goes into great detail about the dietary needs of giant flying lizards, and about the toxicity of hot sauce on their biology.
