Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

Posted by bwb 10/28/2024

Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read(shepherd.com)

315 points | 314 commentspage 6

8bitsrule 10/30/2024|

Then there are all of the sci-fi books you have -not- heard of, and that's a good thing.

Anyway, there are a few missing in this list. Today, I'll pimp for Farmer's Riverworld series. The first got a Hugo Award, and that's a list worth mining.

mostlysimilar 10/28/2024||

> Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts.

Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.

bwb 10/28/2024||

Gosh, no, we have a strict anti-AI policy, and every author we work with agrees to an honor statement that they will always write everything themselves.

I've caught a few dishonest authors, and they get banned from the website forever.

readthenotes1 10/28/2024||

It's a stealth ad for the author's book. If you think the advertising copy was written by an llm, I'm pretty sure that says you won't like his book :-)

bwb 10/28/2024||

It's a way for new or unknown authors to authentically connect with readers by sharing five books they love on a topic, theme, or mood they are passionate about or experts in. Readers get fantastic personalized picks by super readers, and authors get to bump into some readers who might be more interested in them and their books.

Authors face an immense battle to get noticed, and unless something is done, we will only have big brand-name authors who can afford to write full-time. The internet has really consolidated books into a winner-takes-all market, and I want to do what I can to help widen that so new authors have a chance.

If you are curious, here are my goals for readers: https://build.shepherd.com/p/what-is-shepherds-mission-for-r...

Here are my goals for authors: https://support.shepherd.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406508361617...

And here is why I am building Shepherd for myself and others: https://build.shepherd.com/p/why-am-i-building-shepherd-ie-w...

Hope that helps; happy to answer questions :)

mostlysimilar 10/29/2024||

I respect and appreciate what you're doing here, my flippant remark was critical of the author's writing style, not of your app or its structure.

bwb 10/29/2024||

Gotcha, and no worries :)

I work with authors daily and know how hard they work to create a story for us. Most will never earn back the time they put into creating that book. Some books and writing are not a match for what we personally like. I just hope we can say, "It wasn't a match for what I like," rather than accusing an author of using an LLM. I loose my cool sometimes as well, and trying to remind myself to stick to this code (as I know I create plenty of bad writing that I inflict on readers of my blogs).

Larrikin 10/29/2024||

Is Beacon 23 the book better than the show? I thought I was a general fan of sci-fi, but I realized that I was generally bored all through the first season and had begun hate watching it in season 2 before I stopped all together.

hnburnsy 10/29/2024||

Project Hail Mary is soon to be a movie...

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt12042730/

birabittoh 10/29/2024||

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.

This guy figured out the meaning of life back in 1937.

justinclift 10/28/2024||

Can't really take the recommendation for Beacon 23 seriously after seeing the 1/2 half of the first tv episode. That was utter crap and nonsensical. :(

jillesvangurp 10/28/2024||

I didn't know there was a tv series for this one. I read the book ages ago; pretty OK. I wouldn't judge it by any failed attempt to put it out on TV.

The same author also wrote the silo series. He tends to push his books out in small portions but it's effectively a trilogy. The series on Apple TV for that is actually pretty good. I reread the books after completing season 1 a few months ago.

justinclift 10/28/2024||

Thanks. Tried to get into the series too, but end up just reading the summary of things and the whole series just sounds depressing. :(

pavel_lishin 10/29/2024||

It is. One of the sequels was one of the times that a scene in a book actually made me cry.

If you don't like depressing novels, also stay away from Stephen Baxter; I love his novels, but most of them are wildly depressing.

justinclift 10/29/2024||

> Stephen Baxter

Oh. I don't remember those being depressing though it's been years since I read any.

Which ones do you remember being that way?

pavel_lishin 10/30/2024||

Nearly all of the ones featuring Reid Malenfant are a bummer; in many of the Xeelee sequence stories, the future of humanity is only marginally better than living in the Warhammer40k universe, and the "happy ending" ones are ones in which humanity is merely mostly extinct.

bwb 10/28/2024||

Ya TV adaptations can fail for so many reasons that a book succeeds at. I've read so many books that when translated to a visual medium fail because of the people involved, see Wheel of Time as that one was so bad...

holuxian 10/30/2024||

Eric Nylund: Signal to Noise, A Signal Shattered

m463 10/30/2024|

I remember reading and liking his books, but ... did they not make it to ebooks?

holuxian 10/31/2024||

I emailed the author, trying to encourage him to write a third book, and make it a trilogy. As enthusiastic as I was, I couldn't convince him. At the time, I think he was busy writing Halo books and a YA series. I did ask him why there weren't ebook versions of the Signal duo, he said it was a rights issue.

orbisvicis 10/29/2024||

I find it disappointing how A.E. van Vogt has been almost completely forgotten. And to a lesser extent, Poul Anderson.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10/28/2024||

Another set is CS Lewis' Space Trilogy

Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength

Note that like a lot of CS Lewis, there is a very heavy Christian view.

Terr_ 10/28/2024||

While not Sci-Fi, I found that The Screwtape Letters could actually be enjoyed even from a fairly agnostic perspective, as an allegorical dive into human cognitive foibles.

Though I suspect Lewis would be unhappy to hear that, especially since he wrote a fourth-wall-adjacent bit about devils preferring that humans don't believe in them.

mrob 10/28/2024|||

Lewis was clearly intelligent and well educated in the humanities, but I don't think he ever cared much about science. IMO, the Space Trilogy is good writing but bad sci-fi.

AnimalMuppet 10/29/2024||

In "Of Other Worlds", in a conversation with Brian Aldiss and Kinsley Amis (or Martin Amis? Don't remember), he says that he had a rocket take Ransom to Mars, but he knew better by the time he wrote the second book, and had angels take Ransom to Venus. That is, he wasn't trying to write hard science fiction; he was trying to write stuff where you were confronted with "the unknown". Fantasy and science fiction were both aimed at that, but fantasy was better, because you didn't have to worry about the rules of actual science.

He also said (quoting from memory): "If I were briefed to attack my own books, I would say that though the scientist has to be a physicist for the plot, his concern seems to be almost exclusively biological. I would also ask whether it was credible that such a gas-bag could invent a mousetrap, let alone a spaceship. But then, I wanted comedy as well as adventure."

bwb 10/28/2024|||

We've had 5 authors actually pick that one as a favorite, and they connected it to some really interesting book lists: https://shepherd.com/book/that-hideous-strength/book-lists

I love seeing something like this as it is awesome where their minds go for what other books they connect it with...

themadturk 10/28/2024||

Of the three, I always loved That Hideous Strength the most. The first two, which I think are good, were too much like travelogs, but the third had a pretty decent story.

wkat4242 10/29/2024|

Project Hail Mary was good, but I thought Artemis (also by Weir) was amazing. I wish he'd make a sequel.

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