Author Topic: Hard science fiction books  (Read 16783 times)

Offline high road

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Hard science fiction books
« on: 10/23/2019 09:03 pm »

I just read the last half of Andy Weir's Artemis today, and as always after reading a good science fiction book, I'm having some withdrawal issues. Does anyone have some good suggestions about what I could read for my next fix? I prefer hard science fiction, with not too much concessions for storytelling purposes.

Andy Weir's The Martian and Artemis are some of the best books I've ever read in that regard. Smart, relatable and active characters. Well thought out economics (in Artemis, the moon colony is on the brink of descending in poverty because it's based on tourism). The expanse series gets a pass on the spinning asteroids, obligatory zombie waves, etc for being the first books I read where the aliens are truly and incomprehensibly alien, and because the characters and their motivations and conflicts are very well written. Golden oldie Gravity by Tess Gerritsen was the first hard sci-fi novel I read as a child and it pretty much ruined me for softer sci-fi.

Counter example: I wanted to give Ben Bova's Grand Tour series a go, but the first novel (according to the timeline in the books) in that series, Powersat, was so racist (the one muslim in the book who's not a criminal by default turns out to not be a muslim after all) and sexist (the one female character who doesn't make decisions solely based on her feelings for another, mostly male, character is also the only unatractive woman in the book), that I have no desire to pick up the next book. Very onedimensional, stereotypical characters. Very bland story. The economics don't make sense (if you need the spaceplane to make the powersat profitable, how did you construct it in the first place?) A bit dated, but that is acceptable for a book written in 2004. Could anyone tell me if this is just because it was written not too long after 9/11? Or is this the author's writing style in all of his books?

I read Red Mars as well. Liked the imagery, was put off by the philosophical, religious and other tedious details that made the story progress very slow while being unrelated to the plot. So Green and Blue Mars are still on my reading list, but not near the top.

I hope this gives some insight into my preferences. If anyone had similar feelings while reading these books, and knows other ones like them, please share them here.

I was going to post this in the previous thread about this, but I got a warning that the last post was over 300 days old. But I'll report this to the mods so they can merge if they want to.

Offline Orbiter

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #1 on: 10/23/2019 09:37 pm »
Contact by Carl Sagan
Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor
Rendezvous with Rama, 2001 A Space Odyssey, 2010 Odyssey Two, and basically anything by Clarke.
Artemis and the Martian, as mentioned.
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Offline Shane421

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #2 on: 10/23/2019 09:42 pm »
Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem.  Not much more hard sci fi than that.  I could not put it down.

Offline SweetWater

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #3 on: 10/23/2019 10:05 pm »
Contact by Carl Sagan, like Orbiter note a post or two above.
Delta-V by Daniel Suarez, which is about near-future asteroid miners
Blindsight by Peter Watts, which is about a near-future first contact - and, if you like that Echopraxia, Starfish and Maelstrom
The Forever War by John Scalzi
Starship Troopers and Robert Heinlein

Offline whitelancer64

Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #4 on: 10/23/2019 10:30 pm »
Ringworld (1970) and the rest of the Ringworld books (but particularly Ringworld Engineers (1980)) by Larry Niven. The hard sci fi part is the description of Ringworld itself throughout the series. I will note that some of the character interactions are extremely dated (cough sexist definitely a product of the late 60s).

I would strongly recommend Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card and perhaps also the next few sequels in that series, Speaker for the Dead (1986), Xenocide 1991), Children of the Mind (1996), and Ender in Exile (2008). Your mileage may vary for the philosophical bent of the sequel books, but if you liked Starship Troopers you would want to give at least Ender's Game a try. There are also a ton of other sequels and side-story books.

It's much less hard sci-fi but there are hard sci-fi moments, any of the Culture series by Ian M Banks. Consider Phlebas (1987) got me hooked. My personal favorite is Player of Games (1988), I literally had trouble putting that book down. Excession (1996) is often also included as one of the best books in the series. I've read them all except for the 9th one, which I bought but have misplaced.
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Online floron

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #5 on: 10/23/2019 10:44 pm »

Blindsight by Peter Watts, which is about a near-future first contact - and, if you like that Echopraxia, Starfish and Maelstrom
The Forever War by John Scalzi


The Forever War was written by Joe Haldeman, BTW...John Scalzi just wrote the foreword.

Blindsight is one of my favourite books. I can recommend the excellent audiobook of it, and be sure to check out Peter Watt's 'Sunflowers' stories: 'The Freeze frame Revolution' novella was published a year or so ago, and associated short stories can be found through his website.

Also, if you like Iain Bank's stuff, try out 'The Stone Canal' (and it's sequels/prequels)  'Cosmonaut Keep' (and it's sequels) or 'Learning the World' by Ken Macleod

I'd also check out anything by Vernor Vinge, but especially 'A Deepness in the Sky' or 'A Fire Upon the Deep'

Online floron

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #6 on: 10/23/2019 10:54 pm »
And speaking of Joe Haldeman, check out his 'Worlds' Trilogy: 'Worlds', 'Worlds Apart' and 'Worlds Enough and Time'.  Orbital civilizations, politics, apocalypses and interstellar travel.
« Last Edit: 10/23/2019 10:54 pm by floron »

Offline Eric Hedman

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #7 on: 10/24/2019 12:48 am »
O(Ne of my favorites that was about as hard science as you could find for the time written is Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon

While there are major, major technical flaws by today's standards, if you read it thinking about what the general public knew about space at the time you will be amazed at what he got right.  The story isn't too bad either.

Offline Mark S

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #8 on: 10/24/2019 02:13 am »
Pushing Ice
Old Man's War
The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere
The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars
Encounter with Tiber

I'm old, so most of these are old too. Maybe not all would be considered "hard" SF, but some of my favorites.

Offline su27k

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #9 on: 10/24/2019 02:59 am »
Delta-V by Daniel Suarez, which is about near-future asteroid miners

A 2nd vote for Delta-V, best near future space hard SF I have read for a while, much better than Artemis.

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #10 on: 10/24/2019 03:54 am »
I like the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which are:

o Red Mars – Colonization
o Green Mars – Terraforming
o Blue Mars - Long-term results

I found the plot lines believable, and he sticks with near-term technology.

And, of course, very relevant because of how potentially near-term it could be that humans could reach Mars, and without some form of strong government corporations could be a dominate force - if the population doesn't do something about it...  ;)
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline Hobbes-22

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #11 on: 10/24/2019 05:09 am »
Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Anathem to an extent as well.

Offline RDoc

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #12 on: 10/24/2019 05:25 am »
I really like Greg Egan: Diaspora, Schild's Ladder, Permutation City, and if you want REALLY HARD Sci Fi, and have at least a smattering knowledge of general relativity, Incandescence.

Greg Egan is also great for alternative physics hard science fiction with the Orthogonal series, starting with The Clockwork Rocket.

Offline Oersted

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #13 on: 10/24/2019 09:37 am »
The original sci-fi books by David Niven and Jerry Pournelle, especially The Mote in God's Eye and Footfall.

The Mote in God's Eye is the best sci-fi book I ever read.

Don't bother with any of their later stuff, co-written with others.

Offline LM13

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #14 on: 10/24/2019 03:55 pm »
Stephen Baxter's NASA trilogy (Voyage, Moonseed, and Titan) are good ones from a technology perspective.  Voyage is an alt-history where JFK survives his assassination and NASA goes to Mars in the 1980s.  Moonseed is set in a world where alien nanobots from the Moon start eating Earth's rocks, forcing an exodus to the Moon.  Titan was a book written in the early 2000s wherein the Space Shuttle Columbia is destroyed while returning from a mission in 2003, and NASA organizes a Shuttle-derived mission to that moon of Saturn against a backdrop of a xenophobic, klan-backed, wall-building President getting elected in 2016 ([cough]).  Titan is the weakest of the trilogy from a plausibility standpoint (has a few scenes best described as "Old Man Baxter shakes his fist," wherein a state so dominated by fundamentalist Christians that it bans telescopes and teaches the Summa Theologia in public schools also has male pregnancy, for no other reason than that Baxter regards both as decadent), but the tech is still neat. 

Gregory Benford's work--the Martian Race and its follow-up, the Sunborn, are also good--the former in particular has a Mars Direct-type mission to the red planet and speculation on anaerobic life forms on Mars. 

Similarly, Zubrin's own First Landing is a neat little book--it was "The Martian" before "The Martian," featuring a crew stranded on Mars having to figure out how to stretch their supplies and return to Earth. 

Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson, is a classic of the genre--a starship condemned to fly at relativistic velocities forever.  Cosmology's a bit dated, but the book is still good. 

I will second the above recommendation for Niven and Pournelle's collaborations, adding also "Lucifer's Hammer." 

Allen Steele's "Coyote" and "A King of Infinite Space" also hold special spots in my heart, though Coyote is a bit hamfisted in its politics. 

Offline TorenAltair

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #15 on: 10/24/2019 05:03 pm »
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons

Offline PDJennings

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #16 on: 10/24/2019 05:20 pm »
The Firestar series by Michael Flynn.

Offline punder

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #17 on: 10/24/2019 06:03 pm »
Michael Flynn's Eifelheim is an amazing hard-sf novel set in the 14th century.

I too got hooked on Iain M. Banks with Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. All his stuff is good, including Raw Spirit, if you are into Scotch whisky.   :D

Offline leovinus

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #18 on: 10/24/2019 06:13 pm »
"Mars underground", William Hartmann
"The Engines of God", Jack McDevitt
"Moving Mars", Greg Bear
"The Great North Road", Peter F Hamilton
"Einstein's bridge", John Cramer
« Last Edit: 10/24/2019 06:15 pm by leovinus »

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Hard science fiction books
« Reply #19 on: 10/24/2019 09:54 pm »
The Troy Rising series by John Ringo:

Live Free or Die (February 2010) (ISBN 1-4391-3332-8)
Citadel (January 2011) (ISBN 1-4391-3400-6)
The Hot Gate (May 2011) (ISBN 1-4391-3432-4)

Don't be fooled by the aliens and the FTL travel, this is hard sci-fi.

Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

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