Science Fiction

Aside from Project Hail Mary I am reading a couple other things. One of them for another book club I am in. I am listening to The Employees by Olga Ravn which I swear feels like being subjected to 2 hours of Rorschach tests asking you how some sequence of words makes you feel. I don't think I enjoy it very much as there is no fictional science or details about anything going on. The other is Diaspora by Greg Egan which I am enjoying greatly as it is nothing but technical details. Hopefully I don't end up being in the middle of too many books to actually finish any of them in a timely manner.

In terms of sci-fi, I've got The War of the Worlds on list.

Gateway by Frederick pohl. Always.

Hyperion is so good, I'm rereading it right now. Second time through the series.

Currently reading Nemesis Games, part of The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey

I tried dungeon crawler carl because I saw it recommended so much. This has been the most fun series I've read in a long time. I'm up to book 6 which just came out. I'm listening to the audiobooks and the narrator is excellent. I originally thought there had to be multiple narrators, but nope. The premise sounds silly, and it is, but the execution is excellent and is great fun.

Just finished "The Gone World" by Tom Sweterlitsch.

A mix of SciFi, detective and coslic horror. Pretty good, I really liked the ending.

Just picked up "version zero" by David Yoon

I just finished Quantum Radio by A.G. Riddle. Now working on Wool.

I'm about to start Leviathan Falls (final novel in The Expanse). Every bit of it has been phenomenal, and I can't imagine the last book will be any different.

Strange Highways by Dean Koontz, not exactly typical sci-fi but there are stories in the collection about time travel, aliens that take over human hosts like Body Snatchers, and genetically engineered super-intelligent rats that want to kill humanity. Koontz began his early career as a sci-fi writer and didn't find much success, until he steered into the horror genre later. It shines through fairly often in some of his stories, when the aliens or science experiment monsters show up.

Cyberpunk! I read Let Slip the Beasts by Suzanne Berget yesterday. I recommend it. Not too long either.

Today I'm gonna find another cyberpunk book to read. Maybe Nexus by Ramez Naam that someone else recommended me.

Just finished Lightbringer by Pierce Brown. Red Rising series is a must!

Currently reading Codex Alera 5 and loving every minute of it

I'm reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin on recommendation by a colleague, Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett in my second run through of the Discworld series, and Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber, since I never got around to that one when I was DEEP into Star Wars books.

I haven't read much science fiction these past few weeks...I mainly am doing a re-read of Night Watch by Sergi Lukyanenko, which is an urban fantasy set in Russia.

When the Ukraine war started, I was vastly disappointed that the author of this series supports Russia against Ukraine, so I didn't do a re-read for several years due to that.

But recently, I'm curious about his viewpoint of the world--so on the reread I've been looking closer, and I'm starting to understand his stances were there in his work all along, even accounting for the translation from Russian into English.

His series is about Light Others vs. Dark Others, and how they've come together to make a truce, and there's a lot of rather cynical acceptance of corruption and good deeds doing harm so it's better sometimes to do nothing which stands out to me now that I'm older and can digest the themes of the book better.

Craft-wise, he's a very good author, there are things that come through that go beyond language (the way characters talk to one another, the way scenes and plots are set up) so as a writer myself I'm taking note of the tricks I might snatch and use myself. But I've been very thoughtful about culture and ethics and morals and how everyone likes to think they're on the right side of things.

Just finished House of leaves, great book but really uncomventional

Right now I’m reading the entire Dark Space series. All 6 books in collection available on Amazon kindle. I don’t recall if they have physical copies for purchase or not, but it is an attention grabbing series with a great storyline. This is not hardcore sci-if with a bunch of science and mathematics probablilities

I'm working my way through "Way of Kings" right now. I haven't had much time for reading lately, so it's going slow, but the book is fantastic.

I am currently reading A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher. I love her other work so I am excited to read this and the first few chapters read easily for me which is nice.

On a more SciFi note I just finished Artifact Space by Miles Cameron and it was decent. The protagonist is kinda annoying with the "I'm an idiot" thing but is pretty much good at everything they do. The author also goes into a lot of details on stuff that doesn't feel important to the story so it kinda felt like a slog to get through some of the earlier parts.