149
In the mood for engineering / competence porn. What are your favourite novels / series? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.

Edit: I'm so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] 0x0@programming.dev 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is pretty hard-scifi.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space not so much but very entertaining.
Edit: for light reading Stross's Saturns Children is fun.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks! I bounced off the Mars trilogy. All the petty human drama and politics just felt way too much like current news (which is probably a compliment to his writing skills, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time). I think I probably need a very relaxed state of mind to be able to dive into it. As for Rev Space, I've read about half of it before losing track of the various threads and time jumps.

[-] Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I agree with that. Red Mars was great but the second one felt like he only expanded on all the least exciting parts of the first book, so I didn't finish it.

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 1 points 3 months ago

I bulled my way though all three.

There was enough story for one novel, padded out with crap to fill enough books for a "clever" post on the titles.

If someone's looking for a good Mars read: Moving Mars by Greg Bear.

this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
149 points (99.3% liked)

Science Fiction

13893 readers
25 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow@lemmy.world