Well, you've got your epic fantasy, and your personable... Dan Simmons (Hyperion saga, Olympus), Rameez Naam's "Nexus". Nick Harkaway's "Gnomon" is ridiculously good, and I basically buy anyone who wants one a copy of Cory Doctorow's "Walkway". Theodore Sturgeon is probably the closest SF I can think of to Pratchett, although he's Golden Era so suuuuper soft SF and doesn't have the humor. Bujold's "Vorkosigan" saga is one of the funnier SF books (while still being amazing and serious), and I hear good things about Scalzi's "Redshirts" PS - Also checkout out what Hannu and Rameez get up to…
I don't know if it is common, certainly the reviews for the following three did not seem as warm as for the first, which was also the only one to win a Hugo. This is why I prefaced it with "if you like literature", because I think it depends on how much fiction you've read before and what you think is still fresh. Hyperion is most definitely fresh, a wild, tightly written run of imagination mixing Chaucer, Dune and Asimov with Heart of Darkness. The problem with the way he wraps up the story [SPOILERS-ish] is that you feel that he was up against a wall and couldn't find a satisfactory way to…
If you enjoy literature and have not read the Hyperion Cantos yet, I beg you to stick to just the first book. What Simmons did to conclude the Cantos is on par with Star Wars episodes I-III. Sometimes it is better to preserve the magic by omission. As for a movie, I do not think doing it justice is possible today. The only adaptations that came close to a suitable spirit were Dune (1984) and Beowulf (2005). It is SF only by name and requires a very strong and independent minded writer and director, both of whom should be relatively well read as well.
In the absolutely epic space opera "Hyperion" (and its sequel "Endymion") the author Dan Simmons theorizes -- through the plot, not through a monologue! -- that AI creatures would offer us tech that we could never invent -- impossibly minituarized personal computers (the size of a discrete and thin silver bracelet, an earring or even smaller implants under the skin, and which are basic AI by themselves), and real-time worm-holes through which humanity finally achieves inter-stellar civilization status. However, the author is very realistic (pessimistic?) about such an AI community --…
Well, I agree that I got a bit off-topic. The general analogy is still there but you're right about the details. That being said, the author handled the problem you outlined with the simple premise of -- that humanity wouldn't be able to even survive as a whole if it delayed the decision how to treat the AI nation. Without giving spoilers, the fledgling AI nation planned and executed things so well that humanity either had to embrace them and let its core be governed by black-box (and backdoored) tech like teleporters and miniscule personal assistants, or face literal extinction. Needless…
I don't agree with the storytelling being awkward and the characters wooden. I do feel like the novels don't leave much to do after you've finished them, while in some other works you can dig and dig and dig and never stop, but I don't know if this is true or just me. As for the sci-fi elements, just like with Hyperion I read these books as fantasy. It's in the future and they've got spaceship and robots, sure, and they often try to explain the technologies, but they do that in fantasy too when explaining how magic works. In general I don't think much about stuff like "objective quality"…
Yes I have to agree, sci-fi/technology parts are properly novel, creative and give you the reason to want to read more. I presume in 50 years it will be less so but thats fine. But characters are flat, simple even, and I really didn't care about most of them. Without giving major spoilers about the end, its china and chinese above rest of humanity, every single non-chinese I recall is portrayed as evil. Also the end was properly disappointing. Can't call a novel great with such big flaws, but I understand why HN crowd likes it so much. For what's worth, I enjoyed ie Hyperion cantos much…
The combination of a 17th century poet and far future sci-fi is, at first, rather absurd. But the simple and deep connection to topics on love and humanity, something only poetry can provide, is a a beautiful complement to fantastic and terrifying sci-fi concepts in Hyperion. Empathy, love and human connection are the underlying message of the books despite the fun sci-fi facade. I love this series and recommend it to all. I couldn’t make it through this long article but loved reading about Severn, Fanny Brawne, and Keats— all beloved characters from the hyperion series.
Ahhh, I've only ever read one SF series that left me with the same sense of wonder as the Lord of the Rings. You just have to try Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. At first I thought it was ridiculous space opera, with loads of jargon and technical impossibilities that just made it read like 3rd-rate SF. That is right up until the point where Simmons blindsighted me by making all of that stuff an absolutely necessary part of the story. I can be more explicit without giving out a few spoilers, but I've read a lot of SF, and this is really a cut above the rest.
What a lovely written essay. It was a shorter - and obviously more religious - version of several "what will AI bring" books I've read in last couple of years. Such a pleasure to read carefully expressed thoughts. By virtue of being in advanced technology country and in software, a lot of my life is spent in the future (the future from William Gibson's "a future is here, it is just unevenly distributed"), and a lot of guideposts I've encountered on the way were put in place by clever futurists writing speculative science fiction. Reading this essay, I was reminded of ideas of…