Hello.

I’m reading the second book in the Backyard Starship series. I find the books entertaining, but in my opinion, they lack depth.

I’m looking for some better sci-fi literature, so feel free to give me some recommendations.

Edit: Thank you all for the recommendations. I’ve added them to my reading list and I’m looking forward to reading them!

  • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net
    2·
    1 year ago

    So I’m going to throw in a pretty eclectic list:

    If you enjoy tech noir, I always like to recommend Other Kind of Life by Shamus Young, because it’s awesome and somewhat unknown. The tagline/blurb don’t do it justice but I recently wrote up a rant about why people should read it here

    The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl, Cyril M. Kornbluth is an awesome proto-cyberpunk science fiction story (it’s got just about all the elements of a cyberpunk book, but the feel is much more that of a 1950s scifi story, it’s kind of fascinating. The story is awesome.

    Bolo! by David Weber is kind of fascinating because it’s one of the only series I’ve read with a genuine partnership between humans and AIs, where neither one exploits or betrays the other, and it’s in this military scifi book series about tanks the size of small towns. And the scope is huge, from postapoclyptic earth to the rise and fall of several interstellar empires, humans side by side with absurdly giant tanks - it’s a trip. The sequel to this one is also good. The others in the series are fun but the ones by Webber have a surprising amount of heart.

    By the way, if you like Baen books, you can get a ton of their stories (including Bolo!) in ebook form for free - they used to give them away for free on CDs, and fans collected those files onto websites, and the company has been surprisingly chill about just keeping those book available. This website hosts most of them http://baencd.freedoors.org/ but be warned, it’s got graphic design to rival Baen’s infamous covers.

    Anything by Harry Harrison. A bunch of ebook versions of his stories are available on Project Gutenberg Especially Deathworld if you haven’t read it

    When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger is a cyberpunk story worth checking out.

    Obviously anything by William Gibson, and Philip K Dick (personal favorite, A Scanner Darkly and especially the linked audiobook)

    And the Murderbot books by Martha Wells are great.