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I'm reminded of a line of dialogue in a book I recently read (well, listened to). To expound on the plot summary on Amazon, the protagonist awakens to find that, while he was dead, the US became a theocratic state. Cryogenic preservation was ruled to be blasphemous, preserved people were declared to be dead, and all related assets were confiscated and sold off, including the preserved people.
The protagonist observes that it seems like it the proper action would have been to just bury the people, to which the other character replies, "Did theologues limit themselves to logical or consistent behavior in your time?"
I laughed so hard at that line - especially how it's delivered by the narrator - that I nearly had to pull my car off the road.
Without being spoilery, there's a mysterious place ~~in the pacific northwest (I believe... I could be wrong but it feels like it)~~ inspired by St Marks Wildlife Refuge in florida called Area X that has lots of strange behaviors, and the first book is about a team of researchers sent in to investigate it.
Sorry, I can't really say much without spoiling stuff. However, the first book is only 208 pages, so I highly recommend finding a copy at your local library (or it's $7.73 on amazon) and reading through it in an evening
While not a LitRPG I feel like the Bobiverse scratches the same itch very well.
It's about a guy who's consciousness is put into a robot and shot off into space. He has 3D printers that can create anything he can think of, including copies of himself. While not living "in a game" he still creates his own VR world that he shares with his copies and can control his perception of time by speeding up/slowing down his processor.
He explores, invents, creates and discovers tons of amazing stuff.
The best sci-fi book series to come out in a very long time! The first book is Leviathan Wakes; five more have been written so far, and three more are scheduled to come out over the next three years (and the authors have been pretty good about keeping to that schedule, unlike a certain fantasy author we all know and love).
If reading books isn't your jam or you don't have time, there are also audiobooks some fans swear by. There's also a TV show which just wrapped up its second season, which you can get on Amazon Prime in the US and Netflix everywhere else.
If you like sci-fi that does its best to stick to actual science, space battles, political intrigue, and likeable characters who grow more complex with every book, I highly reccommend it!
Have you heard of We are Bob? It's a book that started as audiobook series. It very closely goes through the scenario you mention. One of the best sci-fi series imo.
Give the Bobiverse series a try.
The premise: An engineer signs up for cryogenically freezing his brain when he dies on a whim. A bus runs him over. He wakes up hundreds of years in the future except it has been determined that these frozen brains are now the property of the state. They couldn't unfreeze him and bring him back to life, but they COULD use his brain as a template to be mapped into a computer system. He is now effectively an AI, given control over a Von Neuman probe that is to be sent out to colonize space.
There's lots of fun world building and an interesting look at the human condition. They're pretty clever with Bob too. For example, there's no such thing as Faster Than Light travel, so Bob just turns his clock speed down. In this way he experiences time slower than is actually happening and doesn't go insane on the long journey between planets. The books really start to pick up as he constructs other Bobs, each with their own slightly different personalities.
You might really enjoy a book series called “The Bobiverse”
It’s about a von Neumann probe with an Ai made of a human engineers (Bob) brain scan.
The science is pretty solid and general relativity and time dilation is an integral part of the plot.
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ/ref=nodl_
If you want a story with real politics and fantastic elements I’m going to step out of Fantasy a moment and into SciFi and recommend the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Here is the link to Red Mars, the first book.
Terraforming, political intrigue, corporate greed, nationalism, jealousy. It has it all.
For a perspective on how things might go for a cryonics patient in the future, read "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" by Dennis E. Taylor. The audiobook narration is great!
Seriously though, try not to think about it. Everything ends. That's life. Live in the moment. You have the ability to choose how you want your life to go. Enjoy life while it lasts and appreciate how lucky you are to be self-aware as a human with opposable thumbs, Pokemon, and SpongeBob.
It's hardcore sci-fi and it's beautifully written with extraordinary characters. I read all eight novels and all of the novellas in about 10 days. This was one of those series that just hits you and you know it just has to be made into a movie or something.
Well it turns out some other people already had that idea. Amazon turned into a series back in 2015 and they've just started season 5. It's hugely popular and somehow I never heard of it until now. And I would say it's about 90% true to the books from what I've seen so far.
I highly recommend it. Either the books or the series on Amazon.
Here's a link to the first book of the series:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y171G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_PHLMFbAQWEYWT
I think Grey would really enjoy Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Amazon) and its Sequel The Dark Forest.
...Brady described the "empty" sky as an abandoned city (see Vanilla Sky)...as the sequel's name says, you might also describe it as a Dark Forest where humanity is the only guy lighting a big fire and clumsely searching for more wood and stuff, not particulary caring who or what might be watching and evaluating options (for example: our technology advances exponentially, what would somebody ahead of us think of that if they can only advance linear?)
...the books are not without flaw but very original and interesting in their style.
Oh my, yes you are right. I didn't look it up as I thought I could trust my memory. But I guess not haha.
That's wrong. Earth definitely attacked Deimos, both book and show.
Search inside the text on Amazon for "Deimos" for the relevant passages in the book.
Edit: I realize there was a typo in CW, but that was clearly a mistake, as later books are consistent with LW.
One thing that I've learned is that some books that you buy on Amazon will let you add the narration for really cheap if you buy the book. So instead of paying $30 for a book (or $15 a month for a credit), you can buy a kindle book on sale and 'add' the audio book.
I'm currently listening to a series called the Bobiverse thanks to this. The first book (We are Legion, We are Bob) was only $4 for the book and then another $2 to add the audiobook. If you like sci-fi/adventure books, I'd recommend it, it's dumb fun.
Also don't forget that your local library probably offers audiobooks on OverDrive.
"Hey," Watney said over the radio, "I've got an idea."
"Of course you do," Lewis said. "What do you got?"
"I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of the thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily."
"How does he come up with this shit?" Martinez interjected.
"Hmm," Lewis said. "Could you get forty-two meters per second that way?"
"No idea."
"I can't see you having any control if you did that," Lewis said. "You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control."
"I admit it's fatally dangerous," Watney said. "But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man."
"We'll keep working on ideas," Lewis said.
"Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man."
- Andy Weir, '<em>The Martian</em>'
The last one is actually a short story called The Egg by Andy Weir. He's a really talented artist and you should check out his novel, The Martian, which is being adapted into a movie to be released in November.
This is an easy one.
The Bobiverse series from Dennis E. Taylor is very factorio like.
First Book is called "We are Legion (We are Bob)"
Amazon Description:
>!Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.!<
>!(https://www.amazon.de/Are-Legion-Bobiverse-Book-English-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ)!<
Dennis Taylor's Bobiverse .. 3 books all about exploration and first contact and saving earth ..
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ is litrpg-adjacent.
Guy wakes up, and he's a spaceship. (sorta).
Then transitions into a empire building/combat thing with massive light-speed delays.
No it's not ridiculous. It's an actual experienced publisher with experience, it's not a brand new fly by night outfit, or self-published by someone with no sense of design. But the MDZS volume except for the interior illustrations doesn't look like professional work. I'm comparing books to books, and translated books to translated books. And the first time the Verne was translated, it was just a book by that French guy. I have that original translation. And the places where the original translator edited the original text to make the novel more acceptable to the mores of his audience really show.
I also want people to stop excusing sloppy work as 'what do you expect from Chinese to English in a genre' when, say Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, an SFF genre release originally in Chinese looks a lot better. (not to my taste, but it reads and looks better in English than the Seven Seas translation of MDZS does. go to that Amazon link and check the look inside.) Also genre, but done by people who cared and knew what they were doing. What I got off the Seven Seas package was a sense that no one particularly cared.
Should I resign myself to a life ruled by mediocrity, eternally excused by claims of ‘budget’ and ‘high-school’ and ‘first job’, treating those as reasons that nothing should ever be held to ‘unrealistic standards’? A crowdfunded videogame on a shoestring budget made by three people with no guaranteed audience put more effort into keeping every detail in line with the tone of the world they were crafting than this does. (Hollow Knight, if you're curious.)
It's still better than ER's translation, but that is a really low bar.
Orson Scott Card actually wrote a Science Fiction book about time travel that had this premise
There's a sci-fi book series I read called We Are Bob. It's about a human who has his consciousness uploaded into a Von Neumann probe, essentially the first synthetically ascended human. Aside from nostalgia and interacting with other humans, the human form is kinda impractical for even menial labor when there are more efficient forms.
It's a great series and super quick read. I know it's on Amazon (maybe digital only). I got the audio books and listened to them back and forth from work.
Cool thing. I am slogging through (book #12) of the Wot right now, but a big sci-fi nerd and general fantasy.
Recommend the Bobiverse books by Dennis Taylor. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWAESYQ?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref\_=dbs\_mng\_calw\_0&storeType=ebooks
I wrote I Will Inform Them for a rational writing competition.
> anything that gets into a lot of engineering or practical sciences
Hmmmm. Something with a lot of vernacular and terminology? Red Mars may scratch your itch. It features a lot of engineers and scientists battling to tame the red planet.
Probably not what you meant, but there is a great series about leaving earth with this AI they call The Bobs.
We are legion (we are Bob).
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ/ref=nodl_
I can’t believe nobody has suggested this yet: The Martian, by Andy Weir. (It’s the book that the movie was based on.) This book is just such a great read!! I had already seen the movie, and still loved the book. Exciting, adventuresome, survival against all odds, funny (the main character is a smart-ass), lots of interesting problem-solving. A rollicking read.
Also: The Education of Little Tree, by Forrest Carter. A little boy goes to live with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains after his parents die. It is just such a beautiful story. Adventures, hilarity, learning to live off the land / live with the land, and some deep heartbreak, but so worth the read (or listen). The audiobook narration by Johnny Heller is perfect. This is one of those books i wish everyone would read, and it sounds like your bf might groove on it (mountains! Nature! Outdoors! Dogs! Self-sufficiency! Bootlegging, even! Lol). Highly recommend the audiobook.
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ
It says “1 of 3” in the listing, but he’s up to four books now, with more coming :) The first three books feel mostly like a continuation of a single story arc, where book four jumps off to a kind of “new” story, and IMO was awesome. Watching the otters at the aquarium took on a whole new light after reading Heaven’s River!
Oh you would love the Bobiverse by Dennis Taylor. Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ
Yeah, after I had finished Red Mars (already 5 years ago) I had thought of immediately buying next two. Then life happened, and got carried away. I am seeing some new covers on Amazon, and I am tempted to rebuy Red Mars, just to have that complete trilogy book-cover style