The best
First Contact Science Fiction:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of First Contact Science Fiction by number of unique Reddit comments:
![Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows (1) [Paperback] DeLonge, Tom; Hartley, AJ; Levenda, Peter and Semivan, Jim [Paperback] DeLonge, Tom; Hartley, AJ; Levenda, Peter and Semivan, Jim](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51j2D1MAgmL._SL500_.jpg)
Top Reddit reviews mentioning First Contact Science Fiction:
There's a leadership book based on Picard. It's called "Make it so"
https://www.amazon.com/Make-So-Leadership-Lessons-Generation/dp/0671520989
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.
Actually, that's been a thing since at least 1991; the <em>TNG Technical Manual</em> Rick Sternbach wrote is the earliest reference to it I can recall offhand. To be fair, Discovery was the first on-screen reference to it.
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 story is called "Story of Your Life" and it is in a semi-eponymous collection titled "Stories of Your Life and Others". The book is fantastic; there a couple other stories within ("Hell is the Absence of God" and "Tower of Babylon") that would also make for great movies.
Currently reading "The Story of Your Life and Others", and enjoying every page. Each short story is beautifully written and reads like a Black Mirror episode. One of the best books I've read this year.
Star Trek The Next Generation: Technical Manual
Basically goes through and explains all about how the ship works from an in-universe point of view. It's actually really fun to see all the explanations they came up with for everything.
> there must be better lists out there, but Memory Alpha has the eps for reference.
I had a pocket book written by Armin Shimerman once that was all 285 of the rules of acquisition. I wonder what happened to it.
Edit: A quick search produced an Amazon link. Apparently it's by Ira Steven Behr, not Armin Shimerman. Still don't know what happened to mine.
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.
Can confirm...
I even have this book : Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual Star Trek Next Generation Unnumbered: Amazon.de: Sternbach, Rick, Okuda, Michael: Fremdsprachige Bücher
So that is at least a PHD worth i guess
I don't know the exact bookmark, but here are some tips to try to narrow it down.
Since it's an unabridged audiobook, it should be in the same order as the paperback version. The Amazon page for the paperback allows you to see a preview of the book (click the cover to "look inside") and there is a table of contents in the preview. "Story of Your Life" is the 4th story in the book. You might be able to infer how much to skip ahead (e.g. the book is about 10.5 hrs long, there are 8 stories, if there are chapter separations in the audiobook, you might be able to guess from the chapter marks, etc.). After that, you can adjust the speed of the audiobook to "fast forward" to the story that you want.
It's available on Amazon Kindle which you can read on a smart phone or even your computer.
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_
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.
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.
Amazon has it for as little as $4 (0.01+3.99 s/h), used.
https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Next-Generation-Technical/dp/0671704273
There is also an "Interactive" CD-ROM version, designed for Windows 3.x. While it is interesting, and does cover some of the same material, it is its own work, and in the end, covers far less. The video quality is also severely lacking in 2016, and getting it to work is not straightforward.
It's actually called the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu. It's apparently pretty big in China. But I've kept myself pretty ignorant about what it's about because I want to be surprised.
Here's the Amazon page with a description for the first book.
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/0765382032
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.
I think you want /r/TrekBooks
The only Trek book that I've read and enjoyed enough to remember anything about it is A Stitch in Time by Andrew Robinson, fleshing out his DS9 character, Garak.
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)!<
Maybe this might happen before we can experience multiplayer VR via mind control. The middle of that page shows an excerpt from the Star Trek Technical Manual written by two technical advisors on the Star Trek: The Next Generation" TV show.
In the manual they describe how the Holodeck worked, as seen in the screenshot shows. People in the Holodeck didn't have to wear anything to be convinced that what happened around them was real.
According to the technical manual, the computer created force field beams that people could walk and run on without moving. The computer projected distant holographic imagery. And, according to the manual, real temporary matter was created as needed so that people could touch a temporary human, sit in a temporary chair or feel temporary snow.
If holographic projectors and force field beams don't exist 1000 years from now, maybe they will 50,000 years from now. The hard part might be the matter replicators.
If you're referring to this book-
it's probably one of the finest examples of lore building I've ever seen.
Someone linked this in another comment. It's what I have. Looks like you can still buy a copy!
I found this. paperback or kindle pdf
I assume you've read Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others? If not, definitely do so. Otherwise, you might like the stories of Jorge Luis Borges; The Library of Babel is one of my favorites.
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.
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.