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In addition to being a fiction author e.g. [STARTIDE], I am still an astronomer and one of my areas of research is SETI or the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. Sure, this overlaps with science fiction... you might say I have been exploring the concept of the alien all my life. Along the way, I became involved in the arguments over the so-called Great Silence -- the question of why we see no signs of other civilizations out there.

Might planets be rare? That is being answered right now as we discover solar systems all around us. Might life itself be harder to start than we imagined? Or intelligence? Or technology?

Or might all intelligent races stumble over the same sets of disasters, over and over again. Like nuclear war or ecological mismanagement?

I'll be dabating these issues at the AAAS in San Jose in February.

See http://www.scoop.it/t/seti-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence

Because I had great fun with space operas last year:

Foundation #1 by Isaac Asimov (1951)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29579.Foundation#bookDetails

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun--or fight them and be destroyed.

I have never read:

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/234225.Dune

Set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary dynasties are controlled by noble houses that owe an allegiance to the imperial House Corrino, Dune tells the story of young Paul Atreides (the heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and heir of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the "spice" melange, the most important and valuable substance in the universe. The story explores the complex and multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the forces of the empire confront each other for control of Arrakis and its "spice".

First published in 1965, It won the Hugo Award in 1966, and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is frequently cited as the world's best-selling science fiction novel.

How about:

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson (2011)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9634967-robopocalypse#bookDetails

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

From Amazon:

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

Time to read!

I've updated the Goodreads list (anyone can do it). I notice the wiki and sidebar still point to the Crying of Lot.

In this topic, one can be as enthralled by "wrong" ideas as by right ones, because the splashes illuminate parts of the landscape. Look for example at THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND... a stunning bit of unintentional sci fi.

Or KAPITAL by Karl Marx, portraying a scenario for a hypothetical intelligent race with some similarities to humanity, but just a bit simpler and more-stupid than us.

In my work on SETI I ponder, what would intelligent descendants of TIGERS be like? Or pack carnivores like wolves? Solitary omnivores, like bears. Niven's Puppeteers explored the paranoia of sapients descended from herd herbivores....

See a lot more about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) http://www.scoop.it/t/seti-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence

Because my dad recommended it:

Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martins (1985)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776212.Tuf_Voyaging#bookDetails

From the multiple award-winning, best-selling author of The Song of Ice and Fire series: Haviland Tuf is an honest space-trader who likes cats. So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he's become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth's legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures. With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way... and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf's ingenuity-and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues... Tuf Voyaging interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio. Included will be her original eight illustrations, along with 28 newly commissioned ones

Since we only have four nominations in two days, I'm going to nominate two. If that's not OK, please delete a random one. Doesn't matter which to me!

My second nomination is A Different Alchemy by Chris Dietzel. I've not read anything by this author, but the reviews are good and the premise is interesting. In a comment on the Goodreads page, Dietzel describes the world as going through a great 'de-evolution' in which women can no longer produce healthy babies. As a result, the world is slipping into decline, and the story situates its characters into position as the human race degenerates morally due to the bleak outlook it has for survival.

There are some pretty solid reviews there and on Amazon.

Hmm, I've never heard of that one before. I looked it up on Alexa and it doesn't seem to be ranked very high.

Oh, it's in beta. I'd be willing to move if it's better than what I'm using now, but there doesn't seem to be much info about it yet. Are you using any other sites?

Here is a goodreads link and here is an amazon link.

Desolation Road by Ian McDonald

I heard a lot of praise for this particular book at one point over in r/printSF, and it appears that McDonald's other novel The Dervish House has already been discussed here. The Amazon link doesn't give a whole lot to go on as far as plot is concerned, but according to Wikipedia >On a partially terraformed Mars (comfortable temperature and atmosphere, although still mostly desert) a lone scientist is hunting a mysterious being across the desert, using a device best described as an anti-gravity sailboard for transportation. While taking a rest, he neglects to secure the board thoroughly and wakes up in time to see it blown away by the wind. Stranded in the desert, he is fortunate to discover an artificial oasis (created by a long-lost terraforming AI) near a line of railway. With all the necessities of life around him, he awaits rescue or company. Eventually, he is joined by other strays and castaways, and together they found the town of Desolation Road.

This is the first time you all are reading a book I already read! Recently too, so I hope to participate in the discussion.

I highly recommend the audio book if you can get your hands on it.

^^Shameless ^^plug: ^^I ^^listened ^^to ^^it ^^on ^^Scribd ^^and ^^they ^^still ^^have ^^a ^^free ^^two ^^week ^^trial ^^^that ^^^I ^^^cancelled ^^^it ^^^after ^^^I ^^^finished ^^^this ^^^book

Because House Of Suns was my all-year favourite last year:

Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (2002)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89190.Redemption_Ark#bookDetails

Late in the twenty-sixth century, the human race has advanced enough to accidentally trigger the Inhibitors - alien killing machines designed to detect intelligent life and destroy it. The only hope for humanity lies in the recovery of a secret cache of doomsday weapons -and a renegade named Clavain who is determined to find them. But other factions want the weapons for their own purposes - and the weapons themselves have another agenda altogether...

Southern Gothic is stuff like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (the movie) or Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. Dark stories about the American South, pretty much, with crime, voodoo, swamps, old corrupt families, weird gender and race dynamics, and the heat, weather, and environment of the south. Faulkner, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, and Cormac McCarthy all wrote within the Southern Gothic genre at least to some extent.

I was watching a documentary on netflix last night by Werner Herzog that would also count, "Into the Abyss", if you're into the "dark true crime" sort of thing. Or Midnight in the Garden is available to rent on Amazon for a couple of bucks. That's a really great film.

I really like the observation that Romie got what we want not through the Algernon powers.

<em>Time Out of Joint</em> by Philip K. Dick

From goodreads:

>Time Out of Joint is Philip K. Dick’s classic depiction of the disorienting disparity between the world as we think it is and the world as it actually is. The year is 1998, although Ragle Gumm doesn’t know that. He thinks it’s 1959. He also thinks that he served in World War II, that he lives in a quiet little community, and that he really is the world’s long-standing champion of newspaper puzzle contests. It is only after a series of troubling hallucinations that he begins to suspect otherwise. And once he pursues his suspicions, he begins to see how he is the center of a universe gone terribly awry.

This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams.

> Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games...

> Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her and she needs to get out.

> Her boss Charlie has his own problems -- 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an off-shore account.

> Austin is the businessman -- the VC. He's the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line.

> BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie's star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call-center slaying on-line orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the internet.

> But when one of them is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources -- not least millions of online gamers-- to track down the killer. In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don't get an extra life

If you're into paper books, try this site: http://www.bookdepository.com

It does have almost the same book availability you can find in amazon as far as sci fi is concerned and most importantly, delivery is free of charge. I've tried it myself a couple of times before moving to ebooks and I do recommend it.

And speaking of ebooks, that's also another alternative if you're not partial to paper books.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

"This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn't like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control."

My favorites time travel book, mind blowing paradoxes galore!

<u>The New and Improved Romie Futch</u> by Julia Elliott

A redneck alcoholic taxidermist signs up to go to a private science facility, where through some brain implants they force-feed him with books and learning. When he gets back to the real world, he has a check, a lot of knew knowledge and artistic abilities, headaches and hallucinations, and a singular obsession with finding Hogzilla, a mutant wild boar terrorizing the rural southern town where he lives.

It's a fun gonzo thrillride that is also a sober reflection on intelligence and masculinity. And it got a New York Times review. I'm loving it so far.

How about Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

"A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?"

<u>California</u> by Edan Lepucki

I just got finished reading this. It's about a couple living in the California woods after society has mostly collapsed and gone to shit. Really solid post-apocalypse novel that focuses in on a small group of characters and their various attempts at re-building society. It also deals a lot with trust in relationships (as the chapters alternate being narrated by the wife then husband).

I'd liken it to a literary novel version of The Walking Dead or Lost, just without the zombies and scifi-purgatories.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

Booklist: In the fourteenth century, the Black Death ravaged Europe. Most towns decimated by it were eventually resettled, except for Eifelheim, despite its ideal location. Mathematical historian Tom discovers this anomaly and an unexpected connection to his domestic partner Sharon's research in theoretical physics, which seems to be leading to a method of interdimensional travel. In fact, as Eifelheim's priest back then, Father Dietrich, relates, before the plague's arrival, an interstellar ship crashed nearby. The encounters between its passengers and the people of Oberhochwald, as Eifelheim was first called, reflect the panoply of attitudes of the time, from fear of the foreign to love and charity for one's neighbors to the ideas of nascent natural philosophy (science), and the aliens' reactions are equally fascinating. Flynn credibly maintains the voice of a man whose worldview is based on concepts almost entirely foreign to the modern mind, and he makes a tense and thrilling story of historical research out of the contemporary portions of the tale.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

It Won the Hugo and Nebula Award a few years ago

>For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end. Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

I forget which author said this, but they were asked a question about the first hard to read 100 pages of their book. They said they did that on purpose to make the first 100 pages difficult and confusing. He was trying to weed out the people he didn't think deserved to read the book.

I looked it up:

It was Robert Anton Wilson

http://www.amazon.com/Illuminatus-Trilogy-Pyramid-Golden-Leviathan/dp/0440539811/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1440519496&amp;sr=1-1-spell&amp;keywords=the+illuminatas+trilogy

14, by Peter Clines > Chosen by Audible.com as the best sci-fi novel of 2012! > > Padlocked doors. Strange light fixtures. Mutant cockroaches. > > There are some odd things about Nate’s new apartment. > > Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn’t perfect, it’s livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and the odd little mysteries don’t nag at him too much. > > At least, not until he meets Mandy, his neighbor across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela’s apartment. And Tim’s. And Veek’s. > > Because every room in this old Los Angeles brownstone has a mystery or two. Mysteries that stretch back over a hundred years. Some of them are in plain sight. Some are behind locked doors. And all together these mysteries could mean the end of Nate and his friends. > > Or the end of everything... > "A riveting apocalyptic mystery in the style of LOST." --Craig >DiLouie, author of THE INFECTION and THE KILLING FLOOR > >"A wholly original story that weaves together mystery and the apocalypse like a finely tuned band." --Evan Roy, Bricks of the Dead

This was a really fun and enjoyable read. The characters are very well put together and the twists are plenty. It's not extremely heavy on the sci-fi as it takes place in modern day at an apartment complex, but I think everyone can enjoy it.

A Grey Moon Over China, by Thomas A. Day

> Army engineer Eduardo Torres is caught up in the world’s raging oil wars when he stumbles onto the plans for a quantum-energy battery. This remarkable device could slow civilization’s inevitable descent into environmental disaster, but Torres has other plans. Forming a private army, he uses the device to revive an abandoned space colonization effort in an ambitious campaign to lead humanity to a new life in a distant solar system.

This little known work is one of my favorite science fiction novels. I read it a while ago and was completely engrossed by it and highly recommend it. The characters and story is interesting and the world building and progress is great to see what happens and why it does.

<strong>Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand</strong> by Samuel R. Delany

This is, IMO, Samuel Delany's masterpiece. The story is mostly a walking tour of a far-future city, with meditations along the way about sex, power, technology, and culture. The backdrop is the buildup to an apocalyptic conflict with an enigmatic alien race, amid the machinations of a galaxy-spanning political system. This is a difficult and deeply weird book, and it's definitely not for everyone, but it does something that really no other book does.

The Exegesis of Philip K Dick

Don't want to mislead anyone-it's an absolute tome (almost 1k pages), but man...a trip into the mind of PKD.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Translated from Chinese by Ken Liu.

One of the first Chinese science fiction novels ever to be translated to English, this is considered the papa of Chinese SF and is up for the Nebula this year.

Also, a little birdy told me that if we select this book, translator and SF author in his own right Ken Liu would be willing to drop by and discuss this with us, so there's that.

The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung, translated by Michael Duke.

>Banned in China but sought after, read, and commented on in pirated online versions, Koonchung’s first novel to be translated into English is a novel of ideas in which the principal idea is: what’s wrong with not having any? Set mainly in Beijing, the novel gives us China after a second global financial crisis: the economy is booming, the population is complacent, and the country appears destined to achieve world domination. Everyone seems to have forgotten a month of civil unrest and a vicious state-sponsored crackdown, as if the population awoke from the nightmare of history and found it so implausible that they forgot or dismissed it. We are treated to characters from a cross-section of society, a love story, and the trappings of a thriller. A long, highly theoretical dissection of China’s politics and economy closes the book, and will undoubtedly try the patience of people reading strictly for pleasure. Then again, that may be the novel’s purpose: boring economic minutiae may well require our urgent attention. --Michael Autrey --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Note that the book elicits an almost equal number of 5 and 1 star reviews, and that it's a dense, complicated text - but one that still comes in under 300 pages. The complexity might be a welcome change after The Martian.