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The Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges wrote a bunch of "fictions" (short stories) that blew my SF-loving mind when I read them. They're written in a more academic or "literary" style than classic science fiction, but once you get past that, they are pure "thought variant" big-idea sense-of-wonder fables which would have fit into John Campbell's Astounding during the Golden Age. Like, the characters are pretty flimsy, and the implementation is unexplained, but the ideas are so cool!

If you want to understand what this deal really means, here's what I wrote on Metafilter.

Hint: John is not a millionaire. Rather, John is now in the position of a professor who just got tenure.

I don’t think Asimov was so much fascist or racist, but he was pretty sexist in that Mad Men sort of way. He literally wrote books about it.

You should check out kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 https://www.amazon.com/New-York-2140-Stanley-Robinson/dp/031626234X

It’s a post global warming look at real estate in a tidal zone. NYC is referred to as”super venice”. It’s wonky and focuses heavily on trading and selling, the economics of salvaging a city, landholders and renters rights. Slow but fairly interesting.

I try to shut off the hysterics as much as possible. NEVER watch tv news and especially none of the dedicated news channels.

Also read and think about things like this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814/

The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem. Psychedelics, mobs rioting, totalitarian government, utopian/dystopian, characters with layers of reality getting ripped away from them. Also it's funny!

How about Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series?

This seems to meet your criteria about adventuring, outside the law, etc. But it's far from cyberpunk; while the latter is always dark, the SSR books are quite upbeat and fun.

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley fits your requirements perfectly. Also Surface Detail by Ian M Banks.

• A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle. A Wrinkle in Time is her best known work, but I prefer A Wind in the Door. Plus, it's a better fit for this sub, as I think it's more sciency (though all of her books straddle the line between sci-fi and fantasy).

• The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories, by Pamela Zoline. This collection of new wave, literary stories probably isn't for everyone. I love it though. The stories use science as a lens for examining the human condition in a way that's quiet, sad and beautiful. You can read the title story here.

• The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin. When George Orr dreams, the whole world changes. In the morning, he's the only one that can remember how things used to be. A really, really lovely (and clever!) book which I'm sure some other people will also recommend.

EDIT: I'm surprised that nobody has specifically mentioned Bloodchild and Other Stories, by Octavia Butler yet, so I'll add it here. That is an awesome anthology.

Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth saga, and the Night's Dawn trilogy. The first series has 2 books, the latter has 3. They're all huge, dense reads; each book is around 1000 pages.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is $1.99 on Amazon kindle right now. I picked it up the other day and binged thru it...someday I'll learn not to start reading a book at 1030 when I have to work the next day...lol. It was well worth the price, I enjoyed it and will probably get the next one too

Just thinking about it and re-reading your post, have you looked at Charles Stross's Laundry Files? If you liked The Dresden Files these may be right up your alley...

Okay, it's not exactly a planetary romance, but you should really read the The Entire and the Rose series. It's not actually set on a planet, but it has a lot of the same tropes as the genre.

It's actually set in a hidden universe next to ours that was created by the Tarig overlords and seeded with Earth life. The universe is known as The Entire. Our universe is known as The Rose. The culture in The Entire has based itself off of medieval Chinese culture and appears low tech initially, but in actuality, their technology only appears primitive on the surface because the Tarig control what they may use.

The Entire universe doesn't have stars or planets. It's a single land-mass the size of the milky way galaxy. People travel around on super-luminal steamboats set up by the Tarig. Only the Tarig get unrestricted access to superluminal travel and communication.

The first rule of The Entire is "The Entire hides itself from The Rose."

It's one of the best series I've read that pretty much no one else seems to know about.

It's supposed to be directly related to consciousness. He based this scene off of a comparison of chimpanzees and orangutans that can be found in p381: > Chimpanzees have a higher brain-to-body ratio than orangutans, yet orangs consistently recognize themselves in mirrors while chimps do so only half the time.

The well written notes and references sections is part of why Watts' works are some of my favorites.

This has been a recurring theme. Ages ago, NS answered questions and this came up a*lot!

This was my favorite phrasing:

Is there such a thing as an ending consultant? Could you perhaps employ one? I'm sure that your books would sell much better if the author line was "Story by Neal Stephanson, Ending by Whots Hisname.”

‪https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=125200&cid=10494217 ‬

(Whole ask NS thread: https://m.slashdot.org/story/50609/outstanding)

TL;dr: NS likes his endings. Says so on his faq . Is a bit touchy about it.

Liu Cixin's books are published by Tor. Tor does not use DRM on its eBooks, even when sold by Amazon or B&N.

E.g., check out the book's page on Amazon: "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."

An oldie but goodie: Triton by Samuel Delany, also called "Trouble on Triton."

I don't want to spoil the famous twist in the middle of this book, in case there's anyone alive who doesn't already know about it. (PS, if you get the new edition, don't read the introduction!) Suffice to say, this is a far-future utopia story written from the perspective of someone who doesn't quite feel comfortable in this utopia. Set against this backdrop is a war of annihilation between Earth and the colonized planets.

The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell so far is the best military scifi I read. Not because Campbell is the best author EVAR1!!!111! but because he is the best compared to what I read so far.

His characters are very "business" (don't expect some smoldering lava pits of emotion) and his prose is very workman-like. On the other hand, you get an admiral that truly leads (he doesn't even leave the command ship or leads from the front - "delegating" is a word that exists in these books), equal treatment of woman (it's sad that I have to mention that as a selling point for a book in 2013) and no jingoistic propaganda blaring into your ears.

I think the title of this post goes against the first rule of the deal posting guidelines that were posted a couple of months ago:

> At the beginning of your post title, tag it with the region where the deal is valid and the name of the digital platform. For example: "[USA][Kindle] Send in the Clowns by Hershel Shmoikel Krustofsky is $2.99!" is a fine post title. A post with the title "Send in the Clowns by Hershel Shmoikel Krustofsky is $2.99 on Kindle!" would be removed.

I'll leave it to the mods to decide whether to take any action - I get the impression there was a concern the group might get spammed with deal posts, which hasn't happened.

I'll also note that this looks like it might be specific to the US - the second Murderbot novella is the regular price of £7.24 on Amazon UK.

I would recommend Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, it was published in Sweden in 2012 and recently (2017) translated into English.

I listened to the audiobook, which was very good.

Here it is on Amazon.

I would also recommend checking with your local library, I was able to get it from Overdrive via my city library.

Black Fleet Trilogy sounds right up your alley. Its by Joshua Dalzelle and has many "Battleship in space" type engagements. check it out! I highly recommend it if you are looking for large ship style space battles. Good characters too. There are two trilogies, the first starts with Warship.

I don't remember ever seeing this book here: Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

It's about wormholes used for instant communications (on Earth), and the evolution of this technology (I don't want to spoil anything, but very cool stuff happens with wormholes).

The ending is mind boggling.

I've just finished Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling. It's about a poshuman society that is split into 2 main factions; Shapers and Mechanists; the former specialising in biology and genetics, the latter specialising in augmenting their bodies through technology. Throughout the story these groups further subdivide into smaller clades/factions.

Even as a sequel, it is a difficult book to parse. I am aiming at rereading both books before the end of the year to see if I can fully undestand what Echopraxia is about.

I would also suggest you read "The Colonel", a short novel that bridges "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L73GSVE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i9

For me it's a tie between Jay Lake's Mainspring and Ian Banks Consider Phlebas.

I was especially disappointed with Consider Phlebas. People here kept raving on and on and on about this book but it just isn't that good (this guy sums up all my complaints perfectly: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48178154?book_show_action=true&page=1 ).

My main problem with both books is basically that we're being told how awesome our heroes are without showing it. No character arcs, and no sense of progress in the story whatsoever.

The Expanse by James S.A. Corey? It's set in our galaxy as we've spread past Earth, but mixes a little noir-ish mystery, a little political intrigue, and a little Firefly-esque space-cowboyism.

And some ancient alien terror. Good fun all around, lots of adventure and action and good characters.

The Fifth Science is along those lines. It tells of a very long timeline through separate stories in a shared universe. It's one of the more memorable and enjoyable books I read this year.

https://www.amazon.ca/Fifth-Science-Exurb1a/dp/1796356301

Cordwainer Smith is excellent. Almost all his stories, plus his novel Norstrillia, take place in a shared universe, so details that may be unclear in one are explained in another. I recommend this book, which contains all his short stories, in the perfect reading order: https://www.amazon.com/Rediscovery-Man-Complete-Science-Cordwainer/dp/0915368560/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=cordwainer+smith&qid=1611459313&sprefix=cordwa&sr=8-3

The novel fits in about 2/3 of the way through the stories. Overall, it's a tremendously rewarding universe to explore.

Timely Ben Bova recommendation. His Grand Tour fits the science and exploration aspects, but one of my favorites is Welcome to Moonbase. It's a manual for a working base on the moon. Not written as a future possibility, but as if it actually existed.

From the Amazon description, "the guidebook covers Moonbase history, architecture, ecology, transportation, science projects, jobs, training, industries, tourism, sports ("lunar jai alai"), entertainment, day-to-day life, duties, rights and laws."

I checked it out from the library when I was a kid, excited because it was by the editor of Omni magazine.

I enjoyed the heck out of it!

It's organized like a textbook. I remember being fascinated by his explanation of mining operations on the moon, going into detail about the mineral composition of rocks, and how they're transformed into the raw materials for construction and maintenance.

https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Moonbase-Ben-Bova/dp/0345328590

At risk of self-advertising: the first book in the series, "The Atrocity Archives", is currently on special offer in the USA and Canada for $1.99 as an ebook — Amazon Kindle link here, but it's also cheap on iBooks and Nook right now. (Price will go back up to $7.99 at the end of next week.)

This is to promote the cheapification(?) of book seven, "The Nightmare Stacks" (ebook price just dropped from $13.99 to $7.99 at the beginning of the month) and the oncoming publication of book eight, "The Delirium Brief" (due out in July, will cost $13.99 for the first 9-12 months — if that's too much for you, the price will come down if you wait long enough).

The X-wing saga by Michael Stackpole (1st half of the series) and Aaron Allston (2nd half of the series).

Here's the amazon link to book 1: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00513HXBA/

Fun "in the trenches" depiction of what happened to Rogue Squadron after Return of the Jedi (this is part of the old Extended Universe - so it's no longer canon and doesn't match up with the movies any more). Really good set, lots of tactics and dogfight depictions, etc.

The first half of the series was written by Michael Stackpole. He was the game designer for the old X-wing and TIE Fighter games, and it is heavy on tactics and indepth dogfights. The 2nd half of the series (Aaron Allston) is more "Dirty Dozen in space" but is still quite good and the whole series tells a great story.

As others have pointed out, the science is pretty much bunk because it's a fantasy about Mars, influenced by Golden Age SF versions of planets where Neptune might be a watery realm inhabited by mermaid empires. It was a time of popular, pulp adventure stories set in fantastic extra-planetary realms that could be anything.

If you want to a truly creepy visualization of the fantasy, check out the 1979 edition illustrated by Ian Miller. It's on Amazon. I've posted scans of the illustrations. I've read Martian Chronicles maybe half a dozen times, but I never saw it the same way after seeing Ian Miller's artwork.

Found this site for Belter Swear Words. I don't know if this is taken from the Expanse novels, show, or both. There is Lang Belta subreddit: /r/LangBelta/

Here's a couple of resources for you.

First, the Baen free library: http://www.baen.com/categories/free-library.html This has both older and newer books, with a bit of a focus on military, action, and adventure. Ringo, Weber, and Drake are all a lot of fun. Many of these books are first books in series, so if you try one and like it, there'll be a few more.

Second, there's Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_(Bookshelf) This is the link to their science fiction selection. All of these books are out of copyright and are publicly available for free. In particular, I would point you towards H. Beam Piper, Murray Leinster, and Fritz Leiber.

Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson is this. It starts strong but kinda degenerates into nerdy wish-fulfilment by the end. Still, the aliens and humanity's initial reaction to them are quite fun.

Ah, I just found the PDF with the actual mathematical analysis and it makes a lot more sense now.

H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History, and his Paratime series. The link is to the Gutenberg Project, and contains free and legal downloads of much of his work.

There's also a couple of Aliens Audiobooks on Audible, that have a full cast, including some TV drama A-listers like Anna Friel. (IIRC , she plays Ripley in one of them. )

Here they are, it's a whole trilogy:

https://www.audible.com/series?asin=B071XT35PZ&ref=a_pd_Alien-_c1_series_2

Rutger Hauer, Anna Friel, William Hope, Laurel Kefkow. Some amazing actors in these voice drama.

They also have really high quality production, basically movie-level sound design

> Like Cthulhu in space? (Not a real book, I hope).

Actually, there is one, kind of. And there are quite a few good bits in there too.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang might fit the bill. It's a collection of mind-bending shorts by “your favorite sci-fi writer's favorite sci-fi writer.”

There's a writeup on File 770 now that says Foster's contract had a clause to prevent that:

> Mary Robinette Kowal stated that according to US contract law, when a company is bought or merged, both rights and obligations are transferred to the legal successor of the original company. Vaughne Hansen [Foster's agent] confirmed that the original contract for the Alien novelisations also includes a clause stating that rights and obligations are transferred to the legal successor in case of a buyout or merger. No word on the two Star Wars novels, but it would be very unusual, if the contract did not contain a transference of rights and obligations clause. > > In my day job as a translator, I see a lot of contracts and can confirm that every contract contains a clause regarding the transferences of rights and obligations in case of a buyout or merger. This is very much a legal and business standard. > > Vaughne Hansen stated that the problem is not with the contracts, but with Disney. Mary Robinette Kowal also pointed out that Disney’s behaviour sets a dangerous precedent with potentially huge consequences for all creatives. Mary Robinette Kowal also implored any writers who have experienced similar issues with Disney or any other company to contact SFWA via this form on their website

E-ink is the way to go. It's nothing like reading on a screen. It really does feel a lot more like reading on paper. Even those that have a light reflect it, it's not a back-light, so it's not as in-your-face.

But really, the entry-level kindle is great. I find I read more quickly with it. Not to mention reading more, because I can carry it one-handed on the subway while I commute. I have their most expensive version now and it's good, but only marginally so. If you think you'll be reading in low light levels a lot, then go for the Paperwhite. And if you're anti-Amazon, then pick up the Kobo—they have deals with a lot of indie stores to sell their ebooks.

--

Also if screens are giving you problems with your sleep cycle, check out f.lux. I have been sleeping better and waking up earlier since I put it on my computer. It's incredible what a big difference changing the color of your backlight makes.

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" is the story where this is most center. You can read the story on Gutenberg - although the entire series is definitely worth checking out.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm

Maybe Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg?

That book is remarkable in how well-grounded the science is, and also the philosophical side of the evolution of a whole society.

I really like the idea, and would like to help at some point. However, I would be cautious with the GDocs "anyone with the link can edit" because anyone could come in and erase everything or entire sections.

You might want to consider set it so "anyone with the link" "can comment" which will allow them to add their contributions as comments (like this), and then you could allow people you trust to edit the document itself. Just something to consider.

It's <em>Counting Heads</em> by Dave Marusek, a somewhat overlooked book with a unique economic perspective . The sequel, Mind Over Ship is also quite good.

For an eye-roller of a sci-fi novel in the finest style of Chandler himself, there is Mel Gilden’s 1988 masterpiece.

I swear I never thought that there would ever be a situation where this book would even be remotely relevant to any discussion, but here we are.

It was The Secret Battleplane by Percy Westerman, published in 1916. I was probably 11 years old or so.

It was a riveting story, as was another of Westerman's books that I read shortly thereafter: The Airship 'Golden Hind'.

I didn't (and don't) restrict my reading to sci-fi - I was fairly voracious and not in the slightest bit picky. The first book series I read was the fictional story of Kapitan Konrad Bergman of U-Boat UB44. Shortly after, I read the biography of Otto Kreschmer, called 'The Golden Horseshoe'.

Then I discovered E.E. Doc Smith, Harry Harrison and Julian May. The rest is history.

Classics are the best place to start here.

The City Trilogy by Hsi-kuo Chang is widely regarded as one of the triumphs of Taiwanese SF, and what Taiwanese friends have told me is that Balcom's translation is pretty good.

https://www.amazon.com/Trilogy-Modern-Chinese-Literature-Taiwan/dp/0231128525

Then, of course, there is Stanislaw Lem. The Cyberiad, a collection of short stories is a great place to start. Solaris is also a landmark.

There is also the best SF of a generation, the formative wellspring of much of the tropes that you will see in Space Opera, which is Jules Verne's Extraordinary Voyages. Modern translations are better, as some of the older ones are hurriedly done, and in one case from my memory (I think the first popular edition of 20000 Leagues under the sea), the just excised a couple chapters in the middle, didn't publish in English at all.

Other people will probably recommend The Three Body Problem or the Ninefox Gambit, but I've not read enough of either to really comment.

Delany is such a fascinating man, even beyond his novels. He posts a lot on his Facebook (his personal one, not the agency run author page) and it's always a great read. He's also had a few collections of essays published, Longer Views is quite good, I particularly liked his essay on Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto.

Looking forward to his journals being published. The first volume is up for pre-order on amazon with a release date of Dec 6th if you'd rather get them that way.

The Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley. I just found it in my copy of The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus edited by Brian Aldiss, which has a lot of wonderful stories from that era. Amazon has a collection of Robert Sheckley's stories called The Store of the Worlds

The story ends with: >With the aid of his wrist geiger he found a deactivated lane through the rubble. He'd better get back to the shelter before dark, before the rats came out. If he didn't hurry he'd miss the evening potato ration.

Two, both out of print afaik:

• Tik Tok, by John Sladek, about a robot living in an affluent, space-traveling society who decides to ignore Asimov's rules and become homicidal. (There's an ebook version available on Amazon.)

• Why Do Birds, by Damon Knight, about a man who returns to Earth from an alien civilization with a simple mission: Convince world leaders to put everyone into suspended animation inside a giant metal box before the planet is destroyed. (There's an ebook version available from the Internet Archive.)

Both are parodies of a kind, but the humor isn't broad and obvious. The characters are good and the writing is strong. I read them 20+ years ago, just once, and they've stuck in my mind ever since.

In case you're interested in this, the first one is currently free as an e-book on amazon.

I'm disappointed to find out these aren't gi joe tie ins

Page 251 to page 265 are the epilogue chapter. And another 3 pages for the notes.

It says in the notes: It was written after Campbell died for a memorial volume.

I've purchased the US release for $1.99 and it's fairly often on sale

https://www.amazon.com/City-Clifford-D-Simak-ebook/dp/B00YO78T1M/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?dchild=1&amp;keywords=open+road+media+simak&amp;qid=1600601722&amp;sprefix=open+road+media+&amp;sr=8-13

I found the following quote concerning farts in The Man in the High Castle which may serve as a motivation as to why he incorporates them.

> It's the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can't fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh.

Oh boy, you have to try H. Beam Piper, he was political as all heck. The link is to legal free downloads of many of his books, start with Space Vikings, The Cosmic Computer, and Little Fuzzy.

Thomas M. Disch, <em>The Genocides</em>.

Curiously, another early Disch novel, Camp Concentration, which sounds like it should be just as dark, actually isn't dark at all.

For a small time on the Humble Bundle Books there is this LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS Antology. Might proof a starting point for your Lovecraft quest?

Jack McDevitt has a great line of books you would probably enjoy. I'd start with The Engines of God, the first in the Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins series.

You can thank me later :)

Yes! I have that one also, found it at a market last year. Awesome illustrations. Hope you find one!

Here's some to start your search. Just depends on how much you want to spend. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=cowley&amp;sts=t&amp;tn=spacecraft&amp;x=0&amp;y=0

I'm reading a C.J. Cherryh classic: <em>Downbelow Station</em>, an early novel in her Alliance-Union universe.

I'm about 25% in and so far it's mediocre. I know Cherryh's books often have a slow start, so I keep going as long as I'm not bored. And so far she's showing an interesting universe, but she's painting a broad canvas, with a large cast. She's switching characters so often, that I'm not even sure who the main characters are supposed to be.

I do plan to follow this up with Cyteen, and if I enjoy that with other books in the Alliance-Union universe. Tho I do have a lot of other books on my to-read list, so who knows when that'll happen...

The Martian by Andy Weir. I can't recommend it enough, it's fantastic, and if you haven't already read it it sounds like you'd like it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804139024/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_at_ws_us?ie=UTF8

Possibly part of this anthology? Unfortunately out of print, and I've never been able to get my hands on a copy. If you like blue-collar sci-fi, check out Space Janitors on Youtube, its a great Star Wars parody that follows 2 janitors on a knockoff Death Star.

Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction is pretty great.

&#x200B;

https://www.amazon.com/Wesleyan-Anthology-Science-Fiction/dp/0819569550

It's in Gordon Van Gelder (ed), The Very Best of Fantasy &amp; Science Fiction: Anthology (2009).

An original hardback copy of the novella generally sells for $250-1000 USD on Amazon.

I love the first of the stories in 'The Great Ship' - it is called 'Alone'.

It is about a little robot probe that lands on the surface of the ship and spends about a million years wandering the ship all by itself. You can read the beginning of it on the Amazon Kindle page for the book.

&gt;Nobody knew Phil Dick. I have not found one person from Berkeley High who knew him. He was the invisible classmate.

I was just about to mention to OP that Philip K. Dick is the only other writer that gives me a sense of déjà vu on first reading.

I agree with you on the over-describing part and how he does world building. Further it's the fantasy elements that harm the science fiction for me. I don't mind the sex.

Personally I enjoyed the Greg Mandel stories quite a bit. You might try those.

Clean, the first Mindspace Investigations is probably what you're looking for.

I'd describe it as "hard boiled sci fi" or "urban sci fi". It hits a lot of the same points without ever feeling derivative to a series like Dresden Files.

I highly recommend them, and in writing this just realized that the third one has been released. So now I know what I'm reading next.

I just found this: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ge%3AScience+fiction You can filter by year in the "refine your search" menu. I kept clicking on "show more" and it went as far back as 1890. A lot of years are skipped between 1890 and 1943 but it's consistent between 1943 and today.

I like this one too because it classifies award winners and nominees by year, but I guess it falls into the "top..." type of classification: http://www.bestsfbooks.com/

/u/BewareTheSphere's recommendation is great. For non-Kindle reading, I use Pocket, which is a browser extension that saves stories/articles to a cleanly readable format in an app on your phone/tablet.

I read The Fifth Science by Exurb1a around the same time I discovered Ted Chiang, and found them pretty similar and definitely both great.

&#x200B;

https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Science-Exurb1a/dp/1796356301

Dion Fortune, a contemporary of Crowley wrote several novels about the occult that are at once informative and also funny. My sister describes them as "Bertie Wooster meets the occult"

The downside is that they generally have the same plot. They're also not particularly science fiction so may not be exactly what you're looking for.

The Goat Footed God is my personal favorite. There is also The Sea Priestess

Now for actual science fiction meeting the occult, I read this a couple of years ago and declared that if Dion Fortune and HG Wells had a baby while Lovecraft hid in the next room crying, it would be this book.

The Revolutions By Felix Gilman is fucking amazing. Amazeballs even. It's a novel about a Victorian Couple who get sucked into the world of the occult by a group attempting to transport themselves to Mars.

Here's the Amazon Link https://www.amazon.com/Revolutions-Novel-Felix-Gilman-ebook/dp/B00HL0MA64/ref=cm_cr-mr-img#navbar

Ben Bova wrote a book called Welcome to Moonbase. It's a manual for a working base on the moon. Not written as a future possibility, but as if it actually existed.

From the Amazon description, "the guidebook covers Moonbase history, architecture, ecology, transportation, science projects, jobs, training, industries, tourism, sports ("lunar jai alai"), entertainment, day-to-day life, duties, rights and laws."

I checked it out from the library when I was a kid, excited because it was by the editor of Omni magazine.

I enjoyed the heck out of it!

It's organized like a textbook. I remember being fascinated by his explanation of mining operations on the moon, going into detail about the mineral composition of rocks, and how they're transformed into the raw materials for construction and maintenance.

https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Moonbase-Ben-Bova/dp/0345328590

Ahem: I seem to recall there was another author involved in that book. Also, can I borrow the keys to your time machine? Because we only published it in 2012 ...

You can buy the ebook here if you want to throw some beer money our way (or download it for free if you don't).

Phillip K. Dick is another author whose writing you might enjoy. He wrote many short stories so you could start with a collection of those perhaps, if you haven't read him before.

Please also consider reading Stephen King's 'On Writing', and D.B.C. Pierre's 'Release the Bats'. It could be among the music and art you also take up writing.

I want an English translation of Del Squared so bad I can't see straight. It's soviet era cyberpunk written by a hilarious, bad ass, Russian mad scientist.

Gregory Benford's Timescape. I don't want to ruin the surprise but the depiction of a probably unavoidable ecological disaster of a future really unsettled me.

Classic space opera (and free book from archive.org):
<em>The Spacehounds of I.P.C.</em> (1947) Doc Smith

from Wikipedia:

>[Dr. 'Steve'] Stevens and Nadia [Newton] are now [stranded] on Ganymede, which just happens to be Earth-like right down to the edible plants and some wildlife that's pretty tasty when cooked up right. They have a large section of the liner Arcturus which is made mostly of high grade steel, but with plenty of copper, plastics, and almost every other type of material. Also it is just chock-full of electric motors, wire, electronic equipment, tools, etc. that Steve has scavenged from the other pieces of the ship on the way to Jupiter. In short, everything Dr. Stevens needs to construct an ultra-radio set capable of reaching the inner worlds and calling for help.

>Before he can even start building the radio he needs power. The accumulators were discharged landing them on Ganymede and they must be recharged before anything else can be done. While Steve uses the ship for raw materials to build a hydro-electric power plant and a power beaming station to recharge the accumulators, Nadia explores the area around where they landed.

The most infuriating would be from This Time of Darkness by H.M. Hoover, it was the first piece of dystopian fiction I ever read when I was a kid and it's really stayed with me.

[Spoiler](/s "A large section society of lives in squalor in large, dirty underground factory cities with only legends of an outside world. A section of society lives in clean glass domed utopian cities on the surface, believing the world outside the domes is poisonous, another section of society lives in the green zones supplying food for the rest of society. Each of these sections are kept ignorant of the existence of the others.")

Random acts of senseless violence by Jack Womack. : very near future dystopian fiction that portraits the collapse of the United States through the eyes of a young girl. This book is simply amazing and for some reason hardly anyone has heard of it...

Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha (just read Books 1-3 and then, if so inclined, read the prequels).

The book not only features very, very well told female characters but the world is also very unique. Don't expect the usual "tough chick in a man's world" shtick.

I read the first and have the second KOP book on my to-read list. I agree, it's really good. /u/starpilotsix already mentioned When Gravity Fails and Altered Carbon and I second those as well.

I second Weber's Safehold series as well as S.M. Sterling and Eric Flint (163x), you may also enjoy K.J. Parker's The Engineer Trilogy (not exactly hard SF, more technological fantasyish but cool) and of course H. Beam Piper's classic Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

The Time Machine is one of my favorite books. The next time you are at the library, ask the librarian to use Inter-Library Loan to get you a copy of Harry M. Geduld's book <em>The Definitive Time Machine</em>. It has alternate versions of the story, explanations of the cultural references, and (best of all) an extra unpublished chapter where the Time Traveler overshoots the present on his way back from the future and ends up in the middle of the English Civil War.

I desperately want to read Del Squared but it has never been translated. Supposedly it is the first Russian cyberpunk novel. Peter Vorobieff is a professor at my university and is absolutely hilarious. I have no idea if it (or his other book) was ever translated to Hungarian.

Today I started listening to this:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Gateways-Audiobook/B00HS5W620

I've only gotten into the David Brin story, which frankly I don't like very much, but I can tell was inspired by Gateway. Looking forward to the others.

When I read Gateway I don't think I really appreciated it. But it's one of those stories that I kept thinking about long after I read it.

Have a look at these lists of /r/printsf favorites:

/r/PrintSF Recommends Science Fiction Novels

Last year's survey

Since you seem to imply that you would only consider "new" books good then perhaps you should look at a list of new books - like say https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4893.Best_Science_Fiction_of_the_21st_Century

John Scalzi's Old Man's War or Daniel Suarez's Daemon may fit what you are looking for.

I never saw the appeal of Dune. I tried reading it when I was a kid in the 70s or 80s; I could say I finished the first two books or so, but what's more appropriate to say is that my eyes passed over all the pages without really retaining anything. I tried again recently last year (I think) and got maybe a third of the way in before throwing my hands up and saying 'this is still not for me'. Which is about how I reacted to the other Great Epic of the 60s, the Lord of the Rings. Couldn't slog through that thing either. And I read a ton of other SF/F, both stuff from the history of SF before my time, and stuff being written as I was growing up.

That said. You want something on the cutting edge? Try Hannu Rajaniem's The Quantum Thief and its two sequels. It is unrelentingly dense, hitting you with a constant torrent of the new and strange. It may well be utterly incoherent to someone who's coming to SF for the first time (which Dune certainly is not), but I've been reading SF since I was a kid in the 70s, and it's the first thing that gave me that delightful sensation of reading a book about The Future in years. The second and third volumes didn't give me as much of that, but they were still pretty delightful. It'll be interesting to see what he does for his next book.

There are probably other candidates but that is the only thing that really sticks out in my memory that isn't like ten years old. If I wasn't filtering for that I'd be pointing you to Stross's Accelerando and probably a few other things but I should be going to bed.

It's a famous collection of creepy stories, the first one from Ellison who is a renowned sci fi author. I recommend reading it! Looks like signed copies of this edition are going for $40-$150 abe books. Keep in mind though that that's what people are asking for it, those could sit there at that price for awhile, especially the $150 and up ones, more likely you could get 30-50 for it.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=harlan%20ellison&amp;sgnd=on&amp;tn=i%20have%20no%20mouth

Asimov's short story "Living space" is one of my all time favorites. It can be found in Earth Is Room Enough.

Extract: > There were an infinite number of possible Earths. Each existed in its own niche; its own probability pattern. Since on a planet such as Earth there was, according to calculation, about a fifty-fifty chance of life's developing, half of all the possible Earths (still infinite, since half of infinity was infinity) possessed life, and half (still infinite) did not. And living on about three hundred billion of the unoccupied Earths were three hundred billion families, each with its own beautiful house, powered by the sun of that probability, and each securely at peace. The number of Earths so occupied grew by millions each day.

> And then one day, Rimbro came home and Sandra (his wife) said to him, as he entered, "There's been the most peculiar noise."

I thought Gateway had a pretty interesting take on the discovery of FTL. Humans discover an alien space station with a bunch of ships with preprogrammed destinations, and not knowing how they work its basically a crapshoot - make a discovery and become wealthy or dont come back at all. Might no be as focused on FTL as you would like though.

Try Hull Zero Three.

It's not exactly Lovecraftian, but I recall it being pretty creepy? At least it jumped out into my brain when I read the post title.

I use Pocket for the same purpose. Not sure if it works on Kindle, but I absolutely love it. Having it on my phone is great because I can read stories while waiting in line, waiting for a bus, etc.

It's possible you could also use an RSS app on the Kindle to subscribe to Tor.com's stories feed.

Tor does a yearly free ebook of some of their best/most popular fiction. You can find 2015's here. It includes at least a couple of the Nebula nominees.

Try LibraryThing - it's a site that allows users to catalog their favorite books - it compares your choice(es) again users with similar tastes. Eerily accurate and i've found a lot of good authors that way.

• http://www.librarything.com/work/18501

You could try librarything, it's a social network for readers, the community 'tags' books with a number of keywords. If you have a concept or a subject that you can explain in one or two words, you'll be able to easily find other books that have been tagged with these words.

You could also try tvtropes.

It's available in ebook form: look for Three Tales from the Laundry Files. There's no current print edition, but I have long-term plans for a Laundry short story collection which include it (but unlikely before 2024).

(It was published in a signed hardcover limited edition by Subterranean Press back in 2014, because back then Tor.com were only acquiring rights for their website and non-exclusive ebook pub; they weren't doing novellas on paper.)

A novella-length nomination: Phoresis by Greg Egan.

Description from Amazon:

Welcome to Tvibura and Tviburi, the richly imagined twin planets that stand at the center of Greg Egan’s extraordinary new novella, Phoresis.

These two planets—one inhabited, one not—exist in extreme proximity to one another. As the narrative begins, Tvibura, the inhabited planet, faces a grave and imminent threat: the food supply is dwindling, and the conditions necessary for sustaining life are growing more and more erratic. Faced with the prospect of eventual catastrophe, the remarkable women of Tvibura launch a pair of ambitious, long-term initiatives. The first involves an attempt to reanimate the planet’s increasingly dormant ecosphere. The second concerns the building of a literal “bridge between worlds” that will connect Tvibura to its (hopefully) habitable sibling.

The remaining by D.J Molles.

Very good series. I recommend everybody to read at least the first book. Check the rating and reviews and you will see:

https://www.amazon.com/Remaining-D-J-Molles/dp/0316404152

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13431827-the-remaining

Blasphemy - By Douglas Preston was pretty good

https://www.amazon.com/Blasphemy-Novel-Wyman-Douglas-Preston/dp/0765349663/ref=nodl_

Not sure if it’s line what you’re looking for but talks about the Hadron Collider and talking to something on the other side.