Hey all!

It's been a while... but I thought it would be fun to try and revive this community a little bit! So I'll go first and talk about what I've been reading. Well, technically what I've been listening to since this is all the audiobooks I finished while grinding out the miles. My one rule is that I can't listen to an audiobook unless I'm running (it's a little treat for me doing the work.) So if I'm listening to a bad book there's more of a chance I drop it and physically read it later. I try not to DNF books if at all possible so I can fully judge the entire story.

Waterblack - Alex Pheby

Now this is arguably not speculative fiction... or arguably is once you get more through the book... it's confusing actually. Anyway, a friend recommended the first book in this series (Mordew) when it came out and I really enjoyed it! I did not like the second book so much, it felt like such a slog to get through. Waterblack... it was ambitious. I think there were things I liked and things I very much didn't like, but overall if you want something different in "dark fantasy" this might be the series for you. Hard to talk about this book without spoiling the whole series though so I will just leave it at that, it's different, ambitious and I respect Pheby for trying it out!

***House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds ***

Holy SHIT -- fucking loved this book. I am obsessed with this self-contained story. I have read a few Reynolds books, mostly the famous Revelation Space series. I didn't really like Revelation Space, I am more of a fan of The Culture by Banks and I felt like Reynolds didn't do as good a job world building and also I am just generally a Banks-stan. I kind of dropped off Reynolds and that was a mistake because damn this book has one of the best self-contained stories I feel like I have read in a long, long time. Truly a special gem in his bibliography in my opinion. This book had me running extra miles just to get through more of it. The world-building was incredible, the pace was perfect and just in general the story was intriguing and the suspense was top-notch. I felt really, really engaged the entire time and just in general hats off to Reynolds!

Roadside Picnic - Arkady Strugatsky

This book was a blind spot for me... I had never read it but knew a lot about the story since I played a decent amount of S.T.A.L.K.E.R when that game came out. I thought I would pick it up and it was worth it. Truly another engaging book that kept me out running extra miles. The story is so creative and the world is just intriguing. I really enjoy books that don't hold your hand and just throw you in the world and let your mind figure it out. If you haven't read this one yet, highly recommend. I think the soviet-era writing is a nice break from normal western speculative fiction and really challenging some preconceived notions I had.

The Dragon Never Sleeps - Glen Cook

This one was fun! I read Black Company from a friend's recommendation and hated it, then read it again and loved it so I thought I would try out Cook's science fiction book and honestly... really enjoyable! I wouldn't say good... but it's fun! It's kind of cliche in some points and a slog in a few places but Cook just has a fun prose that is enjoyable to me. Highly recommend if you want something different from the "creator" of dark fantasy. It was interesting to see his take on what he thinks sci-fi is!

Thanks for making this far, please post what you've been reading recently I would love to get this community back up and going!

The shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award was published a few days ago and I missed it! Links go to openlibrary pages. Most of these novels don't have fully fleshed out pages though on there though... :(

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Extremophile by Ian Green

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf

I have been trying to put into words how I feel about this novel by Greg Egan. This novel leans very far into the "hard sci-fi" side of the spectrum and it isn't for everyone. Egan is a mathematician and a software engineer and those areas of expertise are relied on heavily to craft the world we inhabit in Diaspora. I have read this twice now, both times enjoying the technical masterpiece of Egan's world. The beginning is tough to read, it is slow and extremely verbose. There's no hand holding in the conceptual world you have been thrown into. If you are having trouble, the Wikipedia page is helpful to lean on and the glossary in the back of the book is a must to reference in the earlier chapters. As you get the hang of the world though, the story just flows forward. I enjoyed the pacing and characters journeys as well as the general theme of the novel. Highly recommended if you enjoy a technical and dense sci-fi novel.

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL26513113W/Time_Shelter_-_a_Novel?edition=key%3A/books/OL35858097M

New short story from Ken Liu published by Tor.com.

cross posted from https://aussie.zone/post/1331956 with an edited title

This novella fits well under the larger umbrella of speculative fiction I think. It feels like magical realism with a touch of science fiction and having fairy tale elements.

I also enjoyed Noor and I plan to check out the author’s Binti trilogy.

Would recommend checking one of these out for something a little bit different!

Throwing Rocks: Without spoiling the plot, what are some good books that involve the threat of weaponizing a planet’s gravity well against its population?

Please if possible don’t specify whether the event actually happens in the book to keep it a mystery.

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/270743 !fiction@literature.cafe

I have been reading the English translations and the characters and especially their dialogues feel very fake. I do appreciate the hard science aspect of the books but the long monologues, kids speaking like middle-aged philosophers, and army personnel being one-dimensional macho men breaks the immersion for me. It has the depth of a 1980s low-budget thriller.

I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction or translations of Chinese books. I don’t know if this is genre-related.

Currently working my way through The Glass Planet by Christopher Zyck. It's been a very enjoyable and interesting read. Reminds me a little bit of Foundation in the way it tells the story through millennia. I have such a soft spot for grand scale stories like this, they are difficult to get right.

Okay I just read this book and I cannot stop thinking about it and just wanted to mind dump a bunch of random thoughts. This is probably more in a c/weirdlit community but I don't have one of those and I have this one so here we are.

This book is a trip, like wtf I had to read it twice to even get an idea of what was going on. I don't think I've ever really touched any literature that made me feel so uncomfortable and weird after. Just a real breakdown of normal writing and tropes and I loved it.

I still kinda just have no idea what happened or what didn't happen. I am of the opinion right now that it was a drug induced psychotic break with some real in and out of reality. That's fine and cool but what I really loved about this book is just the world. The "ice" is stressful and impending but we don't even really know what people are talking about, we just get it. I feel like there's a human like fear of the danger present by the human emotions presented to us. Even if none of this was real, it felt so real. The journey felt so real.

Anyone else read this book and want to have a conversation on what the hell this is about?

Truly devastating news, I know I'm late.

I'm very interested in seeing this story translated to a screen and wow the art work shown off here is incredible.

Plot (minimal spoilers)

In the 1800, at the hight of the English colonial empire, a Chinese boy called Robin is taken away from his motherland to study translation at Oxford, where translation is the key to the magical silver works. At Oxford, he is confronted with deep-rooted discrimination. There, he finds friendship and, after all, a sense of belonging. But the Empire's greed knows no bounds, and Robin will have to make difficult choices.

Commentary

This book is a masterpiece, a tapestry of words woven with many theme, each complementing and expanding the others. The recurring theme is language, but that’s just the beginning. This book talks about friendship, about happy days, dedication and success, it talks about exploitation, capitalism, colonisation and deep-seated rage. It uses an empathic, charming writing to talk about harsh truths that are hard to confront. As a reader, you get lulled in, starting the story with a fairly standard beginning for a coming of age story with a steam punk setting, but you soon find yourself in a very different literary landscape, a landscape rarely explored with this much talent.

I have been on a kick recently looking at novels where ideas become "entities" and this novel is an interesting look at what constitutes a "city".

I’ve rarely seen the term “speculative fiction” being used, so I don’t really have an idea of what it encompasses. Would someone care to explain? I remember “Anathem” being described as such - and by the way: what an amazing book! I recommend it to all nerds, in particular those into history/philosophy/scifi.