About half way through Revelation Space by Reynolds.
Enjoying it so far.
I’m finishing up Permutation City, then onto Distress (both by Greg Egan), then the Revelation Space series is next in my list! It’s been there for a while, looking forward to reading it.
Have you read any other hard sci-fi lately you can recommend? I’m getting close to the end of several lists I just scraped off the internet for “best hard sci-fi”, so I might have already read it, but in case I haven’t, I’m always looking to add things to my reading list!
When I run out of other things to read, I already have all 6 Dune books on standby…
I bet you’ve already read some Iain M Banks? If not, that’s an obvious choice.
I’m not sure if I read a lot of hard sci fi, but I’ve read some maybe semi-hard good stuff over the years.
Tried Gregg Bear’s Eon series?
Juice by Tim Winton was good.
I loved Gateway by Pohl, but don’t bother with the sequels.
Roadside Picnic by the Russian brothers? Super weird and intriguing.
J. G. Ballard? Alfred Bester? China Meiville?
This is all pretty mainstream stuff, I bet you’ve read it all.
Huh, I’ve actually read NONE of those things, and none of it even looks familiar from the lists I saw.
Over the last 2 years since I started reading again I’ve blasted through Hannu Rajaniemi, Poul Anderson, Peter Watts, Richard Morgan, Amy Thomson, William Gibson, Dennis E. Taylor, Robert L. Forward, qntm…
The only authors left in my reading list are Alastair Reynolds and Vernor Vinge.
Looks like my reading list is about to expand significantly! Thanks! I’m not super picky with what I read, and I tend to enjoy pretty much anything. I think the only thing I haven’t enjoyed to the point of not even finishing the series was Liu Cixin’s trilogy. I read The 3 Body Problem because everyone says you just have to read it, but it just felt like a slog to me and I never picked up the next book, I think mostly just due to the way the novel translates to English.
A bunch of the Murderbot Diaries books. They are short, but fun.
I’ve been reading Human Acts by Han Kang. It’s a sad and touching book about the Gwangju massacre and its effect on people. A couple of months ago I read The Vegetarian by the same author, she’s quickly becoming one of my favourite writers.
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The Dr I work with was begging people in the office to read The Empyrean series so she’d have someone to talk about them with. I am working my way through the most recent one now, Onyx Storm.
A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit
If you’re affected by the nature of the times we’re in, I cannot recommend this book enough.
I’m halfway through Bible and the Transgender Experience, by Linda Herzer.
The title is intriguing. What’s it like?
It’s been incredibly informative. The author starts off by stating plenty of other books talk about the “LGB” letters (sexual orientation), but she’s focusing on the “TQI” letters (internal identity of self). Additionally, the most important thing in reading/studying/applying Biblical scriptures is understanding the context of them.
Some super-condensed highlights of the book:
- Discussion of exclusion (of outsiders, specifically non-Hebrew, women, eunuchs, etc.) in the Old Testament for the purpose of protecting the identity and purity of patriarchal Hebraic society vs. the radically-different inclusion brought about through Jesus in the New Testament.
- The application of Deuteronomy 22:5 against cross-dressing (A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing…) is based on a mis-translation of the original text. The original word for “clothing” is keli; other appearances of this word include vessel, receptacle, armor, tool. The word for “man” is geber, or warrior. Thus, a better understanding of the text is “women should not wear a man’s armor”. Another interpretation is not to cross-dress for the purpose of pagan worship, which was popular amongst other religions at the time.
- “God created them male and female” in Genesis is not an argument that only male and female identities exist and anything else is against his plan.
- The author questions why some medical body changes are culturally-accepted (Botox, breast augmentation/reduction, teeth whitening, hair dye, etc.), but HRT for trans* individuals is unacceptable for some people.
- Gender-variant individuals in the Bible: Jacob (who appeared very feminine compared to his “manly” brother Esau); Joseph of the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fame (the original words for the “ornate robe” that he wore were ketonet passim, and the only other usage of those words appear in Tamar’s story, where she wore “the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king” wore. Thus: Joseph the flamboyant cross-dresser); Deborah, the judge and prophet (but women at that time were property, so she was doing some serious gender-defying; other eunuchs that play a major role in their stories.
That sounds absolutely amazing. Adding it to my reading list.
Rereading Ender’s Game. I had first read it when camping years ago and somehow misplaced it when I was 5 pages from the end of the book. I was so salty about it that I never picked up another copy to finish it until now.
I think it’s good that I waited because the political B plot hits home with the state of the world today.
Edit: I finished the book tonight. I was not prepared for that kind of trauma.
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Reading “El Eternauta” original comic and the first Marvel Collection of Ghost Rider.
I finished Call for the Dead over the weekend and started The Black Company after seeing a bunch of comments about in a post. The writing is choppy, there’s entirely too much literal quaking in their boots, and far too many tortured, menacing souls with good hearts… but the story is good enough and I bought an omnibus so I expect that I’ll finish it.
I’ve also got The Worldbreaker Saga on hold. The writing is superb, the world building is amazingly novel, it’s mercifully free of Idiot Plot… and I just can’t bring myself to care about any of the characters. I have to force myself to read it, so I read other books between chapters. It’s a real conundrum for me, because there’s literally nothing in it that I object to; it’s really technically excellent. I’m almost more interested in why I’m so apathetic about it.
After Black Company I’ll probably go pick up the next Smiley novel from Le Carré. I’d been reading the later Karla novels out of order and hadn’t read any of the early ones so I’m doing a methodical job this time.
On multi media, we’re watching Murderbot, Andor (on recommendation, Apple’s doing their Idiot Plot thing again and we may drop it if things don’t get less stupid within the next couple of episodes), and I’ve got the 2011 Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy queued up. I generally watch the Buster Scruggs “episode” once a month or so; it’s only 20 minutes, and I love it.
For games, I finished Factorio: Space Age a couple of months ago, and I fire it up a couple of times a week to make sure the factory always grows. Most recently I expanded the base on Aquilo, which is astonishingly tedious. It’s a good sign I’m going about it the wrong way, so I may have to change tactics.
Lemmy consumes waaay too much time. I fired up my AP server node again after experimenting with it for several months half a year ago; I guess I have to accept I’m just not a microblog kind of guy. Otherwise, RSS feeds. I read a lot of technical specs and essays. One interesting monograph I’ve been working through is about an interlingua for computers. It’s very dense.
I Roved Out is slowly progressing. I know it’s supposed to be porn, but for a while the art and story was the prime motivator and it was so compelling despite so much porn content. The new book is, just, all porn, and I’m losing interest; I begin to wonder whether Alexis knows where it’s going, because it feels as if he’s padding. He’s got a lot of stories to tie up, and none of them are making any real progress. I hope he gets back on track; maybe his metrics say the prurient content gets him more readers, but honestly I just want the story to continue. There’s plenty of other sources of porn, but good, novel ideas are as rare as angel tears. Anyway, I visit that every couple of weeks to see what’s new.
Also on the web comic front, I binged Three Panel Soul last week. I still haven’t caught up to today (or the end?), but it’s repeating itself more and more so I go back and read a few every couple of days but I’m not binging it anymore. SMBC, XKCD, Oglaf in feeds and as they’re released.
For music, I’m a comfort eater. Most days I have Tomita or Jean Michel-Jarre on in the background, although about once a week I’ll have an Otyken spasm and listen to that on repeat a few times.
Just finished Worm not long ago! I really liked it. :) https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon
https://comick.io/comic/01-skeleton-soldier-couldn-t-protect-the-dungeon
Latna Saga: Survival of a Sword King
https://comick.io/comic/01-survival-story-of-a-sword-king-in-a-fantasy-world
Eternally Regressing Knight
I recently finished The Three Body Problem and loved it, so I’m reading anything I can find from Cixin Lui on libby now - which this week means Supernova Era. Super interesting so far, feels like the novelization of a thought experiment and I’m here for it.
