Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
4people
2012–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Only recent in relation to the classics, but I really enjoyed the following (the years are approximate). There are others, but I've listed these ones specifically because those others have already been recommended elsewhere in the thread whereas these may get missed.
- Adam Roberts: New Model Army (2010?)
- Hiroshi Sakurazaka: All You Need is Kill (2005?)
- Mike Resnick: The Dark Lady (2015?)
- KC Alexander: Necrotech (2015?)
- Gary Gibson: Stealing Light, Nova War, and Empire of Light (2013?)
- Linda Nagata: The Last Good Man (2015?)
- I enjoy Adam Roberts, and he doesn't tend to get much mention on HN. I particularly enjoyed Salt and New Model Army.
I also enjoy Allen Steele, and again he doesn't get much mention on HN. I really enjoyed the Coyete series, although many people get stuck on the lack of science in them.
I don't know about underrated, but I also loved reading Interzone when I was younger, and the anthologies are great if you can get hold of them.
- Adam Roberts has a few parody books (eg "The Soddit"). He also has some good science fiction books. I particularly enjoyed Salt, and New Model Army.
- > The Civil War and "Glorious Revolution" don't really fit a modern revolutionary politics mode. Fundamentally they're part of the older Reformation politico-religious conflict. Also they were elite-driven rather than popular.
On one level, this is true but, as I learned from reading Murray Bookchin’s excellent The Third Revolution - Volume 1, the Civil War story is more nuanced than that. During the English Civil War(s), there were a number of factions on the republican side: the Levellers and Diggers were the more radical, with popular and progressive goals such as universal suffrage, land reform (agrarian socialism), equality, freedom of religion, etc. while the Grandees were the officer class of the New Model Army whose interests were those of the parliamentarian elites who wanted to maintain – and extend – their traditional power as feudal lords.
The book covers the political struggle over the future of Britain without a ruling monarch (see the Putney Debates¹). Unfortunately, the Grandees were the ultimate winners of this struggle within the New Model Army. They maintained their position of privilege while the more radical factions were sidelined. And history remembers the victors.
- I immediately thought of the book "New Model Army":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575083638/
"A giant has brought war to the fields and towns of England's heartland. When the British army brings in air support and deploys heavy weapons he simply melts away, only to form again somewhere else and deliver another devastating blow. He is called Pantegrel, and he is a New Model Army—a giant whose thoughts flow through countless wireless connections, whose intelligence comes from the internet and real-time camera updates, whose mind is made up of thousands of minds, each deciding what he will choose to do. He has chosen the joy of the fight, and his fury is truly democratic—he is me and you. This is a terrifying vision of a near future war as new technologies allow the world's first truly democratic army to wrest control from the powers that be..."
