The Dark Side of the Sun
As heir to a huge fortune, he had an excellent robot servant (with Man-Friday subcircuitry), a planet (the First Syrian Bank) as godfather, a security chief who even ran checks on himself, and on Dom's home world even death was not always fatal. Why, then, in an age when prediction was a science, was his future in doubt?
Stats for nerds
5recommend
9mentions
7people
2010–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Indeed. As an example, it's important they don't read David Brin's Uplift series, or Terry Pratchett's excellent The Dark Side of the Sun.
- Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you.
My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists:
Fiasco - Stanisław Lem
This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks
The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one)
Blindsight - Peter Watts
Bloom - Wil McCarthy
Good luck!
- To me, Lobsang and Sister Agnes (even as they appeared in The Long Cosmos) felt much more Discworld-y than did almost any part of Raising Steam.
I have fond memories of the ascendant of the Discworld series, Strata, which is IMO better than the book it’s riffing on (Ringworld). Likewise I enjoyed The Dark Side of the Sun, which riffs off a different theme from Known Space (though I don’t recall any of that theme ending as a theme in Discworld).
Good Omens was also another fantastic collaboration, between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
- Fun, light-hearted and enjoyable === Terry Pratchett. Strata and the Dark Side of the Sun if you’re looking specifically for Sci-fi. But if you haven’t read the Diskworld series, I envy you! I’d give anything to re-live the sheer ecstasy of reading Pratchett for the first time.
Already mentioned: H2G2 (ditto, would love to be able to read it again for the first time); Ender’s game and sequels; Rama (maybe more thought-provoking than light reading though); basically any Clarke book; basically any Stephenson book.
Another not-quite Sci-fi I’ll put out there is Stross’ Laundry files series: the love child of BOFH and Lovecraft, a really fun read with quite a few hat tips to IT.
- Well, if you want stand-alone + sci-fi, try "the Dark Side of the Sun".
Otherwise, you can pick up any first book from one of the Discworld story arks. Personally, I'd go with "Wyrd Sisters" (witches story ark) and the City Watch story ark. Although the first book in that series is "Guards! Guards!", I'd recommend starting with the Second book, "Men at Arms", which is more representative of the rest of the series, and just more fun AFAIC.
- Fiction, mostly.
Declare, by Tim Powers. Cold war espionage with black magic. Entertainingly bleak, and probably did a lot more weirdness with real history than I knew how to appreciate.
Producing Open Source Software (http://producingoss.com/), by Karl Fogel. A very thorough look into all sorts of practical matters in running a large open source software project.
The Engines of Light trilogy by Ken MacLeod. Entertaining, though a bit erratic. Makes a bunch of Forteana fit in a hard SF framework. Also the second MacLeod book I've read that has a weird pixie dust immortality treatment that seems incongruous with the rest of the technology level.
Matter by Iain M. Banks. Culture again after Algebraist. Still good.
The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett. Finally got around to reading this one. Was surprisingly fresh. It would have been interesting to see Pratchett write more science fiction after this and Strata around 30 years ago.
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. Another old SF book. This one wasn't very fresh, seemed like two or three different novels stapled together, with bits and pieces that might work pretty well if it weren't for the other bits and pieces.
Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Not a lot of surprises, if you know what Warren Ellis tends to write. Basically a road trip novel through various degeneracies in America. Fun, but tends to go for gross-out warrenellisisms in favor of overall coherence.
Neuropath by Scott Bakker. A technothriller about all sorts of fun things you can do by directly rewiring peoples' brains with near-future neurosurgery. Bakker's chilly philosophical outlook doesn't pack quite the same punch in an already mostly rationalistic setting as it did in the Prince of Nothing fantasy books. Sticks with a single not particularly unsympathetic viewpoint character and therefore avoids the problem in Prince of Nothing where you'd often end up in the head of someone you really don't want to be anywhere near.
The Tao is Silent by Raymond Smullyan. Smullyan writes various essays inspired by Taoism. Quality varies, but Smullyan is generally fun to read.
On SF by Thomas Disch. Beautifully acerbic essays by someone who takes science fiction literature seriously and doesn't let it off easy. And just plain likes to insult people. Representative, though noticeably dated sample: http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472068968-1.pdf
Denner's Wreck by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Watt-Evans has an specific style of writing from what follows from the setting and premises rather than going for the most dramatically obvious plot. The results are hit-and-miss with his fantasy novels I've read, but work a lot better here, where the legends of a bronze-age civilization end up emerging from a science fiction setting. Watt-Evans' narrative style supports the plot where the traditional stories end up not really being what they seem to be.
The Official Book of Ultima by Shay Addams. It tells how Richard Garriott's obsession with programming in high school lead to the Ultima game series, which were one of the most notable computer games in the 80s and became the flagship product of Garriott's Origin Systems company. Also documents how the games grew from Ultima I being programmed by Garriot alone learning as he went along into Ultima VI developed by a large team. There is much detail about Ultima VI, which was being developed as the book was written. Much of it also conflicts with the game that ended up being released, and I ended up wondering whether this was about the game changing during production or just Addams getting his facts wrong.
