
On the remote planet Solaria the first murder for two hundred years has been committed. The Solarians are Spacers with a civilisation based on robots instead of slaves - and some pretty weird taboos and phobias. Into this strange set-up comes Terran detective Elijah Baley, assigned to find the murderer and act as an investigator for his government. But as an Earthman, Baley finds aspects of life on Solaria difficult, even terrifying, to cope with. (Men on Earth live deep underground in their vast caves of steel and are terrified of anything outside.) From the moment of his arrival on Solaria, Baley's investigation becomes an ordeal of nerves under the pitiless glare of the naked sun...
This definitely doesn't fit the category of recent, but I've been really enjoying working my way through some Asimov classics. If you haven't read Asimov I'd highly recommend him.
Give the Elijah Baley series a try first: - Caves of Steel - Naked Sun - Robots of Dawn
and then move right on to the Foundation series.
I'd second the other recommendation for Three Body Problem, though the third book went a little crazy at the end for me :-)
I've also been really enjoying reading some Verner Vinge novels: - A fire upon the deep - A deepness in the sky - The Children of the Sky
The Robot novels are also a top read and tie in with the later Foundation books in a satisfying way:
- The Caves of Steel
- The Naked Sun
- The Robots of Dawn
- Robots and Empire
[0] http://www.howtoflyahorse.com/what-coke-contains/
Now I'm starting "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov, having read "Caves of Steel" a few months ago. I don't know why I've never read Asimov before, but wow, the worlds and characters he creates are amazing.
As far as technical books go, I'm working on "Build Your Own AngularJS" by Tero Parviainen. I'm only a few chapters in, but enjoying it.
These are without a doubt my favourite of Asimov's books :)
Earth has evolved to a point where the population lives in Cities (capitalisation is important!) -- massive, hundreds of square miles completely enclosed with no outside areas at all. They might as well be space stations.
Transit within these cities takes place on 'strips' for local transport -- think of them as 'lanes' on a freeway. The first strip you step on to is an acceleration strip (onramp), which gets you up to speed to then step onto faster strips.
There's also an "Expressway", which is basically a metro, which you step onto from the fastest strip (I think there is an acceleration strip too) which takes over when you want to go longer distances.
Then for even longer distances you have aircars (planes!).
It's a really good system, but only for highly, highly urbanised areas. I think there's only 2 or 3 cities on the planet at the moment truly dense enough. New York, and perhaps central London.
