Cyteen
From back cover Warner paperback February 1989: ARIANE EMORY IS DEAD. BUT NOT FOR LONG. WHERE IS ARIANE? For fifty years, Dr. Ariane Emory has dominated politics on Cyteen Station. Because Dr. Emory controls Reseune, a city-sized factory that creates the one item essential to the planet's wealth. Reseune produces people -- computer-trained azi servants and soldiers. Then Araine Emory is assassinated. Yet her rivals and victims, people like Dr. Jordan Warrick, his cloned son Justin, and Justin's azi brother Grant, are not freed by her death. For Emory's murder has turned Reseune into a vast, tyrannical experiment: an attempt to merge nature -- and nurture... biotech -- and cybernetics... genetics -- and psychology... heredity -- and environment. Cyteen's labs can grow clones, but Ariane Emory's followers want more. Much more. The want to re-create Ariane.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
8mentions
7people
2011–2023years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- His Masters Voice by Stanislav Lem
Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers
Cyteen by CH Cherryh
- I'll plug some excellent work that is underrepresented here:
CJ Cherryh's "Cyteen". Won the Hugo for best novel in '89. The backdrop is Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe -- which is arguably one of those classic "cold war in space" type space opera settings of science fiction of a certain vintage -- but that conflict isn't the focus of this novel. Cyteen is set in the research organisation that designs, grows and conditions the "azi" clone slave caste that generates population of labourers and specialists required to keep the Union society running. I found it initially slow going, but it turned out to be one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The plot is a kind of coming-of-age / political-intrigue / murder mystery tale. Not a space opera - power games, paranoia, abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyteen
Yoon Ha Lee's "Ninefox Gambit" (first of a trilogy, each book in the trilogy shortlisted for Hugo best novel 2017/2018/2019). Space opera / military sci-fi. The political stability of the empire depends upon adherence to the empire's standard 'calendar', which is maintained through ritual torture of heretics. Much exotic technology depends upon calendric properties, and fails in regions where populations are following a nonstandard heretical calendar. The outcomes of battles depend not only on how many fleets or waves of infantry can be expended, but each side's mathematical ability to understand the local calendrical properties and adapt their tactics and technology accordingly. The plot follows a military officer's mission to quash a rebellion at a key star fortress -- and her attempt to improve the chances of success by having the mind of a dead undefeated war-criminal general loaded into her head. Space opera / military sci-fi.
Arkady Martine's "A Memory Called Empire" (won Hugo best novel in 2020). A tiny independent station sends a replacement diplomat into the heart of a neighboring empire, in an attempt to direct the empire's attention elsewhere and maintain independent station sovereignty, and discover what happened to the previous diplomat. Backdrop is suitable for a space opera, the story is political intrigue. The station society is one where memories and personalities can be artificially recorded and stored, and then re-implanted into future generations to preserve skills and knowledge. The novel explores attraction and intoxication with the culture and language of a dominant foreign power that is threatening to engulf one's own home.
- Recommended reading: Cyteen by CJ Cherryh. The geniuses in this universe are called “specials” and enjoy special rights.
I still think that sci-fi novels are the best material covering the ethics of science.
- (in case of curiousity, all of these books are intended for mature adults)
Science Fiction:
Ursula le Guin - The Found and the Lost - this one will be higher impact if you're North American, but it works anywhere. Pretty much any of her books are mind bending and perspective opening. Not that they'd help become a better computer developer say - but you'd probably be a wiser person for the exposure.
C.J.Cherryh - Cyteen - on individual, on programming personality and more.
C.J.Cherryh - Voyager in Night. (on a perspective on alien thinking)
(author has a lot of excellent books as writes for an intelligent and well educated audience. I will note neither are easy reads and the second might be harder to get through)
Nonfiction:
T.E.Lawrence - 7 pillars of wisdom. (watching "Lawrence of Arabia" doesn't hurt either, they sync reasonably well). He was a deeply cynical atheist in a whole series of very violent episodes that shape life in the modern world more than you'd think. This one more for a perspective on history than changing one's own view of the world.
(edited for presentation only)
- CJ Cherryh, Cyteen (and then the rest of the Merchanter universe).
Iain M Banks, Player of Games (and then everything else)
For cyberpunk, Neuromancer and the sprawl trilogy have not aged terribly well. I still like them, but they're from a certain context.
Try Greg Egan's Permutation City; Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather, Islands in the Net, or Holy Fire.
Lauren Beukes, Zoo City.
There are so, so many ... ;-)
- I've read CJ Cherryh's Cyteen maybe 20 times.
