Downbelow station
From back cover Daw paperback February 1981: Pell's Star occupied the central spot in the coming conflict between Earth's tired stellar empire and the tough onslaught of its rebellious colonies. Whoever controlled Pell's Downbelow station held the key to Earth's defensive perimeter -- or the jumping off point for a Terrestrial offensive to regain the lost empire. But Pell had always been neutral and was determined to remain so. This is a powerful, complex, and enthralling novel of interstellar conflict and ambitions. In its pages you will meet and strive with many vivid persons, human and non-human, who futures would hang on the outcome of that titanic struggle.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
8mentions
7people
2010–2026years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- City - Clifford D Simack
All of Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold
Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
Stand in Zanzibar John Bruner
Adiamante - LE Modesitt Jr
Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen
Known Space series by Larry Niven and ALL of his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle
Midshipman’s Hope by David Feintuch
Gateway - Fredrick Pohl
Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg
- Sci-fi/fantasy are overrepresented, but "narrowly-focused"? I'm interested in what you think that focus is?
Anyway, The Jungle is a classic by any measure, Dau is a classic, Downbelow Station and most of the rest of Cherryh's catalog, Horatio Hornblower, The Book of the New Sun, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Hyperion, Riddley Walker, Blindsight... I could keep going all night. Listing these off, I realize that I forgot Dostoevsky in my list. Paulo Coelho should probably be there too.
- This is one of several books I read in the 90s that I still think about and love so much. Startide Rising and Downbelow Station are the other ones that immediately springs to mind.
This book (and Startide Rising) are very much in the space opera camp. There's really no basis in physics for the zones in this book but I really love the ideas. I love the Tines. I also love the idea of the arms race that was unwittingly started on this world.
If you like the theme of sudden technological advance, I highly recommend CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series. They're sets of trilogies and I think it's up to ~15 books now? This series is set in the same world as Downbelow Station (tangentially). The central premise is that FTL jumping is possible but difficult. In this series, a group of would-be colonists awake from jump sleep to find they have no idea where they've jumped to. They can't get any star bearings and they end up ultimately settling on a world that has an alien species on it that technologically is around the 19th century. It's not a fast-paced series but I love the thoughtfulness and introspection of it.
- The only book I put aside without finishing (Downbelow Station by C.J.Cherryh) was recommended to me again years later and when I did pick it up I found it gripping.
I really recommend you try Report on Probability A again, it was one of the best books I ever read!
- You realize not a single person has mentioned a female author? Let's fix that:
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Among Others by Jo Walton
Feed by Mira Grant
The Hunger Games!
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Grass by Sheri S Tepper
Gate of Ivrael and Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
And the fabulous space opera:
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
- Probably the most surprising thing about this list is that whoever made it didn't insert Amazon affiliate links into it.
Anyway, these lists always raise the question of what does "good" mean exactly? Inevitably they're dominated by books that were, in their time, incredibly significant.
You see the same things in computing books. Someone will always recommend "Design Patterns" but (IMHO) it is the dullest, driest book you could ever read. The ideas were important. As a book it's terrible.
Science fiction falls into a number of categories.
The first is space opera. This is basically a tale of adventure in a science fiction environment. Sometimes these books have some kind of message but most of the time they don't. They're typically the "Terminator 2" of books: they can be hugely entertaining, sometimes even really significant, but often don't have much substance.
Don't take that as a criticism. Stephen Donaldson's "Gap" series was, for me, a fantastic series but it really is simply space opera style entertainment.
The second is what I call "hard science fiction". It's the sort of sci-fi where the story is a backdrop for some physics. Ringworld is an example of this (as are most of Niven's works).
This is a genre I thought largely dead (with its height in the 60s and 70s) until I read Alastair Reynolds. His books have more of a story than, say, Niven's but they're still largely rooted in our current understanding of physics.
The third is what I call "literary science fiction". Literature, traditionally, was used as a means of talking about something that normally couldn't be talked about. Plays in the Shakespeare's time filled this role. Nowadays it's not so much that talking about these things is verboten, it's that the story can be an accessible way of discussing a topic that an essay never could.
Stranger in a Strange Land is very much in this category. It's almost only sci-fi by association. It does have the hallmarks of its age, most notably mental powers (a common zeitgeist in 60s sci-fi). This book probably had the same effect on society that, say, Pacific cultures did on Victorian English society.
In the 80s cyberpunk was born. Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) "takeover" of Western society. It's actually very xenophobic but it does reflect the dystopian fears of the time. Cyberpunk has waned in recent years as the xenophobia has and the realization that this isn't the future.
Does this make pioneering books in this field like Neuromancer "good"? Personally I thought that if you ignore the pioneering part, it was a fairly average book. Here again is the power of nostalgia I think (as I read it some years after it came out).
So I find many books on this list that are (IMHO) overrated, largely for nostalgic reasons.
I also find some authors missing that really should be represented, most notably the prolific CJ Cheeryh whose books Downbelow Station and Cyteen are both noteworthy and stand the test of time.
Some books on this list stand the test of time very well. Ender's Game, any of the Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, Hyperion to name a few.
