6 ms·

Ask HN: Best scifi of 2017? (Vernor Vinge/Larry Niven style)

79 points by hyperpallium 9y ago

drmpeg 9y ago
Although I very much like hard sci-fi, my favorite this year was the "Broken Earth" trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky) from N.K. Jemisin.
- davidgould 9y ago
  I finished these a few days ago and they keep coming back in my thoughts and make me consider things from new perspectives. I also really liked Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series, particularly the first, Ancillary Justice.
- aaronbrethorst 9y ago
  Seconded. Really remarkable series. Jemisin has a refreshingly unique perspective and voice.
- geoah 9y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Wandering earth (short stories) again by Liu Cixin is also amazing. Blindsight is also worth a shot!
charlietran 9y ago
Ninefox Gambit / Raven Strategem were great, my favorite military sci-fi since Old Man's War.
- moomin 9y ago
  The Red Trilogy is very good military sci-fi as well. I may have accidentally consumed the entire thing in a week.
zengid 9y ago
Not really Vinge/Niven style, but Weir's new one Artemis was a fun read. Also, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 was a lighthearted and somewhat optimistic take on humans who have coped with the inevitability of climate change.
- girvo 9y ago
  Lighthearted, but cynical all the same. Excellent read, 2140; I highly recommend it!
sandGorgon 9y ago
weird question - is there any scifi around finance ? Cryptocurrency, etc. I feel it is weird that almost every piece of tech has had a scifi runway leading to it (VR, AI, robots, clean energy, etc)... but not finance. Maybe I'm missing something
- teraflop 9y ago
  You might want to check out Accelerando by Charles Stross. It predates Bitcoin and the subsequent explosion of cryptocurrencies, but it touches on some similar ideas, e.g. quasi-artificially-intelligent autonomous corporations. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...
  - xhedley 9y ago
    “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every interstellar colony in search of good fortune must be in need of a banker”. Neptune’s Brood also by Charles Stross has slow money transferred between two star systems requiring authentication from a third system. The plot is what happens when a transaction has not been completed. Also robots. And pirates.
- monocasa 9y ago
  There's Daemon by Daniel Suarez that I think directly inspired the DAO.
- Mtinie 9y ago
  It’s not exactly crypto currency as we know it, but Charles Stross’s “Neptune’s Brood”[0] spends a lot of time discussing the challenges of interstellar finance. ——- [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15985402-neptune-s-brood https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15985402-neptune-s-brood
  - moomin 9y ago
    Definitely the geekiest finance/sci-fi book out there.
amorphid 9y ago
If these count, I enjoyed: - The Expanse (season 2) - Sense8 (season 2) - Alien Covenant
- kurthr 9y ago
  Well, The Expanse books certainly count and there's a bunch of them! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
bduerst 9y ago
Not really 2017, but Iron Gold comes out in four days. It's the follow up to the Red Rising series, a Roman dystopian on Mars type story, which I highly recommend.
uxcolumbo 9y ago
Not sure whether you're asking for scifi published in 2017 or scifi we enjoyed in 2017. Here is the scifi I enjoyed in 2017 (via audible) - We are Legion (bob) trilogy About AI, space and Von Neumann machines http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ - Ready Player One About life later in this century. Lots of VR and references to nostalgia from the 80s and beyond
- ConceptJunkie 9y ago
  Yeah, both these books are very fun, with enough hard science to be believable, but still very accessible. My only disappointment with the Bob books was that they ended. "Ready Player One" was full of naked eighties nostalgia fan service, but that suits me just fine. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Wil Wheaton (speaking of eighties nostalgia...), and he's a great reader who brought real enthusiasm to his reading. Given that Spielberg is at the helm, the movie should be awesome.
stormbeta 9y ago
The Terra Ignota series (Too Like the Lightning / Seven Surrenders, and Will to Battle which came out last year). Not only is it very different in tone/style from most traditional SF I've read, it also doesn't restrict itself to just tech/physical science - it explores social and political science what-ifs too. I'd be hard pressed to name any other book I've read in the last year (or more) that's had me pause so often just to think on the ideas presented.
- jpereira 9y ago
  Absolutely loved this book, though I thought the best parts of it were the influx of ideas and worldbuilding in the first 3/4ths of Too Like the Lightning. The last quarter seemed to rush to tie together the threads laid down and I felt that carried over into Seven Surrenders. Of course I think my approach to reading it also changed as I was eagerly awaiting that resolution. Haven't picked up Will to Battle yet, but very excited for it.
  - lucian1900 9y ago
    I felt that Will to Battle improved over the middle book, although I liked all three regardless.
myhf 9y ago
Dichronauts by Greg Egan (adventures in non-Euclidean space) Provenance by Ann Leckie (space opera) The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (similar themes to Anathem)
- girvo 9y ago
  > Provenance by Ann Leckie I really really wanted to like this, but I just couldn't. Not my style unfortunately, but everyone keeps suggesting it so it's likely me that's the problem.
  - myhf 9y ago
    I liked how it drilled deep into themes that were important to the cultures in the story, which were very human cultures but not any specific Earth cultures. It was a glimpse into a small part of a large, coherent world. But you have to like the characters or you can't get anywhere. People have described Stephen Baxter novels in similar ways, but I can't stand any of the characters.
    - johnchristopher 9y ago
      That's interesting, I love Baxter's works and characters but finishing Ancillary's first book took me months and was painful. I liked the universe and the themes so I ended up reading the wikipedia summaries of the rest of the serie.
      - johnchristopher 9y ago
        It just came to my mind that I like the manifold trilogy way more than the xelee cycle though.
- isoprophlex 9y ago
  Dichronauts, biggest mindfuck of 2017 for sure! (it's highly recommended, just keep pen and paper ready to grok all the non-euclidian shenanigans)
maxdo 9y ago
Iphuck 10 by Victor Pelevin, about AI detective working in the art industry
- mlvljr 9y ago
  Was it translated?
Negitivefrags 9y ago
"Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch is an excellent read that has a lot of twists and turns. It's quite dark in places. "We Are Legion" by Dennis Taylor is a very light hearted and easy to read. "The Collapsing Empire" by John Scalzi is a space opera that I quite enjoyed.
bufferoverflow 9y ago
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/107855 https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/107855 https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-books-2017 https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-...
moomin 9y ago
Fantasy, but you’re missing out if you don’t read City of Stairs. Great thriller.
walkingolof 9y ago
I'm reading "Surface Details" by Iain M Banks, love the Culture series !
roryisok 9y ago
I didn't think a question like this would get any attention on HN let alone hit the front page! :) Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi was one of my favourites last year
chirau 9y ago
I was expecting movies and shows... How about those though?
SimonPStevens 9y ago
Don't know about year of release, but these are sci-fi books I enjoyed reading this year... The book of strange new things (Michel Faber). This isn't typical sci-fi, it's hard to describe. It's quite slow paced. I can't really talk about it without spoiling it. I really felt impacted by it though, I think the book has a deeper philosophy that isn't really mentioned but requires thinking about the meaning. I thoroughly recommended it if you are willing to be thoughtful about a book and not just after laser and space battles. Another book by the same author (under the skin) is also good, and has been turned into a very weird film with Scarlet Johansson. Other good more conventional sci-fi stuff... Extracted series (R.R. Haywood) Not alone (Craig a. Falconer) Themys files series (sylvain neuvel) We are legion series (Dennis E. Taylor)
anotherevan 9y ago
The Aeon 14 novels following Tanis Richards[1] have been a consistently good read. The Intrepid Saga and The Orion War series. Haven't ventured into the other offshoots as yet. The Dome Trilogy[2] was also pretty good, as are the Rho Agenda series[3][4][5]. The Bobiverse trilogy[6] (We Are Legion (We Are Bob)) I was a bit dubious about when I started, but ended up enjoying immensly. The Wrong Unit[7] wasn't a bad little humorous tale. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected-rain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected-rain [3] https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda [4] https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda-inception https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda-incep... [5] https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda-assimilation https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda-assimilat... [6] https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse [7] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit
- mlwarren 9y ago
  I second the Bob suggestion. Thought it could to be to silly at first but it's really well rounded.
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  The premise of "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" is strikingly similar to Larry Niven's short story "Rammer" - down to the somewhat unusual terms "corpsicle" and "State". Revived, no rights (though in a wiped body; and intersteller terraforming). Hopefully, a homage, flagging some inspiration/similarity with Niven? Bob: http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ Rammer: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/452990.Rammer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/452990.Rammer EDIT: he does seem to be a fan: first Bobiverse book. Chapter 14 intro... Lawrence Vienn is a tuckerization of Larry Niven. http://dennisetaylor.org/about/ http://dennisetaylor.org/about/
xemoka 9y ago
The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley had some crazy ideas, but lacked some depth I was hoping for. Nine Fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee was also pretty good—had a rough start but ended well. Collapsing Empire by Scalzi was quite solid and well paced. Of books not released in 2017, I read The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi—it probably had the most 'new' sci-fi ideas out of the books I read this year, which made it both a bit of a challenge and interesting read.

79 points by hyperpallium 9y ago

Although I very much like hard sci-fi, my favorite this year was the "Broken Earth" trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky) from N.K. Jemisin.

davidgould 9y ago
I finished these a few days ago and they keep coming back in my thoughts and make me consider things from new perspectives. I also really liked Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series, particularly the first, Ancillary Justice.
aaronbrethorst 9y ago
Seconded. Really remarkable series. Jemisin has a refreshingly unique perspective and voice.
geoah 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. Wandering earth (short stories) again by Liu Cixin is also amazing. Blindsight is also worth a shot!

charlietran 9y ago

Ninefox Gambit / Raven Strategem were great, my favorite military sci-fi since Old Man's War.

moomin 9y ago
The Red Trilogy is very good military sci-fi as well. I may have accidentally consumed the entire thing in a week.

zengid 9y ago

Not really Vinge/Niven style, but Weir's new one Artemis was a fun read. Also, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 was a lighthearted and somewhat optimistic take on humans who have coped with the inevitability of climate change.

girvo 9y ago
Lighthearted, but cynical all the same. Excellent read, 2140; I highly recommend it!

sandGorgon 9y ago

weird question - is there any scifi around finance ? Cryptocurrency, etc. I feel it is weird that almost every piece of tech has had a scifi runway leading to it (VR, AI, robots, clean energy, etc)... but not finance. Maybe I'm missing something

teraflop 9y ago
You might want to check out Accelerando by Charles Stross. It predates Bitcoin and the subsequent explosion of cryptocurrencies, but it touches on some similar ideas, e.g. quasi-artificially-intelligent autonomous corporations. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...
- xhedley 9y ago
  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every interstellar colony in search of good fortune must be in need of a banker”. Neptune’s Brood also by Charles Stross has slow money transferred between two star systems requiring authentication from a third system. The plot is what happens when a transaction has not been completed. Also robots. And pirates.
monocasa 9y ago
There's Daemon by Daniel Suarez that I think directly inspired the DAO.
Mtinie 9y ago
It’s not exactly crypto currency as we know it, but Charles Stross’s “Neptune’s Brood”[0] spends a lot of time discussing the challenges of interstellar finance. ——- [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15985402-neptune-s-brood https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15985402-neptune-s-brood
- moomin 9y ago
  Definitely the geekiest finance/sci-fi book out there.

amorphid 9y ago

If these count, I enjoyed: - The Expanse (season 2) - Sense8 (season 2) - Alien Covenant

kurthr 9y ago
Well, The Expanse books certainly count and there's a bunch of them! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)

bduerst 9y ago

Not really 2017, but Iron Gold comes out in four days. It's the follow up to the Red Rising series, a Roman dystopian on Mars type story, which I highly recommend.

uxcolumbo 9y ago

Not sure whether you're asking for scifi published in 2017 or scifi we enjoyed in 2017. Here is the scifi I enjoyed in 2017 (via audible) - We are Legion (bob) trilogy About AI, space and Von Neumann machines http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ - Ready Player One About life later in this century. Lots of VR and references to nostalgia from the 80s and beyond

ConceptJunkie 9y ago
Yeah, both these books are very fun, with enough hard science to be believable, but still very accessible. My only disappointment with the Bob books was that they ended. "Ready Player One" was full of naked eighties nostalgia fan service, but that suits me just fine. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Wil Wheaton (speaking of eighties nostalgia...), and he's a great reader who brought real enthusiasm to his reading. Given that Spielberg is at the helm, the movie should be awesome.

stormbeta 9y ago

The Terra Ignota series (Too Like the Lightning / Seven Surrenders, and Will to Battle which came out last year). Not only is it very different in tone/style from most traditional SF I've read, it also doesn't restrict itself to just tech/physical science - it explores social and political science what-ifs too. I'd be hard pressed to name any other book I've read in the last year (or more) that's had me pause so often just to think on the ideas presented.

jpereira 9y ago
Absolutely loved this book, though I thought the best parts of it were the influx of ideas and worldbuilding in the first 3/4ths of Too Like the Lightning. The last quarter seemed to rush to tie together the threads laid down and I felt that carried over into Seven Surrenders. Of course I think my approach to reading it also changed as I was eagerly awaiting that resolution. Haven't picked up Will to Battle yet, but very excited for it.
- lucian1900 9y ago
  I felt that Will to Battle improved over the middle book, although I liked all three regardless.

myhf 9y ago

Dichronauts by Greg Egan (adventures in non-Euclidean space) Provenance by Ann Leckie (space opera) The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (similar themes to Anathem)

girvo 9y ago
> Provenance by Ann Leckie I really really wanted to like this, but I just couldn't. Not my style unfortunately, but everyone keeps suggesting it so it's likely me that's the problem.
- myhf 9y ago
  I liked how it drilled deep into themes that were important to the cultures in the story, which were very human cultures but not any specific Earth cultures. It was a glimpse into a small part of a large, coherent world. But you have to like the characters or you can't get anywhere. People have described Stephen Baxter novels in similar ways, but I can't stand any of the characters.
  - johnchristopher 9y ago
    That's interesting, I love Baxter's works and characters but finishing Ancillary's first book took me months and was painful. I liked the universe and the themes so I ended up reading the wikipedia summaries of the rest of the serie.
    - johnchristopher 9y ago
      It just came to my mind that I like the manifold trilogy way more than the xelee cycle though.
isoprophlex 9y ago
Dichronauts, biggest mindfuck of 2017 for sure! (it's highly recommended, just keep pen and paper ready to grok all the non-euclidian shenanigans)

maxdo 9y ago

Iphuck 10 by Victor Pelevin, about AI detective working in the art industry

mlvljr 9y ago
Was it translated?

Negitivefrags 9y ago

"Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch is an excellent read that has a lot of twists and turns. It's quite dark in places. "We Are Legion" by Dennis Taylor is a very light hearted and easy to read. "The Collapsing Empire" by John Scalzi is a space opera that I quite enjoyed.

bufferoverflow 9y ago

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/107855 https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/107855 https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-books-2017 https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-...

moomin 9y ago

Fantasy, but you’re missing out if you don’t read City of Stairs. Great thriller.

walkingolof 9y ago

I'm reading "Surface Details" by Iain M Banks, love the Culture series !

roryisok 9y ago

I didn't think a question like this would get any attention on HN let alone hit the front page! :) Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi was one of my favourites last year

chirau 9y ago

I was expecting movies and shows... How about those though?

SimonPStevens 9y ago

Don't know about year of release, but these are sci-fi books I enjoyed reading this year... The book of strange new things (Michel Faber). This isn't typical sci-fi, it's hard to describe. It's quite slow paced. I can't really talk about it without spoiling it. I really felt impacted by it though, I think the book has a deeper philosophy that isn't really mentioned but requires thinking about the meaning. I thoroughly recommended it if you are willing to be thoughtful about a book and not just after laser and space battles. Another book by the same author (under the skin) is also good, and has been turned into a very weird film with Scarlet Johansson. Other good more conventional sci-fi stuff... Extracted series (R.R. Haywood) Not alone (Craig a. Falconer) Themys files series (sylvain neuvel) We are legion series (Dennis E. Taylor)

anotherevan 9y ago

The Aeon 14 novels following Tanis Richards[1] have been a consistently good read. The Intrepid Saga and The Orion War series. Haven't ventured into the other offshoots as yet. The Dome Trilogy[2] was also pretty good, as are the Rho Agenda series[3][4][5]. The Bobiverse trilogy[6] (We Are Legion (We Are Bob)) I was a bit dubious about when I started, but ended up enjoying immensly. The Wrong Unit[7] wasn't a bad little humorous tale. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected-rain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected-rain [3] https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda [4] https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda-inception https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda-incep... [5] https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda-assimilation https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda-assimilat... [6] https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse [7] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit

mlwarren 9y ago
I second the Bob suggestion. Thought it could to be to silly at first but it's really well rounded.
hyperpallium 9y ago
The premise of "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" is strikingly similar to Larry Niven's short story "Rammer" - down to the somewhat unusual terms "corpsicle" and "State". Revived, no rights (though in a wiped body; and intersteller terraforming). Hopefully, a homage, flagging some inspiration/similarity with Niven? Bob: http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/ Rammer: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/452990.Rammer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/452990.Rammer EDIT: he does seem to be a fan: first Bobiverse book. Chapter 14 intro... Lawrence Vienn is a tuckerization of Larry Niven. http://dennisetaylor.org/about/ http://dennisetaylor.org/about/

xemoka 9y ago

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley had some crazy ideas, but lacked some depth I was hoping for. Nine Fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee was also pretty good—had a rough start but ended well. Collapsing Empire by Scalzi was quite solid and well paced. Of books not released in 2017, I read The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi—it probably had the most 'new' sci-fi ideas out of the books I read this year, which made it both a bit of a challenge and interesting read.