5 ms·

Can anybody recommend authors like Stephenson? He is my favourite author by far and it's going to be a sad day when I exhaust his works.

by hgibbs 5y ago

defect0 5y ago
I would recommend Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky are both excellent. Also relevant to this particular thread, his book Rainbow's End features AR/wearable technology.
lindseymysse 5y ago
Pat Cadigan's Synners.
tvalentius 5y ago
William Gibson, Cixin Liu
mindcrime 5y ago
Nobody's really like Stephenson, but to the extent that he is something of a cyberpunk author, I'd say you might like some of these folks if you're not familiar with them yet: 1. William Gibson - Neuromancer, 'nuff said. The rest of the Sprawl Trilogy is great as well. 2. Rudy Rucker - I haven't read any of his stuff yet, but he is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. 3. Richard K. Morgan - wrote the books that were the basis for the Altered Carbon series on Netflix if you're familiar with that at all. 4. John Brunner - not really "cyberpunk" but some of his work is often described as "proto-cyberpunk". The Shockwave Rider is one of his most famous works, and it is really good IMO. I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar yet, but it is also highly regarded. 5. Pat Cadigan - I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but she is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. 6. Daniel Suarez - Daemon and Freedom were really good. 7. Vernor Vinge - I'm only part of the way through A Fire Upon the Deep now, but so far so good. His works are also usually highly recommended amongst HN'ers. 8. Bruce Sterling - I know of him from his non-fiction work The Hacker Crackdown, but he has also written some well-regarded science fiction. 9. S.L. Huang - The "Cas Russell" series is excellent, as techno-thriller / sci-fi stuff goes. I won't say it's anything real deep but the books are fun to read. 10. K.C. Alexander - The "SINless" series is.. um... well, I enjoyed the first two books (not sure how many there even are, that might be it). They probably aren't for everyone, but if you like them, you'll probably really like them. I'll just try to illustrate with one example line from one of the books: "You haven't lived until you've fisted a nun under the cheap light of a neon Jesus". 11. Charles Stross - fellow HN'er and famous author! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross Writes radically entertaining stuff, including the Laundry Files series, Halting State, Glasshouse, etc. I'd say Glasshouse is an absolute "must read". 12. Greg Egan - I especially recommend Permutation City. 13. China Miéville - Check out Perdido Street Station
- hgibbs 5y ago
  Thank you for all your suggestions and commentary!
- asplake 5y ago
  Stross's Accelerando might be particularly apt
  - senectus1 5y ago
    yes!
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    I've heard good things about it, but it's one of a few Stross works I haven't gotten to yet, along with Singularity Sky. Both are on "the list" though.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > 4. John Brunner - not really "cyberpunk" but some of his work is often described as "proto-cyberpunk". The Shockwave Rider is one of his most famous works, and it is really good IMO. I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar yet, but it is also highly regarded. Brunner's work is sometimes a bit of a downer, Stand on Zanzibar is matched or exceeded in that regard by The Sheep Look Up. However, if that's your thing I can suggest George Turner and Paolo Bacigalupi, and Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room! (which was turned into the movie Soylent Green). > 5. Pat Cadigan - I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but she is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. Cadigan is great, but her ouvre isn't all that large. Linda Nagata is a similar author well worth reading. BTW, from my perspective Stephenson's real contribution in Snow Crash wasn't the Metaverse per-se but the huge dose of irony and insider humor, which reinvigorated a subgenre that was starting to take itself and it's RainyGrimDarkness a bit too seriously. Then again, others have since explored similar territory (Tad Williams' Otherland series, Diane Duane's Omnitopia Dawn, etc.), but Stephenson's return to these stomping grounds in Reamde was a bit... turgid, by comparison.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
Iain Banks. His "Culture" novels are maybe the smartest space opera ever written. start with Player of Games. The various books have no common plot thread, can be read completely out of order; Player is by far the most accessible.
- MrDresden 5y ago
  I second this, and raise one Peter F Hamilton.
schneems 5y ago
Here’s some I’ve really enjoyed recently: - Octavia Butler (Everything) - Becky Chambers (Wayfarers) - Martha Wells (Murderbot) - Liu Cixin (3 body problem/ dark forest) - N.K. Jemisin (Broken Earth & and cities we became) - Dennis E. Taylor (Bobiverse)
- hgibbs 5y ago
  Thank you for your suggestions! I have read some of N.K Jemisin and enjoyed what I read, the others I have not heard of except for Liu Cixin. I've read the three-body problem but I found it a bit jarring how 'magical' the resolution was - it was speculative but in a bizarre/surreal way rather than in a 'plausible extension of reality' way. Is it worth pushing through to the later books?
  - joe-collins 5y ago
    I picked up the Three-Body Problem due to the hype, and similarly found myself put off by the wildly fantastic photon magic.
landonxjames 5y ago
Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth series[0] and Vernor Vinge’s Zones of Thought[1] both scratch a similar itch to Stephenson novels for me [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
darkmarmot 5y ago
Check out Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos. Iain M. Banks is also a lot of fun.
_3i8o 5y ago
Hrm... some... other suggestions are... not like him at all. Look to Alastair Reynolds. Look to 'Mote in God's Eye.'

Can anybody recommend authors like Stephenson? He is my favourite author by far and it's going to be a sad day when I exhaust his works.

by hgibbs 5y ago

Can anybody recommend authors like Stephenson? He is my favourite author by far and it's going to be a sad day when I exhaust his works.

defect0 5y ago

I would recommend Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky are both excellent. Also relevant to this particular thread, his book Rainbow's End features AR/wearable technology.

lindseymysse 5y ago

Pat Cadigan's Synners.

tvalentius 5y ago

William Gibson, Cixin Liu

mindcrime 5y ago

Nobody's really like Stephenson, but to the extent that he is something of a cyberpunk author, I'd say you might like some of these folks if you're not familiar with them yet: 1. William Gibson - Neuromancer, 'nuff said. The rest of the Sprawl Trilogy is great as well. 2. Rudy Rucker - I haven't read any of his stuff yet, but he is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. 3. Richard K. Morgan - wrote the books that were the basis for the Altered Carbon series on Netflix if you're familiar with that at all. 4. John Brunner - not really "cyberpunk" but some of his work is often described as "proto-cyberpunk". The Shockwave Rider is one of his most famous works, and it is really good IMO. I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar yet, but it is also highly regarded. 5. Pat Cadigan - I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but she is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. 6. Daniel Suarez - Daemon and Freedom were really good. 7. Vernor Vinge - I'm only part of the way through A Fire Upon the Deep now, but so far so good. His works are also usually highly recommended amongst HN'ers. 8. Bruce Sterling - I know of him from his non-fiction work The Hacker Crackdown, but he has also written some well-regarded science fiction. 9. S.L. Huang - The "Cas Russell" series is excellent, as techno-thriller / sci-fi stuff goes. I won't say it's anything real deep but the books are fun to read. 10. K.C. Alexander - The "SINless" series is.. um... well, I enjoyed the first two books (not sure how many there even are, that might be it). They probably aren't for everyone, but if you like them, you'll probably really like them. I'll just try to illustrate with one example line from one of the books: "You haven't lived until you've fisted a nun under the cheap light of a neon Jesus". 11. Charles Stross - fellow HN'er and famous author! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross Writes radically entertaining stuff, including the Laundry Files series, Halting State, Glasshouse, etc. I'd say Glasshouse is an absolute "must read". 12. Greg Egan - I especially recommend Permutation City. 13. China Miéville - Check out Perdido Street Station

hgibbs 5y ago
Thank you for all your suggestions and commentary!
asplake 5y ago
Stross's Accelerando might be particularly apt
- senectus1 5y ago
  yes!
- mindcrime 5y ago
  I've heard good things about it, but it's one of a few Stross works I haven't gotten to yet, along with Singularity Sky. Both are on "the list" though.
webmaven 5y ago
> 4. John Brunner - not really "cyberpunk" but some of his work is often described as "proto-cyberpunk". The Shockwave Rider is one of his most famous works, and it is really good IMO. I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar yet, but it is also highly regarded. Brunner's work is sometimes a bit of a downer, Stand on Zanzibar is matched or exceeded in that regard by The Sheep Look Up. However, if that's your thing I can suggest George Turner and Paolo Bacigalupi, and Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room! (which was turned into the movie Soylent Green). > 5. Pat Cadigan - I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but she is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles. Cadigan is great, but her ouvre isn't all that large. Linda Nagata is a similar author well worth reading. BTW, from my perspective Stephenson's real contribution in Snow Crash wasn't the Metaverse per-se but the huge dose of irony and insider humor, which reinvigorated a subgenre that was starting to take itself and it's RainyGrimDarkness a bit too seriously. Then again, others have since explored similar territory (Tad Williams' Otherland series, Diane Duane's Omnitopia Dawn, etc.), but Stephenson's return to these stomping grounds in Reamde was a bit... turgid, by comparison.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

Iain Banks. His "Culture" novels are maybe the smartest space opera ever written. start with Player of Games. The various books have no common plot thread, can be read completely out of order; Player is by far the most accessible.

MrDresden 5y ago
I second this, and raise one Peter F Hamilton.

schneems 5y ago

Here’s some I’ve really enjoyed recently: - Octavia Butler (Everything) - Becky Chambers (Wayfarers) - Martha Wells (Murderbot) - Liu Cixin (3 body problem/ dark forest) - N.K. Jemisin (Broken Earth & and cities we became) - Dennis E. Taylor (Bobiverse)

hgibbs 5y ago
Thank you for your suggestions! I have read some of N.K Jemisin and enjoyed what I read, the others I have not heard of except for Liu Cixin. I've read the three-body problem but I found it a bit jarring how 'magical' the resolution was - it was speculative but in a bizarre/surreal way rather than in a 'plausible extension of reality' way. Is it worth pushing through to the later books?
- joe-collins 5y ago
  I picked up the Three-Body Problem due to the hype, and similarly found myself put off by the wildly fantastic photon magic.

landonxjames 5y ago

Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth series[0] and Vernor Vinge’s Zones of Thought[1] both scratch a similar itch to Stephenson novels for me [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep

darkmarmot 5y ago

Check out Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos. Iain M. Banks is also a lot of fun.

_3i8o 5y ago

Hrm... some... other suggestions are... not like him at all. Look to Alastair Reynolds. Look to 'Mote in God's Eye.'