4 ms·
Yes. In my view it probably did so about 20 years ago. Are there any works from the last 2 decades that could be even mentioned in the same breath as dune, foun
by lsd5you 17y ago
Yes. In my view it probably did so about 20 years ago. Are there any works from the last 2 decades that could be even mentioned in the same breath as dune, foundation, ender's game, neuromancer, hyperion ...etc.?
- Dobbs 17y agoanathem. There are some decent scifi in the last decade or so but not on the level of foundation and friends. Also there has been some amazing scifi in other mediums, like television and movies.
- randallsquared 17y agoIsland in the Sea of Time was published in 1998, and spawned a sub-genre. Speaking of Stirling, his series The Domination is in the same class as Ender's Game and Dune, at least, for world-building, and the first one was published in 1988, per wikipedia. Accelerando has more scope than most of those you mention. Other books in that class would include Snow Crash, A Fire Upon the Deep and the sequel A Deepness in the Sky... Hm. It's true that most of those I can think of right now are from the early part of the last 20 years (or the first one of the series is). Maybe that's because that was the end of the SF era, as you suggest, or maybe it's for some other reason (I've been an adult a little less than 20 years, which may bias me; it may be that lots of books of the past ten years will be considered important, but they require distance; something else?).
- Retric 17y agoI think these could stand up to that list: The Diamond Age (1995) Cryptonomicon (1999)
- smokinn 17y agoTo those I'd add: The Orphanage series (starting in 2004) and The Old Man's War series (starting in 2005)
- Xichekolas 17y agoI recently really enjoyed the Revelation Space series by Alistair Reynolds. Also, Greg Bear's books about The Way (Legacy, Eon, etc) make a great series.
- smokinn 17y agoI somewhat enjoyed Greg Bear's Blood Music book, but not enough to buy another from him. I'll definitely give him another change and check out the ones you recommend though, thanks.
- Xichekolas 17y agoYeah, Blood Music was alright... not one of my favorites either. If you read The Way books, do it in the order they were written (Eon, Eternity, Legacy). Legacy is a prequel, so some are tempted to read it first, but it would basically ruin all the mystery of the other two if you did so.
- rsaarelm 17y agoAm I missing something about Old Man's War? Everbody seems to think it's a great piece of contemporary SF, but to me it read like it was written for people who read Heinlein as teenagers in the 50s, and whose worldview pretty much hasn't developed since. The science parts are handwavey plot conveniences, the books drop their main interesting bit of looking into the psychology of soldiers with 70 or zero years of life experience by treating the characters as generic clever 20-year olds, and the bleak xenophobic backdrop mixed with the juvenile war adventure plots makes the whole thing feel like a weird, unironic war propaganda piece.
- billswift 17y agoI like the "Old Man's War" series about as much as I do Weber's and Ringo's books - they are interesting stories but the science is seriously hand-wavey. Unlike Heinlien who had military and politics in serious science fiction, these authors produce primarily military and political stories with science-fictiony backdrops.
- holygoat 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
- rsaarelm 17y agoBlindsight by Peter Watts and Ted Chiang's short fiction are pretty good.
- randallsquared 17y agoAh, I forgot Blindsight. That does qualify, I think.
- ephermata 17y agoIan McDonald's _Brasyl_ is up there. Hard to find but worth it. Does suffer from the "quantum effects are magical pixie dust" disease but this can be overlooked. Charlie Stross, _Glasshouse_. Yes, _Halting State_ is good too, but in _Glasshouse_ Stross manages to get his temptation to wink at the reader under control and as a result writes a classic. Has a funny throwaway bit about DRM, too: "For some reason the ancients encrypted all their records and threw away all the keys, that's why we don't know anything about them..." Ken MacLeod, _The Star Fraction_/_The Cassini Division_/_The Stone Canal_/_The Sky Road_ (Fall Revolution Series). Yes, there sure are a lot of Trotskyists! in! Spaaaaaace! but there's also serious exploration of how technological change affects social structures on the personal and political level. Overview from Reason magazine http://reason.com/archives/2000/11/01/anarchies-states-and-utopias http://reason.com/archives/2000/11/01/anarchies-states-and-u... and that's just things that unambiguously classify as SF. If you make things a little broader, then you can include novels like the 2008 Hugo winner, _The Yiddish Policeman's Union_, which is classic Michael Chabon applied to alt history.
- codahale 17y agoRobinson's Mars trilogy, Watts' Blindsight, Sterling's Heavy Weather and Distraction, Vinge's Rainbows End. Off the top of my head.