
Ask HN: What is the best sci-fi you read this year? - mudil
Please share with us the best books or series you read this year.
======
shostack
The Worm Web Serial[1]. I've heard it is longer than all of the Harry Potter
books combined.

It starts as modern day slightly alternate universe super heroes, and ends up
in some pretty heavy sci fi concepts towards the middle and end.

By far and away my favorite part is how it dives deep into not just the
origins of many characters (and the universe has a LOT of characters), but
also their powers. Specifically, it walks through how characters learn how to
use their powers in new and creative ways, and explores what it feels like to
use the powers from the users' pov. This gets interesting with things like
perception, control, tinkering and entropy type powers, and the author does a
great job at exploring these in a way where you can almost picture using them
yourself.

Another cool part is that while I referenced it as a superhero story, it is
probably more accurately described as a super villain story as the main
character goes down that path. However you soon learn that it really isn't
that black and white and that gray spectrum becomes a key element of the
story.

[1][https://parahumans.wordpress.com/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

------
alex-
The final red rising book was published this year:
[https://www.amazon.com/Red-Rising-Trilogy-
Book/dp/B0159URANK](https://www.amazon.com/Red-Rising-Trilogy-
Book/dp/B0159URANK)

I really enjoyed the first 15 lives of Harry August
([https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECE9OD4/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECE9OD4/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)) I only found it in 2016 although it was
published in 2014.

~~~
mudil
I second the First 15 lives of Harry August. Great book, well written

~~~
stubadub
Touch by the same author, Claire North is a great book too.

------
hindsightbias
Books 2 & 3 of Liu Cixin's Dark Forest series were translated this year. One
of them will get the Hugo (book 1, the Three Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo).

------
heisenbit
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (admittedly end 2015)

Very good closing of the Hugo&Nebula Award series (Justice, Sword, Mercy)
exploring the questions of identity and consciousness of individuals, androids
and hive minds on the background of a galaxy spanning social, political and
military struggle.

Yeah and I second the 3 Body Series by Liu Cixin - that is one for the ages
too.

------
elevensies
Three books I enjoyed this year:

 _this census taker_ , China Mieville

 _To Say Nothing Of The Dog_ , Connie Willis

 _The Possibility of an Island_ , Houellebecq

If you enjoy science-fiction, it is quite possible that you wouldn't enjoy any
of the books above or even classify them as science-fiction (I would though)
-- so definitely look them up or try the kindle sample to see if they appeal
to you.

Also, I see Ann Leckie's Ancillary trilogy mentioned elsewhere, I second that
recommendation.

[Also, honourable mention to the TV show Westworld -- if it were a book I
would have included.]

~~~
brudgers
_To Say Nothing of the Dog_ won the Hugo for best novel in 1999. That probably
makes it science fiction.

~~~
elevensies
It is a really great book, and I highly recommend it, but IIRC you could tear
out about 20 pages and it would become historical fiction.

------
anotherevan
The _Wayfarers_ books _The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet_ and _A Closed
and Common Orbit_ were quite good. Fantastic world building and characters,
although the plots seem to meander about with not too much purpose.

[https://www.goodreads.com/series/170872-wayfarers](https://www.goodreads.com/series/170872-wayfarers)

Recently ploughed through _The Expanse_ series.

[https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-the-
expanse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-the-expanse)

 _Dark Matter_ was a good read if you like parallel universes.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833670-dark-
matter](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833670-dark-matter)

 _The Rho Agenda_ series was a surprisingly good read.

[https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-
agenda](https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda)

 _Quantum Night_ was something a bit different from Robert Sawyer.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734179-quantum-
night](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734179-quantum-night)

And _Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard_ would probably have to be rated my
favourite for the year.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667916-barsk](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667916-barsk)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Seconding _Barsk_ , and just about anything by Robert Sawyer; I would
recommend his Neanderthal Parallax series, which begins with Hominids:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264946.Hominids](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264946.Hominids)

------
warfangle
The Culture Series by Iain Banks. Love his style, love the setting, and love
the stories. Really fascinating look at a post-scarcity galaxy spanning
anarchist society facilitated by extra dimensional artificial intelligences.

------
davidw
I've been reading the "Expanse" series. I liked the earlier books a bit more.
The latest one drops today.

Anyone watched the show they made from it?

~~~
ShinyCyril
I'm working my way through the show after having just finished the first book.
I found the crew of the Rocinante to be fairly generic characters in the book,
but at least they were likeable. In the screen adaptation, I find the constant
conflict among the crew a little grating at times – Amos and Holden aren't
particularly likeable. Miller seems like a much more interesting character,
and I think he is played well in the series (I will have to look up the actor
who plays his part...).

The dialogue seems quite hard to understand – it falls victim to the typical
mumbled, gravely voices that seem to be present in many American shows and
films.

------
pasbesoin
More than a year ago, I picked up William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition." I
wasn't sure what I thought of it, at first, but it became increasingly
interesting and I finished it. This year, I picked up the third novel in the
series that "Pattern Recognition" started.

It's a different world than that of "Neuromancer" et al., but I've come to
find Gibson's portrayal of and thinking about it quite interesting.

This year, I also helped someone out for a while who is considerably into
fashions of some sorts (make up, running shoes and attire, other stuff more by
just doing it than by talking about it).

I'm finding Gibson's latest trilogy giving me new eyes on all this. And, in
today's world of "image", it's not just and interesting but a valuable
perspective. Treatise. Extrapolation...

Not the most in your face of sci fi titles, but subtly compelling, for me.

Perhaps partially sub-consciously. Just like the world he's describing.

------
pavel_lishin
This is a little more Lovecraftian Horror than science fiction, but I loved
Matt Ruff's "Lovecraft Country". Equal parts what you'd expect, with an
exploration of how shitty America was for black people in the 1950s.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25109947-lovecraft-
count...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25109947-lovecraft-country)

Ted Chiang's "Stories of your Life" have been recommended here a bunch, since
Arrival was based on one of the stories in the collection.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others)

Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are both excellent explorations of the
human mind and consciousness.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight)
and
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18490708-echopraxia](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18490708-echopraxia)

Bonus: Echopraxia comes with an optional audiovisual component that stands
alone quite well:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30ED0756E00786E2](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30ED0756E00786E2)

And don't let the mention of Vampires scare you off; this isn't a Twilight
wannabe, and it's very likely not a take on Vampires you've seen before.

------
joeclark77
John C Wright's "eschaton sequence":

 _Count to a Trillion_

 _The Hermetic Millennia_

 _Judge of Ages_

 _Architect of Aeons_

 _The Vindication of Man_

(and one more to come)

It's a combination of hard sci-fi and space opera, based around one
essentially immortal character (and his rival, and his girl) carrying out a
mission over tens of thousands of years. Mind-blowing scale and yet there's a
romance to it.

~~~
rajacombinator
Sweet so glad to hear this is continuing. When I finished Architect it seemed
it could have been an end to the series.

~~~
joeclark77
It was a long wait, without the benefit of a cryo-chamber, but worth it.
_Vindication_ is far and away the best of the series for me. I suppose it'll
be another year or so before the next is out.

------
afriday11
If you are into AI, Crystal Society was a great 2016 release. You can read it
for free online:
[http://crystal.raelifin.com/society/Prologue](http://crystal.raelifin.com/society/Prologue)

------
BjoernKW
Kill Process by William Hertling: [http://www.williamhertling.com/books/#kill-
process](http://www.williamhertling.com/books/#kill-process)

It's near future and the technology isn't that far-out. Most of it is either
very real already or at least very believable from today's point of view. So,
maybe technically it doesn't count as sci-fi but it's a really great tech
thriller anyway.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I thought for a second this was Daniel Suarez's Kill Decision, which deals
with autonomous drones. It was a fun technothriller, but focused too much on
one particular weird model that I thought wasn't too realistic.

------
amrangaye
n-thing ancillary mercy (and the whole series) - best sci-fi I've read in a
long while. Just finished the fifth season, and liked it enough to get the
rest of the trilogy. It straddles the line between sci-fi and fantasy, but
does it well and packs an emotional punch at the end as you come to identify
with the main characters without even realizing it.

------
brudgers
Connie Willis: _The Doomsday Book_ , a winner of the 1993 Hugo for best novel.
It's deep and wide and brilliant and there's a technical excellence to the
storytelling that made the book as a whole satisfying. She leaves a few loose
ends and they're just the right ones and in just the right quantity.

------
Grangar
An old one, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. It can be fairly slow at
times but it's such an inspiring read.

------
headcanon
Besides Kill Process and Seveneves (mentioned elsewhere on this thread), I'm
going through the Hyperion Cantos right now, and I can't recommend it enough.
Apparently Bradley Cooper is heading up production of a series as well, so
good times ahead for that IP.

------
autotune
How Great Science Fiction Works: The Great Courses. I'd say while not quite
scifi itself, it's one of best audiobooks/lectures about scifi that teaches
the history and techniques of science fiction.

------
BillSaysThis
Seveneves by Neil Stephenson

~~~
RandomOpinion
I read _Seveneves_ this year as well but came away disappointed. Some of the
science was good (orbital mechanics, genetic engineering) but the rest of the
science and engineering was fairly poor[0]. Couple that with the questionable
decisions routinely made by many characters and it's a very weak novel
overall.

[0] In particular, they did not (and physically could not) have launched a
broad enough manufacturing capability for the remnants of humanity to have had
a realistic chance of long-term survival. The practicality of the Seveneves
themselves did was also at best dubious from a biological and other
standpoints.

~~~
headcanon
That universe seemed to have a much more developed space industry than we
have, indicated by the fact that they attached a whole _asteroid_ to the ISS.

Stephenson does seem to have a history of fudging a bit of the realism to
drive the plot, like anybody, but he seems to do it in a way that says "
_wink_ _wink_ , I know this couldn't happen but work with me people ;)"

------
Zekio
A book series called "Omega Force", currently re-reading it

~~~
davidw
Is an Omega Force a group of Omega Men? :-)

~~~
Zekio
Nah, it is just a name of a group of people ;)

------
prions
Definitely The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

~~~
internaut
To those unacquainted, imagine if Godel Escher Bach mated with The Lord of the
Rings. It is a true masterpiece.

