
Ask HN: Sci-Fi Books for Hackers? - franze
Hiho, I just finished "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!" now i need another good book to read. I'm in the mood for some Sci-Fi - but, not the kind that is about politics, light-saber wars, worm-drugs, a fascist regime masquerading as humanitarians, ... - it should be more like "The Robot and the Baby" (by J. McCarthy) but longer, with even more mind bending pseudo code.<p>Long question short: Are there Good Sci-Fi Books for Developers?
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read_wharf
No code in these two, but lots of problem solving:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34_%28novel%29>

I recently read Rule 34 by HNer Charles Stross. I liked it a lot.

Thanks Charles.

If you want to go old school, Rendezvous With Rama is great.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama>

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lsiebert
[http://textiplication.com/2009/07/13/hackers-and-hacking-
in-...](http://textiplication.com/2009/07/13/hackers-and-hacking-in-science-
fiction/)

has many of the recommendations I'd make. I especially recommend Cryptonomicon
if you want some pseudocode. I'll add a few newer books:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(technothriller_series)>

However, have you considered some free nonfiction?
<http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html> The Hacker Crackdown
<http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelTAZ> Temporary Autonomous Zones

You might also like scifi short stories: <http://www.flurb.net/>

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db48x
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge. It's all about the nature of
computation vs thought, usenet, and truly evocative aliens. Not much actual
code though.

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leeny
I'm surprised _Snow Crash_ (or other Neal Stephenson stuff) hasn't come up
yet. It's a bit dated, as it envisions what teh internets will be like from a
1992 perspective, but still a very enjoyable/amusing read.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash>

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latch
Non-developer specific good sci-fi books:

-Dune

-Hyperion + The Fall of Hyperion

-The Book Of The New Sun

-Ilium + Olympos

-Takeshi Kovacs trilogy

-The Culture Series (meh..)

-The Demolished Man

More dev-oriented:

-Reamde (which I hated, but I seem to be in a minority)

-Neuromancer

I'll always have a special place in my heart for Calculating God (not science
fiction), because its the book that got me into reading seriously.

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ramblerman
Adding "for developers" to the end of a question doesn't automatically make it
fitting for hackernews.

I think reddit is a better place for these questions.

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franze
i don't do reddit - and it's a question to the HN community (not a question to
anyone else) - because i value HNers opinion - they might answer, they might
not.

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DanBC
Ted Chiang - except this is short stories. Very good though.

Greg Egan - hard science, mind bending.

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LarryMade
One that has a lot of programming and hackerish humor is the Wizard's Bane
series by Rick cook. Fantasy realm mixing programming and magic quite well.

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ninjaweasel
Space Operas: \- The Reality Dysfunction (Peter Hamilton) \- Gridlinked (Neal
Asher) \- Hidden Empire (Kevin J Anderson)

