Science Fiction

14160 readers

1 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

In the mood for engineering / competence porn. What are your favourite novels / series? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

108 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.

Edit: I'm so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yeah, I loved pretty much all of Andy Weir. I should get back to the Bobiverse. I tried it once and couldn't get into it for some reason. I don't recall the exact details now, and maybe I was misunderstanding something, but there was some stuff about his drones destroying entire solar systems for raw minerals, that just seemed plain nonsensical to me? I guess with all the good things people are saying about it I should go back and figure out what rubbed me wrong the first time.

[–] Subverb@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

I'm stuck on Bobiverse too. This whole section on the Archimedes alien did me in.

[–] brrt@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

there was some stuff about his drones destroying entire solar systems for raw minerals, that just seemed plain nonsensical to me?

Not sure what exactly seems nonsensical to you but it’s a well known concept that is also explained thoroughly in the books. You might want to read up on von Neumann probes.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Like I said, I possibly misunderstood or missed something. I'm familiar with the concept of Von Neumann probes, but an entire solar system to build a small handful of probes seems overkill. How big are these probes? If it turns out to have been a gazillion probes, or they're jupiter-sized, then I guess that's where my misunderstanding was.

[–] brrt@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeh, I guess you really did miss something. I’m sure the purpose of mining a solar system was not to make more simple probes.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Good to know. I'll slot Bobiverse in once I'm done with Greg Bear