Suggest some hard SF literature

[SolarpunkFan]

I'm currently out of reading material and could use some more to pass the time. I love hard science fiction, can't get enough of it. So I'm looking for some suggestions.

My only stipulations are:

1. No Stephen Baxter.

So toss me whatever suggestions you all have. The more the better!

[Zaune]

It almost goes without saying, but The Martian by Andy Weir. Hard enough SF to impress Neil DeGrasse Tyson, likeable and compelling characters and frequently very funny.

[madd0ct0r]

For a Solarpunk Fan, can't recommended Kim Stanley Robinson enough - his Mars trilogy especially. The science has been slightly outdated, the nitrates on mars weren't fully understood at the time but the evolution of society and technology should suit your tastes. He has also put out a story about generation ships recently, but I've not read it so cannot comment.

Distraction by Bruce Sterling - I loved it, it follows the current trends of a creaking USA into the near future. It was published nearly twenty years ago, and it's astonishing how much he's got right, from social media, to sensors, to political reactions to global warming to the Occupy movement. Oh, and in the Nomads he predicted the maker movement and the solarpunks . That said, if you hate Stephen Baxter, you probably won't like his writing.

Cecilla Holland 'Floating worlds' is good, but not strictly hard sci-fi. It should be more widely known though, fantastic epic and a warning shot for those who think environmental anarchism will be enough.
In the same line The Humans by Matt Haig dosen't have near future science to be hard sci-fi - the protagonist is basically a god, and rather confused.

Moving towards more general sci-fi
Mind over Ship by David Marusek was wonderful, but is the sequel to Counting Heads, which I have not read and won't review. I won't say much about the Mind over Ship book etiher since I don't know what I may spoiler.
River of Gods and Cyberdad days is probably on the softer side since it deals with AI, but Cyberpunk India is too damn fun to miss.

Not sci-fi, but for hard science and epic tales, I'd reccomend the books by Gerald Durrel - The Bafut Beagles, The Drunken Forest, The Whispering Lands.

[Broomstick]

The Retrieval Artist Series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Start with the first in the series, The Disappeared and if you like it there are a bunch more that followed, 7 stand-alone novels and an 8-book series with a very long story arc.

Redshift Rendezvous by John E. Stith

City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings. Takes place in an alternate future where WWII never happened... because it was written in 1920, before WWII ever happened.

[madd0ct0r]

is that the one with the pigs?

[Broomstick]

No.

[Zaune]

For a Solarpunk Fan, can't recommended Kim Stanley Robinson enough - his Mars trilogy especially. The science has been slightly outdated, the nitrates on mars weren't fully understood at the time but the evolution of society and technology should suit your tastes. He has also put out a story about generation ships recently, but I've not read it so cannot comment.

One cautionary note about the Mars trilogy, though. Red Mars is very short on sympathetic characters, to the point where I'll be charitable to Robinson and assume this was a deliberate choice on his part to highlight the moral ambiguity inherent to the plot. Some people may like and appreciate that, but I got a bad case of Eight Deadly Words from it.

[SolarpunkFan]

I have read the Mars Trilogy before and it drags a bit too much for my taste. I tried reading other KSR works but I couldn't really get into them (aside from The Years of Rice and Salt, which I haven't finished yet).

Distraction sounds good though!

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Not exactly hard SF, but I recommend Jack Campbell/John Hembry's The Lost Fleet series. The only disconnects I can see in that series for you, Solarpunk, would be the jump drive, the hypernet, and the aliens, but, it should otherwise be hard enough.

For something closer to home space by the same author, there's also the Stark's War series, which is equally good. It takes place almost entirely on Earth's Moon, and features tech only a few years or so out from our own.

[K. A. Pital]

Stanislaw Lem

Tales of Pirx the pilot

As hard as it gets i'd say.

[Nephtys]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, classic, hardest-of-hard scifi and my personal Heinlein favorite.

Except for you know, a computer with 'seven billion bits' of memory becoming self aware, but hey. It was written like 50 years ago.

[Zaune]

I second The Lost Fleet. The science is pretty hard for the Space Opera sub-genre and the characters and setting are interesting, relatable and believable. I rate them higher than the Honor Harrington series even before David Weber got Protection From Editors.

[Q99]

Webcomic rather than text book, but I find Schlock Mercenary to be good hard sf (it's got FTL and gravity control, but fairly strongly sticks to physics aside from those 'black boxes,' including things like remembering spaceships have fuel and how light-delay works, etc. etc.). The alien biologies have thought into how they work, and so on.

Which isn't necessarily what one would expect from a comedy-military webcomic, but hey, it's rather great.

[ZOmegaZ]

I've really enjoyed a lot of Greg Egan's work. Mind-bending, in the most literal sense, exploring what it is to be the person you are, and what it might mean to alter that.

[Elheru Aran]

Webcomic rather than text book, but I find Schlock Mercenary to be good hard sf (it's got FTL and gravity control, but fairly strongly sticks to physics aside from those 'black boxes,' including things like remembering spaceships have fuel and how light-delay works, etc. etc.). The alien biologies have thought into how they work, and so on.

Which isn't necessarily what one would expect from a comedy-military webcomic, but hey, it's rather great.

It's also been around for... geez probably getting close to 15 years, if not past that. So there's a *huge* amount to read through. I don't know if Howard Tayler published any of it as collected editions. Probably. Might be easier to do that.

[SolarpunkFan]

I've really enjoyed a lot of Greg Egan's work. Mind-bending, in the most literal sense, exploring what it is to be the person you are, and what it might mean to alter that.

I did enjoy Diaspora, though I heard his later works read too much like physics textbooks.

[Elheru Aran]

I've really enjoyed a lot of Greg Egan's work. Mind-bending, in the most literal sense, exploring what it is to be the person you are, and what it might mean to alter that.

I did enjoy Diaspora, though I heard his later works read too much like physics textbooks.

Well you can't get much harder than that now can you

[SolarpunkFan]

Well you can't get much harder than that now can you

Touche. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on Quarantine though, that sounds interesting.

[Q99]

I dunno if the Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi qualifies, but it's good stuff. Very ubiquitous transhumanism and information technology, stolen minds, encryption is huge, etc..

It's also been around for... geez probably getting close to 15 years, if not past that. So there's a *huge* amount to read through. I don't know if Howard Tayler published any of it as collected editions. Probably. Might be easier to do that.

Yep, the collected editions go all the way up to the 'massively parallel' arc. So almost all of the Hugo-nominated stuff.

And they do help the early-art phase fly by ^^ (The writing was always fairly funny, but the art definitely took time to spin up)

[SolarpunkFan]

I believe someone recommended Brin to me in another thread. Got a new short story collection by him at the library. I'll let you all know if it's any good!

[matterbeam]

A Sword Into darkness by Thomas A. Mays.

It got its Atomic Rockets Approval.
In fact, look here: Atomic Novels

[slebetman]

The Mote in God's Eye

It's got FTL and force fields but it treats physics with respect. Especially the space battles. Which is why a lot of people consider it hard sci-fi.

[Scottish Ninja]

Here's a short story you might appreciate: Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations.

[Swindle1984]

Rendezvous With Rama. I'm honestly surprised nobody has suggested it yet.

I'd also recommend The Heritage Trilogy (Semper Mars, Luna Marine, and Europa Strike) by Ian Douglas. Pretty hard scifi set in the near future, where alien ruins are found on Mars and the US and EU compete to gain control of them. There's a total of three trilogies in the series, and the first one had me thoroughly hooked by its setting. The second trilogy has much softer science, was more formulaic, and repeated itself a lot. The third trilogy... I quit reading book 8 about halfway through because it was just the same stuff over and over again and it got boring. The culture shock between the marines returning to Earth after decades or even centuries was the only really interesting thing, but instead of exploring it further it was just a plot device to get the marines back into space to fight the evil aliens.

So while the second and third trilogies may or may not interest you, I definitely recommend the first trilogy and its harder setting.

Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Not only pretty hard scifi, it also features quite a number of real people making cameos, though some names were changed to protect the... "innocent".