this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
49 points (100.0% liked)

Science Fiction

17579 readers
3 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.

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

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I was listening to a science and futurism with Isaac Arthur episode about deep time and cryo ships and the book Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds was recommended and it sounded interesting so I gave it a read and Lord it was a really good book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89186.Pushing_Ice

Edit: Just finished house of suns. Whoa!

all 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Another deep time book that I really enjoyed, also by Alastair Reynolds, is House of Suns

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

House of Suns is a fantastic read. You should also look at his shorts in Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days.

[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

Another fantastic short story is The Sleepover. Most of humanity is in hibernation and is being haunted by ethereal lovecraftian entities.

Turquoise Days was the first short story I read by him, and I think it could make a fun movie.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Loved those! Super weird and interesting.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago

I'm going to have to try to go through House of Suns again. If I remember correctly, I started to try to read it and was put off by the political world environment building or whatever. But I'll have to give it another shot.

[–] shatterling@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Far out I love that book. Would love a return to that universe one day

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Goodreads is a subsidiary of Amazon. Consider using the Fediverse equivalent: BookWyrm

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I haven't looked at Bookwyrm in quite a while. The last time I did, I couldn't find the books on it that I was wanting to share. I'm assuming that's changed recently.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, there is an import feature that works really well now, very simple to add books and connected to a few catalogues

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Totally understandable how that can cause friction but know that you can add missing books manually.

[–] PolarKraken@programming.dev 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My favorite author of fiction. Try Revelation Space (a series) for more far-future deep time craziness. Try Revenger for a treasure-hunting romp in a universe with countless fallen space empires and their spooky relics.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Fantastic book. I'm a big fan of most of Reynolds's catalog, but Pushing Ice I think is the first one of his I read.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm glad I got through the political parts of it at the beginning because the book itself was incredibly interesting, but I found the political part at the beginning to be kind of boring. I need to attempt to read House of Suns because I started it but didn't get very far through it.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah, the prologue and the interspersed bits with Bowerbird (I think that was her name) and the future people was a little weird, but not too jarring. They come into play toward the end of the book with the gift box nanotech thing, so I guess it was necessary to frame them in. It took me a while to figure out how they sent it from the future, but it was time dilation the whole time so no time travel.

House of Suns is my absolute favorite of Reynolds' work. It's the least "hard" sci-fi of the bunch but still follows the rules and basically takes all the ships and tech from his other works and cranks them up to 11. Such a fun read.

"Terminal World" is another fun standalone book from him if you come across it. If you feel up for a trilogy, the "Revenger" series is a fun space pirate adventure I quite enjoyed.