this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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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!

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[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

A few of his short stories have been adapted before! Two of them were made into shorts in the "Love, Death & Robots" anthologies on netflix. They were "Beyond Aquila Rift" and "Zima Blue".

[–] hoodles@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I still think about Diamond Dogs every so often. Kind of gave me the same vibes as the movie, The Cube

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

Loved those! Super weird and interesting.

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

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

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 months 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 months 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 2 months ago

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

[–] PolarKraken@programming.dev 7 points 2 months 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 months 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 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[–] notenoughfuel@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

One of my favourite SF book. Very interesting setting with unforessleeable (up to certain part) ending.

[–] hoodles@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I've read everything this man's written; it's all amazing. Obviously the revelation space series is the most well-known, which I can't recommend highly enough. If you want to get a taste of that universe without committing to the series yet, Chasm City is really great standalone.