Recomend some 'realistic' science fiction books

Cafe Society
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If you want science and technology to be as “realistic” as possible, only near-future stories will provide that … with a view exceptions.

A fascinating one is “Evolution” by Stephen Baxter that recounts the history of our ancestors from the distant past when dinosaurs ruled the world to a future that shows an earth that has lost almost all of its capacity to keep life going.

The book is very speculative, of course, but the science is solid.

The same can be said about other books by Baxter and also about Greg Bear, Greg Egan and Alastair Reynolds.

All these authors make an effort to show technology that is grounded in science; their work tends to focus on its implications on human life and culture.

Other authors create “realistic” looking scenarios by concentrating more on “soft sciences” and social and psychological dynamics, technology is not the mover of things.

I very much liked “Eifelheim” by Michael Flynn. It tells the story of crash-landed insectoid aliens in a medieval German village and some present day scientists who discover that such an encounter happened.

David Brin’s Uplift Trilogy is more a space opera but it blends the “technology as mover” idea pretty well with a focus on socio-political dynamics in a universe that is crawling with intelligent life … life that has been made intelligent by older races that in turn had been “uplifted” to intelligence by even older ones.

The humans seem to be an exception: either the race that uplifted them is unknown and has abandoned them or they actually evolved naturally … an idea that threatens many established beliefs and therefore leads to conflict and chaos among the intelligent races.

But quite a lot of technology in Brin’s work follows Clarke’s third law of prediction, so you might not consider it realistic enough.

Otoh, weird or inexplicable consequences of far advanced technology are, imo, in a way more realistic than the logical, clear-cut impacts that authors like Asimov or Heinlein show.

I think that’s why I like “Roadside Picnic” by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky so much; it shows what happens when present day humanity came into contact with the remains of a technology that is so far ahead of our own that we can’t even begin to understand what we are dealing with.

It’s pretty much a “cargo cult”-story: we see the effects but we don’t know where they come from or how to control them.

In this book, the word “alien” actually means what it implicates.

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Thirded the Mars trilogy, with the qualification that they’re sort of a mixed bag in total. The SF element of how we’re going to land on Mars and what we might do there is really well done IMO and bang in line with what the OP is looking for. The human side of the story, plot, characters etc is a mess IMO and weirdly so - it’s odd to see such cack-handed writing from such a talented guy (some of KSR’s short stories are top drawer - really exceptional).

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No love for Asimov?

I think the Foundation trilogy (stick with the trilogy, and let’s not talk about the other books that don’t exist) is excellent realistic sci-fi, even if it’s not space opera and rather personality based. It’s very different from hard sci-fi, but I read and enjoy both. For clarification, the Foundation trilogy is: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation.

I also like some Clarke; Islands in the Sky is a bit whimsical, but enjoyable. Rendezvous With Rama (again, the sequels are best avoided) is also good. Prelude to Space and The Sands of Mars are possibly a bit dated, but still good reading.

Iain M. Banks is another author (of space opera this time) that I would strongly recommend. Terrific writing, amazing imagination, well-plotted stories. The one thing about Banks that gives me a bit of bother is his penchant for giving his characters jaw-cracking names. Anyone who can pronounce “Huhsz”, “Mawhrin-Skel” or “Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da’ Marenhide” without dislocating some teeth deserves praise.

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CJ Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, The Pride of Chanur, and Foreigner. All are standalone, but there are series that follow each.

Also Close to Critical

Also The Left Hand of Darkness

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Allen Steele’s earlier novels are set in the very near future and use pretty much what technology is available right now.

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I just reread that, and while it’s very, very good, it also shows its age in various humorous ways:

Based on MIPS and memory hints in the book, I’ve determined that my free-with-2yr-contract cell phone is more powerful than Mike.

To get a program from one computer to another, Mike has to print out the code and give it to Manny, who has to laboriously type it into the other computer.

We’ve got a moonbase by the 1980’s, but by the 2070’s there are still judges in the South so racist they effectively jail Manny for miscegenation.

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I would also recommend these, Second Foundation more so than the others. (No big need to read them in order, right?)

The Foundation Trilogy is a “Nonology” or something by now, especially if you count the ones not written by Asimov. (I picked up some of the non-Asimov “Foundation” novels once and couldn’t even make it past a few chapters.)

Second Foundation. Best Asimov, and almost more of a political thriller than science fiction.

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Also a lot of the “Heinlein Juveniles” from the '50s. Some do feature telepathy, but this was the age when John W. Campbell actually took the possibility of “psionics” seriously. Otherwise, they do not date all that badly. Try Have Space Suit, Will Travel.

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Try Firestar, by Michael Flynn.

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29 posts and no mention of Haldeman’s Forever War?

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The OP may be interested in this TV Tropes link.

I’ll just recommend Alastair Reynolds and Charlie Stross like I always do in these sorts of threads. While I love Iain Banks’s Culture novels, I wouldn’t put them in the “hard Sci-Fi” end of the spectrum, lots of hand-waving about weapon effects, speeds, etc… The science isn’t really the point in the first three Culture books anyway (haven’t gotten to the others yet).

The manga, “Planetes”, is a very interesting hard sci-fi set of stories concerning the adventures of interplanetary garbage collectors. Evidently, the writers consulted a lot with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and it seems to show. I learned about Planetes from TV Tropes and my efforts to track down copies have been rewarding.

Love Larry Niven, but his stories are all about the location and very little to do with the characters. I can put up with that if the location is really incredible and the characters aren’t too insultingly bad (which is why I can’t recommend Dr. Robert Forward’s sci-fi) I still desperately want to see Avatar-esque versions of the following before I die: the Ringworld, the Smoke Ring, Dream Park, and the Mote in God’s Eye. Throw in the Inferno milieu while we’re at it. Pay Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam or Peter Jackson whatever they want and lets get this done already.

From all of your comments, I really need to read Baxter and Vinge.

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That’s fine. I agree that I don’t have to like the novel. :slight_smile: I think Rainbows End is one of those books that folks love or hate; the reviews on Amazon bear this out. It was painful for me to even finish that book, which surprised me because I had intensely liked Vinge’s two previous novels, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.

Per Gray Ghost, I’d recommend The Mote in God’s Eye. Hard science, interesting aliens, interesting human culture. Great book.

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is of course my favorite, if my user name didn’t give that away. Great story of cultural changes of a moon colony, politics, artifical intelligence, and much more. The writing style can be tough to like at first: it’s written in the language of the Loonies (those that live on the moon). It’s a clipped language, shorn of prepositions and mixing some Russian words and others. Highly reccomended.

I also recommend Starship Troopers by Heinlein. Much much much better than the movie.

Other novels, in no particular order, with important themes or a short synopsis:

Snowcrash: Fun read that involves the internet, avatars, language, and lots of badassery.
Neuromancer: The novel that made cyberpunk.
A Fire Upon the Deep: Just finishing this one and I love it so far: super intelligence, pack consciousness, and identity.
The Forever War: A story of war and love, with time dilation and the resultant cultural changes considered, with a healthy dose of powered armor.
Rendezvous with Rama: A mystery, with a derelict alien spaceship hurtling through our solar system.
Altered Carbon: A hardboiled science fiction novel where every person has a stack implanted in their neck that can keep their consciousness alive to be transplated in another body if they die. Very gritty and entertaining.
The Mote in God’s Eye: Space combat, and first contact with a new extraterrestrial lifeform and eventual understanding of that life.
Childhood’s End: First contact with extraterrestrial life, and a mystery throughout as to their nature.

Some of these novels do bend - or break - the laws of physics as we know them, or stretch our understanding of biology or something else in some way. The upside is, all of these authors are intelligent enough to realize that, and seek to make it believable as possible.

I would recommend starting with any of the “big three” of science fiction: Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke. I’m partial to Heinlein, really enjoy Clarke, and like Asimov to a lesser extent. They all had some misses, but you generally can’t go wrong with them.

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Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series is all about exploration and colonization of the Solar System in the 21st Centuries. Very hard SF, no supernatural elements, no warp drives or teleportation.

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Niven and Pournelle’s ‘Footfall’ is good and doesn’t feature any huge departures from current science. Also one of the best space battles I’ve ever read.

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Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a ‘dystopian’ future novel that is all too depressingly rooted in the real world. The character has some sort of empathic ability, but it is more like a neurological disorder rather than a psychic ability. There’s a sequel, but I never got around to reading it.

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Another by James P. Hogan: Code of the Lifemaker

A wild idea scientifically done.

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Robert L. Forward’s novels feature some exotic things, like neutronium-based lifeforms on the surface of a neutron star, but they’re pretty hard SF (Forward was a physicist).

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And if you like that, follow up with the more-or-less sequel The Diamond Age, set in a future transformed by nanotechnology.

Also by Neal Stephenson: Anathem, set on an Earthlike world where most mathematicians, philosophers and scientists have for centuries lived like monks and nuns (non-celibate, but sterilized by food additives) in monastic “concents” isolated from larger society. Amazingly exciting, given that premise.

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Quoth Noone Special:

Actually, it’s got a pretty glaring error in cosmology, and it’s also not true that a ramscoop ship would attain arbitrarily high speeds: You’re limited by aerodynamic drag to about 0.12c .

Also remember, folks, the OP isn’t just asking for good science fiction, but good realistic science fiction. Ringworld is great, for instance, but in addition to Teela Brown, the hyperdrives, scrith, or stasis fields would any of them be enough to disqualify it. Likewise, Asimov’s Foundation books, even just the original trilogy, contain psionic powers, which the OP explicitly said he doesn’t want.