Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Book recommendation thread? I picked up and read The Eternal Front as recommended from last week's thread, and found it quite enjoyable - very often I find sci-fi loses me within its own scope, but Blaire's writing felt much more human in scale with far lower stakes than what I ordinarily read. I think sci-fi shines brightest when telling stories about the individuals navigating the cultures and battlefields forged through genetic, technological and/or cultural isolation - the actual bedrock upon which every setting rests. Anyway Eternal Front is a good rec and I'll just second @No_one's writeup for it.
Maybe my awareness of the often unnecessarily grandiose scope of sci-fi is the result of serendipity, as I also (finally) got around this week to reading Peter Watts' Echopraxia after having read and reread Blindsight several times over the years, and for as much as I love his writing he doesn't really do people very well. Maybe he just finds them awkward and somewhat unnecessary to the tale he's trying to tell (this may be a literary flourish of his, kind of the point, I've only just recently been introduced to the concept of "media literacy" please understand). Regardless, if you read/enjoyed Blindsight and haven't read the sequel yet, I'll stick a hearty recommendation onto it. If you haven't read Blindsight and you like hard sci-fi then I don't know what you're doing here. Go read it (it's available for free on Watts' website) and curse/thank me later. Pretty sure our actual future looks more like his vision than Gene Roddenberry's.
Continuing down the vein of galactic scale sci-fi that I like but feel a little lost in the sauce, I enjoyed Alastair Reynolds Inhibitor Trilogy, though when reading it I couldn't shake the feeling I was reading a grimdark Culture fanfic (albeit a thoughtfully and competently written one). A fun read if you have nothing else going on, some interesting semi-hard concepts get trotted out and played with, a few logical conclusions to the laws of physics (and breaking them) are portrayed in fairly comprehensible prose. The first entry, Revelation Space, is fun enough by itself to be worth a read; if you want more of that, then each subsequent book expands on those same themes and scenarios. A medium-strength recommend.
Speaking of Iain Banks Culture series, I suppose I'll register some disappointment with everyone who told me Consider Phlebas was a weaker entry in the series than Player of Games, could not really disagree more - PoG was an interesting look into alien anthropology and cultural hijacking but I found it to be bit of a slog. Phlebas, however, scratched that itch I have for a story about a person doing person things in a great big future. Both were good reads though, and I have a fresh copy of Use of Weapons now sitting on top of my stack.
I'm very sorry, but rest assured that top minds are working on a cure for Media Literacy.
I only read PoG and not Phleb, and while it didn't feel like a slog I was deeply unsatisfied with it. The setup was interesting, but the only payoff was... Being lectured by annoying robot communists?
If you enjoyed the other one better I'll give it a try.
Phlebas is acknowledged as one of his weakest Culture work, I believe. Player of Games as one of the better ones. I didn't find any of the books too preachy though. And they aren't really 'communists' in any real sense. It's more of a thoroughly post-scarcity oligarchy with a number of unsolved questions..
Iain was a bolshie, true, but at least the books are good reading, and the preaching / lib-mindedness is at worst present, but not central.
Personally I don't mind long-winded books that are universally acknowledged to 'need an editor' if the writing is fun enough.
I really liked "The Algebraist". Not a culture book at all, and even though it's mildly political, you can hardly accuse the message of being communist. Any human except maybe the most reactionary/hierarchical types would concur, I believe.
Fearsum Endjinn is pretty decent. I liked 'Against a Dark Background' though it's a bit rougher.
He was a good to very good writer... 20 years of writing after work, followed by twenty more years being comfortably well off while writing for a quarter of a year, at most.
Well, pancreatic cancer is no joke. He was dead within three months of diagnosis.
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