(Part 2) Best hard science fiction books according to redditors
We found 1,032 Reddit comments discussing the best hard science fiction books. We ranked the 300 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
There's only been a dozen or so sci fi stories about plastic-eating germs of some sort or other. The Andromeda Strain had some of that in it's plot. So did this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit-Pedler/dp/B000ZKSHGO
Great post OP! I haven't seen the video in question (sorry) but as an anarchist I do feel confident in giving some of my views. First off, there are no right answers to these questions. Even within the same school of anarco-socialism, you'll likely get different answers to these questions from different people (ask 10 anarcho-socialists and you'll get 11 different answers) and in my view, that's a strength, not a weakness. However because I haven't seen the video, I don't know how much of what I'm about to say is addressed by it. I'm sorry!
I personally don't believe that lazy workers are as much a problem as you believe they will be and I base this on my personal experience. I have visited anarco-communes and also "temporary utopias" like climate camps and anti-globalization convergences. And, no, they were by no means perfect. In anarchist households dishes often don't get done to the extent that it's kind of a running joke. But there are lots of reasons for that. Houses aren't designed with communal living in mind. Under capitalism most of us suffer from depression and anxiety and it's hard to be motivated with that kind of thing when you're worried about your next deadline at your unfulfilling job or paying the bills by the end of the month. A more collectivist society could do things like ensuring no one ever has to do menial jobs alone (even by the simple provision of bigger sinks and bigger kitchens--ever notice how classically houses in western society were designed for use by a single-occupancy gendered labour force; my kitchen is barely twice the size of my wardrobe, but the living room, where the man of the house was expected to spend his off-labour time, is huge). And ultimately I would expect that anarchist societies would not only have a good working understanding of the sexism of gendered labour (most menial jobs are traditionally performed by women) but also be more lenient around all labour. Like maybe you can skip the washing up for that day if it's your period or if you're nursing, both of which are labour neglected by capitalism, just to choose a stereotypical and thought-provoking example. Going back to my own experiences, there were plenty of problems with places like the convergences and anarchist camps, but they never actually suffered from not having clean toilets because people understood that cleaning them was as important an activity as any other type of labour which needed to be undertaken. Ultimately, I agree with the point raised by the WNDWU (youtube link--above): "So you're asking me, who will do the dishes when the revolution comes? Well I do my own dishes now and I'll do my own dishes then. Funny that it's always the ones who don't, who ask that fucking question."
There are a lot of different thoughts about how economics can work in anarchist societies at large-scale. Most likely there would be several different economic models, possibly even within the municipal area, but certainly within different ones. In the future, Kim Stanley Robinson describes a system where small consumptive goods are created in situ, then optionally exchanged as gifts with traders. Underlying this, potassium is used as an exchange of hard currency and reserve, regulating the flow of resources throughout for the production of goods the solar system. Meanwhile, Ursula Le Guin envisaged a society organised by collectives (syndicals) where work was undertaken out of a sense of duty. Less speculatively, David Graeber has done a lot of good work documenting the use of gift economies throughout human history and it's hard to believe there's nothing there, given the overwelming preponderance and importance of gift economies to advanced human societies so far.
But I myself am not an advocate of gift economies. Michael Albert and co. have done a lot of writing on how non-gift participatory or democratic economies could be run and I highly recommend checking out his work. Albert's work is pretty much the closest to what I would like to see myself, I think and he also talks a lot about the psychological benefits of job rotation, e.g. a system where doctors also clean toilets. There is also a form of anarchism known as mutualism in which productive work is carried out by coops instead of companies or conglomerates owned by shareholders or an owner or owners. A coop can be structured along purely democratic grounds, where every decision requires a consensus meeting from relevant workers, through the whole gamut to a system with middle managers and bosses basically being like a company except that the workers form and control the board instead of vice versa. After producing goods, they are exchanged through a free-market mechanism as under capitalism. I myself am not a mutualist but really even mutualism would be a huge step forward compared to what we have under the current system, where productive labour is essentially organized by unaccountable and undemocratic corporate oligarchies.
The invention thing is quite interesting, I think. Just as in an anarchist society you might get several economic systems, so today we actually have several economic models under capitalism as well. One which I am quite familiar with as a software engineer is the open-source model of software development. Last year I invented a new and pioneering method for installing Wordpress websites using a fairly obscure collection of deployment software. The mechanism I invented is so niche that even I struggle to develop the enthusiasm to explain its benefits even to people within the same field but I was excited enough to develop it that I spent three months of my free-time doing that, and now that it is done I am still pleased with the effort even though no one uses it. So basically I invented something and released it for free which was the very definition of a project for which I receive no thanks: no economic compensation, no fame within my professional circles, etc. And yet I was still happy to create and distribute it for free, even allowing others to modify it if they found it useful. So I think that when you are very invested in a particular problem field it's actually very easy to develop the enthusiasm to figure out an invention for a better way of doing something, even if you know you'll receive nothing for it but the personal satisfaction of having simplified a particular problem. And of course in an anarchist society you could expect that most techniques and methods are open-source, and able to be modified and improved upon for free by any interested party. Receiving fame among one's professional peer group, being invited to prestigious conferences within your field to talk about your invention, maybe even being interviewed by the news media--these are all extremely good motivations for creating something, arguably a lot stronger than money actually. (Considering most invention these days is IP-protected and ultimately owned by corporations, I'm kind of surprised the myth of the solo inventor made rich by his own success succeeds actually.) And this happens a lot in software. The most common operating system software globally across all devices? By far, Linux. Windows only leads in the desktop, and that only because of entrenched capitalist user lock-in paradigms.
I'm not sure if it's some time-sensitive deal but I had a look and here are some of the cheap ones that I found on Amazon.co.uk, I'm sure there are probably more out there!
There's actually quite a bit of good post-singularity literature. You should check some of it out. Here's a quick list of a few of my favorites:
It's "Signal to Noise", by Eric S. Nylund.
And it's one of my favorite books of all time: http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/0380792923
... and did you know there's a sequel?
"A Signal Shattered":
http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Shattered-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/038079294X/
Hermione. She's the most fleshed out female character. Failing that, any female character. Failing that, not Harry.
I prefer fandom Hermione to canon Hermione, who was kind of a mean person on a number of occasions. In fact, many of the canon characters are assholes. I don't want to read about people like that. Fandom Hermione tends to be a nice person.
Harry has the least personality in canon given how present he is in it. I've also found that most fanfic protagonist Harrys tend to be people I want to punch. It got to the point that, when I read Yoon Ha Lee's hexarchate books recently, I was shocked that there were male characters who weren't jerks.
A Signal Shattered by Eric Nylund. Humanity has been wiped out by the Earth losing its rotation. Only some dozen survive, using the alien attacker's teleportation device to run across the solar system. It's actually the second in a trilogy I believe, but it's the only I've read and I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Shattered-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/038079294X
If you read the Crystal Society, the sequel just came out on amazon.
First, if you haven't read the crystal society you should definitely check it out. EY endorsed it as something to the effect of 'one of the few smart AI books' (can't remember the exact quote). It's free to download or read online.
Second, what do you guys think of the model of writing a book series and giving the first one away and charging for the sequels? Seems a pretty good way to get a following and then actually make some money, and I'm surprised it hasn't happened more.
It might be Michael Flynn's Firestar Saga. The first book is Firestar,
>It is the dawn of the twenty-first century, and America is in trouble. Public schools breed apathy and ignorance, and politics has become the art of the quick fix. There is one woman, though, who has both the vision and the money to leverage change. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten, heiress to one of the great American fortunes, founds an educational subsidiary called Mentor Academies and begins to subcontract public school systems in order to raise a new, less cynical generation. But her clandestine program is much larger than that: it also includes the founding of a private space program, the eventual construction of an orbital power station, and the revival of technological innovation on Earth.
reminds me of this book I read... It came out last year and also describes a space elevator built with carbonfiber nanotubes. A very interesting read, though maybe 2025 was a bit too early.
My other novels Veneer and Xronixle are also free until Dec 5. Enjoy!
On Amazon, it says it it'll be released July 16, 2019 (English translation by Ken Liu). You only need to hibernation for eight months!
Amazon link if anyone wants to order it
http://www.amazon.com/Rocheworld-Robert-L-Forward/dp/0671698699/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Limit (amazon)
>In 2025, entrepreneur Julian Orley opens the first-ever hotel on the moon. But Orley Enterprises deals in more than space tourism--it also operates the world's only space elevator, which in addition to allowing the very wealthy to play tennis on the lunar surface connects Earth with the moon and enables the transportation of helium-3, the fuel of the future, back to the planet. Julian has invited twenty-one of the world's richest and most powerful individuals to sample his brand-new lunar accommodation, hoping to secure the finances for a second elevator.
Was a nice read. Naturally space colonization has not evolved as far as in The Expanse but you get the evil master plan, James Bond like terrorist/assassins and mercenaries and a lot of suspense. It has 960 pages and I made it through in 3 days.
It has more a James Bond: Moonraker feel to it.
You have read the two sequels, right? (Though I just learned the third book isn't that good, apparently?)
David Brin and Gregory Benford - Heart of the Comet
>Gregory Benford and David Brin come together again to issue a new edition of their bold collaboration about our near human future in space, planting our boots . . . and staking our destiny . . . on becoming the People of the Comet. Prescient and scientifically accurate, Heart of the Comet is known as one of the great "hard sf" novels of the 1980s. First published in 1986, it tells the story of an ambitious manned mission to visit Halley's Comet and alter its orbit, to mine it for resources. But all too soon, native cells— that might once have brought life to Earth—begin colonizing the colonists. As factions battle over the comet's future . . . and that of Earth
Given its original date of publication right before the last pass of Halley's comet the computational and biotechnological plot devices within "Heart of the Comet" hold up very well. The movements of characters in and around space and how vacuum/radiation are handled well. It has rock solid classical mechanics descriptions of electromagnetic phenomenon.
But it also has a story. Apparently it is a good and emotionally compelling one if you like that kind of thing. The realistic science was enough for me. Also see the Amazon reviews if you're worried it is too hard scifi oriented.
Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury might satisfy. It is an unofficial sequel to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. It is the story of a young mathematical genius who aspires to be a psychohistorian. It follows him through his youth of being privately tutored in math, through university studying physics, to the Lyceum studying psychohistory under the second ranked psychohistorian, then to his work as a psychohistorian, developing a new theory of psychohistory.
Edit:
There's also Moving Mars by Greg Bear which follows the political education of the woman who ultimately becomes the vice president of Mars, and The Peace War by Vernor Vinge which covers the apprenticeship of a young mathematician to an old mathematician.
You might find this thread interesting too: main character learning a skill type books (also in /r/booksuggestions).
If you'd like to pick up the kindle, too, it's only 99¢
https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Magician-Evolution-Book-ebook/dp/B07G2KQNRL
Evan Currie's Odyssey One series is more military than pure space opera, but it is awesome.
The Golden Oecumene series by John C Wright is a Transhuman Space Opera of epic proportions. I highly recommend it.
Rachel Bach has a great series called Fortunes Pawn. Also a lil closer to military sci-fi but it has some nice Space Opera themes.
Joshua Dalzelle has a great series called the Black Fleet, again more military sci-fi than true space opera, but very good none the less.
The Reality Dysfunction series though, if you are looking for a meaty Space opera to lose yourself in is a must read series.
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I almost forgot about the Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter and the Darwin's Radio series by Greg Bear. Both are phenomenal reads, and while technically they are set in the near future and aren't space opera per say, they are must reads for anyone into Sci-Fi.
I recently read this. It seems relevant to your interest.
Children of Time https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DN8BQMD/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CVU1DbYSV5EWT
Trying here to suggest ones that others haven't already!
The "Odyssey One" Series by Evan Currie.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005ML0EZS
The "Frontiers Saga" by Ryk Brown
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frontiers-Saga-Episodes-1-3-ebook/dp/B00AVBNBHM
The "Blood on the Stars" Series by Jay Allen
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MCZZTPS
The "Exodus: Empires at War" series by Doug Dandridge has both space battles and planetary invasions.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exodus-Empires-Book-Doug-Dandridge-ebook/dp/B009TZSBJO
The "Black fleet saga" by Joshua Dalzelle
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Warship-Black-Fleet-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00RS8FT2G
That should keep you busy for a few nights anyway.
No, because if it's super cheap, it's probably going to be available as a KU title. But again, you don't need KU to get the whispersync deal. You can just buy the book outright.
See the second screenshot. I included the option to buy the book in the screenshot. The only thing KU does is allow you to "borrow" the book.
But again, if you don't have KU, you can just buy the book and you'll still be able to add whispersync.
I'm assuming you don't have KU, you can check this link as an example of a book you can get cheap with Kindle + Whispersync without needing a KU subscription.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KXZ9EE4/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_awdb_t1_f1fRDbHBK3ZSA
There are even cheaper books.
Here's one for $3 total.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L69CJ4/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_awdb_t1_q6fRDb7XK27SS
I'm not recommending either of these books, the first example I feel is hot garbage, the second one I don't know anything about. They're just examples of cheap books.
And expanding upon that, don't expect books like The Expanse or books by Peter F. Hamilton or Alastair Reynolds to be this cheap. It's usually the lower quality books. There are some gems for low prices like this, but for the most part the top quality books are flying to be fairly expensive.
back to the beginning
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Love this series highly recommend it up until the third book but the fourth book... His other series on silver wings fits the bill as well though.
A few other great reads though that are fairly similar listed in the order of my preference.
Also sorry about high jacking this started writing this as a response then ended up recommending a bunch of other books .
First contact is a whole subgenre of scifi, and it is one of my favorites!
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In regards to your request. I have, but haven't read Artemis because it doesn't look that interesting. Rendezvous with Rama, is good, albeit kinda boring. If you like it, but wish it had more action, read Ringworld by Larry Niven.
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Here are some of my favorite first contact books (with oversimplified plot summaries):
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The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Humans discover an alien spaceship and set out to find the source.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu - Chinese centric first book in a trilogy of aliens invading. One of the best I have read in recent years. Don't want to give away too much. Features alien aliens, like in The Gods Themselves!
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A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge - Humans discover an alien race and race to be the first to make contact with them.
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Damocles by S.G. Redling - Humans discover alien life and launch an expedition to make first contact. Follows the story from the point of the humans and the aliens. Very good hard scifi, but easy to read. The language barrier is a major plot piece.
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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Humans are looking for a new home and stumble across a planet with alien life. Trouble ensues. No spoilers here. The sequel comes out in only a couple of weeks!
If you want some space opera antics, you might want to try Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. A humanoid species known as The Festival descends on a backwater repressive pseudo-medieval world and complicates everyone's lives by giving away high technology to anyone that entertains them.
So, I read and finished Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution, and Revolution, which I referenced in last month's thread. It was a really great collection of stories from a variety of authors.
After that, I continued my cyberpunk trend with Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. It was recommended on a list of cyberpunk books, most of which I compulsively bought. I really liked it, especially the character development. There are two more books in the series, which I'll have to get.
Instead, though, I started Limit, 1200 page epic translated from German. It received a bunch of awards and I read that lots of the technical details are on point, which is something that typically takes me out of the story a lot. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of July, but it's a lot to read and I'm easily distracKitty!!!
Consider reading The Psychohistorical Crisis
Set in the foundation universe I believe...
I'm only 2/3's through the 1st book but I'm enjoying it. It's slow to build but the story is really starting to develop. If you enjoy a game like Stellaris I doubt you'd struggle to enjoy the book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Renegade-Spiral-Wars-Book-1-ebook/dp/B0138YJ3WA
David Brin's Earth was published in 1990, and overpopulation is definitely one of the running themes. I wouldn't say that it's the central theme, but it certainly underlies the entire book. Things like the Sea State being created because there is nowhere else for certain populations to go, 'silence preserves', which prohibit aeroplanes, trucks, radios etc.
Heart of the Comet (1987) by David Brin and Gregory Benford also takes place primarily because they need new resources for an over-populated planet. I wouldn't say that it's the main theme of the book, but it is the reason for their journey, and all of the characters have grown up in a very over-populated world.
Legacy of Heorot (1987) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Stephen Barnes takes place because Earth is so over-populated that they start sending out colonists in hopes of finding new land to expand into. Overpopulation isn't the worst thing that can happen :-)
If anyone is interested in a book that would fit this prompt: Rebel Fleet by BV Larson has a similar premise. It is free on Prime Reading right now. I just finished it last night, and I thought it was a pretty fun, light read.
Random Sci-Fi book from great author that uses them in book 2? or 3? I forget : https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Wings-Evan-Currie-ebook/dp/B005QOX3ZY
Lots of weapons in his universe that use kinetics instead of explosives to do the damage.
Actually his other universe uses tons of kinetic kill weapons : https://www.amazon.com/Into-Black-Remastered-Odyssey-Book-ebook/dp/B005ML0EZS/
https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Mentality-Trillogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01N7TK5EF/
Yes! Bobiverse was great (maybe more coming!) Thanks for the suggestion!
Ive been enjoying Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Some of the story is told from the perspective of genetically modified spiders, has to do with AIs and humans being digitized too.
It's an enjoyable speculative fiction by a good author, but it's by no means an action-driven story. The main plot is about someone trying to prevent physical books from being digitized. So if you're ok with a more dialog-driven story it has some interesting ideas.
Honestly, if you want a story focused solely on augmented reality, check out Veneer. It's a self-published book on the Kindle store but it's about a society that has AR fully integrated to the point where people don't even know what the real world looks like anymore. It's much better than The Digital Sea, which I also found as part of my search for good augmented reality stories.
> Could you help me understand this without the requirement of consciousness as a factor in the experiment?
Sure. It's not "interfering." You get the same pattern of bands as you would if it were a wave, but that doesn't make it a wave.
You know how probability works? The probability of A or B happening is the sum of the probabilities (roughly) and the probability of both happening is the product of the probabilities? QED works the same way, except the probabilities are two-dimensional. Thus, it looks like wave interference, because waves follow the same math.
http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691125759/
It's nothing to do with consciousness. Indeed, since science has not determined precisely and measurably what consciousness is or how it works, why would you think there's anything to do with consciousness in the experiment? That's what Schrodinger's Cat is all about. Is the cat conscious enough to collapse the waveform? Is it your consciousness at the computer what is making the CPU work in your machine? Don't be silly, of course it isn't. Don't you think the computer would run the same way regardless of whether you were "observing" it?
The quantum eraser is about this: Not only can a particle "interfere" with particles that didn't exist at the same time as it did, but it can interfere or not depending on events that happen after you've already measured the particle. What has that to do with "consciousness"?
Instead of asking me to prove or explain why consciousness doesn't have anything to do with QED, why don't you try to explain how we build devices that can photograph individual atoms and their bonds without being able to even clearly define what consciousness is. It should then become obvious that consciousness doesn't come into the theory of quantum mechanics any more than angels are required to run a nuclear reactor.
By the way, even if QED did require some sort of "consciousness", what in the world does that have to do with requiring a deity? That makes even less sense than saying a failure of a prediction of evolution logically implies the existence of a deity.
If you want a fun fictional treatment:
http://www.amazon.com/Quarantine-Greg-Egan/dp/0061054232
Looking at the Amazon reviews this seems like an excellent hard science fiction book. I may considering buying it even if it doesn't win.
Psychohistorical Crisis is set during the Second Empire, 2722-2742 FE.
[Tomorrowland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film%29), obviously. :)
Firestar could be Elon Musk's roadmap.
If "Science Fiction, Ecological Thriller, Melted Arctic Icecap, New Wil Frontier" is a pretty hefty book, I'd wager it's Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Brilliant book, huge narrative, first in a trilogy.
The gravity teleportation thingy from Signal Shattered and Signal to Noise. I think it was called a Gateway but I'm not sure.
That or their implants.
Your theory is basically the premise of this book https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01KXZ9EE4/ref=ku_mi_aw_edp
Edit: thanks for reminding me that the second book in the series is now out. Free to read too, if you have Amazon Prime.
Malcolm F. Cross, Dog Country.
One of those crazy good but underappreciated ones.
Joel Shepherd, Renegade (Spiral Wars)
Has a lot of fleet stuff, but plenty of fun with the marine crew.
The Quantum Magicians fits some of them. Bloomin good as well!
Haha, thanks! If you like the sound of Sorcerous Crimes Division, you should check out the first one.
With sci-fi it's not so much the research, it's the difficulty in establishing and maintaining scene geography. When writing a sword fight or a chase through the streets, it's fairly straightforward to establish everything in a way that the reader can use to create a mental map of the events. There's an alley behind this building, two bad guys are in it facing away, and the protagonist is over here doing his thing. There are buildings on three sides limiting his movement.
With space battles and other interactions between ships it's much more abstract. Enemies can be hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart (if you're going for any kind of realism), but if you want a dynamic encounter it will read as if they're a stone's throw away from each other. The geography and timing also gets more confusing. Ok, there's two ships inbetween the human ship and the star, but wait now the human is angling down and rolling inverted, where are the enemy ships now? All the ships are accelerating, so there are no constant speeds. What's the relative motion between good guy and bad guy A, B, and C?
If you're interested, the book On Silver Wings by Evan Curie juxtaposes space battles with ground combat, and you can compare the two and see just how much more difficult it is to make a dynamic space battle while trying to stay realistic. It's a great series, and is definitely an influence on Vick's Vultures.
You should read Psychohistorical Time Crisis by Kingsbury. Continues this trilogy but a couple millennium into the future.
Link
It's a pretty quiet week, after a pretty good haul to start December last week here's what most catches my eye for the week ending Tuesday December 13, including a couple that really, really do:
SERIES BOOKS:
CLASSICS:
KIDS:
From pudquick:
It's "Signal to Noise", by Eric S. Nylund.
And it's one of my favorite books of all time: http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Noise-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/0380792923
... and did you know there's a sequel?
"A Signal Shattered":
http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Shattered-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/038079294X/
Veneer is a pretty good one. I got it when it was free on amazon, if you want I can do the loan a book thing, I would just need your email, in a pm of course.
Ellon's just a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson.
Let me suggest another one, Ninefox Gambit, though I'm hesitant to say which category it ought to be in.
How about Involution Ocean, that one can go in beginner, I think.
Permutation City sorta changed my view of what the universe could be. I'm still not sure whether or not that's a good thing.
What about that Singularity Sky sequel, Iron Sunrise? That one is a tough pill to swallow, [spoiler](/s "Since it basically means that space nazis are going to eat everyone's souls, and there's no hope because the future implies that it will happen").
Late additions. Hope no one minds that I necro this post ;)
A lot of my favorites have already been suggested so here the best stuff I could think of that I didn't see mentioned below.
Have you read any of the Horus Heresy books? The first three are kind of an unofficial trilogy and are fantastic. The series is a whole is really good but with some books being hit or miss. The anecdote I tell everyone is that my wife is not a nerd and is not into sci fi. She cried at the end of the third book and we named one of our kids after a character.
https://www.amazon.com/Horus-Rising-Heresy-Book-ebook/dp/B01MQGRV2R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Horus+Rising&qid=1565396327&s=gateway&sr=8-1
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Even Curries On Silver Wings series is really good. Really awesome/interesting take on both space battles and powered armor. Unfortunately he seems to have kind of dropped the series after the main story arc but up until that point (book 6 i think?) its absolutely worth a read.
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https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Wings-Evan-Currie-ebook/dp/B005QOX3ZY/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=on+silver+wings&qid=1565396560&s=gateway&sr=8-1
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Michael A Stackpole's X-Wing Series. Its considered "legends" now but it gave us SW fans some of the most iconic moments in the franchise. (Errant Venture anyone?). These books, along with Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy beginning with Heir to the Empire,are the Star Wars squeal movies we should have gotten.
https://www.amazon.com/Rogue-Squadron-Star-Legends-X-Wing-ebook/dp/B00513HXBA/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=xwing+stackpole&qid=1565396652&s=gateway&sr=8-1
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Which brings me to the coup de grace. Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. Mad Jedi masters? Super genius military strategists? Talon Karde and Mara Jade? Yes. Even more than the movies these books defined Star Wars to me as a teenager.
https://www.amazon.com/Heir-Empire-Legends-Thrawn-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00513HX7Y/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2C8D6Q4ZX5KEE&keywords=heir+to+the+empire&qid=1565396812&s=gateway&sprefix=heir+to+the+empire%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-1
Quarantine by Greg Egan is a sci-fi book that addresses this thought, but the reasoning is a little different. Basically it's not because of our tendency toward conflict & xenophobia, but rather the fact that our brains are wired to collapse quantum wave functions. It's a kickass book.
Quarantine by Greg Egan
Gap Cycle Stephen R. Donaldson
Dayworld TrilogyPhilip José Farmer
Renegade and its sequel Drysine Legacy by Joel Shepherd might be what you're looking for. It's set 1,000+ years in the future and humans are kind of underdogs in the galaxy. They're still the newest space-faring civilization and are battling aliens that have been around for 25,000+ years. It's really great military sci fi with well-written characters.
If the bodies are mutually tidally locked it may be possible to connect them with an elevator. See my Pluto Charon elevator
See also Robert Forward's Rocheworld. Rocheworld is a planetary contact binary. A smaller contact binary that recently made the news is Ultima Thule.
Although contact binary is more often used as a label for stars close enough to share their gaseous envelope. See the Wikepedia article on stellar contact binaries
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy gets into some interesting political philospohy about why and how humans organise themselves into political groups. (I've only read the first of the three books)
The full novel of "...Dragonfly" is called Rocheworld. Unfortunately, it's not available in Kindle.
If you want to read a scifi book about it, there is Mutant 59
https://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit-Pedler/dp/B000ZKSHGO
Wouldn't it be absolutely fascinating if Satan really did add them?
For some reason this reminds me of the great book Quarantine, by Greg Egan, in which he ties together a phenomenon causing the stars to blank out and a woman who repeatedly escapes from a locked room at a mental hospital.
Worth reading for his take on an effect of quantum physics! That's about all I can say without providing spoilers.
Then I will also suggest The Last Angel (listed above). For something radically different, I might also suggest Ninefox Gambit. It is a strange fantasy/sci-fi mix set in a world where concentrated belief can shape reality. The premise is that the protagonist has the ghost of a long dead general embedded in her mind to act as an adviser during a massive campaign against heretics. Naturally, this long dead general has other ideas, and you could draw some similarities between his ideas and plans and the way the Terran in Chrysalis acted.
Yes, Redemption of Time, not by Liu Cixin tho ...
https://www.amazon.com/Redemption-Time-Three-Body-Problem-Novel/dp/1250306027/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542622175&sr=1-1&keywords=redemption+of+time
Any here read The Quantum Magician? This is essentially the tech St Matthew used for his avatar!
Michael F. Flynn wrote the Firestar series about this same idea. Hard SF, early earth spacefaring. https://www.amazon.com/Firestar-Saga-Book-1/dp/147083619X#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1488082934454
Yawn...http://www.amazon.com/Quarantine-Greg-Egan/dp/0061054232
We're in isolation! This planet is obviously the galactic insane asylum with all manner of crazy lifeforms engineered into these bald monkey carcasses. And we only see what we're allowed to see.
Jackson Wolfe style...I like it. reference
https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky-ebook/dp/B07DN8BQMD/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536503326&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=children+of+time&dpPl=1&dpID=51sR5hLQZIL&ref=plSrch
is that the book?
I have a book recommendation that you may enjoy (based on what you just described above) Singularity Sky, By Charles Stross
Basically the book starts with an orbiting hivemind raining Cellphone like devices from the sky onto the surface of a planet which has intentionally eschewed technology, and when people pick them up, a voice says "Tell us a story, and we'll give you anything"
Here's a snip from it's wiki entry:
>
> "The novel follows the ill-fated military campaign by a repressive state, the New Republic, to retaliate for a perceived invasion of one of its colony worlds. In actuality, the planet has been visited by the Festival, a technologically advanced alien race that rewards its hosts for "entertaining" them by granting whatever the entertainer wishes, including the Festival's own technology. This causes extensive social, economic and political disruption to the colony, which was generally limited by the New Republic to technology equivalent to that found on Earth during the Industrial Revolution. "
Along similar lines, Rocheworld by Robert Forward is based on two planets tidally locked to each other.
"A Signal Shattered" is pretty awesome, too. It starts off in the wake of the Earth's destruction and spirals into clone-of-the-protagonist-army-teleporting-around-the-galaxy strangeness.
http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Shattered-Eric-S-Nylund/dp/038079294X
Amazon link with no referral code in case anyone wants to order it.