Science Fiction

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Diaspora, Greg Egan

• Very well thought-out depiction of a far-future world in which humanity has branched into a myriad of forms, from unaltered natural "statics" to wildly engineered biological creatures, very advanced cyborgs and the main characters of the book, pure uploads of essentially infinite variety. Chock full of ideas about the nature of identity and fundamental physics (!), this is "hard science fiction" at its very best. Highly Recommended.

Permutation City, Greg Egan

• Another much-discussed book: Science fiction taking some of the issues and problems of "mind uploading" head-on and hitting the mark a lot of the time. Like Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, though, it has a disappointingly poorly-thought-out ending and, in addition, could have been edited better.

Quarantine, Greg Egan

• One of Egan's early works, it clearly demonstrates that he is the leading philosophical thinker working in science fiction today. A book thick with ideas. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Distress : A Novel, Greg Egan

• Continues Egan's work as the deepest thinker in science fiction today. Presages some of the wilder ideas found in Permutation City. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Cassini Division, Ken MacLeod

• Scottish science fiction author MacLeod offers an excellent to the growing body of books explicitly addressing transhumanist issues and themes. While I deeply disagree with what appears to be his own personal political philosophy depicted in this book, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it as a good yarn that is well-informed by the best thinking about transhumanism.

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

• Although this book might not be considered "science fiction" by some, I think it is. From a purely literary viewpoint, this is the best novel I've read in the last ten years. Set in two interwoven time frames (World War II and "the present", Cryptonomicon follows a wide cast of well-developed and interesting characters through a complex fabric of personal interaction across time and space. The basic subject matter is cryptography and the birth and development of computers and modern communication technology, but saying that is like saying that Crime and Punishment is about a murder. EXTREMELY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

• Excellent novel set in the period of rapid social change wrought by first-generation nanotech; interesting characters; unfortunate tendancy (like much science fiction) to do too much; bad deus ex machina ending; overall very good sci-fi novel. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

• Classic of the cyberpunk genre, this near-future science fiction novel depicts a semi-anarchist world with significantly weakened nation-states, and the power of what I like to call the "hypernet". Very well written in a hip and humorous style, not like the one employed in The Diamond Age -- revealing Stephenson to be a versatile writer. Recommended.

Queen of Angels and Slant, Greg Bear

• In these two books (1990 and 1998) Bear tells mid-21st century tales of a genetically-altered cop in Los Angeles and Seattle, dealing with legal and moral issues raised by artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetic engineering. Very well written and engaging in the depth to which Bear explores the ideas behind his ideas. Recommended.

Legacy, Greg Bear

• The "prequel" to Eon and Eternity. Not as good as those books, but consists mainly of the portrayal of the interesting life forms on a planet in "The Way".

The Forge of God, Greg Bear.

• Great end-of-the-world sci-fi novel. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge.

• A great example of fiction by one of the best thinkers writing science fiction today. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge

• In a very well-crafted story, Vinge portrays three civilizations (two human, one not) in different stages of adaptation to technology, which is the recurring theme of his work. Set in the same future (but much earlier) as A Fire on the Deep, this book ultimately explores the clash between open closed societies. Highly Recommended.

Across Realtime, Vernor Vinge

• Vinge's seminal sf novel of transhumanist technology and the Singularity. If you read no other work of fiction from the basic Extropians bibliography, it should be this book, as it best expresses the core concepts and values shared by that group. While the plot gets pretty stretched in places, the sheer scope of ideas Vinge packs into the book seems to justify the ... elasticity.

The Martian Race, Gregory Benford

• A very well-crafted story with better than average characterization and extremely well-researched technology and natural science. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

A King of Infinite Space, Allen Steele

• Very well-written (and often humorous) adventure and "hard" science fiction story exploring cryonics, genetic enginneering, nanotechnology and space development. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Deception Well, Linda Nagata

• Far-future "hard" science fiction novel, assuming the full panoply of transhuman technologies (mature nanotech, AIs, "sculpted entities", etc.). Well written, although slightly adolescent (as if that weren't a criticism of 99.999% of science fiction) and a little slow to develop. Nagata saves her forced exposition until the very end of the book, allowing the reader to figure things out on his own -- a nice touch. Recommended.

Vast, Linda Nagata

• A sequel to Deception Well. Nagata shows a poetic mastery of transhuman technologies such as nanotechnology, "consciousness scultping" and especially the problems and promises of uploading. Especially interesting is her depiction of utterly alien life forms and the tension between the goals of unitary consciousnesses and ones formed by union of multiple entities. Highly recommended.

Tech Heaven, Linda Nagata

• Good near-future "hard" science fiction,with a focus on some key transhumanist technologies: cryonics, the "hypernet", VR and nanotechnology. Nagata's main character is a woman with believable motivations and emotional texture.  Recommended.

Queen City Jazz and Mississippi Blues, Kathleen Ann Goonan

• The first two novels in Goonan's tale of an America utterly transformed by the power of mature nanotechnology. Goonan uses a few contrivances to make her story work that require a little stretching of credulity, but once one accepts her premises, the story is wel constructed and, unlike too much science fiction, well driven by character. RECOMMENDED to science fiction fans.
• Crescent City Rhapsody, Kathleen Ann Goonan
  A "prequel" to the other two novels by Goonan I read last month, I finally became disenchanted with the narrative style and especially the plot devices she creates to make a story possible in the context of the powerful technologies she is exploring. I especially found her hand-waving with regard to the cognitive science aspects of the technology unsatisfying.

Startide Rising, David Brin

• The second in Brin's series of "Uplift" novels (I read the first, Sundiver, many years ago). These books deal with, among other things, humanity's relationship with genetically-enhanced ("uplifted") species of chimpanzees and dolphins, who have been endowed with higher intelligence and the ability to function as equals or near-equals in human society. Interesting exposition of the moral issues raised by this scenario. Recommended.

The Truth Machine, Jim Halperin

• Halperin's first novel, set in the same science-fiction future history of the next 50 years as The First Immortal. Halperin explores the ramifications of development of a very relaiable "lie detector". Recommended (despite Halperin's "docu-drama" style, of which I am not fond).

The First Immortal, Jim Halperin

• Well-researched "saga" of a family who reaches from our time into an utterly different 21st century through cryonics. Halperin does a very good job of depicting the step-by-step transformation of the world through the technologies that we now see in their infancies, such as advanced information processing, nanotechnology and cryonics. I did not find Halperin's view of the political element of these changes particularly convincing, but do recommend the book as a solidly reasonable conception of the next 100 years and beyond. Recommended.

Exegesis, Astro Teller

• An entertaining short epistolary novel tracking the accidental development of the first AI. Also interesting because the author, a PhD candidate at Carnegie Melon working on AI, is the son of Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and godfather of the Star Wars program. Recommended.

The Reality Dysfunction, Parts I (Emergence) and II (Expansion); The Neutronium Alchemist, Parts I (Consolidation) and II (Conflict), Peter F. Hamilton

• My friend Bill Luker recommended the first in this series and I got hooked. Now I'm waiting for the fifth (and hopefully last) volume, The Sleeping God, due out later in 1998. Bill described this series as "Episcopalian Science Fiction". I call it Space (Soap) Opera. Hamilton does an interesting job of exploring some implications of nanotechnology and advanced genetic engineering in a classic hard-SF galactic-scale war epic. But be warned: The major plot element will likely bother philosophical materialists (it bothers me) and the series gets a little repetitious after more than 2,000 (!) pages. But Hamilton's good descriptions of space battles made the effort worth it for me on lazy summer afternoons.

Man-Kzin Wars VII, Gregory Benford and Martin O. Martin

• Latest in the entertaining series of short stories and novellas set in Larry Niven's future-history; contains a good story about the first contact with the "Outsdiers"

Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson

• First of three novels about the colonization and terraforming of Mars; very good descriptions of the Martian surface as it is transformed in the terraforming process; Robinson misses the boat on nanotech.

Earthweb, Marc Stiegler

• Good story of ideas about advanced collaborative knowledge systems on the web. Not so impressive as fiction.

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

• A modern classic of adolescent scince fiction.

Vacuum Flowers, Michael Swanwick

• An overly-complex story that is full of interesting ideas (a too-common criticism of "almost-good" science fiction).

The Lost World, Michael Crichton

• Sequel to Jurassic Park. The book is obviously intended as a (sort-of) prose movie script.  Pretty good airplane book and the material will look good as a movie, with lots of good special effects and simple action scenes.

Host, Peter James

• A "techno-thriller" murder mystery based on two transhumanist technologies, cryonics and uploading.  I was impatient with James' "micro-narrative" style and felt there was plenty enough material for a story with just one of the two technologies he discusses. Frustrating because I've had an idea for a story with some similar elements, but a very different line through them.

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