Discuss Fiasco by Stanisław Lem in the comments below. If you have any book suggestions for the upcoming poll, feel free to add those.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is the first book of the "Bobiverse" series by Dennis E. Taylor:
Dennis E. Taylor is a Canadian novelist and former computer programmer known for his large scale hard science fiction stories exploring the interaction between artificial intelligence and the human condition.
While working at his day job as a computer programmer, Taylor self published his first novel and began working with an agent to try and publish his second novel We Are Legion. However Taylor still had difficultly getting any publishing house to take on his work, eventually publishing it through his agent's in-house publishing arm. An audiobook rights deal with Audible was also reached and once recorded, We Are Legion became one of the most popular audiobooks on the service and was awarded Best Science Fiction Audiobook of the year.
[...] In October 2018 Taylor was added to the X-Prize Foundation Science Fiction Advisory Council as a "Visionary Storyteller". This group of accomplished science fiction authors help advise the X-Prize team on envisioning the future.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem • Snow Crash • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Related Stories
Want to read some books? Many of our users have shown interest in having a book club. Now it's finally time to kick it off.
Your soytyrant has pre-selected the first three books so that you have more time to read them, should you choose to do so:
September: Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew
October: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
The plan is to read a book, and discuss it on the 1st of the following month. Suggestions for new books (of any genres, not just "science fiction") will also be collected at the same time. You can start listing some of your suggestions right now in this comment section. We'll pick up to eight of them and run a poll on September 15th to decide the book for December. And so on.
The first book is Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew, one of our more literary users (not to be confused with Mars Ho! by Jennifer Willis). The book is available for free on McGrew's website, although there are some purchasing options available if you want to support him. From the description:
Captain John Knolls thinks he's just been given the best assignment of his career -- ferrying two hundred prostitutes to Mars. He doesn't know that they're all addicted to a drug that causes them to commit extreme, deadly violence when they are experiencing withdrawal or that he'll face more pirates than anyone had ever seen before. Or that he'd fall in love. A humorous science fiction space novel, a horror story, a love story, a pirate story, a tale of corporate bureaucracy and incompetence.
All book club posts will be in the Community Reviews nexus, which is linked to on the site's sidebar. You'll likely want to click on that link once the posts fall off the main page.
October: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
October's book is Foundation by Isaac Asimov, meaning the collection of 5 short stories first published in 1951. It is the first published entry in the Foundation series.
Please discuss last month's book, Mars, Ho! below if you haven't done so already. You can also suggest books for January 2019. I can include titles that were already suggested, such as in the comments on the poll. We may be able to increase the maximum number of poll options to accommodate more books.
Previously: SoylentNews Book Club is Alive
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
A poll for the January 2019 book will be around the 15th, unless you want it sooner (not sooner than the U.S. midterms).
Discuss Foundation by Isaac Asimov in the comments below.
As for Liu Cixin's best known novel:
"Wildly imaginative, really interesting." ―President Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy
The English translation for The Three-Body Problem was published in 2014 by Ken Liu under Tor Books.
Consider using <spoiler>text</spoiler> wherever you feel the need to do so.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho!
December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
The next poll will pick two books. I'd like to do it that way to keep a strong second place contender from being overlooked, and so I don't have to update the poll so often.
Discuss The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin in the comments below.
Snow Crash was written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. The novel features a bit of a Calexit scenario, and is known for popularizing the term "avatar" (paving the way for James Cameron's true magnum opus). These days, Neal moonlights as Magic Leap's "Chief Futurist". Seems appropriate.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation
February: Fiasco by Stanisław Lem
March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in the comments below.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein was published in 1966:
The book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is used in the story for precise human-computer interaction. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits this novel with the first printed appearance of the phrase "There's no free lunch", although the phrase and its abbreviation considerably predate the novel.
The virtual assistant Mycroft is named after a computer system from the novel.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem
March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein in the comments below.
Fiasco was translated into English in 1988 by Michael Kandel:
Fiasco (Polish: Fiasko) is a science fiction novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem, first published in a German translation in 1986. The book, published in Poland the following year, is a further elaboration of Lem's skepticism: in Lem's opinion, the difficulty in communication with alien civilizations is cultural disparity rather than spatial distance. The failure to communicate with an alien civilization is the main theme of the book.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem • Snow Crash
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:01PM (2 children)
Still reading it. I seem to have a lot of other things to do.
(Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:18AM
There is a audio book you can listen to while driving/riding.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fiasco+stanislaw+lem+audiobook [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Wednesday March 13 2019, @12:02PM
I hope this topic won't get locked by the time you have finished it. After the first half of the book I just couldn't stop reading it. The last 50 pages felt like I've read them on single breath.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Improbus on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:54PM (1 child)
I have listened to be Unabridged Audibile version of the Bobiverse Trilogy twice. It is awesome. Anyone that loves space and computers and simulations will love these books. The narrator of the audiobooks is awesome too. A++ will probably listen to them again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday March 12 2019, @08:26PM
I'm signed up for Cryonics and it gave me a new perspective on reanimation that I hadn't considered. I'm still planning on doing it, even if it means I'll be driving a garbage truck.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:04PM (4 children)
May I recommend Too Far by Rich Shapiro?
An amazing blend of reality and fantasy verging on poetry.
My son gave me a copy. I was spellbound from the first page.
A Goodreads reviewer described it as "two six-year-olds ... take refuge from their turbulent homes by exploring the mysterious woodland beyond."
I won't quote more of that sentence because it contains spoilers. Take it form me -- only read the rest of that sentence after you have read the book.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:05PM
s/form/from/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:13PM
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
by Ben Shapiro
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:12AM (1 child)
2.86 · Rating details · 975 ratings
It seem too me your opinion about this book is a lonely one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:54PM
And the guy is a Nazi.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ayn Anonymous on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:50AM (1 child)
I actually have two book suggestions:
Oryx and Crake - Book #1 of the MaddAddam trilogy. By Margaret Atwood
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46756.Oryx_and_Crake [goodreads.com]
73f0f74a8c2c0ccac7aca5c6e96d55a0427f060c
Beggars in Spain - Book #1 of the Sleepless trilogy. By Nancy Kress.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68333.Beggars_in_Spain [goodreads.com]
I recommend the audio-book versions.
(Score: 1) by Improbus on Monday March 25 2019, @05:02PM
Loved Beggars in Spain and the other books. Great hard sci-fi.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:12PM
I'm having trouble finding an epub version of We Are Legion.
I live in Canada; some US booksellers refuse to deal with me.
Any suggestions where to look? Kobe doesn't seem to carry it -- or else their web page has absolutely *terrible* search.
(Score: 1) by adp on Wednesday March 20 2019, @12:32AM (1 child)
So who was Marek Tempe? Pirx or Parvis?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:51AM
There's another Lem book in which Pirx returns to Earth and cannot relate to anything in the changes world. So my guess is Parvis.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 20 2019, @01:06PM
We are Legion (We are Bob) is not available in .epub.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:31PM
Nonfiction this time:
A New History of Life, by Peter Ward and Joe Kirshvink
A fascinating history of life on Earth, starting with the pre-life molten world of meteoric bombardment, and tracking it through the various snowball earths to the present.
-- hendrik