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Well, on an unrelated note, do you have any scifi author recommendations?

I have so many. In real life, this is where I get a very intense look in my eye, and about 50% of the time, I can see that the person I'm speaking with has realized that they're now trapped in an hour-long conversation with me.

I'll make it a short list of recent authors I've liked:

- Adrian Tchaikovsky. He's best known for his Children of Time series, but his other scifi books are also excellent; I haven't read the fantasy ones. "The Expert System's Brother" is particularly excellent.

- James Cambias. "A Darkling Sea" is a tremendously cool novel set at the bottom of an ocean under a moon's icy surface. Arkad's World has some very interesting world-building & aliens. And Corsair is a fun near-future technothriller about near-space and moon mining.

- Stephen Baxter (author of the Xeelee Sequence) writes very good books, but just about none of them have a happy ending, and they're mostly grim - but very interesting.

- It's not HN if I don't recommend Greg Egan, Peter Watts, and Neal Stephenson.

Thanks. I have yet to read the first 3, so I'll add them to the list. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll stumble into that art-project novel.

None of those are that novel, but I gave the answer in base64 elsewhere in the thread!

That particular novel isn't the author's best work, but it's decent - his other stuff is much, much better imo.

Children of Time is such a great series, one of my favorites. I really loved the two corvid characters in the latest book. Tchaikovsky really is a great sci-fi writer, I'd recommend his Shards of Earth trilogy.

I'm also surprised to see somebody recommend A Darkling Sea! I don't think I've ever met someone else who's read it and recommended it before. The somewhat odd sidestory of the aliens who communicate through sex has turned off the couple people I've recommended it to from the story, pun not intended.

I am desperately trying to find the third book as a borrowable e-book at a library, but I'm coming up blank :/

I'm convinced Tchaikovsky must be a collection of writers or using a generative AI heavily because nobody can write that many interesting books in such a short time.

I'm working through The Final Architecture series right now, it's got some absolutely great SF.

That's an interesting point. It seems though the man has written many books prior getting published so maybe he is just running through his back catalogue. Remarkable perseverance to keep going after all the rejections.

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