this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Lemmy World Rules

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In the mood for engineering / competence porn. What are your favourite novels / series? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.

Edit: I'm so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.

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[–] hoodles@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Another vote for Greg Egan. And I too really enjoyed the Children of Time series and anything written by Alastair Reynolds, although I don't think the genre is exactly what you're looking for. Finding modern, hard sci-fi really is pretty difficult.

I get where you're coming from with KSR's Mars series. I think Ministry for the Future was a better read, personally.

Also, I find that a lot of Crichton scratches similar itch to Andy Weir. Especially things like Andromeda Strain and Airframe.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

I might give Ministry a shot, haven't tried it yet. And Greg Egan is on my list now. Crichton, I did not like Sphere and I guess it turned me away from trying his other books. I guess I should give some of them another shot.