This is an excellent sci-fi exploration of possible future, especially given the year in which it was written. I've not re-read it since I've only finished it a few months ago, but it was an excellent read.
Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, from 1930, seems to fit this genre too. It gets a bit outlandish with telepathy, but it’s ambitious novel telling of humanity’s ebbing and flowing, evolving a lot along the way, from ‘present day’ to the far, far future when the solar system is engulfed by a supernovaing sun. Considering its ambition, it reads surprisingly well.
If you enjoy thinking about epic timescales I recommend Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future' fairly outdated, heavy going, but unique.
A few days back I finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. It's really interested, the premise basically explores what a potential posthuman technologically advanced future could look like.
Just looked it up, seems awesome. I'm almost done with what I'm currently reading, so I will pick this up next. Do you have any other recommendations? I've been looking for more stuff like this (futurist, adventure, sci-fi, not cheesy), but just haven't been able to find the right one.
Surprised to see Permutation City in that list. Given that the book is written in 1994, Gregg displays admirable prescience about how computing would develop. Honestly you would think it was written in the last 5 years or so. His vision of cloud computing is absolutely outstanding. It blew me away when I checked when the book was written after reading the first few chapters.
I'd read Schild's Ladder prior to reading Permutation city, which is also a good read. It does seem to get bogged down in the technical and descriptive side of things at times, however, it's a fantastic idea for a story. The main premise of the film would make a great movie.
Whilst I'm on the subject of good "Hard sci-fi" novels, Tau Zero is also worth reading.
Damn, I read that book as a teenager in 2006 or 07! I've been thinking about a reread whenever I remember it. It was the book that really made me appreciate the whole technological singularity idea back then.
Olaf Stapledon has two sci fi works that incorporate many ecological ideas into his vision of a future history of the human species (Last and First Men) and his ideas for possible alien life (Star Maker). They are both incredible works of human imagination
Next time include that it's by Charles Stross in the title - I almost didn't click through to the article! As an aside, anyone who enjoyed this will surely enjoy his novel, "Glasshouse", and I highly reccomend it for anyone vaguely interested in the SciFi genre.
Interesting responses. If you haven't already, the Foundation trilogy is a must read. Essentially a bunch of really smart folks create a new field of science focused on predicting the geopolitical and technological advances of the future universe to ensure the human race is successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men
This is an excellent sci-fi exploration of possible future, especially given the year in which it was written. I've not re-read it since I've only finished it a few months ago, but it was an excellent read.
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