[Renely]

Hey there all. I have just been reading a few books that really go me thinking and wanted to get some more suggestions along the same lines.

I read:
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Mona Lisa Overdrive (William Gibson)
Salvation (C.S. Goto)
Junktion (Matthew Farrer)
Shira Calpurnia (Matthew Farrer)


Each of these books has something in common. They are all about normal people in far reaching future sci-fi settings.

I am tired about reading about space marine's super soldiers, super assassins, never-do-wrong heroes, and in general action-adventure crap that skips over the whole "how does a future like work anyway? And what so the little guys/average citizenry do day to day? What does the hero do in his free time?"

So what I am looking for it any sci-fi books anyone would like to share that really present a believably function sci-fi setting and some characters that are not super human or shallow run-shoot-kill heroes.

Maybe something that has a little bit of moral dilemma, some thoughtful setting immersion and a character(s) who are deeply three dimensional in their actions and choices.

I think the books listed above hit most of these marks, and were in general amazing reads to get me into a future world that i have never seen or heard of. So i am just looking for more. I am open to suggestion and would love to hear what others say.

This is an open discussion so feel free to post your own thoughts on the subject as well, cheers!

[Flatlander]

June's book club nomination - The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - more or less falls into this category.

Are you looking for examples specifically set in a dystopian potential future, or just generally anything which doesn't feature some type of hero or focus on one or two main characters? Just out of curiosity - the only ones of the five you listed which I have read are the two Gibson novels, so I have no idea what the other three encompass.

[psikeyhackr]

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25227&highlight=dystopian

http://www.lunch.com/reviews/book/UserReview-Rite_of_Passage-1631905-21748-Rite_of_Passage_by_Alexei_Panshin.html

http://www.lunch.com/reviews/book/UserReview-Voyage_from_Yesteryear-1685344-198567-Politics_of_Anarchy_in_Outer_Space.html

http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Cosmic_Computer_by_H_Beam_Piper-1601541.html

psik

[Renely]

Odd looks like my reply got lost...

@Flatlander: The other books are simply set in the far future, centered around the lives of a average person (a lightbulb repairman and a scribe). It does a great job of detailing out the mundane aspects of their lives, and how the society as a whole functions logically and where they fit in.

Then they get caught up in intrigue and adventure, all the while the books keep up the detail and believability of the setting and society. We get to see what its like being in the shadow of the hero/great villain and what its like to be on the outside of a great plot, and to get carried away in its current, yet not be the own making waves.

In short, it just gives a bystanders point of view on a grand plot that is happening while making the world feel more lived in and detailed.

[Pronghorn]

I am going to fight the hypothetical. One of the more interesting notions to come out of SF in the last 20 years is the idea of the singularity: that technological change will continue to accelerate, and that advances in AI, nanotech and microbiology will make predicting the future deeply impossible, except to say it will be far stranger than we can imagine.

The prophet of the singularity is Vernor Vinge, and his volume of related stories Marooned in Realtime is the best place to start to try to understand it. (Along with his easily googled essay on the Singularity.)

Greg Bear's Blood Music is a look at a singularity driven more by biological developments than by AI.

Rudy Rucker consistently writes very trippy books on tech development and common people. Try his series Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware.

And I think you would like Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age.

[Chekhov]

Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Why can't science fiction be relatively mundane?

[psikeyhackr]

Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Why can't science fiction be relatively mundane?

Isn't "mundane" the term applied to people not into science fiction?

psik

[Chekhov]

Currently I'm reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, which is set in an alternate past in which the Axis won WWII. It's like a throwback to all the dystopian novels I read in high school - I wish I'd read it sooner.
Isn't "mundane" the term applied to people not into science fiction?

psikMaybe by people I would term "snobs".

[psikeyhackr]

Maybe by people I would term "snobs".

Is physics snobbish to people that can't get it right?

What is the meaning of this story?

http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/105/

http://home.tiac.net/~cri_d/cri/1999/coldeq.html

Actually that is a problem with science fiction and what kind of sci-fi people like. I said Hyperion was not science fiction. I was not joking. To me the mundanes business is just funny. But there are people that don't like sci-fi that contains real science. The common excuse is that when they want science they will get a science book. Of course what I think is, "Yeah right!"

psik.

[Pronghorn]

Look, I like Orwell, Dick and Chekhov as writers, but two points:

(1) That is a bizarre group of writers on which to base an "anti-snobbish" argument about SF, as they have much more snob appeal than anyone else mentioned in this thread.

(2) The thread starter asked for books about "normal people in far reaching future sci-fi settings" and "a believably function[al] sci-fi setting" and "a future world that i have never seen or heard of". Orwell and Dick's Man in the High Castle do not fit that description very well, though he might very well enjoy them anyway. The books mentioned by myself and others in this thread are more clearly aimed at what the thread starter asked for.