A Deepness in the Sky

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge Dune, by Frank Herbert Diaspora, by Greg Egan The Clockwork Rocket, by Greg Egan The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

I consolidated the comments for my reference later. Someone else might also find it useful: # Fiction Books Recommended for Programmers (HN Thread 46128404) ## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time) ## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz ## James P. Hogan - *Inherit the Stars* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/743568.Inherit_the_Stars - *Code of the Lifemaker* — Sci-Fi, Artificial Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifem... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifemaker) - *The Two Faces of Tomorrow* — AI, Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_Tomorrow) ## D. F. Jones — Colossus Trilogy - *Colossus* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi Thriller…

It gets slow after the merging of the two competing factions at the beginning and then builds momentum after the anti-hero's back story half way through. It just might be my most favorite book. I found the building dominance of the anti-hero to be similar but less epic than that of Raistlin Majere from DragonLance.

Eon by Greg Bear. A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.

A Deepness in the Sky, hands down. Also worth reading is its companion A Fire Upon the Deep. Both are the pinnacle of SciFi.

Perhaps a standard list but: Hyperion, Deepness in the Sky, Snow crash, Permutation City, Exhalation and other Ted Chiang

The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge, and A Deepness in the Sky in particular. If you check the series out, and I highly recommend you do, read it in order. Which would mean starting with A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent.

I tend to re-read my favorites every few years or so, my latest re-read was "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. Lots to dig into in that book, but my favorite aspect of it is actually how he writes the two different cultures' points of view to skew the reader's perception of the (very) alien culture, only revealing exactly how uncomfortable humans would be around them late in the book.

Accelerando by Charles Stross: Be there to receive a phone call from a sentient hive lobster consciousness that escaped from the lab, and watch the singularity happen in a hilarious and mind bending fast take off. A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge: explore the far future in a space opera dreamed up by a computer science professor turned sci-fi author. This book literally inspired the first IoT sensor "motes" created, and we haven't come close to achieving the vision he explores just as texture in this rich book with fascinating characters. Not my favorite wordsmith, but one of my favorite idea-smiths. Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: create a new mathematics from the axioms up, while strolling along with a wise tortoise and a hare who share fascinating ideas and connections from art and music to number theory, incompleteness, and consciousness.

His other book A Deepness in the Sky is amazing as well

* A Deepness in the Sky - Vernor Vinge I read it again this year. I read it for the first time about 9 years ago and its who I wanted to be when I grew up.

In a hard SF rather than contemporary context, A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge, is an absolute delight (and a Hugo winner for best novel). Vinge was a mathematics and computer science professor, and very much knows what he's talking about. Part of the fun is that, on a 5000 year old spaceship set arbitrarily far in our future, long past the end of Moore's Law, all the systems are still running Unix. And one of the jobs on board is "Programmer-Archeologist", digging through generations of code to try to find useful bits from the past. But story-wise, there's some outstanding hacking ideas going.

Love both of these. Perhaps more so "A Deepness in the Sky", with its darker tone, very thoughtful programming-related remarks, and the reversed "alien invasion" concept.

His books are great, I loved both "fire upon deep" and a "deepness in the sky". It is unfortunate he inspired the Singularity movement which I find full of bullshit and religious overtones.

I'm fond of "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, and its kind of prequel "A Deepness in the Sky", they both contain some great ideas and I love the fact they have some very alien aliens! Oh and if you haven't read any Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is fantastic

I really liked the concepts of the story in Deepness, but it took so long to progress I got bored of it. :(

Science fiction: - House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds - A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge All of which were recommended here on HN and I really love them, especially House of Suns.

I enjoy The Queendom of Sol series, by Wil McCarthy. Also, A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky.

A Fire Upon the Deep A Deepness in the Sky both by Vernor Vinge

Neal Stephenson, Anathem Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons Greg Egan, Diaspora and Permutation City Frank Herbert, Dune Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars trilogy Vernon Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky [Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]

Books I imagine will have 'tremendous' (what a prior, lol) effect Non-fiction; Slavoj Zizek's Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism Evgeny Morozov's To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism Fiction; William Gibson's Neuromancer Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky It's easy to categorise these as wonderful and well written space opera, but that undersells them. Their author (Venor Vinge) invented the idea of the Singularity, and worked as a computer science professor. Both won both the Hugo Award. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game As good as people say it is. Most of Richard Morgan's works (esp the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kovacs series). Not his fantasy books though. For fantasy books, Patrick Rothfuss is doing good stuff. The Kingkiller Chronicles is excellent. Read his other books before "Slow Regard of Silent Things", though, because that is one weird story. From more recent SciFi books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl is excellent. I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice and I'm really enjoying it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice

Almost anything by Vernor Vinge. "A Deepness in the Sky" in particular is amazing. I was/am particularly impress by how he handles the idea of fundamental limits on the scope of human achievement, and by how he weaves that into the story so that it's there at all levels. "Diaspora" by Greg Egan has a great story, huge ideas, and probably the most cogent explanation of sentience/sapience ever written. "The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" and "Accelerando" have already been mentioned. "Reteif!" Made me laugh out loud. Larry Niven's "Destiny's Road" points out the difficulty of interstellar colonization. "Ringworld" blew my mind. Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Syn" taught me to pay attention; "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams reinforced the lesson. There are a lot of good ones; I could go on for ages...

A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. Because 'unix epoch' is why. Also: it feels like a future where the details are right, but largely hidden unless needed. Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod. A romping good read, is why.

The only book I ever force on people is "A Deepness in the Sky", by Vernor Vinge. If you haven't read it, please do. I've really been enjoying David Weber's Honor Harrington series, if you're open to military sci-fi. It's not on the Amazon site, but it's easy to get from the Baen Webscriptions site. Iain M. Banks - "Algebraist" was a lot of fun, easily the best visualization of a gas-giant alien society I've ever read. I read "Matter" a while ago, and keep feeling pulled back to re-read it sometime soon. For classic sci-fi, I would recommend Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz". Don't forget to check out all the free public domain books that are available in the Kindle Store. All the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc that you can eat, at no charge.

I recommend "A Fire Upon The Deep" and "A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge. They're epic, emotional, and gripping, but also have some quite excellent hard science and future culture speculation. Also his book "Rainbows End" for something a little closer to home... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

RiderOfGiraffes also suggested Snow Crash; both would be excellent choices. I'd add to this Cryptonomicon, which is an interesting story, interesting thematic matter (relevant to software folks, and presented intelligently), and just full of different ways of looking at things (the scene that describes the Hindenburg disaster, or eating Captain Crunch cereal, were both perfectly clear, yet told in ways that took me some time to sync with what they were actually referring to. Also consider most anything from Vernor Vinge. Some of my favorites from him are A Deepness in the Sky, Rainbows End, and A Fire Upon the Deep. Since he's a Comp Sci professor, he handles technology issues (and especially computer-related stuff) very realistically. And if you're looking back into the classics, consider Larry Niven's "Known Space" books, particularly Ringworld.

I got myself a Sony Reader mid-2009 and started reading about twice more than I had been before. 2009 was also the first year in which I wasn't too lazy to document which books I read (I'm really glad I wasn't). Here're some of the favourites this year: Classics: Kafka's The Process and America - both stunning novels that deserve to be read as much as his most famous, The Castle. Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa - a trippy collection of tales organised in multiple nested frames. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Still as breathtaking as I'd remembered it from the previous reading five years ago. Science Fiction: Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun. Wolfe, whom I hadn't read before, turns out to be in a class of his own. It's literary SF, overwhelmingly masterful and beautiful in its prose and characters, yet it could give any hardcore SF novel a run in terms of its ideas. It demands and richly rewards a close reading. I'll be reading more Wolfe in 2010.…

I basically discovered Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge Hyperion, by Dan Simmons Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt, a fun book about some math and physics problems

Indeed. I think his best book is A deepness in the sky.