Fiasco

Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you. My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists: Fiasco - Stanisław Lem This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one) Blindsight - Peter Watts Bloom - Wil McCarthy Good luck!

I wonder whether The Myth of Sysiphus wouldn't be more apt for something like that. But I'd pick an academic text too, though I'm not sure which one. There are many textbooks outside of my expertise that could be just as interesting as more physics or mathematics, e.g. ship/boat construction. Edit: For a fiction book I would probably pick Fiasco by Stanislav Lem, it contains some parables and allergories that are interesting to think about.

The one really first rate recent SF novel I can recall is: "This is how you lose the time war" [0] by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. It's far from being Hard SF if you like that (I do) but the humour and poetry of it won me over very fast. I bought it purely on the basis of the delicious title! The "Lady Astronaut" series [1] by Mary Robinette Kowal is not first rate, but it is reliably entertaining and a fairly Hard SF alternate history with some interesting choices. I'm going to take a liberty and also recommend a much older SF book that I rarely see mentioned; "Fiasco" by Stanisław Lem. This one's all about the characterization and the big picture of humanity's fatal flaws. Not hard SF as such, but he tells a good tall tale when he needs to mess with space and time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_How_You_Lose_the_Time_... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_How_You_Lose_the_Time_War) [1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/193730-lady-astronaut-unive... (https://www.goodreads.com/series/193730-lady-astronaut-universe) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_%28novel%29

Once upon a time I would have agreed - but these days I find poor characterisation stalls my suspension of disbelief just as much as dodgy physics. So my current favourite is Fiasco by Lem. The physics at least sounds convincing and the characters are all too human.