The Peace War
10 best books like The Peace War (Vernor Vinge): A Memory Called Empire, Accelerando, Neverness, The Algebraist, Shadow Captain, Iron Sunrise, Diaspora, Dragon's Egg, Footfall, Nightfall
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident—or that Mahit might...
| Author | Charles Stross |
| ISBN | 0441014151 |
The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial...
| Author | David Zindell |
| ISBN | 0553279033 |
This is a really enjoyable 'big idea' science fiction novel that takes place millenia in our future on the planet Icefall, also called Neverness. It's kind of Dune meets Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Vol 1 with high level mathematics, posthumanism, and trippy metaphysics thrown in.
The story...
| Author | Iain M. Banks |
| ISBN | 1597800449 |
It is 4034. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization....
| Author | Alastair Reynolds |
| ISBN | 0575090634 |
The gripping sequel to the Locus award winning science fiction adventure, Revenger, tells a story of obsession and betrayal as two sisters hunt for the greatest treasure in the universe.
Adrana and Fura Ness have finally been reunited, but both have changed beyond recognition. Once desperate...
| Author | Charles Stross |
| ISBN | 1841493368 |
When the planet of New Moscow was brutally destroyed, its few survivors launched a counter-attack against the most likely culprit - the neighbouring system of trade rival New Dresden. But New Dresden wasn't responsible, and as the deadly missiles approach their target, Rachel Mansour is assigned...
| Author | Greg Egan |
| ISBN | 3453161815 |
By the end of the 30th century humanity has the capability to travel the universe, to journey beyond earth and beyond the confines of the vulnerable human frame.
The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural and physical development divide into three: fleshers — true Homo sapiens;...
"In science fiction there is only a handful of books that stretch the mind--and this is one of them."--Arthur C. Clarke
In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms--the cheela--living on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where...
| Author | Larry Niven |
| ISBN | 0345418425 |
They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star.
The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first...
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
| ISBN | 0553290991 |
Imagine living on a planet with six suns that never experiences Darkness. Imagine never having seen the Stars. Then, one by one your suns start to set, gradually leading you into Darkness for the first time ever. Image the terror of such a Nightfall.
Scientists on the planet Kalgash discover...
On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king, despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies to...
| Author | Alastair Reynolds |
| ISBN | 0575075163 |
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into interstellar space . . . Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award-shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award-winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breathtaking...
| Author | Jo Walton |
| ISBN | 0765379023 |
Necessity: the sequel to the acclaimed The Just City and The Philosopher Kings, Jo Walton's tales of gods, humans, and what they have to learn from one another.
More than sixty-five years ago, Pallas Athena founded the Just City on an island in the eastern Mediterranean, placing it centuries...
It makes me sad to 2-star this Heinlein novel that was one of my very favorites when I was 13 or 14. But it didn't hold up well at all on rereading. First you have to handwave pervasive racial insults and insensitities (American is conquered by an improbable "Oriental" nation that's a mix of Japanese and...
| Author | Peter Watts |
| ISBN | 0812566793 |
An enormous tidal wave on the west coast of North America has just killed thousands. Lenie Clarke, in a black wetsuit, walks out of the ocean onto a Pacific Northwest beach filled with the oppressed and drugged homeless of the Asian world who have gotten only this far in their attempt to reach America....
