Lol! My mum still asks both me and my husband (“techy” jobs according to her) to solve all her problems with computers/printers/ the internet at large/ any app that doesn’t work… the list is endless. I take it as a statement of how proud she is of me that she would still ask us first, even if we haven’t succeeded in fixing a single issue since the time the problem was an old cartridge in the printer some 5-6 years ago.

Wow, that’s great news! Thanks for sharing! I read my father’s version, so definitely older than 1991.

I just started reading The Moon is a harsh Mistress, I’m hope it keeps up with the hype.

For hard sci-fi I agree, but for soft one the difference becomes more and more tenuous.

As far as “best” go, I’m non plussed. Some of these I really liked, some… not so much.

Personal positive votes:

Perdido Street Station - absolutely loved it, great social commentary undertones while the story goes its own way in an incredibly vivid world

Fifth Season - great first book of a good series, good writing and good tension points

Saga - great art to match a great retelling of Romeo and Juliet in space, where all tropes are out the window

Personal “good but not great”: All Systems Red - fun light read, nothing more

Personal negative votes:

The Name of the Wind - it’s the archetypal fantasy story, with a lot of world building and little else, a Marie Sue as a main character and a love story with many many problems. I guess it’s there because it’s famous thus essential?

The Three Boby Problem - the writing is dry, the math is wrong, I can’t stand this book

American Goods - talking about dry writing style. And keeping the reader in the dark about completely arbitrary world rules. I did not enjoy it, often it feels Neil Gaiman writes to show you how much smarter he is than you. I will admit that Gaiman has been extremely influential, so I support it being on the list

Mistborn - page turner with little else to its name. The characters drop their life long ideals so easily to facilitate the plot, they are hardly believable

The other books in the list I haven’t read nor were on my reading list, most I hadn’t heard about before.

I loved its depiction of a complete world, where elements are introduced only for the flavor. It made it feel so lively, while destructuring the usual “Chekov’s gun” expectation. Most of the side stories also tie back into the immigration/discrimination theme that runs through the book.

I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

I never noticed that I also thought of “her”. I read the book a while ago, so I don’t remember your reference, but I remember finding it refreshing to find a robot that was “obviously female” instead of undefined therefore male.

Same here: very far from top result, and links to this same article.

Ideally, yes. Practically, nature needs a lot of space to be able to act freely. Protecting only asking a River might not give nature enough margin of maneuver, so we might need to still take some actions.

I think listening to a book is inherently different than reading. With paper-reading, jumping back is easy, as is slowing down and speeding up. But that’s close to impossible for audiobooks. Thus books that work well with audiobooks are books that are written too be read at a constant pace and not require going back on. I think novels for that description, but I struggled to listen to non-fiction and I wouldn’t try to listen to “hard” books either.

Personally, I can only listen to audiobooks when I am performing a repetitive task (mainly driving around). Otherwise I get distracted, either by the task or by my own thoughts. So I don’t use audiobooks much.

I enjoyed Neuromancer much better than Snowcrash, I have to say. I’m particularly blown away by how much it still holds up! It could have been written yesterday. While I felt Snowcrash aged more, mostly for the style.

Three fifth season is really good! I felt the second book was a little “less”, but it sets up the third book really well.

I haven’t read The Moon is a harsh Mistress yet, but Stranger in a strange Land is amazing.

Not racism, but definitely (unconscious) bias of the researchers

Except that’s not the source of this problem. AI can be great at detecting patterns with little data, if it’s properly trained. But this article is clear that the reason of this failure is in the lack of training data. This means that the AI never learned kids and dark-skinned people exist and it’s unreliable in detecting them.

Heinlein. He far from unknown, but he should get even more recognition. Stranger in a strange Land is a deeply philosophical book wrapped in a scifi page turner.

Philip K. Dick is also not as famous as he should be. In particular with The Man in the high Castle, pure poetry!

Saga is great! I like the story, but the drawings really bring it home for me.

My method is very similar! I don’t read a lot of sci-fi anymore, but I pretty much ran out of classics to read in my teens. Now it’s either recommendations from irl friends (they know what I like and it’s always a hit) or award winners. Sometimes, some recommendations from there internet hit home with a good elevator pitch, but doesn’t happen often.

I don’t feel like it’s worth getting into, the writing is just too poor… but that’s my opinion. I finished it, just because it was so Ashley I was hoping it would get better. I did not try out the second one.

For me, Stephenson is a hit or miss. I hated Snow Crash, I disliked the Cryptonomicon, but I absolutely loved Anathem. I can’t tell you why, just that that’s how it is.

Glad the coin flipped head, I’ll be joining for the read!