[hnmullany]

These are all painfully mid reads. (The alien in Hail Mary is about as alien as a rival fraternity brother.)

If you want real alien aliens, read Blindsight (Peter Watts).

[ABraidotti]

I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and they were all memorable but frustrating.

Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.

Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.

Watts Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...

Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is enjoyable if you liked that in his books: https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at

[hnmullany]

I also found Echopraxia extremely confusing and had to read that AMA to figure out what the hell I just read.

[berkes]

> the alien in Hail Mary is about as alien as a rival fraternity brother

You put that as critique, and I understand that. But for me, this was actually the strength of the story. By making the differences smaller, they are more focused, stronger, and give opportunity to explore them in depth.

Same thing I like about many of the Black Mirror stories: often they tweak, or magnify, just one parameter of our realistic, current (western) lives and then explore the differences that would bring.

[tialaramex]

But Black Mirror is about us whereas the frustrating thing with depictions of aliens is that they're not us, that's their defining feature.

[woleium]

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is the most alien alien i have ever read. I read the old translation, but there is a new one now (2011 by Bill Johnston ) direct from polish rather than via french first

[tialaramex]

Golem XIV also gets at the fact that an artificial intelligence needn't be anything like us either. The titular Golem is capable of communicating with us but finds the experience very frustrating because we're so very stupid, while the perhaps even more intelligent Honest Annie doesn't communicate with humans and is postulated to treat them the same way we treat flies, a nuisance deserving no great thought.

[jillesvangurp]

I read both of those. Peter Watts is a bit of an acquired taste. Not for everyone. I actually enjoyed it but it's a weird one. Genetically modified people that are effectively vampires, a main protagonist with severe brain damage, etc. There's a sequel to this too if you enjoy this.

The Hail Mary project was actually enjoyable. Andy Weir peaked with the Martian his debut novel and this is kind of in the same style. Maybe not as good but enjoyable.

[mariusor]

If you're able to look past the "hard-sci-fi" vampires. I know I wasn't.

[Annual]

Blindsight was the only sci Fi book I ever read that had citations used non-ironically.

[orbisvicis]

It would be a stretch to call Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius science fiction, but like many of Borge's works is packed with references and footnotes.

[lynx23]

Beware, you'll also get Vampires in space, which is so silly, it kills the book.

[vundercind]

That was so good it convinced me that one correct way to make a good sci fi novel is to construct a world and then add one insane thing and make it fit.

FWIW, for calibrating recommendations, I tend to prefer literary sci fi and end up hating a whole lot of highly-praised-online sci fi novels. I really like that novel, and Watts’ short story that retells The Thing. That’s all I’ve read of his.

[edit] For further calibration, I'd say the book's strengths are efficiency (above-average editing and/or author's taste of what to write and what not to); action writing that is very much to my taste, being quick and terse and requiring close attention to follow it (almost like action-poetry) but not actually being unclear; and an excellent core sci-fi concept, which I usually don't rate so important an aspect as (I think) a lot of sci-fi readers, but in this case it's so good that it overcomes my usual "well that's nice, but has almost nothing to do with whether it's good" attitude toward that element. It's weak on characters, but is so busy with other things that it's hard to tell whether that's a general weakness of the author, or whether that simply didn't make it to the page in this case. World-building is sufficient, but also kind of not the focus of the story—there's plenty there to support the story, but no more.

[AlphaAndOmega0]

They're a better depiction of Vampires than most, with Watts doing everything he could to make them biologically plausible (that can only go so far).

That being said, I found the way they were "shackled" to be ridiculous. If you've got superintelligent and superstrong predatory hominids running around, you have no reason to have them physically free even if you put the medical safeguards in place. Break their spines and sedate them when not in use!

Spoilers:

It seems weird to me that a society with other posthumans and intelligent AGI would be bowled over quite so easily by the vampires, but oh well.

[therealdrag0]

I found suspension of disbelief very easy, just like most SF.

[ahmedfromtunis]

Thanks! I really like it when authors shock my neurons with ideas they never even came close to entertain.

Alien aliens are always rare in sci-fi books. Although I really struggled with the octopodes in Children of Ruin, so I'm not sure if I'm ready yet.

Can someone please suggest books with novel, really alien forms of life, social structures, etc.?

[Annual]

I vaguely remember The Gods Themselves by Asimov being a strong contender here, but it's been decades since I read it.

Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" series had a story towards the end that blew my tiny little teenaged mind back in the 90's.

Octavia Butler, of course. Xenogenesis.

[Keysh]

The Tines in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep are pretty good example. (The aliens in A Deepness in the Sky are physically alien, but psychologically pretty close to humans.)

[bodantogat]

Check out Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

[Zardoz89]

Diaspora by Greg Egan.

[interludead]

Peter Watts really explores the concept of alien intelligence in a way that challenges our perceptions

[insane_dreamer]

The depiction of the alien is something I really liked about that book - the concept of having to cooperate with an alien species rather than with being subjugated or subjugating, was refreshingly new (for me).

[BobaFloutist]

If you liked that, may I suggest the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh, or, really, almost anything else by her. But especially the Foreigner series.

[BLKNSLVR]

I loved both of those books and their depictions of 'alien', each for their own reasons.

Project Hail Mary is more... warm and fuzzy, but then one doesn't read Peter Watts for warm and fuzzy...