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My book and movie favourites

The books and movies of which I think that someone with interests similar to mine might enjoy them too.1

Books (fiction)

qntm: Ra

Alternate history in which magic is real and a branch of fundamental physics. By invoking mathematical logic in an arcane language, mages can influence physical reality somehow. Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now used in all kinds of engineering disciplines from aerospace to metalworking - except that nobody really knows why magic works at all. Laura Ferno, notorious girlboss and most promising applied mage of her generation, suffers an assassination attempt which kicks off a chain of events that causes her and her sister Natalie (a theoretical thaumic physicist) to uncover the true nature of magic. The story escalates very credibly and very quickly. The author has a background in theoretical physics and CS, and it shows.

Greg Egan: Diaspora

A post-humanist world in which humanity has split into three categories:

The story kicks off with an impeding gamma-ray burst, which is completely unexpected according to the current state of fundamental physics. The story revolves around post-humanity trying to find a better model for fundamental physics in a race against time. The author is a mathematical physicist, and details of differential geometry and QFT are plot-relevant.

Greg Egan: Permutation City

If you uploaded someone’s mind into a purely functional computer simulation taking no inputs, would it be necesssary to run the simulation?

Stephen Baxter: Xeelee Sequence

The story of a million-year long battle for the fate of the universe between humanity and various alien species. Despite what it sounds like at first, this is a perfectly credible and scientifically sound premise with lots of extremely clever ideas and a masterful execution. Makes Warhammer 40K look like a children’s bedtime story. Start with Timelike Infinity or Vacuum Diagrams.

Also, this is the only sci-fi author I know who understands that FTL travel = time travel. People still believed in Spin(10)\text{Spin(10)} SUSY back in these days, which is plot-relevant.

Liu Cixin: Three-Body Problem

You really can’t write anything about this trilogy without spoiling the entire first book, so just go ahead and read it if you like Asimov. The author is a master in the art of skillfully escalating a story from mundane 1960s political struggles to a horrifyingly bleak vision of the universe’s future.

Andreas Eschbach: Lord Of All Things

A young boy from Japan has a vision to end poverty by building self-replicating machines.

John Milton: Paradise Lost

Basically fan-fiction of Judeo-Christian mythology, and very good fanfiction on top of that.

Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials

Science-fantasy novel based on the story of Paradise Lost, with themes of oppressive organized religion and rebellion.

Andy Weir: The Martian

An astronaut is stranded on Mars in the 2030s and has to use MacGyver-style tinkering to stay alive and come home. Extremely scientifically accurate, except for the fact that people didn’t yet know about the perchlorates in Martian soil back then yet.

Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary

The sun of our solar system is being infested by some kind of light-absorbing single-celled interstellar parasite with a biology frighteningly similar to Earth prokaryotes. Now, 2020s humanity has to scramble all of its technology together for an interstellar mission to find a means against the parasite. The story is told from the perspective of sole surviving astronaut of this mission, who has to use the full arsenal of the scientific method to save humanity.

James Corey: The Expanse

In the 24th century, humanity has colonized Mars, the asteroid belt, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It is split into three factions: Earth, Mars, and the Belt, whose inhabitants are brutally economically exploited by the inner planets. The story is set in the Belt and follows the establishment of the Outer Planets Alliance, which is basically a space IRA fighting against the inner planes. Has an emphasis on political fiction as opposed to science fiction, but its future military technology in space is extremely accurate.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry Potter fanfiction in which Petunia Evans didn’t marry Vernon Dursley, but Michael Verres, a biochemistry professor from Oxford. Harry grows up learning tons of science, enters the wizarding world with a huge arsenal of scientific knowledge and seeks to become the master of both worlds.

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time

Our current civilization has collapsed, and the next civilization rising from its ashes is starting to unearth the archaeological remains of its ancestors. Among these remains is a planet run by a literal immortal mad scientist as an experiment in evolutionary biology. Very nice speculative evolution story about the hypothetical development of intelligence in species other than humans.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation cycle

A book cycle spanning multiple millenia, all the way from 20th century Earth to a galaxy-spanning human empire and its collapse and rebirth. Start with the Foundation trilogy and/or the Robot novels.

Books (nonfiction)

Movies and TV series

Video games

  1. This sentence sounds way better in Lojban. .i ti cukta poi zabna fi mi .e do'o poi mi .e ke'a se cinri↩︎