I’m a big SF fan too, in addition to History. Star Trek, Dr. Who, some general fantasy as well.
I’m more of a fantasy/historical fiction reader. I only get into history books when something catches my fancy.
Love Trek, but dont read a lot of SF. I’m not sure why, but it just doesn’t usually do it for me.
These are not computer games, but playing ancient history board games (Pax Romana, Sword of Rome, and The God Kings) has piqued my interest in those time periods. It’s really tough to find books though on Bronze Age stuff (which is the period in which The God Kings takes place), so would welcome any recommendations on that era.
I quite like 1177 BC by Cline. It spends more than half of its pages just exploring the Bronze Age and it’s aimed at laymen. Cline is a proper historian and knows his shit.
I’ve just got the latest volume of One Punch Man and it remains fantastic. One of the best superhero tales around. Effortless comedy, superpowered fights.
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My go to recommendations are Dune (obviously, given my name), the Foundation Trilogy, and The Martian.
That gives you a good swath of the different sub-genres in sci-fi. They’re all fantastic.
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Ohhh. That was really interesting. Have you read The Sabers of Paradise? If so, do you think it would be comprehensible to someone that knows absolutely nothing about the history of the region?
It’s a great example of the kind of travel/history writing you no longer see, thickly populated with stereotypes and a sort of blatant, cheerful racism; the Russians are cruel imperialists, the Dagestani are brave hardy tribesmen who are unwilling to kowtow, etc. It’s a really good book but it lionises one side unapologetically. I don’t think it offers much difficulty to the layman, it’s a thrilling read but I would hesitate to call it a work of history.
It’s funny, but I still think of myself as mostly a sci-if/fantasy guy, but the books I’m reading right now are about the biology of trees and the history of naval warfare.
Though I did recently take a break for some of the comic collections I got for my kids on the recent Marvel kindle sale. The Darth Vader series was surprisingly good! I remember lots of people saying that Clone Wars and Rebels felt like real Star Wars to them. I didn’t agree, really, but this totally did. IIRC, you can read the first one for free if you have Prime.
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Well, why do you say that? Did my avatar give it away? 
Back when Disgaea released I was a hermit in regard to gaming-consoles with little to no access to “srpgs” and “jrpgs”. When I saw the (in my eyes still legendary) Atlus trailer for the stateside release for Disgaea I went nuts. Bought and imported the game, bought a PS2 and modded it for NTSC Games…I spent lots of money on it for being a student back then, even more time was sunk into it and-I-don’t-regret-it-a-bit! The game influenced me quite bit in my stance to SRPG and japanese games games in general.
I miss the simpler life from back then.
The article about the “source” for Dune was quite enlightening. I always wondered if Herbert came up with everything or got his inspiration elsewhere (aside of the obvious Djihad theme).
Currently rereading “The mote in god’s eye” by Larry Niven and Jerry Purnelle in my Sci-Fi redining marathon - planning to reread the RAMA books by Arthur C. Clarke next
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This might be the most Kelsey thing I’ve read all day.
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The tree boom is great so far. Starts with a brief overview of the parts of a tree, then gets into the evolutionary history of trees (which was new to me, and it’s always cool to see how nature hacks together solutions). I was motivated to read it by my interest in the emerald ash borer incursion. We have a bunch of ash trees around our house, and apparently over 99% of them will die if not treated, but over 99% of treated trees live. But I’m also told those are historical numbers, and we’ve literally never seen the insect in a region with as dense a population of ash trees as we have in New York (they’re 8% of our trees). So, who knows? But I did a little calculation a while back, and, IIRC, 8% of New York’s forestland would be 15 million acres. So this could be pretty serious. The book is Trees: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Structure, by Roland Ennos.
The naval warfare book is just okay. Interesting points about the value of finance, organization, and infrastructure, but I think I need more maps and pictures to really get it. That one’s Naval Power: A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500, by Jeremy Black.
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I’m not going to lie…I made it to the third sentence and then fell asleep.
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Borne, by Jeff Vaaaandeeeermmmmeeerrrr. In a post-apocalyptic city terrorised by a giant levitating bear, a drug dealer and a scavenger find a unique engineered life form. Amidst feral humans, toxic wastes, and genetically engineered horrors, there are mysteries to solve, history to discover and secrets to reveal. I’m not a massive fan of VDM’s style, which I find a little nebulous and too heavy on the adjectives, it gets quite airy-fairy at times, but he weaves together something that, although sci-fi, feels more like fantasy. For all my quibbles, it’s vivid stuff.
The Sellout, Paul Beatty. What do you do if, as a child, your life was made a living Hell as your father tried to understand the racism in society via experimenting on you? You bring back segregation, and you get yourself as slave. I haven’t read Swiftian satire like this in years. Very much an acquired taste, with some uh, brisk language from the start, and certainly it’s going to offend a few, but I can see why this won the Booker. Each page makes me laugh or wince.
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The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch (another Peter Grant story, albeit a novella), The Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell, and now Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott. I’m not sure how coincidental it is, but they all deal with the hidden, magical and malign hidden in modern England, a creeping darkness behind the coffee chains and supermarket lights. Certainly they fit my current view of my country, except that in real life the malignity and darkness is overt and not magical, and winning.
Oh, and Sourdough, Robin Sloan, a charming and lighthearted novel about a disenchanted programmer of robot arms being gifted with a mysterious, possibly magical, sourdough starter. Warmed my nerdy little heart in much the same way as Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
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Just read Beyond Apollo and Guernica Night by Barry N. Malzberg. Malzberg is definitely offbeat, part of the postmodern, New Wave of the 70s SF scene, he wrote a bunch of quite short novels before calling it quits. They are murky, somewhat inconclusive. Not at all classic, straightforward hero narratives. I plan to read several more. Now I’ve picked up Damnation Alley by Zelazny off the shelf where it’s been for a while. You may remember this one from the crappy movie starring George Peppard and Jan Michael Vincent with the cool car. It’s not quite Lord of Light, but I’m enjoying it and it promises to be a very quick read.
Also working my way through Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani. I grabbed this because I am very interested in non-traditional narrative delivery mechanisms, metafictional and otherwise, and Negarestani was a student of Nick Land’s, the accelerationist philosopher turned methamphetamine burnout (that’s the rumor, anyway) and somewhat mediocre science fiction writer (as well as continuing to advocate for a future with capitalism but without humans…yeah). Anyway, it’s as weird as you might expect. Not sure it even really has a narrative, yet.
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Seventh Decimate, Stephen Donaldson. He’s still got it. Rather reminiscent of A Man Rides Through.
I just wanted to thank you for that recommendation. I think I liked it slightly less well than I usually like Neal Stephenson, but it has many of the same virtues and a bit more humanity.
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I tried to read Cryptonomicon a few years ago and struggled mightily to get in to it. if I recall, it was written in present tense, which I found very jarring. Should I give it another try?
The Bobby Shaftoe bits are in present tense. That’s how the novel opens, so it’s probably why you remember that. The part of the book that takes place in “the present day” is written in traditional past tense. My problems with Cryptonomicon were my problems with Snow Crash and Diamond Age: overly-complicated plot falling apart in a badly-executed ending, eye-rolling amounts of “hacker” fellatio and too many just execrable similes. Anathem, the last book of his I read and probably will ever read (sorry, Neil, you’ve got the world’s best “photos” page on your website, but there are just too many books out there), didn’t fall prey to any of that, I thought, so if I were you I’d read that one, instead.