What’s something that you feel like you should like, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
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It’s so funny to me how polarizing KSR’s writing is. I cannot understand how people could be bored by my absolute favorite sci-fi series; I could read a whole other trilogy in the same setting! I’ve talked to so many people who just cannot stand his writing, but he’s my absolute favorite modern sci-fi author.
But I tried to read Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, and I just couldn’t be less interested. People talk about that series in the same ways as the Mars books, so I know I’m missing something good; I feel like some books capture our imaginations while others don’t.
It’s a bit frustrating that some books just aren’t for me, at least for right now.
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Well, luckily for you, there are several other KSR books that are considered part of the same fictional universe, even if they aren’t on Mars. Off the top of my head, I think 2312 and Red Moon are thought to be the same universe, plus you’ve got The Martians and maybe even Aurora
I believe Antarctica also shares a setting, but I’ve not read that one yet.
I feel like I should space them out; it’s hard to face not having another KSR book waiting for me.
Aurora is also one of my favorite books ever; I used it to inspire an RPG campaign that I ran.
I don’t know that I’d heard of Antarctica yet, so thanks for that one! Also, it’s a bit more more mystical and alt-history than his typical hard sci-fi, but don’t sleep on Years of Rice and Salt. I put off reading it for a long time as the concept is not what I usually look for in KSR or sci-fi in general, but it’s become one of my most frequent rereads.
On a separate note, what system did you use for your Aurora campaign? I gravitate towards sci-fi for my reading and fantasy for my TT gaming, mostly because I don’t like how “hand-wavey” a lot of sci-fi RPG systems get with their science, so I’m curious what’s out there that can accommodate a KSR sci-fi campaign.
I still need to read The Years of Rice and Salt, I love his historical stuff like Galleleo’s Dream and Shaman too.
And the campaign was definitely not a hard sci-fi setting, I just took the concepts of generation ships, self-supporting biomes, and a war on such a ship and used those as my starting point (sprinkled with a bit of Battlestar Galactica and Rendezvous With Rama). I used the Apocalypse World system (my very favorite), and a big part of that game is having the players set up their own corner of the lore and setting; it came out as something quite unique and compelling. We started the story about a hundred years after a failed revolution blew out about half the ship with the survivors scrapping over the remaining resources. Apocalypse World is more narrative focused than simulation directed though (and tends to go PVP in the endgame), so it’s not for everyone.
its definitly my favourite sci fi books but I totally get it. the John Detective part was pretty uninteresting to me also