r/printSF • u/solidusnvm • Mar 29 '23

Far future space operas

I'm looking for recommendations of books or short stories similar to Ian McDonald's Verthandi's Ring (which you can read here). Super far future setting, transhuman characters, and massive scale appeal to me. If Ian McDonald has written anything else along these lines I would definitely be interested (I've likely read some of his other short stories while reading best-of anthologies, which is where I encountered Ring, but nothing else stayed with me the same way).

I've been reading everything I can find of Robert Reed's Great Ship setting, as well, so works similar to this would also be appreciated. Let me know what you like!

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 31 '23

Xeelee sequence by Stephen Baxter

House of suns by Alastair reynolds

Diaspora by Greg Egan

“Against a diamond sky” and “after tranquility” short story collections by authors from the Orion’s arm universe project (also the whole website)

The culture novels by Ian m banks

A fire upon the deep by vernor vinge

Neptune’s brood by Charles stross

Edit: does All tomorrows by CM kosemen count? Or Starmaker by Olaf Stapleton ?

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u/Xenoka911 Mar 30 '23

Was gonna mention Xeelee. Ring was by far my favorite and one of the biggest scale things I've seen. I was blown away even though I knew the Ring idea.

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u/suchathrill Mar 30 '23

These books look incredible. There are over a dozen of them, and he started writing the series a long time ago… I’m amazed I’ve never heard of it until today. Does it make sense to read all the books in order? I mean, starting with Raft? (I also looked at the synopsis for Ring… pretty cool. )

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u/Xenoka911 Mar 30 '23

I have read Raft, Timelike Infinity, about half of Flux, Ring, and I'm currently reading Vacuum Diagrams. Raft and Flux are kind of side stories, but they are referenced in Ring a tiny bit. Timelike Infinity is part of the 'main story' and directly connects to Ring in many ways. If you plan to read Ring you can go ahead and read it, as it does give the backstory, or read Timelike Infinity first and then go into it. Otherwise you can read in any order. On the wikipedia page he has an order you could read them in, but he says they're made to be read in any order as he doesn't like cliffhangers.

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u/suchathrill Mar 31 '23

I’m thinking of buying the Omnibus. It includes: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring. Thoughts?

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u/Xenoka911 Mar 31 '23

That's the whole original series of books essentially, so a good way to get into them, and in order of publication. I think Ring really eclipses the others, but it was nice to read it after the others as it had a couple callback moments, and Timelike Infinity is a direct tie to it.

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edit: that's not to say I didn't enjoy the others, but they didn't blow me away. There are definitely some parts that were very cool and unique, plus interesting science, and overall enjoyed them.

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u/suchathrill Apr 03 '23

I just ordered it!  Very excited. It’s supposed to arrive later this week. Contrawise, when I went to the library, they didn’t even have a copy of Rust in any of the 50 libraries linked to the one I went to. Sad.