this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
113 points (95.9% liked)

Science Fiction

13567 readers
1 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
113
Book recommendations that play with what it means to be a book (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
62 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I really love sci-fi novels and I read a lot of books. I read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and that book is particularly interesting to me. Rather than each chapter advancing the narrative of the story, there were occasional breaks where a chapter would have a list of semi-random words which just gave the vibe of what's happening, or some history of a scene, or a recipe for how to build an asteroid.

There's another book that I have heard of but neglected to write the name down, where the reader of the book is a character within the book, and the narrator speaks directly to you (but not a choose-your-adventure style book).

All of this got me interested in finding other books, preferably sci-fi or maybe fantasy, where the concept of being a book is played with and new ideas are tried. Any recommendations?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Redshirts by John Scalzi. A book about people who realize they’re characters in a badly-written TV show. Near the end, though, the main character starts to realize he’s the main character in a book about people who are characters in a TV show. Very surreal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Redshirts suuuuuuuucked. Good lord I could barely stomach getting through it after absolutely adoring Kaiju Preservation Society. The audiobook being narrated by Wesley Crusher didn’t help certainly but that was some of the most pat, ham fisted deus ex machina bullshit I’ve ever read. And the premise “no actually we’re just in a *badly written show * does nothing to make those chapters easier to stomach’s.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Well, to each their own then. I rather enjoyed it. It was a silly self-aware little romp. I’m pretty sure being ham-fisted was kind of the point, in keeping with original Trek tradition.

Didn’t know Will Wheaton narrated the audiobook.