Many trilogies and series seem to be like that - where the first one is the best

The Silo series is fantastic. One of my favorite SF series of all time. 5/5 The suspension of disbelief arguments were nonsense and I'm seemed to show a lack of understanding. Books like Hyperion or Foundation are WAY more ridiculous, requiring far more suspension of disbelief...but they get a pass because they are concensus classics. 😒

There's very little fantasy.

Frank Herbert isn't a good writer? 🤨🤨🤨🤨

Nice job, fellas! The carbon molecule snippet was the only one of those vignettes that I liked and really only because of the throw away line that continents are such fleeting things. They seemed to be writing exercises and while I thought the writing itself during those was clever, I don’t feel any of them were needed in an already too long novel. I did, however, appreciate having climate fiction out there that was hopeful. I hope that, one day, I can be as optimistic as Brent is that we’ll solve it.

Just found the channel chasing silo tv insights - really enjoyed the discussion! You’ve gained another sub! Haven’t listened to anything else yet, but for what it’s worth, I enjoyed the conflicting perspectives!

What? No comments? So listen, I love that you guys are introducing this book to new readers. It is a very important book. The violence IS horrific and you will be traumatized and changed for having experienced the hellscape in this novel. Your mind will not erase such images. It was also mind-blowing to consider that the issues addressed in this book actually justified the violence the readers endure. It is fair to ask if we are actually making choices if we are behaviorally conditioned to that level. Remove freedom and you remove humanity. Is social safety worth that? Who gets to decide? Which would you choose if freedom and safety were the only choices? Couple of other quick thoughts. First, Cody is right. The only way baseball is acceptable is if you are reading a good book at the time of the game. Sorry. Secondly, I want to turn you guys onto a movie that was life changing for me. The film is Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam, released in 1985. This movie is what would happen if Orwell's 1984 had a baby with Monty Python. Seriously. Check it out. Thanks again for keeping this book, and its questions and ideas, alive. It is more than deserving.

I know this suggestion isn’t fiction but if you read brave new world it is most worthwhile and interesting to follow it up with brave new world revisited where he goes into all the ways we are controlled and manipulated in moving towards the world of BNW.

Hadn’t heard of Kallocain so have picked up a copy in penguin edition. A Clockwork Orange is great. Burgess wrote another dystopia, The Wanting Seed, but it’s not as good as clockwork.

Just read the Aplin translation. Enjoyed it somewhat but not as much as the two major books it gets lumped in with. I could see how it influenced those. It influenced the ending of Orwell’s book for sure and is quite a nightmarish world.

Octopuses in the background are great! ha

I am Dh-10133

My favorite sci-fi book of all time. 10/10. I also have an original 1973 hard cover. So groovy. :)

I am so happy to have found you guys. I just finished five semesters of "Science Fiction and Politics," a course on Open Culture that was originally taught by Courtney Brown out of Emory University in the early 2000s. I am familiar with many of the books you have reviewed, and am even more excited to dive into the books that you are introducing to us all. Your perspectives are medicine for me. I think it was Cody who commented about learning from fiction so much more than non-fiction and I deeply believe that observation is right on the mark. I can't wait to see more videos. Thank you for putting the time into these conversations and then sharing them with the rest of the world.

I’m sad to report after listening to it at work today I didn’t all out love it. I did really enjoy some parts but found a lot of the parts not related to the zone or red boring, besides the points of critical exposition. I loved the ending, I loved the ideas but I didn’t love red, I didn’t get that he was so kind and compassionate he seemed more of an asshole to me than anything. That being said I probably missed a lot only listening to it, and whilst working at that, so I will hopefully soon get around to reading it, and maybe I’ll feel differently.

i need spoilers bro, im after spoilers

Talking to a sentient tumor

Probably best to do these by decade... There's just way too many great sci fi novels.

Read Golem XIV and Summa Technologiae, and only then will you have mind-blowing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hugonauts present the most cognizant and thorough understanding of Snow Crash available on yootoob. I first read Snow Crash in 2018; my reread in 2025 has precipitated watching video essays on the subject. Nobody has reviewed it better than me Hugonaut droogs here. Well done, gentlemen.

just found u guys. 10 out of 10, liked and subscribed

No Gene Wolfe or Jack Vance, worst list ever. Please never post again.

I read the book in my teen age, pre-internet era, and I was horrified by what I had read. I spent weeks going through what I had read. It is a very philosophical book, and like all philosophy, it can be very difficult to digest, especially at a young age. I think I became an agnostic largely because of authors like Stanislaw Lem. The idea that we probably can find something that we couldn't understand was worrying to say the least.

And here we are I. 2024 with maga theocracy, Project 2025 and women being striped of our self agency. Our bodies are now property of the state. Women will be dying, orphans and husbands with kids with no mom. And since it is now law women are baby machines with no vote in the matter, the state should be paying for all costs before and after- be tax-exemptions, social security a and healthcare given to these state babies and women. As of November 2024, The Majority of States Have At Least One Restriction on Health Insurance Coverage for Abortion Services. Note: As of November 6, 2024, 13 states have banned abortion (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Three young women have died from being refused medical emergency treatment and two in Georgia. These are The ones being reported. How many of us will have to die because some sick make politician decided god demanded it???

I found the 1972 movie a slog. I saw the 2002 version first and it is really good. You have me interested in the book now.

The deep time and Turnover civilizations made me consider that in each the thousands of transient interstellar civilizations could exist an entire Sci-Fi world and associated saga by itself. I also really like how Reynolds trusts his readers to infer certain terminology that doesn't need to be explained. Aspic of machines comes to mind - just nanobots in a transportable medium.

I'm intrested to add sci-fi books to my TBR list.

I absolutely loved the tone of this book when I read it, the whole book feels so SO satirical and the world is bleak to the point of dark comedy

I love Brent's color-coded bookcase back there

3 stars. The potted pants and dog aliens are ridiculous. The plot is ok. I had a hard time visualizing places.

You mentioned at the start having a hard time visualizing the descriptions if the formations in Solaris. I remember those parts in Solaris being really captivating and printing a really good mental image. Blindsight, on the other hand, i struggled with frequently because i thought the descriptions of the alien ship were incredibly hard to visualize, and even the descriptions of smaller physical spaces like the ships interior i could never follow. To be fair i listened to a Solaris audiobook like ten years ago and read blindsight earlier this year.

I've been thinking about this story a lot the past fortnight! It's very prescient I think another moral lesson is this: when a system grows so complexed that no single person can understand a fraction of its complexities, problems within said system become increasingly difficult/eventually impossible to fix. Perhaps a system so far detached from it's creators, by time or by values, is also impossible to fix for people who have forgotten the vision of its creators.

Um um um um, ffs

Rookie list. No Vance. No Zelazny. No Arthur C. Clarke. Bleh.

I have struggled a lot with dissassociation/derealization and reading VALIS by Philip K Dick left me wondering how close i was to being schizophrenic on top of it. Never before had i experienced an author that can so craftily communicate the actual feel of mental disorders. I say be careful with VALIS, it might bring you to the precipice of the loony bin, but i am definitely investing in more of his novels. The Scanner Darkly will be next.

Hyperion is my favorite too! The sheer amount of mind fuckery that Dan Simmons embedded into those pages produces a first read through experience that no other novel I've read even comes close to emulating.

I’ve been looking for a book channel! So happy I found you guys!

Polish speaker here. No, Snaut is not a real Polish name. In fact, it sounds equally funny in Polish as it sounds in English. I recently read Solaris in its original language and I can agree with the comment below, all names in that book sound weird, as if Lem was trying hard for his characters to have universally sounding names.

Большое спасибо каналу и Рэю Нэйлеру за его творчество и содержательные и глубокие ответы на вопросы!

Come on now guys. The expanse series should be on here.

I'd be interested to see what youngest think of Daniel Keys Moran's The Long Run. To me, it seems to be a lot like Neuromancer, but also very much it's own thing.

I may need to try this one again. I read it some time ago and thought it was fine, but I wonder if I simply didn’t have the necessary background or exposure to concepts to fully understand it.

Bookmarking this one for later. This is probably the next book I read after I finish Blood Music. Can't wait to hear your thoughts!

One of my all time favourite books. I'm really excited to watch this one.

No love for Iain M Banks? Or is it just too hard to pick out of the bunch? Children of Time needs to be in any Top 10 list, sci-do or not, and I’d probably add Foundation too

Fantastic narration 👍 hard to believe the age of this story! My interpretation of the moral is this: when a system collapses, everybody reliant on it suffers, regardless of whether they were supportive (the mother) or critical (the son) of said system. The only ones who don't suffer are those autonomous of the system (the surface dwellers). In other words, become self-sufficient. Not bashing idea, but the author's transcendentalist beliefs are strong in this story; similar to Huxley's Brave New World.

One thing I am noticing many people are overlooking about vampires in this story is their ability to hibernate. That's incredibly important in this story. Not only did they resurrect vampires as a species in order to utilize their intelligence, they did so in order to utilize their hibernation abilities. In the book, all of the crew have been spliced with whatever vampire genes allow for hibernation. Deep space travel wouldn't be possible without this. Most sci fi books that feature interstellar travel have some sort of stasis or hibernation that the characters most go into in order to travel far distances across many many years. This is a super unique take on that and I love it.

A curious list to my tastes, but I suppose isn't that the point of checking out other peoples lists. I see you've explained that ye didnt particularly care that much for Dune and so that's fair enough, and better to not include it just cos most people would. It is your list after all (I personally would've included it, but then again, I read it while working on an ecology project in the desert in the Middle East, so It may have resonated more as a result ). I'm not as well read on some of the more recent books, and I generally find dystopian novels boring, so that'd be a weakness in my choices. But I was kinda disappointed that neither Bester's "The Stars My Destination" or Zelazny's "Lord of Light" got a mention.

What’s a great mech fighting series or book? Got banned from battletech forums for asking what’s up with the lgbt crap everywhere. Nothing against them but why is that such a focus? Played mechwarrier games and want to get into some good books

I read this book back in the '80s in high school. I was a voracious reader, often reading 3 or more books at a time, and I absolutely DEVOURED this book! I love high fantasy, sci-fi, crime, and military/spy thrillers. I saw the flaws in the system, where books are outlawed, and the recent condition of the world has some "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" vibes to it. In their world, they are changing/erasing history, and they're not allowed to question the current regime. It becomes so dangerous to resist the system, and the protagonist is brave, living in fear, but still questioning the status quo. My 27yo son has read this book, and I'm sure my 13yo will read it soon.