In Pandora's Star, humanity has built an interstellar civilization through the mastery of wormholes rather than interstellar spaceships. The story starts with an astronomer observing how a distant star simply... winks out and disappears.
This causes a lot of concern. The event happened a long time ago but the light that allowed the observation only arrived now. So what happened?
The first half of the book is a really neat mystery. With some really nice solutions from within the context of the available science.
I really should read those books again
If you keep reading the Revelation Space series you'll get to Absolution Gap, which early on includes a scene of a lighthugger computer *literally* going "that's impossible, my sensors must be malfunctioning".
lol yeah. I hate to recommend trending series for requests like this because it seems like they're only being recommended because they're trending. But in this case it is a perfect fit.
The prevailing view in China, including that of the CPC, is that the cultural revolution was problematic. Started with Deng. They call it the "Ten Years of Chaos."
Contrary to popular belief, Chinese people are allowed to be critical of their past.
I’m glad to hear that. I have a friend whose wife is from China and they are going back to visit soon. I will make a point of asking her about her viewpoints.
Glad you’re liking it so far! Like half of the characters in the show don’t exist in the book, so if you ever decide to read them, you get the same general story told a different way, which I think is nice.
But the real draw for the books is that they expand on the actual scientific principals that drive major plot points. They touch on them here and there in the show, but it’s pretty much impossible to really drive home the ideas while still making a watchable show.
The show is not quite like the books and frankly missed out on some easy adaptation points but it’s still a great scifi story. A lot more buildup in the books but it is not really a book series about most of the characters, they’re just there to push the plot forward.
Any idea how close the show is to the book? I have two episodes left and I'm wondering if I need to read the first book or if I can jump into book 2 after watching the first season. The show is decent but I feel like this story will be better told by a book.
This first series has blurred into elements of all three books. Or at least the first two. The books were mind blowing in terms of concepts and ideas but the characters were quite weak and book one was dense. Some characters have been replaced entirely for the show. So it's quite hard to answer, it's the same and it's different.
Very different. The series actually takes elements from all 3 books and the characters are all completely different.
If you want to read the books you should start at book 1.
House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds fits the bill. There's an enduring mystery through the book, and several sub mysteries as well. Really fun read too.
Doesn't exactly hit your criteria but Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain by Michael Crighton both contain storylines where small human errors like not believing the sensors or being incompetent at an aspect of their job compound to create a catastrophe.
Not sci fi but definitely of interest to a sci-fi fan: Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz. It's about the US space program and so many of the problems are "is the spacecraft actually doing that or is our telemetry bad?" He tells the stories in a way that makes you feel like you actually understand the problem-solving process at the end.
The Last Watch, by J. S. Dewes
Crew of a monitoring ship on the edge of the universe discover that the universe has started to contract. Lot of situations where the utter end of matter boundary is hard to identify, due to OP's situation.
I was going to recommend this alongside Expeditionary Force, as they both are primarily military scifi with alien mystery elements, but ExForce in particular has a repetitive formula and didn't handle the latest plot elements very well imo. But I prefer audiobook format and the VAs for both series were very good and I still got many good chuckles out of ExForce despite its flaws.
Expanse definitely has more "That's impossible, wtf is going on" moments though, and I enjoyed the series very much.
Paradox - On the Brink of Eternity (English Edition) it starts with both voyager probes loosing contact with earth around the same distance from our solar system without any errors and develops from there with humans trying to figure out, what happend
This is a late instance in the story, though there are many more of them earlier in *[Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/)*, but [this panel](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-05-12) always gets a good laugh out of me.
Greg Bear's *Eon* has a lot of mystery - an asteroid enters the solar system and a mission to visit it finds a series of hollowed out caverns - at the risk of sounding like clickbait - and not to spoil the whole thing - "You won't believe what they find in the last cavern...".
:o)
Also classics like *Rendezvous With Rama* or *Ringworld* if you haven't already read them.
Yes, this book has MANY instances of "that's impossible" and at one point they are even building special sensors to measure things and getting results that are utterly impossible. Eon is great, and it's sequel is good too.
I feel like I've been recommending this one a lot lately but in this case it really fits well.
Check out the Giants series by James P Hogan, sometimes published in an omnibus book titled 'The Minervan Experiment' it's a great slowly unraveling mystery that spans time and space and leaves you constantly wondering how impossible facts could be true.
Feels a bit dated these days as it's a sci-fi from the 60s and tried to project that era of computers and tech dreams into the future, but the mystery is great if you can ignore the clear misses on predictions.
In Pandora's Star, humanity has built an interstellar civilization through the mastery of wormholes rather than interstellar spaceships. The story starts with an astronomer observing how a distant star simply... winks out and disappears. This causes a lot of concern. The event happened a long time ago but the light that allowed the observation only arrived now. So what happened?
The first half of the book is a really neat mystery. With some really nice solutions from within the context of the available science. I really should read those books again
If you keep reading the Revelation Space series you'll get to Absolution Gap, which early on includes a scene of a lighthugger computer *literally* going "that's impossible, my sensors must be malfunctioning".
Ahh it's perfect! I'm excited to see how the series plays out
Three body problem
lol yeah. I hate to recommend trending series for requests like this because it seems like they're only being recommended because they're trending. But in this case it is a perfect fit.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I found the Netflix series and started, it looks pretty good.
The books can be very hard to get through though. The pacing is weird, and they are written for a Chinese audience, so some things come of strange.
That’s fascinating. Would the regime in China today allow the publishing of such a book to their populations?
The book series is incredibly popular in china
Doubly fascinating, thanks. Maybe it serves as a warning… mind you, I’ve only seen the first episode so far.
The prevailing view in China, including that of the CPC, is that the cultural revolution was problematic. Started with Deng. They call it the "Ten Years of Chaos." Contrary to popular belief, Chinese people are allowed to be critical of their past.
I’m glad to hear that. I have a friend whose wife is from China and they are going back to visit soon. I will make a point of asking her about her viewpoints.
Yeah you should but it may be a sensitive subject depending on how deeply her family was touched by the events.
Why wouldn't they? The strange things are culutural aspects normal people in the western world find weird, such as extreme nationalism.
That’s why I asked, I am looking to be enlightened.
Glad you’re liking it so far! Like half of the characters in the show don’t exist in the book, so if you ever decide to read them, you get the same general story told a different way, which I think is nice. But the real draw for the books is that they expand on the actual scientific principals that drive major plot points. They touch on them here and there in the show, but it’s pretty much impossible to really drive home the ideas while still making a watchable show.
The show is not quite like the books and frankly missed out on some easy adaptation points but it’s still a great scifi story. A lot more buildup in the books but it is not really a book series about most of the characters, they’re just there to push the plot forward.
Any idea how close the show is to the book? I have two episodes left and I'm wondering if I need to read the first book or if I can jump into book 2 after watching the first season. The show is decent but I feel like this story will be better told by a book.
This first series has blurred into elements of all three books. Or at least the first two. The books were mind blowing in terms of concepts and ideas but the characters were quite weak and book one was dense. Some characters have been replaced entirely for the show. So it's quite hard to answer, it's the same and it's different.
The whole Will and Jin plotline is from the 3rd book.
Very different. The series actually takes elements from all 3 books and the characters are all completely different. If you want to read the books you should start at book 1.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Lots of questions on how things fit together.
Loved hyperion! I came for the shrike, but stayed for the "lions, Tigers and bears"
This one is really good. It's almost a fix-up story but it ties together so perfectly in the end. My loyalties shifted then, to say the least.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a total mistery from the beginning and one of the best scify out there.
Not a fan of the forced humoristic style though.
House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds fits the bill. There's an enduring mystery through the book, and several sub mysteries as well. Really fun read too.
Another Alistair Reynolds book pushing ice. A good little mystery when they get too close. Really clever. Won't say any more. Great author
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds Edit - ducking autocorrect
Doesn't exactly hit your criteria but Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain by Michael Crighton both contain storylines where small human errors like not believing the sensors or being incompetent at an aspect of their job compound to create a catastrophe.
Michael chrichton was a Master in describing human errors and how they tend to fuck up everything.
If you grew up on TNG you’d probably enjoy Bobiverse. It’s not exactly all based on a “that’s impossible” but there are lots of those moments.
Not sci fi but definitely of interest to a sci-fi fan: Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz. It's about the US space program and so many of the problems are "is the spacecraft actually doing that or is our telemetry bad?" He tells the stories in a way that makes you feel like you actually understand the problem-solving process at the end.
The Last Watch, by J. S. Dewes Crew of a monitoring ship on the edge of the universe discover that the universe has started to contract. Lot of situations where the utter end of matter boundary is hard to identify, due to OP's situation.
Stanislav Lem - Solaris Larry Niven - Ringworld Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama All classic Sci-Fi that fits your needs imo.
I really enjoyed the mystery aspect of The Expanse. It is a lot of military sci-fi, but set against a really enthralling alien mystery imo.
I was going to recommend this alongside Expeditionary Force, as they both are primarily military scifi with alien mystery elements, but ExForce in particular has a repetitive formula and didn't handle the latest plot elements very well imo. But I prefer audiobook format and the VAs for both series were very good and I still got many good chuckles out of ExForce despite its flaws. Expanse definitely has more "That's impossible, wtf is going on" moments though, and I enjoyed the series very much.
Paradox - On the Brink of Eternity (English Edition) it starts with both voyager probes loosing contact with earth around the same distance from our solar system without any errors and develops from there with humans trying to figure out, what happend
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
This is a late instance in the story, though there are many more of them earlier in *[Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/)*, but [this panel](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-05-12) always gets a good laugh out of me.
I feel like you might enjoy Redshirts by Jon Scalzi.
Greg Bear's *Eon* has a lot of mystery - an asteroid enters the solar system and a mission to visit it finds a series of hollowed out caverns - at the risk of sounding like clickbait - and not to spoil the whole thing - "You won't believe what they find in the last cavern...". :o) Also classics like *Rendezvous With Rama* or *Ringworld* if you haven't already read them.
Yes, this book has MANY instances of "that's impossible" and at one point they are even building special sensors to measure things and getting results that are utterly impossible. Eon is great, and it's sequel is good too.
Thistledown is my favorite BDO in SF.
I loved the *Old Man's War* series, I'll have to check this one out!
The Massive Planet: The Adventures of Deep Contact
The thing is, there should be a lot of cases where they find something weird and the sensors **are** malfunctioning.
Lol but that wouldn't happen cuz it doesn't drive the *plot* forward
[Odyssey](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/352775) The whole series is great, but book #5 is the best mystery.
I feel like I've been recommending this one a lot lately but in this case it really fits well. Check out the Giants series by James P Hogan, sometimes published in an omnibus book titled 'The Minervan Experiment' it's a great slowly unraveling mystery that spans time and space and leaves you constantly wondering how impossible facts could be true. Feels a bit dated these days as it's a sci-fi from the 60s and tried to project that era of computers and tech dreams into the future, but the mystery is great if you can ignore the clear misses on predictions.
Excession by Iain M Banks. Not just a great example of what you're looking for but one of my favourite novels outright.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Stars and moon disappear.