The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) - <AUTHOR> http://blamcast.net/articles/best-science-fiction-books <comment><USER2> I'm sorry not to see Accelerando by Charles Stross (cstross on HN) on the list. One of the best singularity stories I have read, if not the best.

For those of you interested, it's available as a free ebook here: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

<comment><USER3> My problem with Stross is that while he has some absolutely fantastic ideas and world-building, his stories fall short of keeping me interested or entertained. It's like there's so much stuff crammed in that the story part just falls out of the equation.

 __MINOR SPOILERS for Accelerando __

I thought Accelerando was great up to the part where it stopped making any sense (about the time they were fighting some alien invaders parasites that teleported from somewhere using communication channels). Maybe I'm just dumb, but I really couldn't keep up with the plot and it got very nonsensical so I stopped reading. Dealing with singularities, the divide between the physical and the abstract is always very fluid. While Stross dealt OK with the abstract reality, I thought his physical reality didn't make any sense to me. Hilarious extrapolations, and such.

<comment><USER4> His newer books (Jennifer Morgue etc) are better stories; with some of the hell of modern office work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you've dismissed any of these based on your reading as a kid, try re- reading. I read Tolkien at 12, loved the wizards and orcs, but as an adult remembered it as nonsense. When I re-read it (to be able to discuss with my 11 year old son), I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Likewise the Dune books (all but the first are probably beyond any adolescent). Good fiction is complex, and readings fascinated with wizards and swords and knife- fights will miss a lot of thought-provoking stuff. Nothing wrong with a good wizard, but don't miss the rest.

That said, I'm sorry to say that the Zelazny books, especially the later ones, don't withstand re-reading. And I don't see how "Old Man's War" appeals to any one but a teen or an ideologue. (I share the ideology! but the writing is stale as yesterday's cornflakes, and the characters as unidimensional as Heinlein's laziest pulp, without the Heinlein all-transgressive idiosyncrasy.)

Last note: "Starship Troopers" and "Forever War" ought to be read in sequence. I can recall reading Haldeman at 15 and thinking "Hey! He's going after Rico's Roughnecks!" It was my first moment of literature as Great Conversation. And as I read some political philosophy, I could see Haldeman as a Chomsky / Rousseau "it's all socialization!" response to the Locke / Hobbes rationalism of Heinlein. It was an early experience of fiction as thought, and a suggestion of why philosophy alone won't do.

Now I gotta go read the stuff on the list that I've missed.

<comment><USER6> I don't get how Old Man's War makes all these best of lists either. It's simple, and not in a good way. It's the literary equivalent of Red Dawn—awesome to 14 year olds, but lacking in anything deeper than "Old man gets new body and has lots of sex."

<comment><USER7> Old Man's War is pulpy fun that manages to also explore some interesting aspects of what it would mean to be able to swap your consciousness into that of a wholly redesigned younger "you".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author.

Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better.

That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to life.

Whether he's writing for Wired about expats in South East Asia (which dove tails nicely with Cryptonomicon) or extra dimensional aliens in Anathem, he makes the world come alive and the technology and methodologies clear.

He also makes me laugh out loud. Very few books have done that.

<comment><USER9> Agreed... I read Cryptonomicon first, then Diamond Age (my favorite from him) then Snow Crash, and I found the third book a lot less mature and dated (I read it in 2001, almost a decade after it was published).

Diamond Age painted a very deep and rich tapestry of future vision.

<comment><USER10> I found Cryptonomicon a painfully long slog. I enjoyed it overall, but only read it because of having read Snow Crash and Zodiac first. I love Stephenson's humor with technical issues. I suppose I should read some of his longer, er, later books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is really good book. The movie is also nice, but it is almost independent masterpiece in itself. These dresses of Rachel, these rainy streets. Never mind.

Btw, A Scanner Darkly is also good novel by Philip K. Dick, but it never appear in any such ratings. It is almost that dark and depressive as Electric Sheep. ^_^ [http://www.amazon.com/Scanner-Darkly-Philip-K- Dick/dp/067973...](http://www.amazon.com/Scanner-Darkly-Philip-K- Dick/dp/0679736654)

As for Zelazny, A Night In Lonesome October is very nice read. [http://www.amazon.com/Night-Lonesome-October-Roger- Zelazny/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Night-Lonesome-October-Roger- Zelazny/dp/0380771411)

<comment><USER12> PKD has written so many great books its not surprising everyone has their own favourites. I personally prefer _Man in the High Castle_ , _Ubik_ , _Time out of joint_ and _Martian time-slip_ to _Electric Sheep_ and _Scanner_. I'm surprised none of these managed it onto the list :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine.

Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?)

Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair amount of Asimov and Dick.

<comment><USER14> Hear, hear. Any "Best of Sci-Fi" list that omits Solaris and includes Ender's Game is worthless.

<comment><USER15> The demise of any social website also seems to coincide with the first mention of Ender's Game. Could this be the end of HN as we know it?

<comment><USER16> I don't think that's a good rule at all. Ender's game a is popular children's novel and is likely remembered fondly in any techie/nerd/geek setting. It just shouldn't belong at the top of a "best of scifi" list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would add Permutation City. It's about: what's it like to be a digital person in a virtual world? What are the psychological effects of knowing that you're virtual; how do you experience time passing; what are the social implications of changing your appearance at whim, etc.

And, how do different interpretations of data compete to become "real"? For example, if you look at it one way it's a city, another way it's a collection of data cells to be colonized, etc.

<comment><USER18> For a more complete extrapolation of this concept, check out _Diaspora_ by Greg Egan.

<comment><USER19> Disapora is a semi-sequel to Permutation City, both are written by Egan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone is interested, here is the list of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_Hugo_and_Nebula_awards)

I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next.

<comment><USER21> Another very valuable source of new material for me has been The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies[1].

Perfect for finding new interesting writers (Bacigalupi was one of the nicest discoveries)

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_Best_Science_Fiction>

<comment><USER22> Dozois has a knack for picking great stories. The saddest part is that it's tricky to get past editions; when I find an old edition I don't have at a used book store it's terribly exciting, especially since the quality has been so consistent over the years.

<comment><USER23> I've had pretty good success picking them up in digital formats - not sure if you prefer the paperback version, but if you're okay reading it on a screen you can get all of them digital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad to see Gene Wolfe just squeaked onto the list, but IMO the New Sun series ranks up there with Dune.

Pohl's "Gateway" and Gibson/Sterling's "The Difference Engine" would have been nice additions, too.

Otherwise, it's a nice starting point. There are a few titles I hadn't heard about that I'll be reading, if I can find the time.

<comment><USER25> Agreed, I spent the entirety of the list going "Yes, this is a good book, but where's Gene Wolfe?" Anyone who loves literature is doing themselves a disservice by not reading it.

<comment><USER26> Though I think I prefer Long Sun and Short Sun. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One omission that may fit this crowd well is "Daemon" and it's sequel "Freedom(tm)" by Daniel Suarez

<http://thedaemon.com/>

These books are very well written and billed as a 'techno-thriller'. I think they are also near-term science fiction, and have a lot of very interesting ideas.

The books chronicle the rise of a very digital culture and a revolution driven by technology. The technology is amazingly well researched and believable, and the writing is entertaining and fun. At the moment they are quite recent and the technologies aren't there yet, but I wouldn't be at all surprised for some of the technology to fall into that 'oddly prescient' category within the decade.

<comment><USER19> Love those, probably the only books I've read that deserved the "techno- thriller" label that publishers love. Best extrapolation of the networked society yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What? No mention of Lois McMaster Bujold and her excellent Vorkosigan series? Bujold won four Hugo awards for her work, just behind Heinlein (who won five), and I'm always surprised that she isn't better known.

<comment><USER29> Bujold has a noteworthy digital philosophy as well. The entire Vorkosigan series is available online <http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD/>

_... all of it beautifully unencrypted and unencumbered. What's the catch? This disk and its contents may be copied and shared, but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved. That's it._

<comment><USER30> From her novel _Barrayar_ :

>" _The people's right to access information shall not be abridged. It's the first item in the Constitution._ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Foundation series was a great read, I read it when I was young and it influenced a lot of how I viewed the world around me.

Having just reread it, I must say that it shows that Asimov did not really want to write the last parts of the series (i.e. Prelude to the Foundation and Forward the Foundation). Forward the Foundation especially is just trying to tie everything together by whatever means necessary. That being said, the original first four parts are awesome.

<comment><USER32> Foundation, the book, was absolutely brilliant. Brilliant concept, brilliant structure to the book, and even the sentence-to-sentence writing is better than Asimov's usual (I normally find the actual wordcrafting to not be Asimov's strong suit).

But ugh ugh ugh. Every single book thereafter gets worse and worse, and by the end it's so bad that I actually welcomed the blatant fanservice reappearance of you-know-who.

<comment><USER33> Voldemort vs. the Foundation? Don't go giving me ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Original thread

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k70dh/whats_the_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k70dh/whats_the_best_scifi_novel_you_have_ever_read/)

</comment><comment> T-hawk How about more modern science fiction? I loved the Golden Age series by John C. Wright, published around 2004. It's refreshing to read sci-fi where computers and connectivity are ubiquitous, rather than the old masters who didn't foresee the internet. ( _Stranger_ has flying taxicabs using magnetic tape for storage, a jarring juxtaposition to the modern reader.)

Golden Age raises some real philosophical questions, as good mind-expanding SF should. Suppose you have an adversary in some endeavor, and you have the technology to perfectly simulate your adversary's mind and predict what he will do. Does that simulation have consciousness? Does it have civil rights? What if it's forked? Very interesting stuff, grounded in real science (no FTL travel.)

<comment><USER35> Thank you. I believe Golden Age is the series I was trying to remember in a conversation a few weeks ago as an example of extreme use of augmented reality.

I'll toss in my recent favorite space opera: the Polity series by Neal Asher. Similar to Banks in that it has governing AIs, but less omniscient; good adventure stories, with a dash of horror in original hostile species, sentient and otherwise.

<comment><USER36> I'll 2nd Asher. Just read the prologue of Gridlinked. On par with Game of Thrones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Dune _is_ great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great.

Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work.

I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's absolutely 100% no risk...it makes it all quite dull/pointless.

I hated Stranger in a Strange land..maybe I should re-read it. All I remember (and it's been about 10 years)..was that I liked the start, an then it turned really weird...all about drugs and sex and cults.

<comment><USER38> Something Dune accomplishes really well -- and which very few sci-fi books or movies have ever pulled off quite as effectively -- is weaving a lot of background, and culture, and esoteric terminology, into the story without disrupting the story's flow. There aren't lengthy, disjointed sidebars about what X means, or why Y exists. Instead, X and Y are woven into the narrative via context, allowing the reader to pick up quickly on what they are. (There's also a glossary at the back of the book, of course, which helps).

The book's most glaring weakness, however, is that many of its characters suffer from I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely-what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome (Harkonnen, in particular, has a James Bond Villain-esque penchant for such speeches.)

Regardless, the book has been absolutely foundational to the genre. Nearly every convention of the modern space opera can be traced back to Dune.

It's a pity that no one's ever been able to crack the book's code on film. Understandable, though, as so much of the action is psychological and the drama internalized.

<comment><USER39> I only read Dune last year (I'm in my thirties), and really disliked it. Your comment, however, emphasizes a virtue I did not sufficiently acknowledge at the time. It _is_ true that Dune was able to weave a lot of background into the story without resorting to technical infodumps. And at the time it was a rare and impressive achievement in SF, deserving of praise. But I don't think I'd agree that things haven't changed since; nowadays careful weaving of background isn't rare. The first two examples that pop into my mind are Banks' books (the Culture series or _Fearsum Enjinn_) in SF and Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire_ novels in fantasy. It may be reasonable to say, however, that Dune has been foundational in teaching later authors the necessity of doing this.

(Ultimately, I just couldn't handle how bad the writing was. All the characters are utterly cardboard flat. Cliched tags follow them around the book. One character has an inkvine scar on his jaw that eventually ripples in any scene he's in... and then again in the next scene... and again... I felt like instituting a drinking game based on the rippling of the scar. The main hero's mind is filled with a _terrible purpose_ whenever the author feels the need to emphasize a clue or a plot point. And the author just can't handle the flow of information (who knows what how, and whether the reader also knows that and how). This leads to the I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely- what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome you mention, but goes deeper than that, creating plot holes and distortions, and causing most of the characters to learn most of the important knowledge they need basically by staring into space and having a revelation).

<comment><USER40> Try again in a year or so. Dune is one of those books that takes a few tries. I think it was my 3rd attempt before I really got hooked and made it through (and savored every page from there on out).

It's kinda like Lord of the Rings in that respect. If you're in the right frame of mind, it's awesome. If not, it's the most boring piece of dullness you've ever seen in print. But once you're in, you're in for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Probably the most surprising thing about this list is that whoever made it didn't insert Amazon affiliate links into it.

Anyway, these lists always raise the question of what does "good" mean exactly? Inevitably they're dominated by books that were, in their time, incredibly significant.

You see the same things in computing books. Someone will always recommend "Design Patterns" but (IMHO) it is the dullest, driest book you could ever read. The _ideas_ were important. As a book it's terrible.

Science fiction falls into a number of categories.

The first is space opera. This is basically a tale of adventure in a science fiction environment. Sometimes these books have some kind of message but most of the time they don't. They're typically the "Terminator 2" of books: they can be hugely entertaining, sometimes even really significant, but often don't have much substance.

Don't take that as a criticism. Stephen Donaldson's "Gap" series was, for me, a fantastic series but it really is simply space opera style entertainment.

The second is what I call "hard science fiction". It's the sort of sci-fi where the story is a backdrop for some physics. Ringworld is an example of this (as are most of Niven's works).

This is a genre I thought largely dead (with its height in the 60s and 70s) until I read Alastair Reynolds. His books have more of a story than, say, Niven's but they're still largely rooted in our current understanding of physics.

The third is what I call "literary science fiction". Literature, traditionally, was used as a means of talking about something that normally couldn't be talked about. Plays in the Shakespeare's time filled this role. Nowadays it's not so much that talking about these things is verboten, it's that the story can be an accessible way of discussing a topic that an essay never could.

Stranger in a Strange Land is very much in this category. It's almost only sci-fi by association. It does have the hallmarks of its age, most notably mental powers (a common zeitgeist in 60s sci-fi). This book probably had the same effect on society that, say, Pacific cultures did on Victorian English society.

In the 80s cyberpunk was born. Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) "takeover" of Western society. It's actually very xenophobic but it does reflect the dystopian fears of the time. Cyberpunk has waned in recent years as the xenophobia has and the realization that this isn't the future.

Does this make pioneering books in this field like Neuromancer "good"? Personally I thought that if you ignore the pioneering part, it was a fairly average book. Here again is the power of nostalgia I think (as I read it some years after it came out).

So I find many books on this list that are (IMHO) overrated, largely for nostalgic reasons.

I also find some authors missing that really should be represented, most notably the prolific CJ Cheeryh whose books Downbelow Station and Cyteen are both noteworthy and stand the test of time.

Some books on this list stand the test of time very well. Ender's Game, any of the Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, Hyperion to name a few.

<comment><USER42> "Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) 'takeover' of Western society."

I would argue that this has largely already happened. There is sort of a battle between liberal jewish culture and fundamentalist christian culture for being the official US mythology, but on a day to day basis Japanese culture and values are largely what have filled the power void. I would argue that most of our mainstream institutions, from schools to jobs to pop culture, have become and are increasingly becoming largely Japanese in nature.

<comment><USER43> Can you offer some examples? I was surprised by this statement.

<comment><USER42> So I think the fundamentalist christian thing is pretty self explanatory if you've been paying attention. In terms of Jewish culture, it's not really a secret that most of Hollywood, the media, and much of progressivism and culture in general is organized around liberal jewish values.

I'm not really an expert on why this is, but from what I can see protestantism sort of hit its high water mark shortly after WWII. Around this time we had an enormous rise in summer camps, spiritual retreats, folk music, sort of a pre- environmental movement, etc. that was all basically a reaction to the atomic bomb. Not to mention the birth of rock & roll, which came out of protestantism as well. All of this eventually led to the counter culture, which protestantism sort of pulled back from. These loosely affiliated movements were then basically embraced by liberal judaism. So today even though judaism proper is in the background, many of its values have still shaped those of the progressive movement to the point where liberal jewish values and progressivism are largely intertwined.

In terms of Japanification, one pretty clear example in schools is high stakes testing. In the workplace it's characterized by how bureaucratic large companies have become, and the way the people at the bottom are treated. I think it's in the movie The High Cost of Low Prices that there are videos of Wal-Mart employees doing their morning dance or whatever that corporate makes them do every day when they open the store, stuff like that is straight out of Japanese business culture. In general you see an increasing amount of abstract ideas being productized so that they can be sold as part of new fads, whether we're talking about rock band, credit default swaps, politicians, etc. It's essentially a glorification of surface appearances.

From everything I can see, the U.S. is basically becoming like Japan except without the ideas surround honor and the other spiritual norms, and without enough money to facilitate the same level of pop culture fads. Again I'm not a historian so if you want to call bullshit on me then go for it, I'm just calling it as I see it.

<comment><USER44> While an interesting thesis, and I would never claim Japan has completely failed to influence the US, none of your examples strike me as evidence of Japan -> US influence rather than either convergent evolution, or things that just flat out come from different sources. High stakes testing is a result of the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy requires something to test and measure, and it will create it even if it's impossible, damn the consequences. The US is adopting it due to an increase in sclerotic bureaucracy, many Eastern cultures has histories of sclerotic bureaucracies longer than Western culture itself. Team building exercises and the term itself predate any conceivable Japanese influence. If "productizing abstract ideas", or perhaps rather, "productizing culture" flowed in any direction, it was from US -> Japan, not vice versa! See also the concept of "soft power".

<comment><USER42> "either convergent evolution, or things that just flat out come from different sources"

I more or less agree with this. At the same time, when you look at Japan everything just looks better -- even though it isn't. So while I think much of it is convergent evolution or things that come from different sources, just having Japan being the way it is vaguely over there seems to be giving US leaders more self confidence to make these sorts of reforms.

Part of it also though is that Japan has a history of taking ideas from other cultures and then perfecting them. E.g. germany invents scientific management, Henry Ford popularizes and commercializes it, and then 60 years later it's getting shipped back to us as TQM and Kanban. So yeah it's definitely all tangled up, all I'm saying is that we're becoming more like Japan currently is, regardless of why we're becoming that way or why Japan is that way.

<comment><USER45> _Part of it also though is that Japan has a history of taking ideas from other cultures and then perfecting them._

As one example, a lot of the "japanese management techniques" stuff can trace its roots back to an American, W. Edwards Deming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming>

 _Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's later reputation for innovative high-quality products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Despite being considered something of a hero in Japan, he was only just beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death._

<comment><USER46> It doesn't necessarily matter what the culture of the person who had the idea is. It matters who has the courage to do it. Execution trumps idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wow, no classics that so far stand the test of time. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (unbelievable at 18 in 1818!) and as others have mentioned Verne, HG Wells(his insight inspired physicist Szilárd's neutron chain reaction).

Still an interesting list that shows what the mob is looking at. I guess I'll have to give neuromancer another chance(i only skimmed it) also hated heinland's stranger (the jesus complex was unconvincing). And it's easy to see how a list can be skewed by something like hitchhikers (which is so funny & readable) But in 200 yrs how many from this list?

</comment><comment><USER48> I was pleasantly surprised to see two Neal Stephenson books on the list, but why did the second have to be Anathem? I thought Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle were much better books. Anathem's plot seemed like book-nerd wish fulfillment.

Of course I still read all thousand pages of Anathem in, like, four days. :)

<comment><USER49> favorite stephenson books in order: 1\. snow crash 2\. diamond age 3\. cryptonomicon 4\. zodiac 5\. baroque cycle

<comment> brown9-2 is Anathem kept off your list on purpose ? :)

<comment><USER49> yes because I couldn't finish it so I don't have a comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Someone who never appears on these list but is one of the rising stars in Scif-Fi isis Ted Chiang. He's not written a full length novel yet but his short stories and novellas are mind blowing, best stuff I're read since early Egan. Check out:

Stories of Your Life and Others [http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Ted- Chiang/dp/193152...](http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Ted- Chiang/dp/1931520720/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1))

The Lifecycle of Software Objects* [http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Software- Objects-Ted-Chiang/...](http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Software-Objects-Ted- Chiang/dp/1596063173/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315602763&sr=1-2)

*if there's a more HN title for a novella ever I haven't heard of it!

</comment><comment><USER50> I have two give two huge thumbs up to a few books on that list:

* A Fire Upon the Deep - This book manages to capture both galaxy wide conflict and intense personal narrative in a manner that kept me riveted to the end. That and an extremely unique type of alien life form that gains its personality based upon a telepathic summation of individual consciousness of it's members, made for some really interesting reading.

* The Forever War - Take one part Starship Troopers (the book), add a dash of conscription and another of superluminal travel with full time dilation effects, and you end up with this superb novel. I've read it a few times already because it's so damned good and concise.

</comment><comment><USER51> Missing: Eon by Greg Bear <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(novel)>

<comment><USER52> Anvil of Stars is my favorite Greg Bear book. It's the sequel to Forge of God which is also a great read: <http://www.amazon.com/Anvil-of-Stars- ebook/dp/B003XRERB0>

<comment><USER53> Anvil of Stars also my favorite Greg Bear book. Nobody read my review of this book on Amazon, so perhaps this is a better place for it:

I've read hundreds of science fiction books where humans have military conflict with aliens (though not yet the Forge of God). In nearly all of them, there are World-War-II-Naval-like space battles with weapons/ships/shields at near parity. I have always thought this to be highly implausible, and I thought an interesting aspect of this book was to consider three possible battle situations in space:

1) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly higher tech level. If they detect you before you detect them, you are dead. Period. Your only possibility to win such a battle is to detect them first and destroy them instantly - and your chances of being able to do that are slim.

2) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly lower tech level. Using the logic above, all that matters is you being able to detect them before they detect you. The technologies of stealth, electronic counter measures, detection, etc. are therefore all extremely vital in order to never be defeated by aliens with a lower tech level.

3) There is a possibility that you encounter an enemy close enough to your own tech level that the battle could last more than a split second. It is only in these instances that all the other things often written in other science fiction stories might matter - amount and type of shielding, weapons systems, quality of personnel, etc. But such battles are very unlikely, because technological progress is so fast. Consider what it would be like for any of today's industrialized nations with a substantial military to combat the most powerful nation on earth from 200 years ago - there would be no contest at all. The universe has been around for billions of years, so the chance of two races encountering each other that are within a few hundred years of each others' technology level is very low.

The above logic also applies to planetary defense as well, though with even more emphasis on not being detected.

This is the only SF book I've read that envisions future military conflict this way, and for that I give the book 4 stars. In my mind, this clearly deserves a place among the top 10 science fiction books in the military SF genre.

However, I did not care for the characters and character development and dialog which occupied the sluggish first half of the book. It wasn't until they started exploring the killers home system that I had trouble putting the book down. I did enjoy the dialog about ethical considerations of what the human ship was going to do, and the aliens they joined forces with were an interesting twist to the story and well done.

Bottom Line - the key to this book for me was an exploration of military encounters in space that struck me as vastly more plausible than the typical SF novel. Rewrite the book to remove most of the first half - and it would have been 5 stars for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Not surprised to see that "Quantum Thief" isn't on the list - it's probably too new:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief>

Highly praised by Charlie Stross (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross>), and recommended by me. Be warned, though, bloody hard work - the criticism mentioned in the "Reception" section of the WikiPedia page is accurate. I think it adds to the experience.

</comment><comment><USER55> I think Speaker for the dead should have made that list. Or at least they should have listed it as Ender's game + Speaker for the dead.

</comment><comment><USER56> There were a few 'everything by X' comments that got massive upvotes (Philip K Dick comes to mind) that aren't really represented here. The authors appear, but only 1 or 2 of their works. It's worth keeping in mind that this wasn't just a list of books, but of authors as well.

<comment><USER57> And he wrote lots of good short stories, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The only guide you'll ever need (also courtesy of reddit!):

[http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/brm9y/have_you_seen_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/brm9y/have_you_seen_this_its_a_really_good_guide/c0o8kah)

</comment><comment><USER59> I highly recommend the science fiction of Eric Frank Russell. Especially Wasp (<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575070951/>)

Russell is a great writer. And funny.

The Great Explosion (<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/088184991X/>) is another good one.

</comment><comment><USER60> Some others I'd recommend:

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Loved it.

Flatland. o.O

Isacc Asimov short stories collection (specially "Jokester" "The Golden Man" and "The Last Question")

<comment><USER61> The Last Question is perhaps the short story with the most mind-bending finale. Highly recommended.

<http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html>

<comment><USER62> I prefer the last answer.

<comment><USER63> I found both to be some of the most rewarding stories I read. With both, upon finishing them, I spent another hour just thinking about it. Highly recommended!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> A pretty stellar list, except for Altered Carbon which I found cheap and utterly predictable. I'm really not a fan of Revelation Space/Alastair Reynolds, but that's more due to the flaws in the fiction writing, whereas the sci-fi aspect of that book and most of his subsequent books is truly impressive (save for Chasm City).

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm really surprised Charles Stross didn't get into the list. One of the best futurists currently writing, IMHO.

I also highly recommend M. John Harrison's 'Light' <http://www.amazon.com/Light-M-John-Harrison/dp/0553382950>.

</comment><comment><USER66> While I thought Alastair Reynold's _Revelation Space_ was just ok, I really loved his standalone book _Chasm City_. I picked it up randomly at a book exchange and was blown away. The universe is fiercely imaginative and colorful, the dialog is snappy, the characters are flawed and interesting, the science is just hard enough to be vaguely plausible, but on the whole there's enough silliness for the book to not take itself completely seriously. The mysteries are compelling and the plot winds up nicely.

I highly recommend it over his other Revelation Space books--it's truly a brilliant, self-contained space opera in every sense of the word. It was the first book of his I read and I haven't since read something so brightly imaginative.

<comment><USER9> Chasm City is my favorite book, but not by far... The first book (Revelation Space) set a very nice backdrop for the character development and story in the 2nd book (Chasm City).

My only gripe with Chasm City is that there is an (not essential to story) interlude which breaks hard sci-fi canon (ie, superluminal travel).

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I really miss Stanislaw Lem from this list.

<comment><USER57> Or any other non-English writer.

<comment><USER35> Really, they could have tossed Pierre "Planet of the Apes" Boulle in there, if they knew the name.

Although my favorite Boulle story was "Les Jeux de l'esprit", where scientific rationality takes over the world, and, for entertainment, contests between physical and biological science teams are broadcast. They quickly progress to all out war ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Metafilter has a list of lists of the best science fiction books: [http://ask.metafilter.com/127327/What-is-the-best-list-of- Sc...](http://ask.metafilter.com/127327/What-is-the-best-list-of-Science- Fiction-books)

</comment><comment><USER69> This is a really interesting list! You've got the predictable ones, e.g. _Snow Crash_ (man, did the conclusion of that one _suck_!) and juvenile SF, like _Startship Troopers_ (an example of Heinlein's early phase), but really niche ones toward the end (not many would think Atwood as a SF writer).

Two gaping holes: Any SF list that doesn't include Stanislaw Lem (e.g. _Cyberiad_ ) is incomplete. Also missing is James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), who was Le Guin's mentor (read her _Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death_ , it'll stay with you for weeks.)

Also a series I really enjoyed is Chalker's Four Lords of the Diamond Series, very creative.

<comment><USER70> Indeed, I've been enjoying "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" (an anthology of Tiptree's short stories). I'm short on free time lately, so the short story format makes them feel more accessible.

<comment><USER69> I _loved_ that anthology and was so intrigued by her Wikipedia page that I bought and read her biography, which is excellent. Would have loved to meet her before she was undone by depression, what a woman!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm working on a website called Raunk that crowdsources rankings of anything (including Science Fiction books) and allows you to view best of lists from different perspectives.

It's also a great way to keep track of your favorites and compare them with your friends and the entire internet.

Check it out at <http://raunk.com>

Log in to make your best Science Fiction Books list here: <http://raunk.com/create/82,268>

Or view the list here: <http://raunk.com/list/82,268>

We just launched and are still in Beta, so we'd love to hear any feedback on the site.

</comment><comment><USER72> Thank you, John Forsythe, for taking the time to do this. This crowd-sourced bestof list is a nice update to David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels". I love all such lists that have some passion in them, since more often than not I'm introduced to a book and an author that are good reads.

Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, fan site <https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_pringle_sf.asp>

Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, amazon <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786704810>

</comment><comment><USER73> This thread points out the problem with Top 100 lists, of SF or other large bodies of things judged subjectively, which is that there are far too many good ones to stop at 100. In the real world of course one would hope to have the time to read far more than 100 SF novels; fortunately for me I've read several thousand over the past 40 years.

Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF novels. Could never get past the first pages. Banks, Stross, PFH, MacLeod, Rudy Rucker, Kage Baker, of the recent vintage, would all be there though ;)

<comment><USER74> > Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF > novels. Could never get past the first pages.

Try Wolfe's _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ and see if you might change your mind. It's very readable, and it's pleasantly short. It's half Borges, half Sturgeon, with a pinch of Ray Bradbury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is out of place.

It's a good book for what it is: young adult absurdist comedy. But it honestly never occurred to me to classify it in the same genre as the other books in the list.

</comment><comment><USER76> Thought I might see 'Flowers for Algernon' on here.

<comment><USER77> The problem there is maybe that the novel length treatment of the idea is not quite as amazing as the original short story.

One author that I find sadly missing from the list is John Brunner. Each of "Stand on Zanzibar", "The Sheep Look Up", and "Shockwave Rider" would arguably deserve a place on this list.

<comment><USER78> Completely agree on The Shockwave Rider, which I feel is a great precursor to cyberpunk. Extremely prescient book considering it was published in 1975.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Amongst my favorite SciFi books (not on that list) I loved The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

</comment><comment><USER12> Many moons ago i was recommended to read _The Last Starship from Earth_ by John Boyd with it being referred to has the often overlooked SF classic. It does occasionally squeak onto a list but is still sadly often overlooked :(

Also no HG Wells, Verne, Silverberg or Bob Shaw books on the list? Certainly would have _War of the Worlds_ and _A Time of Changes_ on mine.

</comment><comment><USER80> An aside that may be of interest:

From the linked page: "Ever wonder where the term 'Avatar' came from?"

Still amazes me that people think the word Avatar arose out of recent technical advances.

One educated in a perspective beyond just the Western should know that its an ancient Sanskrit word.

More information: * <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar> * [http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/17/bet-you-didnt- know-a.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/17/bet-you-didnt-know-a.html)

By the way, both references use the word 'descent', and Wikipedia quotes two western sources claim that 'descent' is more correct than 'incarnation'. I checked with at least two Indian contacts that claim the opposite. [Its a Hindi word also; for those that don't know, Hindi is a derivative language from Sanskrit (just as many Western European languages are derived from Latin).]

</comment><comment><USER81> I liked the idea of outfitting Zeb Carter's Ford with a "continua" device in Heinlein's Number of the Beast and programming it so it would move through parallel universes via voice command to the onboard computer.

Can't tell you how many times I've sat in traffic and wished I could say "jump deety" and immediately be in the parking lot.

</comment><comment><USER82> While I am a voracious reader, I have just started reading sci-fi. (Just finished dune, Starting with stranger in a strange land). Just in case anyone's interested, here's a list of the books mentioned in the article and some famous hackers and entrepreneurs who like the books:

Snow Crash - Sergey Brin

Dune - Michael Arrington

Stranger in a strange land -Michael Arrington ,Linus Torvalds

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - Michael Arrington

Ender's Game- Mark Zuckerberg

Anathem - Michael Arrington

Source: my hobby site <http://vipreads.com>

Links to individual people:

<http://vipreads.com/sergey-brin>

<http://vipreads.com/linus-torvalds>

<http://vipreads.com/mark-zuckerberg>

<http://vipreads.com/michael-arrington>

</comment><comment><USER62> Alfred Bester check.

Greg Egan check.

No Peter Watts, understandable Blindsight is relatively recent and unknown. (Seriously though drop everything and read this now: <http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm>)

No Stanislaw Lem you best be trolling.

</comment><comment><USER83> IMHO Jack Vance should be in the list, be it the Tschai series or some other. Really loved it.

<comment><USER84> Jack Vance, the forgotten grand master. I love his stuff as well. My choice would be the Cadwal Chronicles trilogy. The problem may be that his signature work, the Dying Earth stories, are generally categorized as fantasy rather than SF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Lots of great suggestions have already been made (I'm particularly intrigued by _The Quantum Thief_ ), but I believe that _Startide Rising_ has gone unmentioned so far, and that's a shame. The rest of the Uplift Trilogy is also great fun.

</comment><comment><USER86> I'm a big fan of Iain Banks since reading Excession (which still remains my favourite). Also loved Dune, but haven't read any of the sequels yet. I'd also recommend Catherine Asaro's saga of the Skolian Empire to anyone that is into physics/maths.

<comment><USER87> Read the 6 books by Frank Herbert, skip the other spin offs by his son and the other guy - they're terrible in comparison.

<comment><USER88> I never though much of Dune 2-5 either, but I guess I'm in the minority on this one.

<comment><USER89> It took me two or three tries, but now I put 2-6 up there with the first book.

I think the reason people have trouble with 2-6 is that they're ultimately a reversal or deconstruction of the Hero myth. The first book is a fairly typical "Rise of the Superhuman Hero" tale, and that's why it's accessible. Book 2-6 explore the dark side of this myth, which is why they're unique, somewhat inaccessible, and really interesting.

<comment><USER88> I thought they suffered too much from "scope creep". The scope of the first book was nicely limited, but the later books made the story's consequences so far-reaching I couldn't take them seriously.

As regards deconstruction, I think Gene Wolfe does it so much better than Herbert that I don't really consider it a selling point that Herbert tries to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Good list, and I've read nearly all of them.

Getting past the first chapter of Pandoras Star is well worth it - Morninglightmountain is one of the most original, minblowingly awesome all time alien baddies, and the trepidation and sense of impending doom in that book and its's sequel Judas Unchained are superb. Would also recommend the Void Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton too - strong mix of scifi and an alternate fantasy world.

Missing in my view would be: Greg Bear - Eon (as people have mentioned, but also: M John Harrison - Light James Blish - Cities in Flight Battlefield Earth (awesome book, hopeless film) Brave New World for my ultimate "classic"

</comment><comment><USER91> Out of all the scifi I've read over the years, one really stands out to me. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler. The reason isn't that I enjoyed it, but rather that by the time I finished it I was inherently disturbed by it.

I've often read stories I enjoyed. Sometimes I read some that are boring. But it's very rare to actually finish something that makes you physically uncomfortable most of the way through.

The story is excellently written and I recommend anyone willing to experience scifi in a different way to read it.

Would also throw in The Windup Girl as another first rate recent novel.

<comment><USER92> Definitely second the recommendation of Lilith's Brood, I also found it very moving. I bought it based upon the strength of her (much) earlier short story Bloodchild which I found myself thinking about for weeks after I'd read it.

<comment><USER91> I'm very interested in how the book affected you. When you say you find it moving, can you describe in what ways?

For me, the word "moving" means that I was emotionally tied to the character(s). When they succeed, I succeed. When one dies, its heart breaking. But that's not how Lilith's Brood affected me. At some deep level I was very disturbed by the overtones of rape and subjugation by the aliens, but that at the same time these creatures loved the humans they bonded with in the same deep way we feel when we love another person. There was a big amount of alienation in that humans in the bondings were physically repulsed to be near each other even though they were deeply in love. That human beings could only be close via the alien partner, there was just something deeply wrong with that.

One of the reasons I respect that novel and can recommend it, but can't love it, is that Octavia Butler did such a magnificent job in telling the story in a way that it makes me feel as I do. That's rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Interesting to compare it against goodread's list: <http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction>

</comment><comment><USER94> I just finished the Commonwealth Saga + The Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, loved it. Both set in the same universe, the first two in the relatively near future (about 300 years from now), the trilogy in the far future (about 1500 years from now).

The trilogy can get a bit abstract, verging on the fantasy genre at times, but in the end the author manages to give an explanation that "makes sense" for everything, which is the thing I really like about his stories. Highly entertaining.

<comment><USER95> It's a bit of a dubious explanation of The Void, to be honest (although the "Think of it as an 8-dimensional onion" kind of makes up for it), and the ending is a little weak, but overall I enjoyed the series a lot. The alternating of space opera/fantasy chapters is also done pretty well, and keeps things interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Curious that Roert Silverberg's "Up The Line" did not make this cut. It was the inspiration for Back to the Future and is an entertaining time travel story.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm a bit disappointed to only see English books on there.

<comment><USER97> If you know of any (translated, given my lack of non-English speaking capability) non-English-origin sci-fi, I'd love pointers. I realize a lot is lost in translation, but I love the viewport into other cultures that fiction can provide.

<comment><USER98> Largely ignored in all these comments is the enormous legacy of Soviet SF. During all the years of SF's Golden Age and the decades after, the main ideological and technological competitor to the US was the Soviet Union.

We're so familiar with the tropes and concepts of US-centric SF, but imagine a _whole new world_ of science fictional ideas - separated only by language! That's Soviet SF...

The finest series of translations was Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction in the 1980s. Some of the books are now very rare and expensive, but if you're a seeker of ideas, they're priceless (especially any stories by Genrikh Altov).

As an introduction, I particularly recommend World's Spring, edited by Vladimir Gakov. And one of the finest SF novels I've read is Self Discovery, by Vladimir Savchenko (freely available online here: [http://lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_ok- en...](http://lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_ok-engl.txt)).

<comment><USER99> I have a copy of a collection of soviet stories, including two by Altov (and his wife). It's a Portuguese translation of a French translation, but it's still great (although I wonder how much was lost).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Based on the books I have seen a movie , the key theme is that the charachters resembles perhaps us founders a bit. They feel threatend in their current existance (user issues) and have to venture out into space (Silicion Valley) , into the unknown (the market) to usually defeat something (problems and competition) and in the end become victorious and have peace (some founders). Its Hollywood so in reality many fail.

</comment><comment><USER101> I'm surprised Slaugher House Five wasn't on the list.

<comment><USER102> I think I can understand why it wasn't on the list - but I'd rather not explain the reasoning here for fear of spoilers. (...or has the statute of limitations on this book run out?)

FWIW, I _loved_ Slaughterhouse Five, and had nightmares about it.

</comment></comment><comment> buff-a No Greg Bear???

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel)>

</comment><comment><USER84> I see many comments in support of favorite authors here. I'm gratified to see several for personal favorite CJ Cherryh & 1 for another personal favorite, Jack Vance. So in the interest of variety, I'll state this - Hamilton's Pandora's Star doesn't belong on this list. Read it, enjoyed it, but it's just not all that.

</comment><comment><USER103> Thanks for the list. Nice to see some old friends on there. My all time favorite is Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I think it is his best. First time I read it I was in the sixth grade. That was 45 years ago. I've read it many times since, and will no doubt read it again.

</comment><comment><USER104> That discussion of Science Fiction heavily disappointed me because it lacked any mention of some books that are full to overflowing of amazing ideas and insights. And well written to boot.

The Uplift Trilogy (the first one) by David Brin

</comment><comment><USER105> What about Stephen King's Dark Tower Series? Or is this just best single book?

</comment><comment><USER106> Good list, thanks.

Weird to make the equation (writers / Margaret Atwood) = (bands / (Celine Dion | Nickelback)). I would make the right side (bands / (Tragically Hip | Rush)). There's nothing light weight about Margaret Atwood.

</comment><comment><USER107> Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson should be on there as well! THAT is a book that made me sorry I had finished it. I had lived in it half a year, reading a bit every night before sleeping.

</comment><comment><USER108> Everybody is going to have their own opinions. For Clarke I would have put _The Fountains of Paradise_ way ahead of _Childhood's End_ , for instance, but to each their own.

</comment><comment><USER109> Neil Stephenson wrote "The Diamond Age", an amazing sic-fi book as well.

John Twelve Hawks "The Traveler" is also deserving of this list.

There are some great books on this list and they truly speak for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER110> Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I read some of these as a teenager and some more recently.

Some really have staying power and some really don't hold up. I found Foundation and Mote in God's Eye rather disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER110> Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it.

JURGEN

</comment><comment><USER62> Steel Beach begins with perhaps the best ad copy I've ever seen.

WIN FREE SEX!

</comment><comment><USER111> I was disappointed not to see any of the real classics (20000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc.) on the list.

</comment><comment><USER112> While they may be old, and show their age, I would have thought that the Lensmen series, by E.E. Doc Smith would/should have made the list.

</comment><comment><USER113> Not one of Peter Watts' [1] books made it to the list.

[1]<http://www.rifters.com/crawl/>

</comment><comment><USER114> Dune number one, yay! I love all six books.

<comment><USER115> The first book is definitely one of my favorites, but I can't say I would recommend the rest of the series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> This must be the runners up list. The best list is mostly Stanislaw Lem with a sprinkling of Philip K. Dick. :)

</comment><comment><USER117> Sirens of Titan is on the list hence I feel the list is valid. The relative position might be wrong though...

</comment><comment><USER118> This kind of list makes me sad, because I've read every book on it (except the classic military SF one).

</comment><comment><USER119> I wonder if Jacek Dukaj is known outside of Poland? He writes very philosophical SF.

<comment><USER119> Probably he's not, because nobody translates him. What a shame.

There are some excerpts translated by fans: <http://dukaj.pl/English/ReadingRoom/BlackOceans>

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> if you are looking to easily keep your own list of best science fiction books, check out raunk <http://raunk.com/list/82,268>

</comment><comment><USER121> Personal favorite: The Space Merchants, by Pohl & Kornbluth.

</comment><comment><USER122> "Time enough for Love" belongs very close to the top.

</comment><comment><USER123> I don't see anything to argue against here, actually.

</comment><comment><USER110> Great list. Only missed four titles. So glad to see "The Stars My Destination" on the list Wish it had included Zelazny's "Lord of Light". No arguments about the rest of it.

JURGEN

</comment><comment><USER124> No Dhalgren or Triton, by Samuel R. Delany?

</comment><comment><USER125> I miss "The earth abides".

</comment><comment><USER126> sort of dissapointed to not see any Stanislaw Lem on there

</comment><comment><USER127> Thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER128> I missed Huxley's Brave New World in the list, and I noticed that the list contained only English writers. I wonder why the crowd the list was sourced from hasn't been exposed to writers of other nationalities.

<comment><USER129> Several of the authors on the list are American (e.g. Orson Scott Card, Asimov, etc.). Or do you mean "english-langauage" only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> The first half of "Stranger in a Strange Land" is wonderful, but the second... God in that novel actually exists.

For a truly atheist like me, sometimes I want to read a fanfiction of the Stranger, but without god and the religion bullshit. Centered in the economics and the power.

In science fiction, the sole purpose of God is to be mocked, criticized or denied.

<comment><USER131> Do I understand you correctly that you cannot even stand the idea of someone talking positively about God?

I am trying to think of another context in which your sentence (In <genre>, the sole purpose of <noun> is to mocked, criticized, or denied.) would make any kind of sense whatsoever.

Is there a particular, articulable reason that this is anything more than running away from concepts that challenge your preexisting mindset?

For example, I disagree with slavery, but I also disagree that in modern art, the sole purpose of slavery is to be mocked, criticized, or denied.

I am a fan of Python and not so much of Java. Nevertheless, I would never agree that in web development, the sole purpose of Java is to be mocked, criticized, or denied.

I tend to disagree with the Republican party on a number of issues, but I would never say that in political discourse, the sole purpose of Republicans is to be mocked, criticized, or denied.

Finally, I spend all day, every day working against patent trolls. They make me frustrated and angry, and are, in my opinion, the symptoms of a broken system. Yet I seek out people who advocate for the current system so that I can understand it. I can't afford to have the patent literature I read circumscribed so that the sole purpose of patent trolls is to mocked, criticized, or denied.

Am I missing the point?

<comment><USER130> Just try to imagine something so awful, so harmful to <X>, and your horrible generalisation would make sense :)

In particular, what happens when the genre is sci fi and the noun is god?

Clearly, that noun is not to be adored. Religion is for that.

Should sci fi say something nice about that noun? That He really exists, after all? Science is for that, and science until now...

I really think that sci fi should take a clear stance against god.

<comment><USER132> God has yet to be disproved by science; it's unlikely that will ever happen, actually, no matter the fact of God's existence.

There's also no general framework from science that makes God incompatible with known laws.

So God, in the context of a sci fi book, belongs to the class of things that have yet to be discovered but which are still consistent as possible discoveries.

Even aside from that, you can have concessions made to the willing suspension of disbelief. There are limited concessions made in all but the strictest of science fiction for the sake of making a compelling story.

I can understand if you have such a strong distaste for those kinds of ideas that it ruins a story for you, but that's a matter of taste, not any necessary quality of the genre at large.

<comment><USER99> "God" will never be disproved by science since there's no real definition of God. Between the thousands of conceptions of God and the eternally moving goalposts (under which god will eventually be (or already is) defined as 'something impossible to test by science'), it's completely meaningless in an empirical pov.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> So hackernews is having a discussion about a blog post about sci-fi books that were recommended by a reddit discussion?</comment>


Ask HN: A Non-Hacker has an Idea - <AUTHOR> Hi hackers,<p>I have been researching about startups and the tech world and I came across your wonderful community. I do not have a background in technology (non-hacker here), but I have always been fascinated by tech changes and I have made an effort to be up-to-date with your world. I now have the chance and the means to pursue my ideas and I would like to know from you: is it practical for a non-hacker to start her own tech business? I have found a great team of coders and web-designers I can hire to help me with that, but is it possible for a sole founder to get funding without herself having the technical knowledge? Anyone in a similar situation? There is an answer to a question on the FAQ page which suggests that at least one of the founders be technical (in order to both be successful and get funding I'm guessing) but this is currently not an option for me. Thank you in advance! <comment><USER2> I'll chime in for what it's worth.

Can you be successful, yes.

Can you get funding, yes.

But, you won't get funding with an idea and a team of what you think are good programmers. You'll need a good execution of your idea and traction with paying customers. Can you get to that point with your own money? Or better yet, should you even try?

And here's the problem with being non-technical. How do you know if the money you're spending on the programmers is going to yield you something useable. For instance, I could build you a basic Twitter clone in a day and you would be impressed when I showed it to you. What you wouldn't know is that the whole thing will fall apart soon as more than a few thousand people start using it. Worse, at the point it falls apart you'll have to build an entirely new and costly replacement. All while the thousands of users you worked hard to acquire bolt for the door.

IMO, this is the biggest issue with not having a technical co-founder. It's not insurmountable, but the risk of technological failure is much higher.

If I were you, I'd spend all my time vetting the idea. Talking to customers and getting them to buy a product that's not built yet. One problem I already see is that you seem hesitant to explain your idea here. That's a red flag to me and mostly everyone else here.

For instance, here two ideas I'm thinking about right now:

1) A business making all natural wooden toys, finished with an all organic wax, and build from locally sourced, already felled trees. It would be branded Cape Cod Toy Factory and would sell initially to local toy shops where I live. People on vacation love stuff like this and it makes for a great vacation gift. There is no one in this space now.

2) A blog platform for artistic types where everything is hand drawn, words, images, everything. This would be for people with a MS Surface or like devices. It would use handwriting recognition to underlay their handwritten words for search engines and render there drawings and text on html canvas. Reading this blog would be like reading someone's personal handwritten journal.

See that's the thing about ideas. Most people are going to hear your idea and say, "that's stupid" or "that's a good idea", but very few will say "I'm going to rip that off". Ultimately no one will have the fortitude to follow through with your vision but you.

Best of luck!</comment>


2017 Voice assistant trends on IFTTT - <AUTHOR> https://ifttt.com/blog/2017/07/voice-assistant-trends-infographic <comment><USER2> I don't know if the problem is infographics or just not providing enough nuance and context. Some examples:

\- I showed a friend this who didn't know what IFTTT was and he balked at the results before understanding what IFTTT was. Since the percentages were too high. Understanding Ifttt made the footnote of who was surveyed make sense. They had seen it before, just didn't understand it.

\- "46% say they're more likely to ask their assistant for information over their smartphone". Most of the users have Alexa devices. Alexa is pretty limited in what it can help you with. For my daily briefing of news from specific niches/publishers, weather, and one or two other things, it is great and I too prefer it to using my smartphone. But for most other things, your smartphone is likely to be much better for other information.

An example of basic information I tried a few months back: "How tall is X companies building in Y City?" I chose 6 corporate buildings in 5 cities. Alexa didn't get any of them. Siri and Cortana were 50%. They differed on one of them. Google got all but one. I can't find my notes on it now, but one example was asking the height of the Comcast building in Philadelphia.

\--

I guess my point is, this infographic is great for the specific niche of Ifttt users who have already connected with at least one voice assistant. So that's great for home/tech enthusiasts with some spare money. Ifttt does state in the footer who is surveyed, but footer is footer. The rest of the infographic is what pops out at the average person. I have no clue if this infographic actually shows anything or just helps out Ifttt marketing.</comment>


Show HN: SMAM (Send Me A Mail), a free contact form embedding software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/babolivier/smam <comment><USER2> I upvoted it because it has a configurable template and I like configurable templates, but it is way too complicated for a thing so simple (email is complicated, I get it).

I would better

      1. use https://formspree.io/ (which doesn't provide templates)
      2. use https://requesthub.xyz/ to redirect form POSTs to Mailgun -- or, better, to Pushbullet, so I get mobile notifications</comment>


Codier – Front-End Coding Challenges and Creations - <AUTHOR> https://codier.io/challenges <comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for posting!

Here's a little bit about Codier [https://twitter.com/KebabYusuf/status/1024009004949876736](https://twitter.com/KebabYusuf/status/1024009004949876736)

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks pretty good!</comment>


Competition Is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k <comment><USER2> Most of this lecture is merely a convoluted parallel construction of a fact which is already quite obvious, that if you want to make a profit you should avoid competition.

He claims that "the amount of value that you produce", and "the amount of that value that you can capture" are independent variables, but then spends the rest of his lecture treating them as strongly anti-correlated.

He touches briefly on the corrolary that capitalism does not actually reward people for the value they create, and seems to think of this as something of a problem, but I think that should be the focus of his lecture. If he really wants to convince the students of something that they didn't already believe, the talk should be titled "value is for losers".

</comment><comment><USER2> here's the transcript, for those of you that read faster than peter thiel talks

[https://genius.com/Peter-thiel-lecture-5-business- strategy-a...](https://genius.com/Peter-thiel-lecture-5-business-strategy-and- monopoly-theory-annotated)

<comment><USER3> I tend to watch these things at x1.5 or faster but the transcript is useful as well :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I heard the talk as a sort of deprogramming of university graduates (or dropouts) from the cult of careerism. For years they've had it beaten into them that they have to "be competitive" in order to "succeed" \-- when in the real world the outsized rewards go instead to those who succeed while hardly competing at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> "We always think of advertising as this thing that works on other people, for all the stupid people who follow ads on TV, but they obviously work to some extent and they work to the disturbing extent on all of us and it's something we must work to overcome."

I've heard this alot. But, I happen to know it doesn't work well on me at all. I know this, because I can create a pie chart of all my spending and show you that a very tiny percent of it is products I've ever seen advertisements for (Most of my spending is on products that don't have advertisement - not that I'm against ads, it just worked out that way).

But, why does he say it's something we should work to overcome? If you are making smart purchasing decisions as a consumer or business, then there's no need to "overcome advertisement". On the contrary, it can point out products you might rather buy - although this rarely happens because advertisement still sucks.

If you are smart about your spending, then advertisement isn't the problem. The problem is all the bad products we're forced to buy because there's no alternatives and very limited competition: ISPs, Utilities (electricity, water, garbage), Housing.

</comment><comment><USER5> The content of this talk was in his book, Zero to One, it's well written, a good read.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the fact that he's being honest: it's about making money. There's no pretense of "changing the world" BS.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a great talk. Made me really reconsider what I spend my time on for personal projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could someone please clarify what the ": 5" in "2014: 5" means? Thanks.

<comment><USER8> Lecture number. See the other related videos:

 _> Growth with Alex Schultz (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 6)_</comment></comment>


Who Is More Trust-Worthy with Our Data: The Government or Big Companies? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/14/who-is-more-trust-worthy-with-our-data-the-government-or-big-companies-tctv/ <comment><USER2> Consider that the governments (state & federal) have all your data and have since you were born. Do you think a bigco would have held all that data for that long without making your life a living hell? (imagine the spam and unsolicited phone calls that you would be getting wo the protection of said government). If anything, things have become worse as more bigcos (like insurers) require government managed data (like health records).

</comment><comment><USER3> Consider it this way, the worst that happens when a corporation is involved, you may get some spam. There is no limit to how bad things can get if your profile suddenly gets flagged (everything from air travel harassment to Guantanamo).

<comment><USER4> There's not necessarily a distinction between the two, though, because many companies willingly share data with governments (either due to disinterest in fighting requests, for economic or political gain, or some other reason), or else share the data with other companies who in turn do so.

From that perspective, a large company having your data seems likely to be equivalent to _multiple_ governments having your data, unless you have some reason to believe the company is not sharing your data with governments, _and_ is not sharing your data with other companies who will share the data with governments. Otherwise, the conservative guess is that a large company having your data implies that the governments of all countries they operate in, as well as the governments of all countries their business partners operate in, have access to your data (or at least, can get access if they decide to).</comment></comment>


Hand print - <AUTHOR> http://microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article&id=13867

<comment><AUTHOR> Instructions and more context in the comments section.

Higher resolution photograph: [http://www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article...](http://www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article&task=download&id=13867)</comment>


Ask HN: Website Builder suggestions or recommendations - <AUTHOR> I am looking to build an extremely simple website that essentially will have email contact information and a name with some other brief 'about' type information.<p>I was considering squarespace or wix but was wondering if anyone had some better wisdom or experience they can share.  I fear implementing a django or jekyll type solution and would prefer an easier route. <comment><USER2> WordPress Dublin shared a podcast this week on this topic, [https://goo.gl/e7ajAd](https://goo.gl/e7ajAd)</comment>


Show HN: Paypyrus – Electronic money in physical form with Venmo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cydrobolt/paypyrus <comment><USER3> So I only see two major downsides: 1) I basically I have to verify/transact every "printed" money the moment I get it - preferably using a smartphone - <USER2> case someone else has a copy of it and "takes" it first. Copies could be made with any high-resolution camera. 2) If the money travels from A to B to C in paper shape and the digital transaction will be from A to C then A will know that B has done business with C.

<comment><USER4> Unless the note changes hands additional times between B and C.

<comment><USER3> Point taken. It then just becomes a statistical probability of how many steps between A and N. Considering that everybody using this system better have 0 steps (former point made) 1 step is about the furthest I would hope. But you are right: there could be more steps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is unclear from description (and I am too lazy to read the code) how it works.

The first question is whether such paper "bill" would guarantee payment. Could issuer refuse to pay it, when presented. In other words such paper bill is analogous to dollar bill or bank check? If this feature could not be implemented with Venmo API, perhaps one can build some kind of escrow service.

My second question is about privacy. Is identity of the original paper bill "issuer" is disclosed to recipient?

<comment><USER6> It would be similar to a cheque, central banks and governments do not like normal people printing "money" or inventing their own

a better alternative would be bitcoin paperwallets, this here relies on Venmo to play nice as well as the "payer"

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Using Bitcoin would definitely help make it resemble cash, however, this could potentially be less convenient. Venmo is more popular among students, especially on university campuses, so the idea was to make it easy to adopt among friend groups, not specifically to guarantee the transfer of funds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually made something pretty similar to this for Bitcoin. Basically printed coins with the public key on the outside and the private key inside, so you could verify that the "wallet" was full and then break it open once you're ready to redeem.

In practice, it was only really useful as a gimmick/fun tool for giving people their first bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER8> >Paypyrus is versatile like cash

But with none of the security, what a useful idea... Could I not just print the same dollar twenty times then it's a race to see who redeems it first? Cute idea though I guess.

<comment><USER9> I think that they can add security features in the future.

<comment><USER10>
      $ cat /var/history.log | grep 'add.*security.*future' | grep -v failure | wc -l
      0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a hell of an idea. Haha, Damn you this has triggered my entrepreneurial ADD, it makes me want to build something around it! Venmo should not ignore this. They could really build upon this, and get some vendor lock-in if it gains popularity among their already loyal users.

<comment><USER12> This is just like printing out private keys for bitcoin wallet. AKA "paper wallet".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Groovy/Grails or Scala/Play? - <AUTHOR>

if I had to pick one to go with and learn, what would be my best option? <comment><USER2> I'd say it depends on what you wish to accomplish.

Based on experience, you can deploy 'something' out there and build that 'something' really fast with Grails. GORM instantly takes care of persisting to DB with minimal effort, there's not much to configure. If you're planning to just create an API Server, the latest Grails 2.3.x releases have specifically made that easier too.

Can't say anything for Play since I haven't used that, but if you face growth problems with your Grails project (scaling), just piece off the heavy parts and create separate services written in Scala. First hand experience, Finagle is a good choice for this. You can easily be productive and quickly create services with this RPC system.

Conclusion: In my opinion, your best option for creating an MVP/Prototype is Grails.

<comment><USER3> I haven't tried Scala/Play, but I come from the .NET world and with Groovy/Grails I had something (very tiny) up on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk really fast.

The problem is I really don't know the underlying technology and I'm going to hit several walls really soon :)

I chose it because I know a friend who works with it and is really happy and evangelizes a bit :) . I never considered Scala/Play. My other option was MVC4, but .NET is pretty expensive for an MVP (not many options for free or cheap hosting, etc.) and I wanted to explore other options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably Scala/Play, but I would spend time learning and using both.

Here are job trends for these languages: [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Groovy%2C+Grails%2C+Scala&...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Groovy%2C+Grails%2C+Scala&l=)

<comment><USER3> Hmm Scala seems to be on the upswing, while Groovy/Grails seems to have stagnated.

I've heard good things about it too :) .

<comment><USER5> Play! used to use both Scala and Groovy, but v 2.0 purged itself of all its Groovy code, perhaps triggered by Grails dictator Graeme Rocher joining the Groovy despotry 4 yrs ago (he didn't leave it until a few months ago). Whereas Scala is used by more than one framework (Play!, Lift), I can't imagine anyone would use Groovy to build anything not sanctioned by the Grails crowd.</comment></comment></comment>


John Resig Advanced jQuery Talk [video] - <AUTHOR> http://loft.bocoup.com/john-resig-advanced-jquery/

<comment><USER2> Very strange behavior (seizure) on the slides with Safari Version 4.0.4 (6531.21.10) and Chrome 5.0.307.11 beta.

<http://ejohn.org/apps/workshop/adv-talk/>

Press Cmd - to decrease the font size and the slides go crazy. Cmd + to increase it and they stop.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to attend John's talk of the same name at Microsoft MIX next week. I bet he was practicing at a smaller event to work out the kinks.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think the "democratic Internet" is over-stated? - <AUTHOR>

A recent TED talk explaining YouTube virality says that tastemakers determine the initial spike in views. If a celebrity tweets or a journalist writes about a video, that creates the conditions for virality.
It got me thinking that, despite all the talk of a flat democratic Internet, the basic system of hierarchy (or oligarchy) from pre-Internet publishing and media is still fully in place. It's just that different small number of people determine what gets mass exposure.
What are your thoughts on this, particularly in regard to how it diverges from the public meme of a truly "democratic" Internet? <comment><USER2> The term "democratic" is generally over-applied. For example, open source is not democratic — developers have no formal responsibility to their users. (Of course, if it was really democratic you'd have to pay taxes.)

I wouldn't call the Internet an oligarchy (it also has random information cascades), but there are definitely power structures at work that are not democratic (or meritocratic). It may be dangerous to believe that the Internet is more free than it really is, because that implicitly legitimizes those power structures. (In other words, if the system is fair and you're winning, you obviously must be winning fairly so let's not question how you got there.)</comment>


Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-06-02-n56.html <comment><USER2> It's cool to see other designers with a strong design sense that can also code... some times I feel a little alone in that respect. Seems useful for startups but not so great for finding a job else where.

<comment><USER3> Same here.

I guess it should be no surprise since the most surprising thing I've noticed since I've moved out here is how little devs and designers interact. It saddens me to no end (though it does help keep me a scarce resource).</comment></comment>


Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign unveils tech tool to increase its voter database - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-2020-campaign-unveils-app-increase-its-voter-database-n999206 <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a massive privacy flaw

<comment><USER2> Beyond that, crowdsourced spying on those around you? Yuck.</comment></comment>


NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-usa-nsa-termination-idUSKBN0TG27120151127 <comment><USER2> _As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said._

"As required by law"? The government violated the Fourth Amendment and the director of national security committed perjury (1). As required by law, justice officials and prosecutors should have brought charges against Clapper and other responsible parties ... yet nothing happened.

What makes the government think that we will trust them to investigate and prosecute anyone violating our rights in the future, "as required by law"?

1\. [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he- misspoke-d...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke- didnt-lie-about-nsa-surveillance/)

<comment><USER3> Where was it found the NSA violated the 4th amendment?

<comment><USER4> Oh, please. There comes a time when even you have to give up the legalistic approach, and just acknowledge plain fact.

The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is.

If you want legalistic, narrow (razor thin!) interpretations of all "rights", then they're not really rights, they're just something for lawyers to natter on about. Further, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" becomes nothing but parody.

<comment><USER3> > The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for > some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is.

Even assuming that were true, I disagree it would be an archetypal 4th amendment violation. Privacy on the Internet doesn't exist as a matter of fact. Anyone who controls a router between you and your destination can see your Internet traffic. When you try to apply the 4th amendment to the Internet, you're not asking the government not to intrude on an otherwise private space ( _i.e._ the heart of the 4th amendment). You're asking it to indulge a purely legal fiction of privacy.

<comment><USER5> The crux of this argument and the propaganda the current administration lawyers have been shilling centers around whether these searches (ie, mass collection of US citizen data) are unreasonable. I reject your argument that searches are reasonable because the internet infrastructure is currently fundamentally flawed; as already concluded in Katz v. United States, an unlawful search occurs when a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is violated. Given your own argument, any and all attempts by end users to obtain privacy, via https or otherwise, constitute an individual reasonably expecting privacy and therefore any information gathered is done so illegally.

<comment><USER3> The "reasonableness" standard is _objective_ not subjective reasonableness. It's objectively unreasonable to think that your data in say gmail, which is stored in a form accessible to many people you've never met, and is in fact data-mined by the host, is somehow "private."

If I keep an unlocked box full of papers in my neighbors garage, and he sometimes rifles through them looking for something interesting, can I say that box is "private"? Maybe if the box is locked and only I have the key (I.e. Client-side encryption) but not if I send it to him locked but give him the key (I.e. HTTPS). Again, it's not about legal technicality or technical technicality. It's about whether the information is actually "private."

<comment><USER6> Millimeter wave imaging means any building can be made transparent, and your privacy within that building is a social construct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      "Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died."

It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that.

The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and manage the data.

<comment><USER8> > It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad > or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." \- Rahm Emanuel

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A somewhat inaccurate headline. As Marcy Wheeler writes:

"Just a tiny corner of the phone dragnet will shut down, and the government will continue to collect "telephony metadata records in bulk … including records of both U.S. and non-U.S. persons" under EO 12333. Hypothetically, for every single international call that had been picked up under the Section 215 dragnet and more (at a minimum, because NSA collects phone records overseas with location information), a matching record has been and will continue to be collected overseas, under EO 12333."

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government- wants-y...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-you-to- forget-it-will-still-collect-your-phone-records-in-bulk/)

<comment><USER10> > international call

It's important to remember that Snowden has confirmed several times that "international" is referring to the physical wire/fiber/radio they are tapping, _not_ the people at each end of the call. In a packet switched world, any call can become "international" if the packets are sent by way of the Bahamas. ("misconfigured" BGP is a traditional method)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus will be holding a press conference on Monday.

<comment><USER12> "... and from Monday, the official language of the USA will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old..."

(adapted from Woody Allen's Bananas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's no way to win here. If the government outright abolished the NSA at noon, there would be dozens of hn comments at 12:01 saying "Yeah, but did they _really_ abolish it?" or "But what about all the bad things they did when they existed? or "They'll just do something even worse next".

It seems like distrust of authority is just a part of some people's personality. Perceived wrong doing by the government in the past has caused them to distrust the government into perpetuity, even if that same government does exactly what those people demand. So why should the authorities listen at all? It's like a convicted felon who can no longer get a job or be part of society. Why not just go back to a life of crime? You're damned if you and damned if you don't.

<comment><USER14> Wow, I don't know that I've seen such a perfect example of Battered Woman Syndrome outside of a rerun of Cops. By "Perceived wrong doing", you mean clear and well documented violations of the law - right? Portraying people who don't immediately prostrate themselves before the throne of state power as having some sort of personality defect is pretty funny as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program > by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the > new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

Except every time the White House has said "we're only doing X.." we find out later that it wasn't true so why should we believe them now?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm sure this will go as well as shutting down the bulk email surveillance program did.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sure they will.

</comment><comment><USER18> What, again?

</comment><comment><USER19> Good. We can all pretend we believe it.

</comment><comment><USER20> On Monday, the Pope will convert to Islam.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk will start his journey to Mars.

Wednesday, Isis declares peace.

By Thursday, the static vs. dynamic typing debate will finally be solved.

On Friday, king Salman of Saudi Arabia will donate all his wealth to charity.

And finally, on Saturday, Elon Musk will land on Mars.

<comment><USER21> On Sunday, the Vim vs Emacs debate will finally come to an end.

<comment><USER22> This sudden bout of positivity on HN is worrisome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No they won't.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can you trust Obama and the NSA to do what they say they are going to do?

</comment><comment><USER25> 1) NSA shuts down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday.

2) NSA starts totally different and with even less oversight "aggregate" phone surveillance program by Monday.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records- show-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email- analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html)</comment>


Air travel and health care got great for the wealthy and worse for everyone else - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/3/21154745/velvet-rope-economy-nelson-schwartz-book <comment><USER2> Air travel got way cheaper and more popular over the last two or three decades. Some of this is deregulation and technological innovation enabling lower fuel costs. Much more of this is because customers almost always choose the lowest cost airfare over all other choices. This is a constant pressure to reduce cost and features of the flight and reflects what the average coach customer actually wants. It is nothing to be mad about. Airlines are a low- margin industry, which in my mind trends towards nonexploitative.

If you look at proportions of revenue and costs, the premium seats of an airplane subsidize the cheap seats. And they get to the destination maybe 5 minutes earlier if they disembark first.

<comment><USER3> That's just a race to the bottom, people will choose the cheaper seat / airline when they see the prices in a list. However, I think it would be different if they saw the leg room difference and amenities. Also, short flight flyers dominate the markets and they care less about being packed into a dirty shoebox with no amenities for two hours to pay $5 less on a ticket.

<comment><USER2> A race to the bottom seems like it is a pretty good thing in this case.

People are reasonably well-informed of the difference between the different levels of seating. To pretend otherwise is to claim ignorance of how many up- sell screens every airline tries to push in front of you during ticket purchase. Seating information is built-in to the ticket purchase process, and there are also third-party websites available just for the purpose of telling you about seating.

"Premium economy" tickets still cost less than the cheapest tickets did in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the people who run the society never have to deal with its problems, the problems will never be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is unrestrained capitalism's natural progression. Just look at the Guilded Age. Capitalism increases the total size of the pie (GDP) but at the same time actively shifts its concentration more and more towards the top (those who already have ownership, instead of those who simply work). Without balancing mechanisms keeping that new wealth distributed, this is simply what you get.

After the Great Depression, and then doubly so after the rise of Communism as western countries were trying to keep their citizens from having any reason to go down that path, we had a golden age of capitalist societies that also had appetites for social investment. With nothing over the past 50 years really keeping that a priority for the rich, we've started sinking back into a pre- depression structure.

A more thorough analysis (which has been posted on HN before I think): [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs- refo...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed- parts-1-2-ray-dalio)

<comment><USER5> *Gilded Age. Whoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr

The article is a book review/author interview.

The author of the book has a grievance. Rich people can pay to avoid waiting, inconvenience, and hassle. It isn't fair. the author also expresses the opinion this leads to much resentment in the have nots.</comment>


Ask HN: Next step for Uber, VR taxi drivers? - grif-fin Assuming the investment in driverless cars pays off in couple of years from now there will be massive job losses specially for taxi/uber drivers.
Since the initial driverless cars cannot be perfect, would it make sense for Uber to start with Remote taxi drivers (drivers sitting at home with a VR headset taking customers to homes)?
What are the challenges with this idea? <comment><AUTHOR> Would you ever feel comfortable with a person remotely driving a car you are in? Your family's in, your spouse is in? I wouldn't.

<comment><USER2> I think the idea is to have a driverless car, with a remote-driver fallback.

I don't like that option because there are no downsides for the person remotely monitoring the car (plus it has to be incredibly boring).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can one argue it's a monopoly when it's only 25% market share? - <AUTHOR> source: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile <comment><USER2> multiple aspects:

a) somewhat incorrectly using "monopoly" when they mean "market dominating", which can also apply in non-monopoly situations (and also be regulated)

b) geographical market definitions: countries don't care about global market shares (i.e. your stats), but local ones. Which in the US is 50-60% for Apple. And e.g. in the EU a lot lower, which is why the EU tends to care more about Google+Android

c) market definitions: the app store has a higher percentage of the "mobile apps" market than Apple devices have in the "smartphone hardware" market

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a monopoly on the mobile market, or even the general app market. They do have a monopoly on the "Apple App Market", which they also abuse to be quite frank.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Is it a monopoly?" is the wrong question. The right question is "Do they have market power that they abuse?"</comment>


Show HN: I made an API to generate social media images - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/chrisvxd/og-impact <comment><USER2> Haven't read it through in detail, but what would be cool is an AI layer that suggests an image automatically. A bit far fetched I agree. Good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Something like that could definitely be possible, although it would require a fair bit of work. You can build custom HTML templates for OG IMPACT under the Pro tier, which supports JS.

You could have the template accept the origin URL as a query param, download the page and then do any AI processing using related libraries / APIs. The risk is that this could be quite a heavy template, which could cause timeouts on social media platforms.

Feel free to play around with this using the Editor: [http://ogimpacteditor.netlify.com](http://ogimpacteditor.netlify.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, thank you for sharing this! `puppeteer-social-image` is perfect for a side project I have where I want to generate images for riddles (both for social media using `og:image` and inline with the content of the page).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is awesome. Let me know how you get on with it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. Several people are tackling this issue.

Can users use their own CDN to host the images?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure they can if they'd like to. The public API can either be placed directly in your meta tag, or requested as a GET API via a backend.

What would be the reason for using your own CDN?</comment></comment>


Portuguese government set on increasing use of open source - <AUTHOR> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/portuguese-government-set-increasing-use-open-source

<comment><USER2> Maybe now it's the time to stop buying software when there are plenty of other open-source options to take into account. It is a step forward indeed but they will have to invest more in skilled people to support these choices.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a post a few days back about the Spanish government cracking down on piracy, which looks like a sneaky way of encouraging open source. Looks like Europe is trying to loosen ties.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a step forward from the Portuguese gvt. Hope others follow suit.</comment>


HTML5 Snake Game - Practice Work - Enjoy the good old - <AUTHOR> http://pochen.me/snake

<comment><AUTHOR> Post this because my previous post got lots of clicks.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5012135>

<http://pochen.me/tetris>

<http://pochen.me/></comment>