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Looking for Good and Recent Sci-Fi Books
#6
I've enjoyed Charles Stross for his "Laundry File" series. His Saturn's Children series is much more OA-like material, Interplanetary Age stuff filled with synthetics, AIs, and solar system development, but I didn't get hooked into the plotline. I read his 6-book (now consolidated to 3) series, "Merchant Princes," but they ran on a bit long. The ending had an amusing amount of nuclear fun, though. Of his works, I look forward to more "Laundry Files" sequels.

S. Andrew Swann has written three series in an OA-like setting, covering about 5 centuries of advancement.

His Moreau series looks at near-future Earth, following several characters (two engineered animals, one engineered human) as they gradually discover manipulation of Earth's society into a state of conflict and regressed technology by aliens. The aliens are waging very successful memetic warfare to eliminate their rival: humanity. There is an assessment of the impact of future technology and bigotry against engineered animals and humans.

The follow-up Hostile Takeover trilogy is set several centuries later and looks an early interstellar human civilization that features wormholes (somewhat different than OA), faster-than-light drives, and the continued work of alien AIs attempting to destabilize human civilization even after the defeat of their masters. A continued background element is bigotry toward the products of genetic engineering, AIs, and nanotech. It is not a happy Star Trekkian future, but one of mixed dictatorships, authoritarian governments, and violent anarchies.

Finally, the Apotheosis Trilogy moves a couple of centuries further forward after the collapse of humanity's central interstellar government. It is dominated by a battle against a transapient blight (in OA terms), one of the alien AIs from the prior series that got ahold of human nanotech and is now running wild, guided by an insane AI.

Swann's books are great reading for Orion's Arm inspiration.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
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"Everbody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oh, suddenly you've gone too far." -- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
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RE: Looking for Good and Recent Sci-Fi Books - by Cray - 03-21-2014, 12:15 AM

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