Alright here it is. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with this since I have barely read anything since middle school (maybe a book or two a year). My contributions will primarily be manga. If I need to add a genre or period let me know. This series will eventually be canonized into the sidebar as a definitive recommendation list of all things C/Lit.
Future threads:
Periods: Pre-1800, 1800s, 1900-50, 1951-99, 2000-20, 2021
Genres: Children's, Comedy, Coming of age, Folklore, Historical, LGBT, BIPOC Related, Philosophy, Pop Culture, Religious, Thriller, Western, Young Adult, Action, Adventure, Survival, Crime, Mystery, Fantasy, Romance, Horror, Graphic Novel, Biography, Travel, Historical, Propaganda, Philosophy, Political Theory, Poetry, Plays, Manga, Speculative Fiction, Sports, and Miscellaneous
I really like the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
I'm currently reading The Ministry for the Future, after listening to the episode of Rev Left that discussed it, and it's a pretty cool read. Pretty solid hard sci-fi vibe, and it's a great counterpoint to doomerism.
I love the way it reads like an instruction manual wrapped up in a narrative. It's almost like a Socratic dialogue but with Dialectical Materialism instead of the Socratic method.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's also very readable, despite Kim going into some pretty technical detail sometimes. Some of the economic and scientific concepts that he uses kind of fly over my head sometimes, but it's generally accessible and very satisfying to read. I suppose that's true for any work of hard sci-fi, though.