this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
113 points (95.9% liked)

Science Fiction

13662 readers
76 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow
113
Book recommendations that play with what it means to be a book (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/sciencefiction
62 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I really love sci-fi novels and I read a lot of books. I read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and that book is particularly interesting to me. Rather than each chapter advancing the narrative of the story, there were occasional breaks where a chapter would have a list of semi-random words which just gave the vibe of what's happening, or some history of a scene, or a recipe for how to build an asteroid.

There's another book that I have heard of but neglected to write the name down, where the reader of the book is a character within the book, and the narrator speaks directly to you (but not a choose-your-adventure style book).

All of this got me interested in finding other books, preferably sci-fi or maybe fantasy, where the concept of being a book is played with and new ideas are tried. Any recommendations?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brookes is a detailed fictional instruction manual. It's sequel is World War Z which is closer to a normal book, but still has an odd structure of creating a world through interviews ... and the The Zombie Survival Guide book exists within it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

WWZ is one of my all time favorite books. They should really make it into a movie. Or, even better, an HBO miniseries.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I dunno, I think maybe some things should just be left alone

[–] felixwhynot 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

WWZ is a banger!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It is at that :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the suggestion. Should I read WWZ first?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

As with so much in life, it's best to read the manual first. It can get a little dry in places though, like any instruction manual, but I enjoyed all of it because I'm the sort of person who likes normal manuals, lol

[–] JackiesFridge 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The WWZ audiobook is really solid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did they get different people to record each story?

[–] JackiesFridge 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yup! Alan Alda and Henry Rollins are the only 2 I can remember off the top of my head. Get the expanded version - the original was abridged, but the new one has all the content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Oh fab, I'll keep an eye out for it. It's one of my favorite books :-)