I Found Something

Any other decent 'we found an alien object' novels like Sphere?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    People will shit on Michael Crichton for his reputation as an airport novelist, but he's truly one of the greatest speculative fiction writers of the past thirty years.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >airport novelist
      I don't even see that as a bad thing: something that can distract you for several hours from the potential threat of falling thousands of feet to your death.

      Harlan Ellison bust his balls to keep his books in airports.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        nowadays in airports you just find shitty Obama biographies (they don't even show Michele's wiener), and Harari books, i'd rather read Crichton tbh

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Well air travel got cheap, and so did the clientele.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      People hate him? Why?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Popular science fiction always has it's snobs. Having movies options means you've sold out according to 'proper' literary fiction writers who write boring shit about women harvesting geraniums and making preserves to supplement their 3 job incomes while their estranged father fights cancer.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      He has a pretty amazing range of ideas. Only sequel he ever wrote was Lost World and that was after some pressure.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Can think of two:

    Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke

    Alien spashship turns up in the solar system with humans have near future tech and go and explore it.
    Excession - Iain M Banks

    Set in high tech warp drive type future. Super intelligent beings drop an object in the galaxy.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This and 2001/2010. Pretty sure Crichton stole the idea but I enjoyed Sphere more than any of his other works so I guess it’s ok.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Do not read the sequels to Rama. It was a “co-written” project and feels nothing like Clarke.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Do they become super horny like all scifi sequels of that era?

    • 1 year ago
      Sage

      Dang I was going to post Rama

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Oh yes please! I love this genre, but I don't have a large repertoire.
    Dead Space: Martyr is very good
    Deep Storm by Lincoln Child
    Grieg Beck wrote a couple, like The Siberian Incident

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer takes place after they find the alien object, and are now just throwing people at the problem phase. If that helps.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      is it better than the movie? i liked the movie except all the scenes where women are on screen talking

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Better. The women aren't just being women, there's a good reason they're there, and they all have a job to do. The movie really amped up the b***hiness, but because it's a diary of the biologist, there's a lot less chat.

        The boring scenes about her husband are still boring in the book, but she also writes about her past studies and ambitions which is nice to see.

        No break dance battle in the book. But it does actually have the reason for the name Annihilation, which is a baffling omission.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Not really, did you read the whole trilogy?

      Its heavily implied that Area X grew out of a defect in an old lighthouse lens built by German occultists. So its alien in that its from so sort of HELP ME Black personMAN realm, but not so much from some off-planet intelligence. VDM is into that shit.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Not really, did you read the whole trilogy?

      Its heavily implied that Area X grew out of a defect in an old lighthouse lens built by German occultists. So its alien in that its from so sort of HELP ME Black personMAN realm, but not so much from some off-planet intelligence. VDM is into that shit.

      that sounds interesting, maybe will have to check the trilogy if the women are not too annoying in book 1

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ship of fools by richard russo. Has excellent pacing, I read it all in a day.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I haven't read it but I think Transfigurations by Michael Bishop is about discovering alien ruins (not an object but yeah).

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    roadside picnic, but it's more like we found a bunch of shit rather than one object

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    2001: A Space Odyssey and the sequels

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymouṡ

    This genre is called "BDO" ("big dumb object"), I believe. Searching on that might help.

    A (sort of) predecessor: At the Mountains Of Madness, by Black personman.

    A couple of famous examples: Rendezvous With Rama & Ringworld.

    I think it works best when the people really never understand the mysterious alien THING. Roadside Picnic (the book Stalker was based on) is another example of this idea, although it has a different feel.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >This genre is called "BDO" ("big dumb object")
      i hate redditors so fricking much

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Sci fi writers probably came up with it. Definitely sounds like something Harlan Ellison would have said. Maybe Stupid Fricking Maguffin.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Ringworld
      Was both fascinating, and about 100 pages too long. It's surprisingly a character study of the people who go there and the ring itself, but I felt it had nothing more to offer from about the half way mark. Felt like a high class sci fi show doing the inevitable cheap episode in British Columbia.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They’re called first contact.

    • 1 year ago
      Sage

      Kys, you are not welcomed here

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Sci fi writers probably came up with it. Definitely sounds like something Harlan Ellison would have said. Maybe Stupid Fricking Maguffin.

      >The term was not in general use until Peter Nicholls included it in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as a joke in 1993,[1] while its creation has been attributed to reviewer Roz Kaveney.

      Wow, its amazing how someone can take a genre I love and turn it into the gayest shit imaginable.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Every reply has been a solid recommendation or entirely on-topic. Maybe there is hope for this board after all.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >no blindsight by peter watts
    sci fi homies are you even trying

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The eternity artifact, author has a bad habit of making MC infallible in his other books but the sizable novel was my intro into scifi

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      To continue this post Tue "bdo" as that other anon so graciously put it is actually a planet that is passing through the galaxy and the mc's are contracted to figure out what it is and leave it before it leaves the galaxy ( no they don't have a problem with the planet or leaving it or anything on it)B truly though it is a unique story though

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    "Eon" by Greg Bear.
    The asteroid Juno disappears, then years later, suddenly reappears, totally transformed.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      He ripped off Rendezvous with Rama, ran it through his digestive tract and dribbled shit into his typewriter. Patty-Sue saves the day trite garbage, only worth reading to provide a contrast to what a good story is.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Then write something better, gatekeeper.
        Anyone can criticize. That takes no special talent.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You provided an implicit opinion through a recommendation, I provided an opinion based on having previously read your recommendation. Why are you buttblasted by this? It’s just not a very good book

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Roadside Picnic

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This isn't a novel, but its quite IQfy.

    https://indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/a-topiary-numbered.pdf

    Shane Carruth (the guy who wrote, directed, and starred in Primer on like a literal $8K budget), was trying to get this script made for years. Its one of the most engrossing sci-fi stories I've ever read that isn't a novel. It falls pretty squarely in the "alien object" genre, although its a bit closer to Childhood's End in that its about a force or influence, not necessarily an object.

    This dude breaks it down pretty well but sorta blows the conclusion, or what Carruth was ultimately getting at.

    Just like this butthole, I would fund this movie in a heartbeat. Carruth has since gotten #metooed and gone off the deep end, but I think he'll be back, assuming he doesn't kys himself, which I could see him doing, for fun.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Roadside Picnic(which was adapted as a film titled Stalker by Tartakovsky) is Sphere but Soviet

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Roadside Picnic(which was adapted as a film titled Stalker by Tartakovsky) is Sphere but Soviet
      so basically the same, but the protagonist is depressed, gets drunk, and fights people all the time

  18. 1 year ago
    bodhi

    Andromeda strain, gridlinked kinda

  19. 1 year ago
    bodhi

    I guess congo could be in there as well t.b.h

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