What is your favorite type of sci-fi? For me since Ive always been interested in life in the universe/space exploration, anything regarding that. I love golden age sci-fi and reading what they thought we would do in space back in the 40s and 50s
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Have any more recommendations? A Fire Upon the Deep and the Culture series are some of my favorite books, but I haven't found much else that tackles the same topic, at least not on the same scale.
The Revelation Space series kind of touches on similar topics though more in the sense of being a clear inspiration for the bad guys in Mass Effect.
That's about the limit of my recommendations myself. I loved Revelation Space and enjoyed the others in the series but found that the more I checked out Reynolds beyond that series, the more hit and miss he got. It's been years since I finished a new fiction book.
Stone by Adam Roberts is an odd story that hints at an AI element as it goes on. Dreaming in Smoke by Tricia Sullivan is a bit 90s-woman-pretentious (a heroine called 'Kalypso Deed' who loves jazz - nuff said) but has some themes of communicating with a greater alien intelligence. I enjoyed both but read them absolutely yonks ago in my teens, when I was much less critical, so I can't promise either one is a recommendation that stands the test of time. Neither's really about the god-like sprawling entities that Vinge plays with, either.
Someone else here mentioned Blindsight by Peter Watts and I know that deals with post-singularity consciousness somehow, but I haven't read it.
EDIT - oh I forgot The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, as a classic depiction of a doomsday strong AI awakening scenario. Read it online many years ago so it inhabits a different part of my mind to paper novels. Some edgy degenerate shit in it on reflection, plus the ending was absurd to me, but it's a well known, well done technological singularity idea if you haven't already read it.
Way back in the mists of time I also started and never finished Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, because I lost the book. I think I was drawn to it by some sci fi AI elements, but not having ever finished it, I can't say if my instincts were right.