As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.
Edit: I’m so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is pretty hard-scifi.
Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space not so much but very entertaining.
Edit: for light reading Stross’s Saturns Children is fun.
Thanks! I bounced off the Mars trilogy. All the petty human drama and politics just felt way too much like current news (which is probably a compliment to his writing skills, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time). I think I probably need a very relaxed state of mind to be able to dive into it. As for Rev Space, I’ve read about half of it before losing track of the various threads and time jumps.
I agree with that. Red Mars was great but the second one felt like he only expanded on all the least exciting parts of the first book, so I didn’t finish it.
I bulled my way though all three.
There was enough story for one novel, padded out with crap to fill enough books for a “clever” post on the titles.
If someone’s looking for a good Mars read: Moving Mars by Greg Bear.