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.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
      2·
      20 hours ago

      Heads up — Murderbot series can be fun, but I’d say it’s more “robocop” than hard sci fi.

      • eternachtEnglish
        2·
        16 hours ago

        I’d say it definitely counts as competence porn though, it’s got tons of high-stakes hacking and problem solving.