Read the original article
Comments
I once commented on HN how my favorite Sci Fi novel is Accelerando and the author, Charles Stross, replied to it suggesting I try his The Rapture of the Nerds he co-wrote with Cory Doctorow; I loved it when I read it too.
I love HN - it's basically the only website I visit these days (aside checking mail, watching YouTube, and gardening my GitHub repositories).
Accelerando is one of my favourite too! Thanks for sharing the reply, always love book recommendations
By jaggederest 2025-12-221:022 reply In a thematically similar but very different vein, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series was an enjoyable read.
I also recommend Eric Nylund's work, specifically Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered.
Edit: Well, there you go, Children of Time had 23 mentions now that I've read down further. Disappointed to see Eric Nylund's work fade into obscurity, I rate him up with Neal Stephenson.
I thought I recognized that name: Nylund also wrote some books for the Halo series which I enjoyed, although I was already a fan of the games.
By jaggederest 2025-12-223:41 I believe he was a staff writer for the Halo series in house as well, something like Marc Laidlaw at Valve, and the books emerged from internal storytelling written for the series. Very interesting stuff.
I also highly recommend his older books Pawn's Dream, Dry Water, and especially A Game Of Universe. They're available on Kindle and part of the Unlimited program so easy to check out.
I haven't been able to find Eric Nylund's "Signal to Noise" and sequel "A Signsl Shattered" in ebook format.
But they are strange and great.
By aspenmayer 2025-12-225:20 Those two novels of Nylund's really captured the "dark forest" concept well, though I won't say more so as to avoid spoilers.
I haven't read the source material so I can't speak to the books, but the adaptations of 3 Body (Problem) that I've watched, both the Tencent and Netflix ones, also explore similar themes to Nylund's works. Heck, I just discovered that Liu Cixin coined the "dark forest" term, though he isn't the first to explore it.
By troyvit 2025-12-233:20 I must finished my last book and grabbed Accelerando blind based on ya all's recommendation and damn it's great. Thank you!
By yuzhun 2025-12-227:19 Not long ago I came across this book in an HN thread about AI and the future. The moment I saw the title, I knew I had to read it. Crypto, AI, collective intelligence — it hits all the right notes for me.
By bananaflag 2025-12-229:542 reply If you want some other portrayals of the Singularity, see The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect and Friendship is Optimal (and also Caelum Est Conterrens)
By A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2025-12-2211:32 It was good. Depressing, but good. While not singularity, some motiff and predictions seem to align.
I would still add:
Snow crash Rainbow's end
By nehal3m 2025-12-239:11 The Singularity series by William Hertling were fun reads in that category too.
By parkersweb 2025-12-2214:481 reply Amazon lists it as book 3 of 3 in a series - do you need to have read the first two?
By yboris 2025-12-2221:42 Never read the first two, love Accelerando, unsure what I was missing; feels like a well-written self-contained story.
By smoyer 2025-12-221:01 Just reread Accelerando ... Still awesome.
By hermitcrab 2025-12-2212:20 I really appreciate Cory Doctorow's work on digital rights, enshittification and other topics, but I couldn't make it more than half way through 'Rapture of the nerds'. Just too strange, I couldn't connect to it. It is very original though. Some people will probably love it.
By GenerocUsername 2025-12-2117:344 reply Hitchhikers guide to the universe having 42 mentions is a cosmic level coincidence
By QuantumNomad_ 2025-12-2120:191 reply It has wrong author.
The author and book cover it is showing is for a comic book adaptation by John Carnell.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41725880
Instead of showing the author and book cover for the original text book by Douglas Adams.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guid...
By seinvak 2025-12-2120:34 Thanks for the heads up. Corrected it.
By duckerduck 2025-12-2117:563 reply Now its 43 :'(
List was to a time point, and list says 42. All good! You could even say after waiting the right amount of time, 42 was the answer this computer program generated…
By kenjackson 2025-12-2120:17 Actually still 42. The guide to the “universe” is a different book.
By georgefrowny 2025-12-2118:32 The eternal fate of the Googlewhack.
By belter 2025-12-2120:53 So does Project Hail Mary...I sense a Easter Egg by the Author...
By kaangiray26 2025-12-2117:40 the ultimate coincidence of life, the universe, and everything
By furyofantares 2025-12-2117:47 You should scrape 2024 also and then 2025 should be sorted by the delta. Otherwise it doesn't have that much to do with 2025 and is largely just books commonly mentioned on HN.
It's possible this idea isn't straightforward due to more or fewer total mentions but I think you could get there.
