Some Books Chris Read

In Search of Megastructures

Historically I haven't read much SF, but I've been trying to fix that over the past couple of years. One thing I really enjoy about delving into something new is watching my taste develop (by which I mean I enjoy observing my own process of figuring out what I like and what I dislike).

I learned fairly early in my journey through SF that I really love stories about people discovering and exploring weird alien megastructures. Or, at least, I really love them in theory. In practice I've found these tales to be a mixed bag.

My first exposure to those sorts of stories was Alastair Reynolds' Pushing Ice, which I first read about a decade ago, and honestly that remains my gold-standard for alien megastructure fiction. I also really love the brief megastructure exploration in his Revenger books, as salvage crews crack open "baubles" and take part in what is essentially deep space dungeon delving. Those sections are unfortunately far too slim, and I'd love to see Reynolds return to the Revenger world with a book exclusively about those bauble cracking crews and their work.

Most recently (i.e. this morning, right before writing this post) I finished Larry Niven's Ringworld, which always comes up in recommendations when I mention loving these sorts of megastructure stories. Unfortunately it contains basically everything I've discovered I dislike about SF. In both SF and fantasy I have a weird response to stories that prominently feature non-human species. I find that in practice most authors write them as essentially humans who have look a bit weird and have one personality trait that's massively exaggerated. Here it's the cat-like kzin, who behave like massively prideful, violent humans, and the puppeteers who are massive cowards with two heads and three legs. I can't explain why but I find this "they're like us but a bit strange" approach to writing alien species a little embarrassing (I guess some people would call it "cringe") and I struggle to read it. Combine that with an approach to women that reduces both of the female characters to objects for the super smart, ageless lothario protagonist to fuck and I can't say that I enjoyed Ringworld much at all.

I've been trying to pin down what it is that I'm actually looking for when it comes to megastructure exploration, and I think what I said earlier about "deep space dungeon exploration" in Revenger gets quite close to it. Books like Ringworld and Greg Bear's Eon give us megastructures that are populated and have a clear purpose, and neither of those books really worked for me. Meanwhile Pushing Ice gives us a truly alien structure that's been long-abandoned, with no discernible purpose, that's sort of passively hostile to the explorers in that it doesn't really care why they're there or what they're doing. This is what I seek out in dungeon exploration when I play (and write) tabletop games, and it's something I'm increasingly drawn to in SF as well.

I've found that I'm really drawn to this trope in every genre. In film I've become obsessed with seeking out films in an underserved genre I've started to call "archaeological horror" - The Ruins, The Pyramid, Black Mountain Side, etc. Books like Susanna Clarke's Piranesi and Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves very much scratch this itch and are among some of my favourite novels.

I've been doing some Googling in search of more SF that might scratch this particular itch for me, and I've put together this list:

And a couple of shorter works:

One thing I'm keenly aware of is that this list is almost entirely populated by white men. I'd love some recommendations for work in this sort of space that comes from a wider variety of voices. Bear doesn't have comments sections, and that's one of the things that really appealed to me when I chose it as a host for this blog, but if you happen to read this and thing you know something I'd enjoy then please do send me an email and let me know about it.

#jun24