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Cyan comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
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I don't know whether to be surprised that no one has recommended the Ender's Game series or not. They're not terribly realistic in the tech (especially toward the end of the series), and don't address the idea of a technological singularity, but they're a good read anyway.
Oh - I'm not sure if this is what you were thinking of by sci-fi or not, and it gets a bit new-agey, but Spider Robinson's "Telempath" is a personal favorite. It's set in a near-future (at the time of writing) earth after a virus was released that magnified everyone's sense of smell to the point where cities, and most modern methods of producing things, became intolerable. (Does anyone else have post-apocalyptic themed favorites? I have a fondness for the genre, sci-fi or not.)
I had a high opinion of Ender's Game once (less so for its sequels). Then I read this.
A poorly thought out, insult-filled rant comparing scenes in Ender's Game to "cumshots" changed your view of a classic, award-winning science fiction novel? Please reconsider.
If you strip out the invective and the appeal to emotion embodied in the metaphorical comparison to porn, there yet remains valid criticism of the structure and implied moral standards of the book.
I did not believe this was possible, but this analysis has turned EG into ashes retroactively. Still, it gets lots of kids into scifi, so there is some value.
A really great kids scifi book is "Have spacesuit, will travel" by Heinlein.
I've heard that effect called "the suck fairy". The suck fairy sneaks into your life and replaces books you used to love with vaguely similar books that suck.
Great name, but unfortunately it's the same book; the analysis made it incompatible with self-respect.
The suck fairy always brings something that looks exactly like the same book, but somehow....
I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to enjoy Macroscope again. Anthony was really interesting about an information gift economy, but I suspect that "vaguely creepy about women" is going to turn into something much worse.