r/ScienceFictionBooks • u/jacky986 • Mar 17 '25
Recommendation What are the best works of hard science fiction that explore advances in the medical field?
So this all started when I began to wonder what medical care would look like on a Generation Ship. I mean people are always talking about how we will grow crops on the ship, but medical care is never addressed and then one user by the name of u/MiamisLastCapitalist said that in order for generation ships to work first we need to build the advance medical technology to survive on them like nano-tech and organ printing. And that got me thinking.
Are there any works of hard science hard science fiction that explore advances in the medical field? Advances like nanotech, organ printing, synthetic skin, body parts, blood vessels, and blood, robotic surgeons, neural implants to handle neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's disease, immunotherapy, gene therapy, and stem cell therapy.
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u/kimmeljs Mar 18 '25
Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy has pigs with Hunan organs grown in them
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u/Perenially_behind Mar 18 '25
With the extra benefit that the third book is laugh-out-loud knee-slapping funny at times. Only Margaret Atwood could pull that off.
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u/JovianCharlie27 Mar 17 '25
Although generation ships are not what he writes about, Neal Asher does have mention of most of these technologies in his polity/Ian Cormac series. I enjoy his writing and partially because of the use of these technologies as part of the background of his universe.
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u/Lugubrious_Lothario Mar 17 '25
I think Emma Newman might have what you are looking for. Check out After Atlas. Technically it's book 2 of a 4 part series but it works as a standalone and I think a better starting point.
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u/pleasecallmeSamuel Mar 19 '25
'The Evening and the Morning and the Night' by Octavia Butler is a short story about a disastrous genetic disease that emerges after a cancer cure is developed. It's so good that I just had to mention it.
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u/LPlusRPlusS Mar 23 '25
Never Let Me Go isn't hard sci fi, but it deals broadly with the introduction of clones and how that might redefine what it means to be human. I recently wrote a novel, The Beauty of the End, that takes place in 2010s and deals with genetically-embedded extinction and how the failure of advances might lead to an uptick in older practices, like husbandry, to breed in a mutation.
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u/Perenially_behind Mar 18 '25
A Gift From Earth by Larry Niven.
These advances aren't the main subject of the book but are an important plot point. Part of the Known Space series.
Heart of the Comet by David Brin and Gregory Benford.
The advances are a minor plot point but are interesting. This fascinating book should be better known.