[zabzonk]

Kind of hard for SF stories featuring organic life (i.e. humans) to be based around Jupiter because of the planet's incredibly strong magnetic field and hence killing radiation belts - like the Van Allen belts around Earth, but much worse. Probes to the Jovian system have to be heavily hardened.

[freedomben]

If anybody is into sci-fi, I highly recommend The Three Body Problem series. I'm being very elusive here to avoid spoilers, but let's just say that there are some very fascinating challenging with establishing technology (and especially human life) around Jupiter, what with it's gravity, the radiation, it's moons, distance from the sun, etc. As a space nerd, those books were highly enjoyable

[jajko]

The tech/fantasy parts are great and were novel back then. But the characters were shallow, story so-so and ended in big meh, and overal it feels like chinese propaganda re freedom and future.

Any non-chinese character is evil for example, only chinese will inherit the right for their future. Western culture moved from such properly bad cliches long time ago for the better.

[bencyoung]

I think it's more that western cultural cliches become invisible to western audiences rather than moving on. E.g. the "superhero" is definitely a western cliche. "A lone operative defies the rules to do the right thing because might is right if you're right. Individual exceptionalism triumphing etc". Somewhat shallowly examined in some films but still turns up all over the place.

[dcminter]

The opening scene of the first novel during the cultural revolution I recall as being absolutely fantastic. The rest of that novel was a big rather dull Asimovian deus ex, and then the rest of the series was more of that.

Big disappointment, very much not what I think of as hard sci-fi which is what it often gets billed as, and I absolutely do not get the love for it here.

Don't get me wrong, there's some total dross out there that I adore, but this ain't it for me.

[qingcharles]

As a hard sci-fi fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the books. They're a lot "harder" than most popular sci-fi books out there.

[dcminter]

Then I can only assume that you and I have very different definitions of "hard sci-fi"

[nwlotz]

There's a fantastic Ray Bradbury short story from 1948 called "Jonah and the Jove-Run" that I hardly see referenced anywhere. It's about Jupiter being the next frontier after colonizing Mars and the complexity of navigating the asteroid belt on supply runs.

It's a great quick read. Though it hardly attempts the sort of scientific justification as in The Three-Body Problem.

[ahazred8ta]

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64420/pg64420.txt Bradbury, Jonah of the Jove-Run

[stevenbedrick]

In case anybody’s interested, Malka Older has a really enjoyable series (two books so far) of short novels set on habitats in Jupiter’s atmosphere (so not breathable atmosphere, but also not vacuum). They’re solid mystery stories with fun characters and an intriguing setting. The first is called “The Mimicking of Known Successes” and the second is “The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles”.

[Snoddas]

You may also enjoy Farewell Horizontal K. W. Jeter, takes place on a giant floating cylinder

[CobrastanJorji]

Well, life on Jupiter is possible, but "organic" life seems way less likely. "Organic" means carbon compounds, and there's not a whole lot of carbon on Jupiter.

[anon_cow1111]

Read "Call me Joe". Short story so you may be able to find a text dump of it with a little google-fu.

[generic92034]

What kind of life are you thinking of?

[CobrastanJorji]

I have no idea! Maybe ammonia or methane based? Seems somewhere between unlikely and fantastical, but maybe?

[Mistletoe]

Are the moons toast from it too? Which ones would be amenable to life?

[zabzonk]

Of the four big ones, Callisto at 0.01 rem/day is probably the least deadly. Io is the worst, not only for radiation but being basically one huge volcano, powered by tidal stresses.