Books

• Octavia Butler
• Ursula K Le Guin

E: Markdown

Maybe Iain M. Banks' Culture series, if you're not familiar with his work already. The books are generally standalobe stories, but there are some recurring side characters and references to earlier books. Consider Phlebas is the first one I think.

I suggest the Commonwealth's saga by Peter F. Hamilton (Pandora's star, Judas unchained).

Roadside Picnic is awesome. It inspired the film stalker. I loved it.

While nothing like Dan Simmons, The Three Body Problem is the only one that has knocked my socks off in the last 10 years. If you want to stick with Simmons I recommend Song of Kali.

I fucking did not like that book. I did not like any of the characters. Grrrr to that book. That is all. I guess in saying I wouldn't go more Hyperion. Do Revelation Space Series. Much better.

The Book of the New Sun (really 4 books) gave me the feeling of reading Dune, Hyperion, and Lord of the Rings kind of wrapped into one.

I would also recommend the 4th Dune book (God Emporor), as it wraps up where the first 3 books were going with the Golden Path. After that, he starts a new trilogy, which doesn't get finished, so results may vary.

Blindsight by Peter watts.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,” recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist – an informational topologist with half his mind gone – as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. --Wikipedia

The second Hyperion book. Immediately followed by Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks. It has the same approachable writing style, doesn't overstay it's welcome, has similar deliciously out-there sci-fi, and I think may also be inspired by touchstone poetry.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. If you like it (and I think you will) there are more in the series.

If you're into a rich narrative and deep references, don't miss Cryptononicon and the whole Baroque cycle by Neal Stephenson.

You read the expanse series?

Simmons' books "Illum" and "Odessey" are pretty great and feel like the same universe

I wouldn't recommend Anderson Dune books.

Pohl has some classics Heechee Saga Space Merchants Man Plus

Ringworld

Vernor Vinge: Fire Upon the Deep

John Scalzi: Old Mans War Series

Very surprised I haven't seen Red Rising mentioned.

Ursula K. LeGuin's Always Coming Home is an intriguing approach to novel writing. Some can't get into it because it looks more like an ethnologist's report, but there is a story there (and I don't mean the segments with Stone Telling: the entire novel has a story that rewards those who pay attention).

Some of my suggestions:

• Forever War - due to time dilation this story follows combatants that spend decades at war while on earth hundreds of years pass (inspired by the Vietnam War).
• Stanger in a Strange Land - Story of a human raised by Martians coming to earth. Has similar religious notes as dune and hyperion, but also has a weird Ayn Rand vibe (in my opinion, also not necessarily in a bad way).

I didn't really like the Hyperion series much myself, but both Dune and Hyperion are sci-fi with religious elements. Maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Give Philip K Dick a chance: Start with 'Ubik'. I think we all need a little bit of Dick in our lives, to broaden our horizons.

If you're looking for something epic but self-contained I really liked "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson. If you want something that's got a similar level of art to Hyperion I'd suggest "This is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Haven't seen these mentioned here, but the "Old Man's War" series by John Scalzi is great as are "The Expanse" books by James SA Corey. I'd highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn't lose the reader or become overly technical.

I highly highly recommend Old Man's War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you've seen the TV series... the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she's an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).

I believe the most popular PKD is Man in the High Castle, my favorite is Ubik. But to be honest, if you disliked Do Androids, PKD may just not be your thing.

Hmmm… maybe next go for something a little less ponderous, try some Neal Stephenson, maybe Diamond Age.

The 4th and final you say? That means Endymion and it's sequel. I couldn't stand them. Loved Hyperion. Additionally loved Ilium hated Olympos. Idk what it is about Simmons and his inability to stick the landing for me.

Wraeththu Chronicles by Storm Constantine.

Someone way to far down in the comments mentioned Arthur C Clark and the Rama series already.

I’ll go with Philip Jose Farmer and the Riverworld series then. Excellent 70´s to 2000´s philosophical sci-fi!

I'm currently three books into the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. The first book is a Dune rip off until about the halfway point when it gets really good. The second book is awesome. I'm about 100 pages into the 3rd book. Most reviews I've read mention the 3rd book as the best in the series. There's still four more books after though. The latest one is set to release this year IIRC. The best I've heard the plot be described is imagine Anakin was justified about turning to the dark side.

If you're wanting a break from the serious sci-fi, take a look at Expeditionary Force, it's hilarious.

Absolutely incredible, I’m disappointed knowing I’ll be done with it soon.

Hyperion was def one of those series that I was sad to finish, like, it impacted me that "how tf can there be no more of it" way more than the norm.

Simmons in general has a very wide variety of topics in genres & Hyperion alternates them nicely (while never really leaving sci-fi).

any suggestions

Maybe as a short palette cleanser 'The Terror' by the same author? It's completely different, but nicely done. I've read a few more books by Simmons after Hyperion & this one stood out* a bit more (it's not as polished as Hyperions, but much more than the rest I've read - overall easy to read, I like it when the setting/spaces are always explained, and most importantly it's one of those stories that I gladly let live in my mind).
Warning: it has one instance of horse riding! But it's in horny a flashback :). It's a historical fantasy with good semifictional characters, really tasteful blend of actual Inuit stories, historical nautical facts, & authors own derived reality of both, also one of the top tier "monsters" ever ... and the Hyperion-style technical description that make sense of the basically literal alien world (the same story could have been set in planet exploration).
[*Edit: I completely forgot about Ilium & Olympos. Those are sort of more of the sci-fi with the expected classical twist, but I stand by my Terror recommendation too, it just lacks interplanetary travel.]

The real suggestion (and I can't/am unable to explain why the association in my mind) is the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke. It's prob one of the top easiest writer/books for me to read (the way things are explained & which things are explained, how characters act, etc). It's nicely logical & absurdity fantastical without it ever being fantastical for the sake of being fantastical (ie the big amazing things always make sense & don't seem forced or unlikely).