- Octavia Butler
- Ursula K Le Guin
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I’ve heard of Le Guin, thanks for the recommendations
The Dispossessed is a really interesting look at anarchism in practice
Also may I recommend the Culture series by Iain M Banks.
People, please. Don't sleep on Butler either. A truly visionary artist. She's incredible. I hate how late in life I heard of her. Genuinely alien aliens. And she cooked up Make America Great Again for her neofascist fiction party decades before their lizard brains could copy it. It's literally in the books. She predicted the future with basically 100% accuracy. The series is Earthseed.
I recommend you start with the Hainish series's trilogy (Rocannon's world, planet of exile, and city of illusions). The Left Hand of Darkness is better, and it doesn't require any of them, but those books will do a lot of world building so you can just focus on the story rather than ask what the hell the Ekumen is.
City of illusions is also just hard-core payoff and that made it really interesting
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.
Honestly, I tell people to pass on Consider Phlebas a lot of the time. The first book is worth reading, but The Player of Games is a much better book and is a better introduction to the series.
I suggest the Commonwealth's saga by Peter F. Hamilton (Pandora's star, Judas unchained).
Been on a Peter Hamilton binge since I started Pandora's Star about 4 months ago, and have since gone through all 7 of the Commonwealth books (Commonwealth duology, Void trilogy, and Chronicles of the Fallers duology) Exodus: Archimedes Engine, and am almost done book 1 of the Salvation trilogy.
So far my favourite is probably the Commonwealth duology, followed by Exodus. All of the books I've read have been amazing IMO, this is the first time I've read based solely off the author rather than recommendations. He can be pretty horny at times which is the main thing about his books that annoy me, but the world building is top tier IMO and the ideas he presents are fascinating.
Highly recommend giving the Commonwealth duology a try, it's a bit slow going at first but once it gets going, I found it hard to stop. Amazing books.
Great books, I recently re-read and they don't stand up as well as I remember, some characters in particular, but still good.
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 put down three body after first book, perhaps I should push through
I didn't like the rest as much, it did more get more universal in scope. It's OK to give them a miss, first book is satisfying on its own.
The escalation of story/plot stakes from Three-Body to Dark Forest is huge, but if you don't like the writing style or the author's voice, it's more of the same.
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.
I gave Hyperion about 200 pages and they were STILL world building and offering leading secrets the author didn't think the reader needed to know. So I just gave up.
I'm with you. I was pretty close to giving up on it several times, but slugged through it at first because so many people said it was so great, and then because the next book was meant to be better, and then because I was over halfway so I may as well finish it. I wish I hadn't.
I felt the Culture books by Iain Banks were a similar tone and style, but I found them much more enjoyable.
I loved the first two books, it felt like an adventure and a puzzle piece. Then the last 2 are 😬
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.
Second The Book Of The New Sun - it’s dense and really rewards re-reading.
There’s also the Urth Of The New Sun, which sort-of concludes the story.
I liked Urth of the New Sun, but I can also see why it is separate from the others. For me it felt like a step back for the main character.
I second the finishing of the quatrology. I think one could stop at the first book, maybe even the second, but if you're in for the third you should be in for the fourth.
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 second these if you want more Simmons.
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:
The Forever War is such an important and great read. I'd put it alongside Catch-22 and Johnny Got His Gun for an anti-war novel.
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).