Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you.
My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists:
Fiasco - Stanisław Lem
This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks
The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one)
Feersum Endjinn isn't a culture novel, so "other" doesn't really apply. I like the rest of his works, but this is my actual favourite of his SF genre stuff. Plus it's relatively short and self-contained which is often a plus for someone new to an author.
Of the Culture novels, my favourite is Excession - but I can't see it appealing to someone who hasn't already read any of the others.
I loved all of Seveneves, and hate Three Body Problem.
The biggest difference in theme being, optimism that humanity can overcome any obstacle and flourish.
If you want more in that vein, see:
Have you read other non-American/non-Western Scifi?
It's not a universal assumption that the future is good and technology will make us better. I love Soviet sci-fi for the completely different perspective.
I haven't read any of the Bobiverse books, but I recall reading a review that stated something like "I realise this isn't going into what's so bad about it, but I honestly don't know where to start. It would be like explaining why murder was bad." :D
Annoyingly I can't find the original any more, but I do note that most of the 1 star reviewers are angry about anti-religious tone, so perhaps that was the bee in their bonnet?
I've read and enjoyed the other two as amusing romps (albeit of otherwise quite different tone). So you might possibly enjoy the Lady Astronaut Universe Series by Mary Robinette Kowal. Just a thought.
I really enjoyed the Bobiverse books, but could understand why folks who favor authoritarian theocracies as a government structure might feel that the novels don’t convey zealots that start planet-destroying conflicts optimistically.
Well, I duly did get and read the four extant novels. They're not the pinnacle of fine writing, but they're a pleasant time passer.
The first one in particularly did feel a bit too mary-sue ish. That plus the slightly excessive nerd-referencing might put someone off. I wondered several times whether a litigious rightsholder might go to battlestations on some of the use of trademarked franchise names!
I heartily second Ted Chiang. He is an expert at the craft of the short story despite it being his first whole compilation that was published.
Short stories have historically been the way science fiction was popularized starting in the early 1900s. Novels and series would develop out of those successful shorts or if an author becomes successful enough.
I read Snow Crash growing up. It is a wonderful weird cyberpunk novel that (metaverse aside, unfortunately) turned out to be kind of Nostradamusly. Easy read. Higly recommended!
With the recent advancements in LLM/AI, I've been thinking more and more about Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" (also titled "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer").
One of the major plot points is the development of a sophisticated interactive book that patiently individually educates and entertains one of the characters; greatly positively impacting her life.
We're much closer to being able to build that now than we were 6 months ago.
Yes, me too! Soon we might have real 'Ractives' -- of course with all the baggage that comes along with them, probably with developing world actors creating the custom content for the wealthiest
Not just much closer - it seems inevitable that something close will be built in the next year. Khan academy, beast academy, and Wikipedia show that we are already close.
I don’t think people at red grappling with how much this will change society.
Asimov wrote too widely to recommend “all of him”.
For an entrance into Asimov and his incredible Sci-Fi voice, check out “I, Robot” and the Robot detective series. He was really the originator of the term and popular idea “robot” and “robotics.” He would eventually turn to writing popular science to mixed results.
I liked The Prefect and its sequel, which are also in there Revelation Space universe but take place during its heyday rather than in the post apocalypse.
Chasm City is also a pretty incredible whodunnit/thriller. I liked that the Reynolds books tie together but also kind of stand alone, so you're not stuck reading them in order.
Two favorite books of mine I've seldom seen mentioned but I think are gems: The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Time out of joint, both by Philip K. Dick. The first plays with several layers of reality along the book. One time I found myself re-reading some passages because there were so many layers it was hard to follow, but it's worth it. The second is (if I recall correctly) the inspiration for a 90s pop movie starring Jim Carrey. I won't mention the name because it might give away some plot points.
I adapted The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch for the stage many years ago, but was refused permission to perform it by P. K. Dick's estate.
It is truly a masterpiece!
We ended up using Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, since that was an existing adaption by a friend of Philip K. Dick's that they had no control over.
Not sure I still have the stage play to be honest, it was done in the late 90s, I'd have to really dig back into my old backups.
The whole idea was to use multimedia, video projection, computer animation and live video mixed up with live performance to really mess with the audience's sense of what was real or not.
We managed to pull it off quite nicely with Flow My Tears though. A nice bit was cutting from a live feed of an actress apparently cutting her arm, to a pre recorded close up of the arm being cut and lots of blood. Audience always thought they were seeing what was happening on stage at that point :)
Lem is one of the most interesting sci fi authors. He is deep and philosophical, but can also be very funny. Solaris is definitely not one of the funny ones.
I also love both the film versions of Solaris. The Tartovsky one is the best IMHO but very long, but I also really like the more recebt Soderbergh one with George Clooney.
For funny, try The Cyberiad. A collection of short stories of two robot inventors who try to outcompete one another.
Quite a few of my faves already mentioned in this thread so let me throw in a couple of relatively lesser-known ones:
- City by Clifford Simak
- Everything by M.A.Foster, but Waves and the Transformer Trilogy in particular
- You Must Remember Us...? by Leonard Daventry
- The Green Man and Other Stories by Rand B. Lee (in particular the story Knight of Shallows)
- The Star Wolf series by David Gerrold
And a few easily overlooked ones by Philip K. Dick:
- Clans of the Alphane Moon
- The Game-Players of Titan
- Now Wait for Last Year.
As an author better known for other genres, C.S. Lewis wrote an exceptional as Sci-Fi trilogy beginning in the 1930s. He would finish it in by the 1950s. Heavy in philosophy and combatting the currently popular ideas of eugenics and Wells’ ideation of human conquering of the solar system and eventual universe, it was a great read.
Conversely I think these are some of the worst books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read basically everything mentioned in this thread). The characters are uninteresting, the plot is haphazard and the ideas are derivative. I can see how it would be appealing if you don’t read much at all but once you’ve experience some higher quality stuff it’s just bad.
I try to not be pedantic about plot holes but i’ve felt there were so many ilogical and unexplained decisions. Author just moves on and does not care that it was very distracting.
I liked some of the ideas although i think you can find books that dig into similar ones a bit deeper.
What also doesnt help is that this seems to be the book that people that dont read sci-fi (because its for kids) all read and they love it. I got so many raving reviews from people telling me if scifi was like this they would read sci-fi… annoying as hell.
I loved the series the first time through. Great concepts. First use of “dark forest” that I am aware of. Very specific arc of what could happen in the deep future.
I went to read it a second time and found I simply could not get through it. That which I found so exciting was significantly less so the second time around.
The Expanse books are great. The TV show is a pretty good adaptation too, but I love the portrayal of the characters in the books.
A recent thing I started reading (first book release this month) is The Last Horizon series by Will Wight (author of Cradle, and Elder Empire books). This one's more of a sci-fi and fantasy blend, if you're into that sort of thing. In a nutshell, it's magic-as-technology, but with space travel.
I have only watched the show. In hindsight, I should have read the books. However, as the show hasn't been greenlit for further adaptations, I have been debating if I should just follow through with Persepolis Rising and the remaining books or start from scratch including all the novellas.
The Novellas are amazing! So, I definitely recommend them. I loved The Churn personally, because I really enjoyed finding out more about Amos.
I'd recommend reading all the books anyway. They flow quit differently to the show, even if they are a faithful adaptation. So, I think you'll enjoy the experience even if you think you know what's coming.
You have convinced me. I don't think I can glean much more from re-watching the shows at this point. It is good to know that the books have some added dimensionality.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadStainless Steel Rat series (Harrison - a bit juvenile, but fun)
Dune (Herbert)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
Starship Troopers (Heinlein)
A Scanner Darkly (Dick)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Childhood's End (Clarke)
Robot series (Asimov)
Bicentennial Man (Asimov)
Brave New World (Huxley)
https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (L. Ron Hubbard)
https://books.google.com/books?id=KF2hckiYTocC&printsec=copy...
L. Ron Hubbard - Space Jazz - 1982 - Full Album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNaqh4PLME
My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists:
Fiasco - Stanisław Lem
This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks
The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one)
Blindsight - Peter Watts
Bloom - Wil McCarthy
Good luck!
Of the Culture novels, my favourite is Excession - but I can't see it appealing to someone who hasn't already read any of the others.
Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Delta-V - Daniel Suarez
It's not a universal assumption that the future is good and technology will make us better. I love Soviet sci-fi for the completely different perspective.
Old Man's War series (John Scalzi)
The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)
Annoyingly I can't find the original any more, but I do note that most of the 1 star reviewers are angry about anti-religious tone, so perhaps that was the bee in their bonnet?
I've read and enjoyed the other two as amusing romps (albeit of otherwise quite different tone). So you might possibly enjoy the Lady Astronaut Universe Series by Mary Robinette Kowal. Just a thought.
IMO the Bobiverse books are trying to have a fun go at a few different big sci-fi concepts and on that basis I think they're fairly successful.
The first one in particularly did feel a bit too mary-sue ish. That plus the slightly excessive nerd-referencing might put someone off. I wondered several times whether a litigious rightsholder might go to battlestations on some of the use of trademarked franchise names!
Wireless - Charles Stross
Stories of your life and others - Ted Chiang
Moonrise - Ben Bova
Last Plane to Heaven - Jay Lake
Best of Greg Egan - Greg Egan
Short stories have historically been the way science fiction was popularized starting in the early 1900s. Novels and series would develop out of those successful shorts or if an author becomes successful enough.
If you check the series out, and I highly recommend you do, read it in order. Which would mean starting with A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent.
This might be considered a spoiler: https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/TrueNames.Afterword...
One of the major plot points is the development of a sophisticated interactive book that patiently individually educates and entertains one of the characters; greatly positively impacting her life.
We're much closer to being able to build that now than we were 6 months ago.
I don’t think people at red grappling with how much this will change society.
For an entrance into Asimov and his incredible Sci-Fi voice, check out “I, Robot” and the Robot detective series. He was really the originator of the term and popular idea “robot” and “robotics.” He would eventually turn to writing popular science to mixed results.
(Read ~12 tomes of Strugatskies and perhaps a dozen titles by Asimov)
The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)
Hitchhiker's Guide series (Douglas Adams)
- Children of Time
- Accelerando
- The Forever War
- Axiomatic
(Ender's Game too, but haven't read the sequels, but I also recommend Ender's Shadow - a parallel novel from a different character's perspective.)
I read a lot of the scifi/fantasy section in our local library.
Tom Swift was pretty good too.
Three Body Problem Series - Cixin Liu
Salvation Sequence - Peter F Hamilton
(and by listing these I just realized I like stories about humanities doom)
Chasm City is also a pretty incredible whodunnit/thriller. I liked that the Reynolds books tie together but also kind of stand alone, so you're not stuck reading them in order.
Ringworld
Titan
-Permutation City
-Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
-The Egg (Andy Weir short story)
It is truly a masterpiece!
We ended up using Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, since that was an existing adaption by a friend of Philip K. Dick's that they had no control over.
The whole idea was to use multimedia, video projection, computer animation and live video mixed up with live performance to really mess with the audience's sense of what was real or not.
We managed to pull it off quite nicely with Flow My Tears though. A nice bit was cutting from a live feed of an actress apparently cutting her arm, to a pre recorded close up of the arm being cut and lots of blood. Audience always thought they were seeing what was happening on stage at that point :)
Wool by Hugh Howey (Silo is now steaming on AppleTV).
I also love both the film versions of Solaris. The Tartovsky one is the best IMHO but very long, but I also really like the more recebt Soderbergh one with George Clooney.
For funny, try The Cyberiad. A collection of short stories of two robot inventors who try to outcompete one another.
I can rattle of an endless list of authors I like, but by organic evidence of “favorites” these stand out.
The "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...) which is more known as "the three body problem". All the books are great but my favourite by a large margin is "the dark forest" (part 2)
I liked some of the ideas although i think you can find books that dig into similar ones a bit deeper.
What also doesnt help is that this seems to be the book that people that dont read sci-fi (because its for kids) all read and they love it. I got so many raving reviews from people telling me if scifi was like this they would read sci-fi… annoying as hell.
I look forward to a day when the top scifi is unabashed optimism about humanity's future.
I went to read it a second time and found I simply could not get through it. That which I found so exciting was significantly less so the second time around.
A recent thing I started reading (first book release this month) is The Last Horizon series by Will Wight (author of Cradle, and Elder Empire books). This one's more of a sci-fi and fantasy blend, if you're into that sort of thing. In a nutshell, it's magic-as-technology, but with space travel.
I'd recommend reading all the books anyway. They flow quit differently to the show, even if they are a faithful adaptation. So, I think you'll enjoy the experience even if you think you know what's coming.