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Ask HN: Sci-fi recommendations by non-western authors?

58 points by elric ↗ HN
While talking with a friend about books, I realised that 99% of the sci-fi I've read was written by western authors. Mostly white men at that. When reading Cixin Lui's Three Body Problem I was pleasantly surprised by the (to my mind) different perspective that his background brought to the telling of the story.

I'd love to hear some sci-fi recommendations featuring authors with different backgrounds. Anything goes: non-westerners, refugees, deeply religious cultists who live in a hidden paradise underneath antarctica, whatever.

58 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] thread
davewasthere
Hiroshi Sakurazaka wrote 'All you need is kill', which became Edge of Tomorrow film.

And, while not SciFi, I think Haruki Murakami's books are worth a read and might scratch and itch you didn't realise you had. Start with Norwegian Wood if you want a light intro, but then Windup Bird Chronicle next. Possibly 1Q84 after that?

ThrowawayR2
It should be noted that Edge of Tomorrow is reported to be very different from the novel, particularly the conclusion. I've read only the novel and it's a decent read in its own right.
agarren
I think Murakami’s books are a great suggestion. Magical realism, nowhere near sci-fi, but very easy to slip into. However, 1Q84 feels a bit like a heavy recommendation even if you’re a Murakami fan. It’s a bit more of a commitment and I think it helps if you’re familiar with his other stories before diving into it. I’d say try Hardboiled Wonderland first - I thought it stepped away from some of his recurring themes but still a good example of his style. Also a quicker read. He has a few anthologies might be good intros as well - I read two, Dance, Dance, Dance and The Elephant Also Vanishes, but I think he’s got some others.

Along the lines of magical realism, Kurt Vonnegut seems like a great recommendation too. His books incorporate a bit more sci-fi - Galapagos, Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, slaughterhouse five, …

__rito__
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World is a pretty underrated Murakami novel. It gets talked about much less than his other works- undeservedly so.
creer
Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira [japanese, manga, psychics, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo]
Loughla
Tokyo really gets screwed over in the monster and disaster world.
jknoepfler
If you're up for manga, I'd consider giving BLAME! a shot. It's... wild.
protocolture
I never know what people mean by western, heres some stuff I like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) - Written by a Russian. Allegedly inspired Orwell.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5450488.Bryn_Hammond Bryn Hammond is an Australian woman who writes chiefly about mongols.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaro Charles Saunders Imaro is one of my top all time reads.

elric
> I never know what people mean by western

I deliberately kept it a bit vague, not wanting to exclude anything interesting based on too narrow of a definition. Thanks for these :-)

Metacelsus
Stanisław Lem is great, if Polish counts as non-Western. I'd especially recommend Cyberiada and Summa Technologiae.
k1musab1
I second this. Lem is one of the best sci-fi writers I've come across.

I would also recommend "The Year's Best Science Fiction" edited by Gardner Dozois, first to 35th editions.

bdjsiqoocwk
I think in this context western isn't meant as the geographical term but as the cultural term. In that sense Poland is a very western country.
yakime
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a truly mind-bending work.
jknoepfler
The movie inspired by Roadside Picnic (Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker) is one of my all-time favorites.
golergka
Exactly what I wanted to recommend. Their books progressed from idealistic communist propaganda to disillusioned analysis of totalitarianism, while still (mostly) being set in the same fictional universe.
idontwantthis
The Doomed City is also great. Tried to read Noon and it was too unfocused for me.
agarren
I was hoping to see this one - I was just about to post before seeing your comment. It’s not a long book, but it definitely sticks with you.
wafflemaker
Roadsise Picnic and The Snail on the Slope are IMO two of their best books (A. B. Strugatsky). I really liked others like Monday starts on Saturday or It's hard to be a God.

Sci Fi by Ursula k. Le Guin is also written from a very different perspective. Earthsea cycle, which is more fantasy, but unike any other. Also the book on the planet where people marry in quadruplets, The Planet of Exile, part of Hainish Cycle. Whole Hainish Cycle is awesome, Left Hand of Darkness, Rocannon's World.

jknoepfler
I'd recommend Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, or maybe His Master's Voice.

You'll get a fascinating blend of psychological realism and eastern-euro science fiction, which I find fascinating (it is much more analog/mechanical, and also refreshingly real about scientific progress / knowledge creation vis a vi the human condition).

They are both rather short, also.

zajio1am
Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe are generally considered part of the West [*] (in contrast to, say, China or Japan), so Stanislaw Lem is western author.

(Outside of that, i would definitely recommend Lem, esp. Fiasco, The Invincible, or Peace on Earth.)

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

saulrh
Other people are covering the big names, so I'll throw in a suggestion in completely the opposite direction: Large portions of the fanfiction and online amateur fiction community, even in English, are international. Even the Western authors frequently bring minority perspectives. Amateur fiction and especially fanfiction doesn't have to be accepted by a publisher or get through editing, so they're free to explore topics and reinterpretations that would be anathema to marketing and PR and the need to make a profit.
Frotag
Any specific recommendations?

I've looked through royalroad a few times but most amateur sci-fi are more about power-fantasies rather than logically exploring / exploiting an idea.

Out of the few dozen top-rated stories I've tried these are the only 2 I liked:

[1] https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/13468/paladin

[2] https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/30848/burning-stars-fallin...

saulrh
So, I intentionally refrained from recommending any specific works for "novel perspective", and I'll hold to that: There are just too many different angles for me to cover, my recommendations would be relatively low-quality in many places because I'm not an expert in all domains, and there's no real way for me to provide anything like a "primer" because the entire point is to get hyper-specific rather than easing people into things or starting with general coverage. If you're looking for novel perspectives, just keep digging. The key is that you probably won't find much that's particularly unusual in the top-rated lists because the top-rated lists filter for mass appeal in the same way that mass market paperback publishing does. As a specific example, Royal Road's community is infamous for leaving bigoted one-star reviews on anything with queer characters. Instead, you'll want to move sideways through things like AO3's tagging system and the shout-outs that RR authors put in their after-chapter notes.

For general introductions to amateur fiction and fanfiction, though, though, I'm happy to share my starter recommendations. These are just plain good fiction. You can find a lot of other good works starting from these.

* Xenoethnography (https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458): Optimus Prime, realizing that there are people whose job is facilitating cultural understanding, hires an ethnographer to live among the refugee Transformers and document their culture. Familiarity with Transformers not required. This one probably is a pretty good work for the refugee/immigrant perspective.

* Katalepsis (https://katalepsis.net/): A serial web novel about cosmic horror and human fragility, urban fantasy and lesbian romance.

* Super Supportive (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759/super-supportive): Hopeful, sometimes cozy sometimes harrowing commentary on trauma, colonialism, sacrifice, and self-actualization. It takes its time about it, but IMO it's worth it.

* To The Stars (https://archiveofourown.org/works/777002/chapters/1461984): Old Man's War, guest starring Iain Banks and Greg Egan... as a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic. It's shockingly deep and twisty. You do ~need to watch PMMM first, but that's absolutely stellar too, and I have no reservations recommending both.

* Divided Loyalties (https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/warhammer-fant...): Swords-and-sorcery diplomatic intrigue with a heavy helping of worldbuilding. Familiarity with WHF not required.

* Bioshifter (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59450/bioshifter/chapter/1...): A story about love, self-acceptance, neurodivergency, and a whole lot of trauma. Seriously, it's extremely good, but also super rough to read.

* Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches (https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lieutenant-fus...): Lesbian war robot questions her purpose while coping with the fact that the humans keep themselves ...

Frotag
Oh awesome, first time I've heard of AO3. And To the Stars + Commonweal also sound super interesting, thanks!
saulrh
I totally forgot one! A really important one!

* Pound the Table (https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/pound-the-tabl...): X-men courtroom drama, written by a practicing attorney who brings the reader along with their own clear love for their work, using it as a lens through which to examine the real-life social issues that the X-Men franchise has always concerned itself with. It's really good. Seriously. I can't believe I forgot this one.

Frotag
That one sounds interesting too, I'll check it out!

I also really enjoyed To the Stars (currently on ch50). Especially the beginning where most of it is fleshing out the madoka lore in a uh, comprehensive way. Like it seems well thought in how magical girls are integrated with science / the military / the govt. In terms of characters, not sure I really care for the SoL scenes but I thought each of the ancient's backstories was pretty interesting (I'm sucker for tragedy).

TheAceOfHearts
Lots of anime and manga are adaptations of light novels. The first one that came to mind was Haruhi Suzumiya.
trescenzi
I’d highly recommend Tade Thompson’s novel Rosewater. It’s a bit hard to describe honestly but it’s an afrofuturist novel taking place in Nigeria and involves aliens and mind altering experiences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_(Thompson_novel)

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson is also very good but set on a different planet so a bit more divorced from today. It is still afrofuturism, and still covers a lot of the topics you describe. It can be a bit tough to read, at least I found it to be, as the Caribbean accents are very strong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Robber

jodrellblank
Cat Country by Lao She is debatably science fiction, being set on Mars as a way to satirise and criticise some parts of Chinese life in the early 1900s; there isn't much science in it, it's social commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Country

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were white Soviet Russian men, famously wrote Roadside Picnic (among other works) which became the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic

They were trying to tell stories critical of the way things were, but set in a fantastic world so it could get past the censors. Part of a genre of Russian/USSR sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22412.Russian_Science_Fi...

Possibly including Stanisław Lem writing in Eastern-bloc Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem

Reddit thread on African sci-fi and fantasy book suggestions: https://old.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/11zngrs/afr...

picklebarrel
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang. A really enjoyable story about people on Mars and Earth after their societies and cultures diverge. Definitely felt like a new perspective to me.
Frotag
Last and First idol is a parody of otaku (Japanese) culture.

https://j-novel.club/series/last-and-first-idol

It's really 3x short stories (~200 pages each) but here's a synopsis for the first:

    The story follows Mika Furutsuki's journey to become an idol.  [...] After the Monopole Super Flares hit though, humanity is on the decline. Maori still tries to revive her idol friend and ultimately succeeds after 30 years. Mika may no longer human, but that doesn't stop her quest to become the #1 idol.
leejoramo
The podcast Imaginary Worlds has often covered Science Fiction and Fantasy from around the world and different cultures. Just reading the show notes will give you authors to check out and other links. Even the episodes that are more focused on standard USA/UK works often bring in wider view points than we typically get. Just a few example shows: https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/african-sci-... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/creating-hin... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/octavia-butl... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/postcolonial...
tinkertrain
I recently read The Poppy Wars trilogy by Rebecca F. Kuang, it's more fantasy and mythology than sci-fi, but it's very entertaining and I found the mythology and history (which I believe is based in China, though in the novel no real countries are named) very interesting.
minetest2048
(My first thought when reading the title is Three Body Problem, but of course you already read it) Some manga / anime recs:

- Planetes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes) is a hard scifi manga with anime adaptation about daily life of astronauts cleaning up space debris. It feels pretty grounded, you can feel how its like living in Earth orbit and Moon

- Space Brothers / Uchuu Kyodai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Brothers_(manga)) tells the story of a Japanese worker getting kicked out from his company and then he applied to JAXA, following his younger brother's footstep

Not manga/anime/books, but there's a Korean scifi movie at Netflix called Space Sweepers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers), similar to Planetes. What I found interesting is that they have people speaking different language, and you can hear their universal translator translating their conversation to their own languages. Different than western scifi where everyone speaks English

asicsp
* "The Sword of Kaigen" by M.L. Wang

* "The Green Bone Saga" by Fonda Lee

* "The Weirkey Chronicles" and "Street Cultivation" by Sarah Lin

See also:

* Middle East/Middle Eastern SFF: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/128ozc6/the_2023_r...

* Set in Africa: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ttrhvf/the_2022_rf...

* Set in Asia: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/mhz3k7/the_2021_rf...

edanm
Fonda Lee is Canadian-American. Definitely Western, though not a western white man. The setting of the books themselves are non-Western, though.

So I'm not sure she strictly fits the question.

That said, I adore The Green Bone Saga so I highly recommend reading it in any case :)