Don’t really know how to explain this. I like sci fi and would love to dig deeper into it. Am avid reader and enjoyed Project Hail Mary (though set in space, this book is just amazing), Dune, short stories by Ray Bradbury and TV shows like Raised by the Wolves, Westworld, From (love From!). But e.g. Foundation I really disliked. Wheel of time is massive and I lost interest. Even the guide through galaxy I appreciated but was not really into it. Somehow, all those lots of traveling, lots of worlds, lots of many novel/invented names and terms render reading laborious for me.
Can you help me pin what is that I like and perhaps offer me a suggestion where to start? Thanks!
EDIT: thanks everyone for your excellent suggestions! So happy to be a part of lemmy community. I might make a follow up thread in couple of months so we can discuss some of the works. And lastly, if you been reading this far: have a good weekend.
Ursula K. Le Guin is an example of a writer that does deep but focused worldbuilding. Her sci-fi books tend to be about a single planet, sometimes two like in The Dispossesed. You could try that one or even better start with The Left Hand of Darkness. I like how she sets up various unusual alien factors (geopolitics, biology, society, natural environments) and lets them interplay but also without forgetting a plot.
She keeps popping up so I think I really have to check her out. :)
Try some cyberpunk stuff, it’s great “local” sci-fi, with hardly any of that muck you don’t like.
“Neuromancer” - William Gibson
“Snow Crash” - Neal Stephenson
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” - Philip K DickWhy is it always those 3? Is there no other cyberpunk books people read? They are very heavy reads. Heres a few “mediocre” cyberpunk books I found entertaining, everyone takes place on earth:
- “A cyberpunk saga” by Matthew Goodwin, if you prefer teamwork and strong friendship. And a VERY stereotypical cyberpunk world.
- “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez, a techno triller, if you enjoy overly “smart” villains who think multiple moves ahead.
- “Immortality Upload” by Patrick Fell, if you like MMOs and VR.
- “Neo Cyberpunk”, a genre anthology book. Multiple short stories. I found Matthew Goodwins books because I enjoyed his short story.
I just read Nexus, which is called post cyberpunk.
I assume its this one by Ramez Naam? Looks cool.
Yes, that’s it
It’s really good, especially if you like technothrillers.
Even better, The Big Book of Cyberpunk comes out next month.
Cool! Thanks for the tip, choomba!
I suggest Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The whole series is good but each is stand alone. There is a world and it’s in space but the stories are people scale.
Seconding Becky Chambers. Her books are more character driven, with lots of development and the plot advances around the characters.
I was hoping someone would mention this series!
How about The Expanse or The Martian? They’re both relatively hard sci-fi that focuses mostly on our own solar system.
The Martian tells the tale of a man stuck on Mars and his ability to survive on his own whilst those back on Earth figure out a way to get him back. Both the book and the film are great so you can’t go wrong with either.
The Expanse covers more of the local system. Earth and Mars are on the brink of war, whilst others live out near the asteroid belt, Jupiter and beyond. It goes a little sci-fi later on but it’s an inherently human story that has some great characters living in a time when space travel is still dangerous but achievable by humanity. It starts a little slow but ramps up brilliantly and has a nice conclusion that wraps everything up pretty neatly. You’ve got 9+ books, a 6 season TV series on Amazon Prime, and a newly released TellTale video game, all of which are well produced and worth investing time in.
The Martian I am saving as one of those cannot go wrong books, in case i ever run into reading blockage. But Expanse i didn’t check out. Will do now. Thanks
Dune is an example of massive world-building with a tons of jargon, but you still liked it? It seems that this post is saying you don’t like books like Dune, so how did you manage to enjoy it?
Dan_Simmons : ( Hyperion ) Also has world building nothing crazy. Involves multiple timelines. But written as a space opera. Think ( The Canterbury Tales )
Maybe take a look at post apocalyptic sci Fi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction), as it includes a lot of interesting futuristic tech, but it is mostly limited to earth. There’s probably another category where things like blade runner fit too
Hey thanks for this, excellent resource! (Cozy catastrophe is def my new favorite genre name)
If that’s the case, try The Road.
Just finished it a week ago. That prose… From another planet.
He’s so good. Too good - reading Blood Meridian was like having my face dragged across fresh gravel, but in a good way, somehow?
I Thoroughly enjoyed The Dispossessed by Ursle leGuin. Just enough world building to destroy it all in the narrative.
You also listed fantasy, so I’d like to recommend N.K. Jemisin. She won the Hugo award for a novel 3 years in a row for her first 3 books, and has I think 2 more? So 5 Hugo’s on 7 years?
Those three books are called the Broken Earth trilogy, starting with The Fifth Season, and it’s probably my favourite trilogy. (Not correcting, just adding detail so they are easier to find). The magic system here always feels very specific and ‘grounded’ (heh), so it doesn’t feel like the fluffy magic of more “high fantasy”, and maybe connects more with sci-fi sensibilities? Anyway, i agree that it’s excellent.
OP could also look at Ursula Le Guin. The Earthsea books are amazing, very low-key and character focused. More in the fantasy space too though, but so is Dune pretty much. She also has Left Hand of Darkness, which was great and more on the sci-fi side (no actual space travel or other planets, aside from references), particularly if they have any interest in a kind of meditation on cultural differences and gender.
I’m really enjoying the Wool Trilogy my Hugh Howey. It’s maybe more dystopia than sci-fi but in the same vein for sure.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Yes, or for something I enjoyed much more, Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
A great book, but it certainly includes a lot of invented vocabulary to deal with, and the reader is expected to just roll with it and sort the vocabulary out on their own.
This is such a good recommendation really, I have to elaborate why: I love The Stand (rebuilding the society), Heart is a Lonely hunter (american southwest) and 1000 years of solitude (story that spans across number of generations). So thanks!
Guant’s Ghosts - Dan Abnett
it’s warhammer 40k but it doesnt really focus on space too much, other than they always travel through space to get from one battlefield to the next. lots of mud & blood trench warfare.
Love this series. Very episodic, self contained but also with the contuation of character arcs and themes over novels. Good pick.
Oh there’s just so many. A favorite of mine is Replay by Ken Grimwood. It’s a kind of a time travel book, but different from most, and a lot of fun - written in 1986, so not new. Broad plot is that the main character, a middle aged man, dies on the first page and wakes up back in college, back in the 50s, I believe. It gets more interesting from there.
You might enjoy the Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, which is a series that starts with All Systems Red. The first couple are novellas, and the first one was published in 2017, so much more recent. They won a lot of awards. It takes place in an unspecified time in the future, told from the perspective of a cyborg of sorts who is a security bot who has hacked his control unit and doesn’t have to do what he’s told, but he doesn’t want people to know that so he can watch soap operas when he can. He’s guarding a small group on an alien planet when things get weird.
I’ll recommend one other, very different: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. I believe that was 2007. It’s told from the perspective of a guy in near earth future who had late stage Alzheimer’s but was given a cure, so is slowly getting back his mental function. Wearable computers are ubiquitous at the time. Also a big award winner.
I hope you find something you like.
Murderbot is good
Agreed!
Omg this comment is so beautiful. Thank you so much! I think I am going to start with your first option, just got it on kindle (I am a total sucker for time/dimension travels, from 11/22/63 (one of my all time favorites) to Time Traveler’s wife to Blake Crouch).
Please, please write back and let me/us know what you think!
Hey I just finished the Replay and came to thank you again for mentioning it. Such an amazing book, absolutely one of my best reads so far. Cannot believe it is not more popular. Not only the plot got me, but also the way it was written, so… Human and intelligent. Also there is often quite some interesting info and emotional maturity in the dialogs, and yet they never felt forced, as those well-thought-through-exchanges sometimes tend to be. Just excellent. But gotta say: for once, for freaking once, the main character of time travel invests in stocks. I mean, come on, finally!
Anyways, you literally nailed it with recommending me this one. Will also look up now the other two from the list. Thanks again!
Oh, great! I’m so glad you liked it. I really appreciate your coming back to let me know. Like you, I’m not sure why it isn’t more widely known - it’s such a fun read.
I have a friend who was a reviewer for a major science fiction magazine back in the day. When I was going through a bad time and needed some escapism, he’d take me to the bookstore and pick things he thought I’d like; Replay was one of those. I’m so glad to be able to point someone else to it.
So I’ll make this recommendation a little more hesitantly. There’s another time travel book I really like - one that is is more well known - The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. It’s really great and really well written, but it’s also… very, very strange. It’s the kind of time travel where, if you go back a little, then there are two of you at that point. The character does some odd things. One to consider.
Let me know what you think of the others!
I recently finished The Psychology of Time Travel, not sure if you’ve read it, but it was really good and interesting! And totally unique
Isaac Asimov: ( The Caves of Steel ) Next books in the series involve space travel. But nothing large the world building is very limited. All short reads. Was written in the 50s keep that in mind with some of the language.
Check out The Greg Mandel trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. A lot of sci-fi, not focused on space travel.
I also love his large Commonwealth universe with several trilogies and novels in it that can be read independently, but these are definitely space based. I would start with the Void Trilogy. It is defined as a space opera. There are just so many cool sci-fi concepts though :)
