5 ms·
Ask HN: Sci-fi recommendations by non-western authors?
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.
- specproc 2y agoNot sure if quite sci fi, certainly not in the Three Body Problem vein, but Viktor Pelevin is mind-bending stuff. Dark, funny and quite unique. Well, some debt to Kafka, TBF. Another Russian bonus, this 2014 short story[0] by Kremlin-insider Vladislav Surkhov[1] is, well, give it a read, a well spent five minutes. Make of it what you will. [0] http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue582/without_sky.html http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue582/without_sky.html [1] https://londonpolitica.com/europe-watch-blog-list/vladislav-surkov https://londonpolitica.com/europe-watch-blog-list/vladislav-...
- throwaway81523 2y agoDoes Somtow Sucharitkul count? He is Thai but went to university in England and spent a lot of time working and writing in the US. He is back in Thailand now (https://www.somtow.com/ https://www.somtow.com/).
- muyanapar 2y agoSaturnina from time to time - Alison Spedding - Amazing Bolivian Sci-fi
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- basementcat 2y agoBinti by Nnedi Okorafor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binti_(novella) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binti_(novella)
- roughly 2y agoNnedi’s whole catalogue is great.
- solardev 2y agoTed Chiang is American but not white... you've probably heard of him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang
- davewasthere 2y agoHiroshi 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 2y agoIt 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 2y agoI 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__ 2y agoHard 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 2y agoKatsuhiro Otomo, Akira [japanese, manga, psychics, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo]
- Loughla 2y agoTokyo really gets screwed over in the monster and disaster world.
- jknoepfler 2y agoIf you're up for manga, I'd consider giving BLAME! a shot. It's... wild.
- protocolture 2y agoI never know what people mean by western, heres some stuff I like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) - Written by a Russian. Allegedly inspired Orwell. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5450488.Bryn_Hammond 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaro Charles Saunders Imaro is one of my top all time reads.
- elric 2y ago> 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 2y agoStanisław Lem is great, if Polish counts as non-Western. I'd especially recommend Cyberiada and Summa Technologiae.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoI 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.
- k1musab1 2y agoI 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.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu worth looking into as well.
- yakime 2y agoRoadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a truly mind-bending work.
- jknoepfler 2y agoThe movie inspired by Roadside Picnic (Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker) is one of my all-time favorites.
- golergka 2y agoExactly 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 2y agoThe Doomed City is also great. Tried to read Noon and it was too unfocused for me.
- agarren 2y agoI 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 2y agoRoadsise 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 2y agoI'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 2y agoPoland 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoIs Poland non-western? This book is certainly unlike anything else I’ve read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)
- saulrh 2y agoOther 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 2y agoAny 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 https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/13468/paladin [2] https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/30848/burning-stars-falling-skies https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/30848/burning-stars-fallin...
- saulrh 2y agoSo, 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 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/ 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 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 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-fantasy-divided-loyalties-an-advisors-quest.44838/ 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/1009910/1-two-worlds 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-fusilier-in-the-farthest-reaches.73927/ https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lieutenant-fus...): Lesbian war robot questions her purpose while coping with the fact that the humans keep themselves busy in the post-scarcity space-future by cosplaying as victorian english nobles. * The Commonweal, starting with The March North, by Graydon Saunders (https://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-my-books.html https://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-m...): How to build a good place to live when physics hates you and every other polity is an expansionist totalitarian sorcerer-kingdom, featuring radical egalitarianism, military ethics, and eldritch spider granny weatherwax. The least amateur thing here, but I'm pretty sure still traditionally unpublishable - the text is aggressively dense and elliptical.
- TheAceOfHearts 2y agoLots of anime and manga are adaptations of light novels. The first one that came to mind was Haruhi Suzumiya.
- trescenzi 2y agoI’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) 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Robber
- jodrellblank 2y agoCat 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 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 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_Fiction_in_English 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 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/african_scifi_or_fantasy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/11zngrs/afr...
- picklebarrel 2y agoVagabonds 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.
- hedora 2y agoHere’s a good first cut: https://escapepod.org/people/s-b-divya/ https://escapepod.org/people/s-b-divya/ Escape Pod had a strong Indian and other overseas author bend under SB Divya’s editorship. Not everything she hosted was non-western, but much was. I’ll also throw in The Quiltbag by Ashok K Banker. Lightspeed runs plenty of foreign authors: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-quiltbag/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-quiltbag/
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- ahazred8ta 2y agoBangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_science_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_science_fiction
- Frotag 2y agoLast and First idol is a parody of otaku (Japanese) culture. https://j-novel.club/series/last-and-first-idol 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.
- bergundytomato 2y agoI highly recommend Vandana Singh's works, particularly "Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Singh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Singh
- leejoramo 2y agoThe 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/african-sci-... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/creating-hin https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/creating-hin... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/octavia-butl https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/octavia-butl... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/postcolonial https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/postcolonial...
- tinkertrain 2y agoI 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 2y ago(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 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) 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 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
- yanko 2y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Selfie-Hir-Dulo-ebook/dp/B0CVWYYJXJ https://www.amazon.com/Selfie-Hir-Dulo-ebook/dp/B0CVWYYJXJ
- asicsp 2y ago* "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_rfantasy_bingo_recommendations_list/jejmn2q/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/128ozc6/the_2023_r... * Set in Africa: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ttrhvf/the_2022_rfantasy_bingo_recommendations_list/i2zhxm6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ttrhvf/the_2022_rf... * Set in Asia: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/mhz3k7/the_2021_rfantasy_bingo_recommendations_list/gt1ozca/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/mhz3k7/the_2021_rf...
- edanm 2y agoFonda 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 :)
- harry_ord 2y agoNot sure if they count but the novelisation of Mobile suit Gundam https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Suit-Gundam-Escalation-Confrontation/dp/1611720052 https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Suit-Gundam-Escalation-Confron... Yukikaze and Good luck Yukikaze by Chōhei Kambayashi it ends on a cliffhanger though since the later books did not get translated. https://www.amazon.com/Yukikaze-Chohei-Kambayashi/dp/1421532557 https://www.amazon.com/Yukikaze-Chohei-Kambayashi/dp/1421532...
- __rito__ 2y agoI read Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh few years back. It's kind of magical. It deals with the invention of discovery of the method of transmission of malaria by Ronald Ross. The novel is set in late-1800s Calcutta. There is science, conspiracy, and local occult involved in the story. It is one of the most unique SciFi I have ever read. And Ghosh is not a SciFi writer.
- __rito__ 2y ago> It deals with the invention of discovery of Should be "It deals with the discovery of..."
- CMCDragonkai 2y agoLike most of sci-fi anime/manga counts right?
- elric 2y agoI guess it would, though I've read so much of it that it's become mainstream in my mind.
- roughly 2y agoSo, taking the spirit of the question - authors with unique perspectives - if you haven’t read anything by Ursula Le Guin, you really owe it to yourself to do so. For work that explicitly draws on other cultural backgrounds, Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James is fantastic, and someone else mentioned Nnedi Okorafor, whose whole catalog is great. Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series is also worth a read.
- ratg13 2y agoKlara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro Written a few years ago from the perspective of an AI child companion.
- soco 2y agoYoon Ha Lee "Conservation of shadows". Korean-American, I can't get all their folklore references in this collection of (SF/fantasy) stories but I see an otherworldly Calvino touch in it. Or, Xia Jia - start with "The spirit of the fox" for a huli jing shapeshifter in a steampunk world.