9 ms·

My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

145 points by bwb 1y ago

bwb 1y ago
Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)
- auntienomen 1y ago
  Little, Big by John Crowley. Also everything else he's written.
  - mwigdahl 1y ago
    Seconded!
  - themadturk 1y ago
    "Little, Big" is one of what I consider my "foundational" books. I've never been able to get into any of his other stuff.
- cheela 1y ago
  Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake: https://mdpub.github.io/cheela/ https://mdpub.github.io/cheela/
- andyjohnson0 1y ago
  > And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :) Permutation City is his best-known work, and while some people (including me) enjoy the density of ideas, others find the characterisation weak. I'd start with one of his short story collections, such as Luminous.
  - georgefrowny 1y ago
    Second the short stories. Axiomatic has some great ones too with concepts that really stuck with me. And if you like that, Phase Space by Stephen Baxter feels very similar.
- notpachet 1y ago
  The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. It's become my go-to recommendation for anyone I know that likes to read. Most people I've recommended it to have ended up buying all four books.
  - notpachet 1y ago
    Also: a little more widely known, but the Black Company series by Glen Cook.
    - iamacyborg 1y ago
      Midworld Press have started putting out some really nice signed editions of these which has made me quite happy.
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  For modern sci fi and fantasy, pretty much anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I also just discovered the short story collections of Rich Larson (Changelog and Tomorrow Factory are both recommended) Just published as well is There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm. You can read the original on SCP [1], but it's now out in book form. [1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
  - thirtygeo 1y ago
    There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm is a great read
- n4r9 1y ago
  For cult sci fi classics you can't get much better than "Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Other goodies include Dune (of course), Gateway, and The Forever War. I also recently read Speaker For The Dead (sequel to Enders Game) and was pleasantly surprised. Possibly better than the original. A sibling comment mentions Tchaikovsky which I strongly concur with.
  - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
    > Possibly better than the original. IIRC this was the first book in the universe that the author wrote, but publishers insisted it was a bit heavy, so he wrote Ender's Game as an easier entry into the universe. On the topic of Ender's universe, the whole Ender's Shadow thread is also a great read. The first book is covering some of the same events but from the perspective of Bean.
- I-M-S 1y ago
  Ted Chiang is often regarded as the best sci-fi author of our times.
  - stoneman24 1y ago
    Wouldn’t say best but he is certainly world class for his short stories. While the film “Arrival” was excellent, it was based on his short story “Story of your life” which was even better.
    - auntienomen 1y ago
      The Ted Sturgeon of our era.
    - themadturk 1y ago
      "The Story Of Your Life" is a real mind-bender.
- a_bonobo 1y ago
  I love Stanislaw Lem. Solaris is his most famous and it has many of his core themes; I'd also try Fiasco. I'm also a huge fan of R.A. Lafferty, but his stuff his harder to find, mostly out of print. Peter Watts' Blindsight is amazing recent-ish hard SF. (the follow-up, I did not like at all). Anything from the Strugatsky brothers you can get your hands on!
  - franczesko 1y ago
    Solaris is such a unique concept. From Polish authors I've really enjoyed Limes Inferior by J. Zajdel. The concept of means of payment spoke to me, when I had my own wondering about workless future and digital currencies.
  - raddan 1y ago
    I also love Solaris. I remember reading it the first time as a teenager. It is so matter-of-fact in its telling, but the facts are so bizarre, that I found it to really induce terror. It has always struck me as more of a horror novel than as a sci-fi novel although it is clearly the latter. There are now multiple English translations of Solaris available. I know that there’s been a lot of praise for the newer translation, and I read it, but I do not like it. Something about the earlier translation feels more ominous. On that note—I’ve always found it hard to believe that The Cyberiad was written by the same author! I love the Cyberiad as well but almost for the opposite reasons I love Solaris. The entire universe is charming and funny, whereas Solaris is engrossing but dreadful. I went through a phase in college, reading every Lem book I could find, and eventually discovering that my library’s stacks also included Lem in Polish. Sadly I know no Polish, and was not motivated enough to learn it, so those novels remained off-limits to me.
    - a_bonobo 1y ago
      I grew up in Germany, and there are more German translations of Lem than there are English translations - some 'first' English translations are very recent (last 10 years? Like Summae Technologicae?). I've always had a hypothesis that German geeks are more constrained and worried about the impacts of tech because we grew up with Lem, while American geeks grew up with Heinlein. VERY different views of the world.
- 0xEF 1y ago
  What's aspects of sci-fi or fantasy draw you? I personally go for the weirder sci-fi that seemed to come out of the imaginative (and, well, drug-fueled, probably) 60's and 70's, so my recommendations tend to come from that. Dune by Frank Herbert - I'll get the obvious one out of the way. Everyone needs to read at least the first book. The world-building is a commentary on our own and none of the movies, series or games will every really capture the books in their entirety. There is just so much more to Dune than the barely-below-the-surface treatments we get with film because they have to appeal to a mass audience that tends to have the relative intelligence of my left shoe. Candy Man by Vincent King - take PKD's Electric Sheep question of what makes a human a human, then explore the answer in a far-flung future that ends up being a bit of a nightmare circus. Great world-building, here, but King reveals in slow morsels that leave us with questions and fuel turning the page. While his other works are not really that prolific, he hit the nail on the head with this one, bringing some dialect playfulness to the writing that just adds to the immersion. It's a haunting world, unsure of why it exists due to short memories and withholding of information, and unintentionally hints at the modern day disquiet of man as we race toward whatever Singularity we have accidentally or intentionally created. Colossus by D. F. Jones - a bit like Wargames but more swanky, the US and Russia each create artificial super-intelligence then let them talk to each other, which goes about as well as you can imagine. The story hints at the notion that as soon as politics gets involved with science, things tend to get really cocked up, resulting in hostile takeovers, or worse, annihilation. It's a short read, and should be on the to-do list of anyone experiencing existential dread over the AI race today. A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller - everyone needs a bit of post-apocalypsia now and then and I always recommend this one to get your fix. Here's an extreme treatment of what happens when anti-intellectualism becomes the modus operendi as we are thrust into a harsh and desolate world brought about by global nuclear war, roaming mobs blaming science (rather that politics, as Simpletons will do) for getting humanity into the mess it's in, going so far as to forbid pretty much any book-learning or education beyond the church. As artifacts from the past (our present, more or less) are uncovered, things get a bit hectic. I'm also happy to take any recommendations, enjoying other authors like Stanislaw Lem, John Brunner, Robert Heinlein, Vonnegut, Jack Vance, etc. Reading books is probably one of the few things in my life that makes me feel a little less alone.
- beardedetim 1y ago
  I've become a huge fan of A.E. van Vogt and have been slowly collecting all of his pulp books.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  I'm into Neal Stephenson and PKD. Currently reading Nexus by Naam. Near-future post-cyberpunk tends to be a hit for me, but I'm hoping to find a good space opera. I thought the first Culture book was basically a Schwarzenegger space-adventurism movie in book form, which is nice but not what I wanted.
  - tessellated 1y ago
    I also didn't like Consider Phlebas. Space Opera's not really my genre but I enjoyed Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton some years ago. Read by myself and the rest in audiobook read by boring John Lee walking the dog. But I finished it and several conceptes have stayed with me since.
- logicalshift 1y ago
  Had a look at my bookshelf to see what I could find that was obscure, maybe these would be interesting: First Contract (Greg Costikyan) - a book about the economics of first contact John Courtney Grimwood (author) - science fiction, generally cyberpunk, told from the point of view of characters who don't understand the tehcnology, which gives his work a kind of mystic vibe. (Eg, Nine-tail fox is about a detective trying to solve his own murder) Footfall (Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle) - was a big release back in the day, but not so well known these days. Hard SF alien invasion novel (Independence Day might have ripped this off a bit) The NASA trilogy (Stephen Baxter) - dark alternative future books, with bleak endings but great science. I think not so well known these days because of the bleakness, but that's also part of what made them memorable when I read them.
- OisinMoran 1y ago
  The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke is one of my favourites and have only ever met one other person who has read it. Just reread it recently and it's even better and more relevant than I remembered. The 1950s was a particularly good time for sci fi I think.
- wmil 1y ago
  In the spirit of brining down the level of intellectual sophistication here, I have a few recommendations I've enjoyed. - All 18 Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson - The first 5 Starship's Mage books by Glynn Stewart. UnArcana Stars (book 6) went in a direction that made the government look extremely incompetent. - Jacques McKeown series by Yahtzee Croshaw - Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor
- tetris11 1y ago
  To quote an earlier comment of mine > Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series. > Culture, gender identity, hive mind, all rolled up into one extremely dense universe with a rich history told through warfare and cutting remarks, humanising potentially inhuman central characters with a vague number of limbs. > It takes ten pages to get used to the dense yet clipped writing style, but once it clicks, you cannot put the book(s) down: the plot moves forward at breakneck speed.
- sorokod 1y ago
  River of Gods by Ian McDonald Indian politics 100 years following independence, forbidden AIs that pass a predefined threshold and policemen that chase them, individuals who have all their gender indicators surgically removed ... An amazingly saturated piece of writing
- Frotag 1y ago
  I usually care more about the ideas than characters / prose and the recs below kinda reflect that. Anyways, in no particular order ... - Adiamante by Modesitt (1996), pacifist environmentalists vs cyberpunk warmongers. It's a lot of philosophy and a bit preachy at that but the world building was pretty thorough. - Last and First Idol by Gengen Kusano (2018). Similar to Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, it parodies various aspects of Japanese culture over a period of eons. (It's a set of three ~70pg stories). - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky (2010). Parody where the main character investigates how to exploit magic. Kind of like xkcd / what-if but in the Harry Potter universe. Author is controversial and the story's pompous /r/iamverysmart vibes can be offputting but I enjoyed it. Also want to second some of the other recs in this thread. - Greg Egan's stuff - There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm - Sequels to Enders Game and the Ender's Shadow spinoffs by Orson Scott Card. - Dragon's Egg and its sequel by Robert L. Forward.
- boznz 1y ago
  Bit of shameless self-promotion but I have just finished re-editing my 370,000 word sci-fi trilogy novel and have just released the eBook for free (https://rodyne.com/?p=1252 https://rodyne.com/?p=1252) - the length shouldn't be a problem if you like Peter Hamilton :-)
- frm88 1y ago
  On A Red Station Drifting - Aliette de Bodard: a wild mixture of a station, run by a failing AI and strict Vietnamese behavioural rules. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel, plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven Nine Fox Gambit: Yoon Ha Lee: disgraced officer of space fleet must capture fortress protected by complex mathematics. Theatre of the Gods and Hunters and Collectors by Matt Suddain. Both defy a one line plot description, look them up. Theatre was one of the best books I have ever read. This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal el Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Two opposing generals mess with time to gain a personal meeting. Sea of Rust - C. Robert Cargill: the story of a scavenger robot
- zem 1y ago
  "an alien light" (nancy kress) and "windhaven" (lisa tuttle and george martin) are two underrated gems. windhaven has long been my go-to recommendation for sf/f fans looking for good books they might not have encountered; the nancy kress is a more recent discovery, one of her early books that i feel has quite undeservedly not gotten as popular as some of her later stuff.
- robotguy 1y ago
  For anyone (like me) who likes their sci-fi fun and a bit cheesy I have a few recs: Dream Park - Larry Niven & Steven Barnes: A group of pretend adventurers suit up for a campaign called "The South Seas Treasure Game." As in the early Role Playing Games, there are Dungeon Masters, warriors, magicians, and thieves. The difference? At Dream Park, a futuristic fantasy theme park full of holographic attractions and the latest in VR technology, they play in an artificial enclosure that has been enhanced with special effects, holograms, actors, and a clever storyline. The players get as close as possible to truly living their adventure. All's fun and games until a Park security guard is murdered, a valuable research property is stolen, and all evidence points to someone inside the game. The park's head of security, Alex Griffin, joins the game to find the killer, but finds new meaning in the games he helps keep alive. The Long Run - Daniel Keys Moran: Years after the massacre of the Castanaveras genies, Peaceforcer Elite Commander Mohammed Vance still searches for the survivors. Now the gene-altered children have come of age. Denice – the world’s most powerful telepath – and Trent the Uncatchable – hacker, thief, and revolutionary – are about to come out of hiding. The world will never be the same. (It's book 2 in the series, but I'd recommend this as a stand-alone, or starting here.)
ifh-hn 1y ago
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Amorymeltzer 1y ago
Of these I've only read The Worm Ouroboros, and I cannot recommend it enough. The structure is a bit weird at first—you gotta get past the first chapter—but after that it settles and is astounding. If you have any passing interest in Lord of the Rings, you'll likely love it.
bondarchuk 1y ago
I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?
- croes 1y ago
  Because they need a place for Star Wars, best known fantasy in space
- rapind 1y ago
  I think because a lot of sci-fi dips it’s toes in fantasy. Once you invent FTL it’s not much further to a medieval era species of telepathic dogs. I’m with you though.
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  Of course there is a significant overlap in readers of both genres. I am mostly the same as you though, I rarely read fantasy. Always annoys me having to wade through fantasy to find the sci fi on bookshop shelves. At least you can filter to just sci fi for ebooks mostly.
- pointlessone 1y ago
  It’s not people, it’s publishers insist on it.
- nsavage 1y ago
  Bookstores like to make things easy for themselves by defining categories (a la Seeing Like A State), especially due to the perceived overlap between the readership of the two categories as the weird books the nerdy guys read. While that may have been true historically, fantasy has a new, blossoming, largely female readership, although you could consider this to be overloading the term 'fantasy' as these new BookTok books seem to have little in common with the old school sword and sorcery.
- mritchie712 1y ago
  I'm with you. My favorite sci-fi is something like Project Hail Mary, which is radically different from fantasy.
tetris11 1y ago
John C Wright wrote a nice short story set in William Hope Hodgson's "The Night Land" Awake in the Night https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightawake.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenig... In the side panels are users/readers who drew up their own maps on what they think the Nightscape is. It has all the romantic mystery of a fantasy tale, whilst still being firmly grounded in reality. I remember when London's Shard was going up, and I'd see it lit up slightly at night, glowing and ominous and thinking, "this is it: this is the last holdout of humanity."
- jerf 1y ago
  It's four stories in the complete set: https://a.co/d/gEdBkYR https://a.co/d/gEdBkYR Wright also has an extended paen to the mentioned Voyage to Arcturus: https://a.co/d/hubUM05 https://a.co/d/hubUM05 which neither I, nor the author, recommend unless you have read and deeply love Voyage to Arcturus, but I mention it because the overlap reading this list was quite uncanny. That is a very, very specific point of overlap. Should the original author ever read this thread I highly recommend Wright to them because of the overlap.
  - tetris11 1y ago
    > Voyage to Arcturus The blurb reads like a Gene Wolf story, surreal in its landscapes and interactions. I will give it a try, and follow up with Wright's book. Thanks for the recommendation!
donkey_brains 1y ago
Am I missing something, or is “Love And Chocolate” a romance novel that was included as a joke? Seems pretty incongruous in this list.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- tempacct2cmmnt 1y ago
  You may have overlooked the small blue bar at the top labeling it an ad.
- cubefox 1y ago
  My version of the website doesn't mention "Love And Chocolate" anywhere?!
ReptileMan 1y ago
One of the effects of passing of time is that even some of the greats of yore are now obscure and cultish. Like the whole golden age I have met very few people under 50 that have read the early Schekley short stories. That are probably one of the sci fi peaks. But in cult and unknown works - Ticket to tranai. One of the best (anti) utopias written.
freetonik 1y ago
I'd like to recommend one as well: The City & the City, by China Miéville. A delightful, unique experience! Fresh and original, “fantasy science fiction”. Not a big fan of detective stories and noir, but this is something else.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  Liked it though preferred Embassytown. Hated PSS.
- flanbiscuit 1y ago
  I loved Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Haven't read this one but I'm adding it to my list now. Thanks!
- georgefrowny 1y ago
  I found Railsea really fun. It's a bit silly and didn't take itself very seriously. Somehow it feels like it could have been a novelisation of a British 1960/70s stop motion TV show like the Clangers.
- shawn_w 1y ago
  I think of TC&TC as sociological science fiction.
xeonax 1y ago
I would like to recommend The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba. You won't read anything else for years.
auntienomen 1y ago
If you like these books -- early classics of the genres -- it's going to be well worth your time to check out Fantasy Masterworks collection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks). It's a set of reissued sci-fi and fantasy novels, chosen by the British publisher Millennium for their quality and influence on later writers. 3/5 of the books in the linked article are included. It's not perfect-- it's missing War for the Oaks, for example, and doesn't have any Iain M Banks. But there's an awful lot of good material in there.
- noir_lord 1y ago
  Missing Iain M Banks is a weird omission indeed - perhaps they couldn't get the reprint rights.
  - georgefrowny 1y ago
    Both Gollancz (SF Masterworks) and Orbit (most Banks books) are ultimately owned by Lagardère/Hachette. Presumably they could wrangle the rights if they really wanted. I suppose they just don't see any need to republish Banks books, most of which are quite recent, continue to be popular and are mostly still in print under Orbit as part of an already unified series.
    - noir_lord 1y ago
      Perhaps but if adding it to the list costs them little then to do a print run I don't get why they wouldn't and just have two printings concurrently, if they did say Consider Phlebas with the first edition cover I'd pick up a second copy just for that cover. Though I'm carefully not going to look on AbeBooks to see what the first editions currently go for since I don't need to spend that kind of money (want to yes, need to no).
      - vidarh 1y ago
        What annoys me with SF Masterworks is that they changed the style (and checking now, it seems they might have changed it again from last time I bought any). I don't see any point in continue buying the series as opposed to individual versions if they're not going to stick to a cohesive style anyway. I might just finish buying the original numbered style (up to number 74 or something) But anyway, they've "only" published about 200 novels, mostly older, so it's not that weird that Banks hasn't been added yet. It makes sense if they focus on works that have not been republished as recently until they get through the many obvious candidates.
BiteCode_dev 1y ago
A E Van Vogt can hardly be called unheard of, the null A series is quite a cult classic. But yeah, the Space Beagle is not his most well-known work. It always surprises me (although it shouldn't) how many underrated gems there are still in the world. And new ones are produced every day. E.G: I still think QTMN will deserve a place as a classic sci-fi author among the great ones, for "there is no antimemetics division" alone. And yet despite a solid fan following, it has never exploded in popularity. It is 10 times better than the 3 body problems, which comparatively had stratospheric success. In movies, "Amelie" has been a planetary success, but from the same author, the excellent "The city of the lost children" is practically unknown. Even last month, a tv show named "Nero" came out on Netflix, and while not revolutionary, is clearly above most of the crap that regularly comes out. Yet, nobody talks about it. Popularity is a cruel mistress.
- MomsAVoxell 1y ago
  City Of the Lost Children is an absolute classic, good point. However, I think there’s something to be said - sci-fi people of the 70’s all knew AE Van Vogt. This list was, for me delightful, because it reminded me of books I once owned, long ago, indeed many in this list .. back when books were how you encountered these materials. Real books were how we read, back then. The need to know things has been radically compartmentalized by the mega-computer we’ve allowed to take over our planet, meanwhile, apropos cruel mistresses ..
idoubtit 1y ago
I've read 3 out of those 5 books, and I see our preferences differ. For instance, I've a few books from Van Vogt, and I can't imagine I could like anything he wrote. - "A voyage to Arcturus" tried hard at being strange and philosophical, but it seemed shallow and I did not feel interested. - "The worm Ouroboros" was better, with a very unusual epic style, both in writing style and in the story. But some points made me cringe, e.g. the focus on nobles and the despise of common people, even heroic characters. Then it got repetitive, with a final trick that felt like a mockery of the whole story. - "The dying Earth" was a good book, but it is far from my favorites. I prefer continuous novels to collections of short stories, even when they share a common setting. The book sometimes felt like a poetic tale, with nature and nostalgia as strong themes, though it was also quite brutal. Since anonymous suggestions aren't very useful without any context, I'll match little-known books with famous books: - If you thought that "1984" had good ideas, but also many stupid parts that spoiled the whole book, then try two older books. "We", by Zamiatin, is a bit old and naive but enjoyable. It was a source of inspiration for "Brave new world" and "1984". The Swede "Kollocain" (1940), by Karin Boye, is excellent, and much more subtle than the latter. - If you like collections of related short stories, like "The dying Earth", then "The carpet makers" (1995) by Andreas Eschbach is a must. I remember the joy when I finally had a global understanding of the whole situation. - If you wish for bizarre fantasy, not the epic Tolkien style, not even the dark saga of Ouroboros, but something more gothic and unsettling, then Mervyn Peake's "Titus groans" is perfect. - I think "Brain twister" (1961) is the only funny book I've read in SF-Fantasy-supernatural.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  "The Dying Earth" is an "important" book historically as it is the source inspiration for the early Dungeons and Dragons magic system (some of the spells are clearly copied from it). As an aside, I've had the good fortune to play in a few "Dying Earth" roleplaying campaigns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Earth_Roleplaying_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Earth_Roleplaying_Ga...) and it's one of the most fun RPGs as most of the gameplay revolves around one-upping everyone else and experience is awarded for using taglines appropriately rather than killing monsters etc.
aduwah 1y ago
So many lesser known modern books to recommend. Memoires of an imaginary friend Dogs of war (Adrian Tchaikovsky one) The devil's detective Red rising The painted man
- Lord-Jobo 1y ago
  As a more casual sci-fi reader I highly recommend Red Rising as a series. This first book is a very straightforward mashup of hunger games and Galica which is quite fun and enjoyable, but the series as a whole immediately creates it's own identify after that and I adore it deeply.
smitty1e 1y ago
+1 The Dying Earth Pretty much anything by Jack Vance is a win.
Raphell 1y ago
I really enjoy lists like this. These days, recommendation systems tend to push the most popular and addictive content, which makes it harder to stumble upon hidden gems. But I’ve found that older or more obscure novels often carry a different kind of imagination. They’re not following formulas and they’re not tied to movies or franchises. It feels like reading someone’s raw creative mind before it got polished or filtered. I’m also curious if anyone has a book that barely anyone talks about, but left a lasting impact on you. I’d love to add it to my list.
- zwilliamson 1y ago
  Agree. That is why when it comes to movies I still rent discs at a local video store. The owner, Colin, is the ultimate movie recommendation master. The algorithm just can’t compete. If you live in San Francisco, the store is called Video Wave.
- finalarbiter 1y ago
  Judging from your comment, you may find it intriguing to take a peek at the authors and books listed in Appendix N (Inspirational and Educational Reading[0]) from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). If you have any interest in the fantasy roleplaying sphere, this list should be all the more interesting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_N https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_N On your latter question, I don't see much discussion surrounding The Magus by John Fowles (1965), which is one of my favorite fiction novels of all time.
- dayjaby 1y ago
  I just read "THE MEMOIRS OF THE CONQUISTADOR BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO WRITTEN BY HIMSELF" It's not fiction but it feels like a time warp into a world unimaginable.
Ethan312 1y ago
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DigitalHookworm 1y ago
Blown / Image of The Beast by Philip Jose Farmer More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer Norstrillia by Cordwainer Smith
- frm88 1y ago
  Norstrilia I absultely second. Actually, all of Cordwainer Smith is worth a read, but stories set in The Instrumentality of Mankind certainly are. The culture novels by Iain M. Banks are also amazing, ship names in particular, but also themes. And then there is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or is this too recent) another fine example of exploring the absurdity of mankind. I often find that older works deal more with ideas and philosophy than the modern works, which tend to be more formulaic with some notable exceptions, like K. J. Parker and Adrian Tchaikovsky - there are less niche works - or so I feel.
d4rkp4ttern 1y ago
A couple books I'd put in this category: 1. Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers, loose basis of Tarkovsky's Stalker movie. 2. XX by Rian Hughes -- hugely under-rated book. Starts with a signal from outer space and goes quite far, and also has a book-within-a-book. Nearly 1000 pages but found it very engaging. Currently trying to read Stanlislaw Lem's His Master's Voice which has a similar theme of a possible signal from an alien intelligence.
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  I absolutely love Lem, and I just read Roadside Picnic this year. I had not heard of XX before - will have to check it out, thanks.
cindyllm 1y ago
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themadturk 1y ago
I'm familiar with all these titles. Three of them: The Worm Ouroborous, The Night Land, and A Voyage To Arcturus, were republished in the late '60s and early '70s in an effort to follow up on the popularity of LOTR. It took a few years for the modern fantasy market to ramp up, and books like these helped calm the hordes screaming for more. I never made it through any of them. I wish he'd mentioned the Gormenghast novels -- those I enjoyed, especially the first.

145 points by bwb 1y ago

bwb 1y ago

Anyone got some favs to share? I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)

auntienomen 1y ago
Little, Big by John Crowley. Also everything else he's written.
- mwigdahl 1y ago
  Seconded!
- themadturk 1y ago
  "Little, Big" is one of what I consider my "foundational" books. I've never been able to get into any of his other stuff.
cheela 1y ago
Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake: https://mdpub.github.io/cheela/ https://mdpub.github.io/cheela/
andyjohnson0 1y ago
> And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :) Permutation City is his best-known work, and while some people (including me) enjoy the density of ideas, others find the characterisation weak. I'd start with one of his short story collections, such as Luminous.
- georgefrowny 1y ago
  Second the short stories. Axiomatic has some great ones too with concepts that really stuck with me. And if you like that, Phase Space by Stephen Baxter feels very similar.
notpachet 1y ago
The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. It's become my go-to recommendation for anyone I know that likes to read. Most people I've recommended it to have ended up buying all four books.
- notpachet 1y ago
  Also: a little more widely known, but the Black Company series by Glen Cook.
  - iamacyborg 1y ago
    Midworld Press have started putting out some really nice signed editions of these which has made me quite happy.
MattPalmer1086 1y ago
For modern sci fi and fantasy, pretty much anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I also just discovered the short story collections of Rich Larson (Changelog and Tomorrow Factory are both recommended) Just published as well is There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm. You can read the original on SCP [1], but it's now out in book form. [1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
- thirtygeo 1y ago
  There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm is a great read
n4r9 1y ago
For cult sci fi classics you can't get much better than "Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Other goodies include Dune (of course), Gateway, and The Forever War. I also recently read Speaker For The Dead (sequel to Enders Game) and was pleasantly surprised. Possibly better than the original. A sibling comment mentions Tchaikovsky which I strongly concur with.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  > Possibly better than the original. IIRC this was the first book in the universe that the author wrote, but publishers insisted it was a bit heavy, so he wrote Ender's Game as an easier entry into the universe. On the topic of Ender's universe, the whole Ender's Shadow thread is also a great read. The first book is covering some of the same events but from the perspective of Bean.
I-M-S 1y ago
Ted Chiang is often regarded as the best sci-fi author of our times.
- stoneman24 1y ago
  Wouldn’t say best but he is certainly world class for his short stories. While the film “Arrival” was excellent, it was based on his short story “Story of your life” which was even better.
  - auntienomen 1y ago
    The Ted Sturgeon of our era.
  - themadturk 1y ago
    "The Story Of Your Life" is a real mind-bender.
a_bonobo 1y ago
I love Stanislaw Lem. Solaris is his most famous and it has many of his core themes; I'd also try Fiasco. I'm also a huge fan of R.A. Lafferty, but his stuff his harder to find, mostly out of print. Peter Watts' Blindsight is amazing recent-ish hard SF. (the follow-up, I did not like at all). Anything from the Strugatsky brothers you can get your hands on!
- franczesko 1y ago
  Solaris is such a unique concept. From Polish authors I've really enjoyed Limes Inferior by J. Zajdel. The concept of means of payment spoke to me, when I had my own wondering about workless future and digital currencies.
- raddan 1y ago
  I also love Solaris. I remember reading it the first time as a teenager. It is so matter-of-fact in its telling, but the facts are so bizarre, that I found it to really induce terror. It has always struck me as more of a horror novel than as a sci-fi novel although it is clearly the latter. There are now multiple English translations of Solaris available. I know that there’s been a lot of praise for the newer translation, and I read it, but I do not like it. Something about the earlier translation feels more ominous. On that note—I’ve always found it hard to believe that The Cyberiad was written by the same author! I love the Cyberiad as well but almost for the opposite reasons I love Solaris. The entire universe is charming and funny, whereas Solaris is engrossing but dreadful. I went through a phase in college, reading every Lem book I could find, and eventually discovering that my library’s stacks also included Lem in Polish. Sadly I know no Polish, and was not motivated enough to learn it, so those novels remained off-limits to me.
  - a_bonobo 1y ago
    I grew up in Germany, and there are more German translations of Lem than there are English translations - some 'first' English translations are very recent (last 10 years? Like Summae Technologicae?). I've always had a hypothesis that German geeks are more constrained and worried about the impacts of tech because we grew up with Lem, while American geeks grew up with Heinlein. VERY different views of the world.
0xEF 1y ago
What's aspects of sci-fi or fantasy draw you? I personally go for the weirder sci-fi that seemed to come out of the imaginative (and, well, drug-fueled, probably) 60's and 70's, so my recommendations tend to come from that. Dune by Frank Herbert - I'll get the obvious one out of the way. Everyone needs to read at least the first book. The world-building is a commentary on our own and none of the movies, series or games will every really capture the books in their entirety. There is just so much more to Dune than the barely-below-the-surface treatments we get with film because they have to appeal to a mass audience that tends to have the relative intelligence of my left shoe. Candy Man by Vincent King - take PKD's Electric Sheep question of what makes a human a human, then explore the answer in a far-flung future that ends up being a bit of a nightmare circus. Great world-building, here, but King reveals in slow morsels that leave us with questions and fuel turning the page. While his other works are not really that prolific, he hit the nail on the head with this one, bringing some dialect playfulness to the writing that just adds to the immersion. It's a haunting world, unsure of why it exists due to short memories and withholding of information, and unintentionally hints at the modern day disquiet of man as we race toward whatever Singularity we have accidentally or intentionally created. Colossus by D. F. Jones - a bit like Wargames but more swanky, the US and Russia each create artificial super-intelligence then let them talk to each other, which goes about as well as you can imagine. The story hints at the notion that as soon as politics gets involved with science, things tend to get really cocked up, resulting in hostile takeovers, or worse, annihilation. It's a short read, and should be on the to-do list of anyone experiencing existential dread over the AI race today. A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller - everyone needs a bit of post-apocalypsia now and then and I always recommend this one to get your fix. Here's an extreme treatment of what happens when anti-intellectualism becomes the modus operendi as we are thrust into a harsh and desolate world brought about by global nuclear war, roaming mobs blaming science (rather that politics, as Simpletons will do) for getting humanity into the mess it's in, going so far as to forbid pretty much any book-learning or education beyond the church. As artifacts from the past (our present, more or less) are uncovered, things get a bit hectic. I'm also happy to take any recommendations, enjoying other authors like Stanislaw Lem, John Brunner, Robert Heinlein, Vonnegut, Jack Vance, etc. Reading books is probably one of the few things in my life that makes me feel a little less alone.
beardedetim 1y ago
I've become a huge fan of A.E. van Vogt and have been slowly collecting all of his pulp books.
lanfeust6 1y ago
I'm into Neal Stephenson and PKD. Currently reading Nexus by Naam. Near-future post-cyberpunk tends to be a hit for me, but I'm hoping to find a good space opera. I thought the first Culture book was basically a Schwarzenegger space-adventurism movie in book form, which is nice but not what I wanted.
- tessellated 1y ago
  I also didn't like Consider Phlebas. Space Opera's not really my genre but I enjoyed Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton some years ago. Read by myself and the rest in audiobook read by boring John Lee walking the dog. But I finished it and several conceptes have stayed with me since.
logicalshift 1y ago
Had a look at my bookshelf to see what I could find that was obscure, maybe these would be interesting: First Contract (Greg Costikyan) - a book about the economics of first contact John Courtney Grimwood (author) - science fiction, generally cyberpunk, told from the point of view of characters who don't understand the tehcnology, which gives his work a kind of mystic vibe. (Eg, Nine-tail fox is about a detective trying to solve his own murder) Footfall (Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle) - was a big release back in the day, but not so well known these days. Hard SF alien invasion novel (Independence Day might have ripped this off a bit) The NASA trilogy (Stephen Baxter) - dark alternative future books, with bleak endings but great science. I think not so well known these days because of the bleakness, but that's also part of what made them memorable when I read them.
OisinMoran 1y ago
The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke is one of my favourites and have only ever met one other person who has read it. Just reread it recently and it's even better and more relevant than I remembered. The 1950s was a particularly good time for sci fi I think.
wmil 1y ago
In the spirit of brining down the level of intellectual sophistication here, I have a few recommendations I've enjoyed. - All 18 Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson - The first 5 Starship's Mage books by Glynn Stewart. UnArcana Stars (book 6) went in a direction that made the government look extremely incompetent. - Jacques McKeown series by Yahtzee Croshaw - Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor
tetris11 1y ago
To quote an earlier comment of mine > Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series. > Culture, gender identity, hive mind, all rolled up into one extremely dense universe with a rich history told through warfare and cutting remarks, humanising potentially inhuman central characters with a vague number of limbs. > It takes ten pages to get used to the dense yet clipped writing style, but once it clicks, you cannot put the book(s) down: the plot moves forward at breakneck speed.
sorokod 1y ago
River of Gods by Ian McDonald Indian politics 100 years following independence, forbidden AIs that pass a predefined threshold and policemen that chase them, individuals who have all their gender indicators surgically removed ... An amazingly saturated piece of writing
Frotag 1y ago
I usually care more about the ideas than characters / prose and the recs below kinda reflect that. Anyways, in no particular order ... - Adiamante by Modesitt (1996), pacifist environmentalists vs cyberpunk warmongers. It's a lot of philosophy and a bit preachy at that but the world building was pretty thorough. - Last and First Idol by Gengen Kusano (2018). Similar to Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, it parodies various aspects of Japanese culture over a period of eons. (It's a set of three ~70pg stories). - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky (2010). Parody where the main character investigates how to exploit magic. Kind of like xkcd / what-if but in the Harry Potter universe. Author is controversial and the story's pompous /r/iamverysmart vibes can be offputting but I enjoyed it. Also want to second some of the other recs in this thread. - Greg Egan's stuff - There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm - Sequels to Enders Game and the Ender's Shadow spinoffs by Orson Scott Card. - Dragon's Egg and its sequel by Robert L. Forward.
boznz 1y ago
Bit of shameless self-promotion but I have just finished re-editing my 370,000 word sci-fi trilogy novel and have just released the eBook for free (https://rodyne.com/?p=1252 https://rodyne.com/?p=1252) - the length shouldn't be a problem if you like Peter Hamilton :-)
frm88 1y ago
On A Red Station Drifting - Aliette de Bodard: a wild mixture of a station, run by a failing AI and strict Vietnamese behavioural rules. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel, plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven Nine Fox Gambit: Yoon Ha Lee: disgraced officer of space fleet must capture fortress protected by complex mathematics. Theatre of the Gods and Hunters and Collectors by Matt Suddain. Both defy a one line plot description, look them up. Theatre was one of the best books I have ever read. This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal el Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Two opposing generals mess with time to gain a personal meeting. Sea of Rust - C. Robert Cargill: the story of a scavenger robot
zem 1y ago
"an alien light" (nancy kress) and "windhaven" (lisa tuttle and george martin) are two underrated gems. windhaven has long been my go-to recommendation for sf/f fans looking for good books they might not have encountered; the nancy kress is a more recent discovery, one of her early books that i feel has quite undeservedly not gotten as popular as some of her later stuff.
robotguy 1y ago
For anyone (like me) who likes their sci-fi fun and a bit cheesy I have a few recs: Dream Park - Larry Niven & Steven Barnes: A group of pretend adventurers suit up for a campaign called "The South Seas Treasure Game." As in the early Role Playing Games, there are Dungeon Masters, warriors, magicians, and thieves. The difference? At Dream Park, a futuristic fantasy theme park full of holographic attractions and the latest in VR technology, they play in an artificial enclosure that has been enhanced with special effects, holograms, actors, and a clever storyline. The players get as close as possible to truly living their adventure. All's fun and games until a Park security guard is murdered, a valuable research property is stolen, and all evidence points to someone inside the game. The park's head of security, Alex Griffin, joins the game to find the killer, but finds new meaning in the games he helps keep alive. The Long Run - Daniel Keys Moran: Years after the massacre of the Castanaveras genies, Peaceforcer Elite Commander Mohammed Vance still searches for the survivors. Now the gene-altered children have come of age. Denice – the world’s most powerful telepath – and Trent the Uncatchable – hacker, thief, and revolutionary – are about to come out of hiding. The world will never be the same. (It's book 2 in the series, but I'd recommend this as a stand-alone, or starting here.)

ifh-hn 1y ago

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Amorymeltzer 1y ago

Of these I've only read The Worm Ouroboros, and I cannot recommend it enough. The structure is a bit weird at first—you gotta get past the first chapter—but after that it settles and is astounding. If you have any passing interest in Lord of the Rings, you'll likely love it.

bondarchuk 1y ago

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

croes 1y ago
Because they need a place for Star Wars, best known fantasy in space
rapind 1y ago
I think because a lot of sci-fi dips it’s toes in fantasy. Once you invent FTL it’s not much further to a medieval era species of telepathic dogs. I’m with you though.
MattPalmer1086 1y ago
Of course there is a significant overlap in readers of both genres. I am mostly the same as you though, I rarely read fantasy. Always annoys me having to wade through fantasy to find the sci fi on bookshop shelves. At least you can filter to just sci fi for ebooks mostly.
pointlessone 1y ago
It’s not people, it’s publishers insist on it.
nsavage 1y ago
Bookstores like to make things easy for themselves by defining categories (a la Seeing Like A State), especially due to the perceived overlap between the readership of the two categories as the weird books the nerdy guys read. While that may have been true historically, fantasy has a new, blossoming, largely female readership, although you could consider this to be overloading the term 'fantasy' as these new BookTok books seem to have little in common with the old school sword and sorcery.
mritchie712 1y ago
I'm with you. My favorite sci-fi is something like Project Hail Mary, which is radically different from fantasy.

tetris11 1y ago

John C Wright wrote a nice short story set in William Hope Hodgson's "The Night Land" Awake in the Night https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightawake.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenig... In the side panels are users/readers who drew up their own maps on what they think the Nightscape is. It has all the romantic mystery of a fantasy tale, whilst still being firmly grounded in reality. I remember when London's Shard was going up, and I'd see it lit up slightly at night, glowing and ominous and thinking, "this is it: this is the last holdout of humanity."

jerf 1y ago
It's four stories in the complete set: https://a.co/d/gEdBkYR https://a.co/d/gEdBkYR Wright also has an extended paen to the mentioned Voyage to Arcturus: https://a.co/d/hubUM05 https://a.co/d/hubUM05 which neither I, nor the author, recommend unless you have read and deeply love Voyage to Arcturus, but I mention it because the overlap reading this list was quite uncanny. That is a very, very specific point of overlap. Should the original author ever read this thread I highly recommend Wright to them because of the overlap.
- tetris11 1y ago
  > Voyage to Arcturus The blurb reads like a Gene Wolf story, surreal in its landscapes and interactions. I will give it a try, and follow up with Wright's book. Thanks for the recommendation!

donkey_brains 1y ago

Am I missing something, or is “Love And Chocolate” a romance novel that was included as a joke? Seems pretty incongruous in this list.

deleted 1y ago
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tempacct2cmmnt 1y ago
You may have overlooked the small blue bar at the top labeling it an ad.
cubefox 1y ago
My version of the website doesn't mention "Love And Chocolate" anywhere?!

ReptileMan 1y ago

One of the effects of passing of time is that even some of the greats of yore are now obscure and cultish. Like the whole golden age I have met very few people under 50 that have read the early Schekley short stories. That are probably one of the sci fi peaks. But in cult and unknown works - Ticket to tranai. One of the best (anti) utopias written.

freetonik 1y ago

I'd like to recommend one as well: The City & the City, by China Miéville. A delightful, unique experience! Fresh and original, “fantasy science fiction”. Not a big fan of detective stories and noir, but this is something else.

lanfeust6 1y ago
Liked it though preferred Embassytown. Hated PSS.
flanbiscuit 1y ago
I loved Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Haven't read this one but I'm adding it to my list now. Thanks!
georgefrowny 1y ago
I found Railsea really fun. It's a bit silly and didn't take itself very seriously. Somehow it feels like it could have been a novelisation of a British 1960/70s stop motion TV show like the Clangers.
shawn_w 1y ago
I think of TC&TC as sociological science fiction.

xeonax 1y ago

I would like to recommend The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba. You won't read anything else for years.

auntienomen 1y ago

If you like these books -- early classics of the genres -- it's going to be well worth your time to check out Fantasy Masterworks collection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks). It's a set of reissued sci-fi and fantasy novels, chosen by the British publisher Millennium for their quality and influence on later writers. 3/5 of the books in the linked article are included. It's not perfect-- it's missing War for the Oaks, for example, and doesn't have any Iain M Banks. But there's an awful lot of good material in there.

noir_lord 1y ago
Missing Iain M Banks is a weird omission indeed - perhaps they couldn't get the reprint rights.
- georgefrowny 1y ago
  Both Gollancz (SF Masterworks) and Orbit (most Banks books) are ultimately owned by Lagardère/Hachette. Presumably they could wrangle the rights if they really wanted. I suppose they just don't see any need to republish Banks books, most of which are quite recent, continue to be popular and are mostly still in print under Orbit as part of an already unified series.
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    Perhaps but if adding it to the list costs them little then to do a print run I don't get why they wouldn't and just have two printings concurrently, if they did say Consider Phlebas with the first edition cover I'd pick up a second copy just for that cover. Though I'm carefully not going to look on AbeBooks to see what the first editions currently go for since I don't need to spend that kind of money (want to yes, need to no).
    - vidarh 1y ago
      What annoys me with SF Masterworks is that they changed the style (and checking now, it seems they might have changed it again from last time I bought any). I don't see any point in continue buying the series as opposed to individual versions if they're not going to stick to a cohesive style anyway. I might just finish buying the original numbered style (up to number 74 or something) But anyway, they've "only" published about 200 novels, mostly older, so it's not that weird that Banks hasn't been added yet. It makes sense if they focus on works that have not been republished as recently until they get through the many obvious candidates.

BiteCode_dev 1y ago

A E Van Vogt can hardly be called unheard of, the null A series is quite a cult classic. But yeah, the Space Beagle is not his most well-known work. It always surprises me (although it shouldn't) how many underrated gems there are still in the world. And new ones are produced every day. E.G: I still think QTMN will deserve a place as a classic sci-fi author among the great ones, for "there is no antimemetics division" alone. And yet despite a solid fan following, it has never exploded in popularity. It is 10 times better than the 3 body problems, which comparatively had stratospheric success. In movies, "Amelie" has been a planetary success, but from the same author, the excellent "The city of the lost children" is practically unknown. Even last month, a tv show named "Nero" came out on Netflix, and while not revolutionary, is clearly above most of the crap that regularly comes out. Yet, nobody talks about it. Popularity is a cruel mistress.

MomsAVoxell 1y ago
City Of the Lost Children is an absolute classic, good point. However, I think there’s something to be said - sci-fi people of the 70’s all knew AE Van Vogt. This list was, for me delightful, because it reminded me of books I once owned, long ago, indeed many in this list .. back when books were how you encountered these materials. Real books were how we read, back then. The need to know things has been radically compartmentalized by the mega-computer we’ve allowed to take over our planet, meanwhile, apropos cruel mistresses ..

idoubtit 1y ago

I've read 3 out of those 5 books, and I see our preferences differ. For instance, I've a few books from Van Vogt, and I can't imagine I could like anything he wrote. - "A voyage to Arcturus" tried hard at being strange and philosophical, but it seemed shallow and I did not feel interested. - "The worm Ouroboros" was better, with a very unusual epic style, both in writing style and in the story. But some points made me cringe, e.g. the focus on nobles and the despise of common people, even heroic characters. Then it got repetitive, with a final trick that felt like a mockery of the whole story. - "The dying Earth" was a good book, but it is far from my favorites. I prefer continuous novels to collections of short stories, even when they share a common setting. The book sometimes felt like a poetic tale, with nature and nostalgia as strong themes, though it was also quite brutal. Since anonymous suggestions aren't very useful without any context, I'll match little-known books with famous books: - If you thought that "1984" had good ideas, but also many stupid parts that spoiled the whole book, then try two older books. "We", by Zamiatin, is a bit old and naive but enjoyable. It was a source of inspiration for "Brave new world" and "1984". The Swede "Kollocain" (1940), by Karin Boye, is excellent, and much more subtle than the latter. - If you like collections of related short stories, like "The dying Earth", then "The carpet makers" (1995) by Andreas Eschbach is a must. I remember the joy when I finally had a global understanding of the whole situation. - If you wish for bizarre fantasy, not the epic Tolkien style, not even the dark saga of Ouroboros, but something more gothic and unsettling, then Mervyn Peake's "Titus groans" is perfect. - I think "Brain twister" (1961) is the only funny book I've read in SF-Fantasy-supernatural.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
"The Dying Earth" is an "important" book historically as it is the source inspiration for the early Dungeons and Dragons magic system (some of the spells are clearly copied from it). As an aside, I've had the good fortune to play in a few "Dying Earth" roleplaying campaigns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Earth_Roleplaying_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Earth_Roleplaying_Ga...) and it's one of the most fun RPGs as most of the gameplay revolves around one-upping everyone else and experience is awarded for using taglines appropriately rather than killing monsters etc.

aduwah 1y ago

So many lesser known modern books to recommend. Memoires of an imaginary friend Dogs of war (Adrian Tchaikovsky one) The devil's detective Red rising The painted man

Lord-Jobo 1y ago
As a more casual sci-fi reader I highly recommend Red Rising as a series. This first book is a very straightforward mashup of hunger games and Galica which is quite fun and enjoyable, but the series as a whole immediately creates it's own identify after that and I adore it deeply.

smitty1e 1y ago

+1 The Dying Earth Pretty much anything by Jack Vance is a win.

Raphell 1y ago

I really enjoy lists like this. These days, recommendation systems tend to push the most popular and addictive content, which makes it harder to stumble upon hidden gems. But I’ve found that older or more obscure novels often carry a different kind of imagination. They’re not following formulas and they’re not tied to movies or franchises. It feels like reading someone’s raw creative mind before it got polished or filtered. I’m also curious if anyone has a book that barely anyone talks about, but left a lasting impact on you. I’d love to add it to my list.

zwilliamson 1y ago
Agree. That is why when it comes to movies I still rent discs at a local video store. The owner, Colin, is the ultimate movie recommendation master. The algorithm just can’t compete. If you live in San Francisco, the store is called Video Wave.
finalarbiter 1y ago
Judging from your comment, you may find it intriguing to take a peek at the authors and books listed in Appendix N (Inspirational and Educational Reading[0]) from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). If you have any interest in the fantasy roleplaying sphere, this list should be all the more interesting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_N https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_N On your latter question, I don't see much discussion surrounding The Magus by John Fowles (1965), which is one of my favorite fiction novels of all time.
dayjaby 1y ago
I just read "THE MEMOIRS OF THE CONQUISTADOR BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO WRITTEN BY HIMSELF" It's not fiction but it feels like a time warp into a world unimaginable.

Ethan312 1y ago

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DigitalHookworm 1y ago

Blown / Image of The Beast by Philip Jose Farmer More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer Norstrillia by Cordwainer Smith

frm88 1y ago
Norstrilia I absultely second. Actually, all of Cordwainer Smith is worth a read, but stories set in The Instrumentality of Mankind certainly are. The culture novels by Iain M. Banks are also amazing, ship names in particular, but also themes. And then there is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or is this too recent) another fine example of exploring the absurdity of mankind. I often find that older works deal more with ideas and philosophy than the modern works, which tend to be more formulaic with some notable exceptions, like K. J. Parker and Adrian Tchaikovsky - there are less niche works - or so I feel.

d4rkp4ttern 1y ago

A couple books I'd put in this category: 1. Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers, loose basis of Tarkovsky's Stalker movie. 2. XX by Rian Hughes -- hugely under-rated book. Starts with a signal from outer space and goes quite far, and also has a book-within-a-book. Nearly 1000 pages but found it very engaging. Currently trying to read Stanlislaw Lem's His Master's Voice which has a similar theme of a possible signal from an alien intelligence.

MattPalmer1086 1y ago
I absolutely love Lem, and I just read Roadside Picnic this year. I had not heard of XX before - will have to check it out, thanks.

cindyllm 1y ago

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themadturk 1y ago

I'm familiar with all these titles. Three of them: The Worm Ouroborous, The Night Land, and A Voyage To Arcturus, were republished in the late '60s and early '70s in an effort to follow up on the popularity of LOTR. It took a few years for the modern fantasy market to ramp up, and books like these helped calm the hordes screaming for more. I never made it through any of them. I wish he'd mentioned the Gormenghast novels -- those I enjoyed, especially the first.