For Mind games, something from the Culture series - Use of Weapons which does have a nice twist.
For sheer scale and sensawunda - A Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.
For sheer scale and sensawunda - A Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime
For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically? "Kiln People" explores this idea in some remarkable ways.
I was able to get about a third of the way through the book because my friends kept saying it gets better... but it’s a thick book and I just didn’t get it as I kept chugging
If I’m reading fiction it’s OK to put a book down. I ask you, dear internet stranger, what do you enjoy about these books?
Also, focus has got to be one of the most terrifying concepts anyone has put into a SF book.
- Imaginatively exploring grand futures.
- Evocative hints you have to fill in yourself.
- Intelligent characters.
- Computer security as an often central concern.
- Tightness. There's a reason he barely manages a novel a decade.
- The prose style just breathes sense-of-wonder to me.
A Fire Upon the Deep has a much bigger scope and includes a menagerie of truly weird aliens.