Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?

84 pointshubraumhugo163 comments

I was mostly reading non-fiction in the past but recently got into sci-fi after reading Seveneves, so I'm looking for more recommendations :)

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Multiple re-reads:

- Saga of the Exiles by Julian May, which merges science fiction with folklore/fantasy in Pliocene Earth

- Hyperion by Dan Simmons, excellent SF with a feel of the Canterbury Tales about it

- Neuromancer by William Gibson, plus the follow-ups (all the Sprawl) are very good too

- The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, about the eco collapse of the US in the 1980s (10 years after it was written) and which William Gibson called a "brilliant novel"

And a couple of guilty pleasures:

- Venus Equilateral by George O Smith, 1940s stories based around a three mile long space station at the L4 point in space, a bit like Babylon 5 meets DS9 in the era of vacuum tubes

- Necrotech by KC Alexander, a brutal and obscene body-mod cyberpunk dystopia (the sequel of which, Nanoshock, has a superbly offensive opening sentence)

- Halcyon Drift by Brian Stableford, about a corporate dystopia and a pilot who hooks up his body to merge with his ship (a bit blase now but less so then, especially as I had read far less at the time)

- Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, a 6 book series following the rise of a refugee to becoming the Tyrant of Jupiter

After reading the Wikipedia summary, "The Sheep Look Up" sounds too real

I second Hyperion and Neuromancer -- both are amazing book and a great representation of modern and classic sci-fi

Two favorite books of mine I've seldom seen mentioned but I think are gems: The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Time out of joint, both by Philip K. Dick. The first plays with several layers of reality along the book. One time I found myself re-reading some passages because there were so many layers it was hard to follow, but it's worth it. The second is (if I recall correctly) the inspiration for a 90s pop movie starring Jim Carrey. I won't mention the name because it might give away some plot points.

I had a genuine mini existential crisis at the end of Palmer Eldritch.

I adapted The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch for the stage many years ago, but was refused permission to perform it by P. K. Dick's estate.

It is truly a masterpiece!

We ended up using Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, since that was an existing adaption by a friend of Philip K. Dick's that they had no control over.

Oh man, is there any way you can send it to me? I would love to see how you adapted that story

Not sure I still have the stage play to be honest, it was done in the late 90s, I'd have to really dig back into my old backups.

The whole idea was to use multimedia, video projection, computer animation and live video mixed up with live performance to really mess with the audience's sense of what was real or not.

We managed to pull it off quite nicely with Flow My Tears though. A nice bit was cutting from a live feed of an actress apparently cutting her arm, to a pre recorded close up of the arm being cut and lots of blood. Audience always thought they were seeing what was happening on stage at that point :)

Ted Chiang's sci-fi short story collections like Stories Of Your Life and Others is fantastic. It features the story that the feature length film Arrival from a few years ago was based on, among other great stories.

I'm in the middle of Exhalation right now and it's great. Character development isn't Chiang's strong suit in these, but the concepts are so thought provoking.

Foundation series (Asimov)

Stainless Steel Rat series (Harrison - a bit juvenile, but fun)

Dune (Herbert)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)

Starship Troopers (Heinlein)

A Scanner Darkly (Dick)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)

Childhood's End (Clarke)

Robot series (Asimov)

Bicentennial Man (Asimov)

Brave New World (Huxley)

Voyage of the Space Beagle (A. E. van Vogt)

The Machine Stops (E. M. Forster)

https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (L. Ron Hubbard)

https://books.google.com/books?id=KF2hckiYTocC&printsec=copy...

L. Ron Hubbard - Space Jazz - 1982 - Full Album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNaqh4PLME

^^^ "The Classics"

The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge, and A Deepness in the Sky in particular.

If you check the series out, and I highly recommend you do, read it in order. Which would mean starting with A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent.

Seconded

Thanks for the rec, put it on my tbr. I have only read True Names by VV.

True Names is excellent! A Fire Upon the Deep is also one of my favourite sci fi novels.

Thanks, added to my list. The afterword by Minsky made True Names even more memorable.

This might be considered a spoiler: https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/TrueNames.Afterword...

Any short story by J.G. Ballard.

His work is sci-fiction in the sense it explores inner-space and not outer-space, and was prophetic in many ways of current technology [1].

One story I frequently reflect on with the rise of LLMs is "Studio 5, The Stars" [2] from the Vermilion Sands collection [3]. Where automated poetry machines are used and people no longer have skill to write poetry, and trying to do so it met with skepticism and disgust.

1. "Why we are living in JG Ballard’s world" https://archive.is/pksxh

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_5,_The_Stars

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion_Sands

My absolute favorite is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit was also excellent. Other than that, of course Snow Crash is a masterpiece, but I think my favorite Stephenson book is The Diamond Age. Another excellent one is Daemon by Daniel Suarez whose books are quite fascinating and look at generally pretty topical plotlines (I was just thinking I have to revisit his book Kill Decision about AI enabled killer drones).

Blindsight by Peter Watts. Canticle for Leibowitz by Henry Miller. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein.

Blindsight is possibly my favorite book of all time. It stayed with me for a very long time and sincerely changed the way I view the world.

I'm highly confused by the popularity of Blindsight, but don't want to make a big deal of it.

Instead, I will point out that "The Mote in God's Eye" has a quite similar setting and is overall one of the best S-F books.

On the one hand, there is similarity in that both "The Mote in God's Eye" and "Blindsight" are first-contact-with-aliens scenarios. On another hand, Niven & Pournelle's story is painted atop the background of interstellar human civilization, with colonies and wars and FTL drives and shields, while humanity in Watts' universe is firmly stuck on Earth with sublight travel in our local solar system -- with the quirk that humanity evolved alongside a near-human predator species, although one that can be harnessed toward corporate or organisational goals using modern science.

On the gripping-hand, the two books have rather different perspectives on how first-contact might go:

Niven & Pournelle's alien species and society is alien, but somewhat recognisable and relatable from a human perspective. Both species figure out how to communicate. The threat posed to humanity by the aliens is perhaps not so dissimilar to the threat humanity might pose to other species (c.f. Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar).

Watts' book explores intelligence, communication, sentience. Earth's first-contact team aren't all human. Many of the human specialists are far from neurotypical -- there's already considerable difficulty in them even being able to understand or emphasise with each other, even before introducing aliens. Blindsight takes a bunch of familiar assumptions underpinning how first-contact could play out, and challenges them, and asks what might happen if those assumptions were not true.

In my opinion, Blindsight scratches the politically correct itches, and delivers little bottom line.

I just don't see what will go more wrong has China sent this mission packed with brighter alumnis of its best universities, tested for mental stability and stress tolerance, under command of General Secretary nephew.

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

Wireless - Charles Stross

Stories of your life and others - Ted Chiang

Moonrise - Ben Bova

Last Plane to Heaven - Jay Lake

Best of Greg Egan - Greg Egan

I heartily second Ted Chiang. He is an expert at the craft of the short story despite it being his first whole compilation that was published.

Short stories have historically been the way science fiction was popularized starting in the early 1900s. Novels and series would develop out of those successful shorts or if an author becomes successful enough.

I quite liked "Terminal World" by Alastair Reynolds, though sadly he plans no further novels in that universe.

"Mockingbird", by Walter Tevis. 40 years old but startlingly timely: centuries after humanity ceded all authority and responsibility to AI, the last superintelligent robot is ready to die of boredom – and one human has learned to read.

"Elder Race", by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This short novel is a bit reminiscent of Iain Bank's "Inversions" in that it combines sci-fi and fantasy through the perspectives of an anthropologist from an advanced space-faring culture and a second protagonist from the medieval world they are secretly observing.

Mockingbird is awesome and not widely known.

Oh jeez I just realized you and I made the same two comments the last time someone asked this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30400572#30401018

Heh! Great minds...

Personally I don't care so much about genre categories, but it's interesting reading all these comments to think about "science fiction" vs. "speculative fiction" and then the lump category of science fantasy.

Anyway, one title I didn't see mentioned was Grass by Sheri Tepper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_(novel).

* Greg Egan’s short story collections, Diaspora, and Permutation City. Fair warning, Egan puts the “hard” in “hard sci-fi”.

* Haven’t finished the Expanse final trilogy, but I really enjoyed the first two.

* The Wool series

* Project Hail Mary, for story reasons I’d recommend the audio book.

* We Are Bob trilogy, fourth book is garbage.

* Old Man’s War

* The Culture Series by Ian Banks

* If you enjoyed Seveneves, and thus can tolerate Stephenson’s consistent habit to drop the ball in the last 20% of his books, Diamond Age is enjoyable.

I read Snow Crash growing up. It is a wonderful weird cyberpunk novel that (metaverse aside, unfortunately) turned out to be kind of Nostradamusly. Easy read. Higly recommended!

With the recent advancements in LLM/AI, I've been thinking more and more about Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" (also titled "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer").

One of the major plot points is the development of a sophisticated interactive book that patiently individually educates and entertains one of the characters; greatly positively impacting her life.

We're much closer to being able to build that now than we were 6 months ago.

Yes, me too! Soon we might have real 'Ractives' -- of course with all the baggage that comes along with them, probably with developing world actors creating the custom content for the wealthiest

Funny half way through it after it came recommended on one of the many LLM threads on HN a month or so ago

Not just much closer - it seems inevitable that something close will be built in the next year. Khan academy, beast academy, and Wikipedia show that we are already close.

I don’t think people at red grappling with how much this will change society.

It's kind of wild how he guessed that we'd have generative stories before we'd have perfect human voice production.

Easily these (so far):

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (actually now one of my all-time favorites, without regard to genre. Just amazing)

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Book of Strange New Things - Michael Faber

Ted Chiang's short story collections (Exhalations and Stories of your life and others)

Daemon - Daniel Suarez

The City and the City - China Miéville

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (this one still haunts my dreams at times)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) - Dennis Taylor (just finished this series for book club)

Galatea 2.2, The Overstory, Bewilderment, The Gold Bug Variations - 4 different books, all by Richard Powers - what can I say, the man is a genius and a treasure

Eifelheim - Michael Flynn - ok, this book can be a slog at times, but it is very rewarding for those who persevere, and has stuck in my brain for many years

Chocky - John Wyndham - A quiet, delightful surprise

Providence - Max Barry - This book flows like a movie. It will make a great movie. I found myself LITERALLY out of breath a couple of times

Hench: A Novel - Natalie Zina Walschots - Quirky, memorable

The Peacemaker's Code - Deepak Malhotra - Why hasn't this guy written more sci-fi?

Orange World and Other Stories - Karen Russell - OK, maybe not strictly sci-fi, but this book tickles my brain

GUILTY PLEASURE SCI-FI FAVORITE: The Vaz series by Laurence Dahners. I think I've read that series 3 times now.

I recommend Bobiverse all the time as a good sci fi intro or just a solid trilogy to crush in a weekend. And I always recommend reading it on kindle as he drops astrophysics terms with no context or explanation. It’s nice to touch the word and learn along the way. I didn’t know what a Lagrange Point was before, but now I do and it’s so cool!

Worm by Wildbow is a pretty good tale. It was written as a web serial and follows a young girl in a world where "capes" (people with supernatural powers) are normal to a point they are regulated and entwined with education, government and crime.

It can be a little hard to get into initially, first few chapters are necessary set up, but once the ball starts rolling its a real page turner. There are a lot of entangled plot lines that almost all add major substance to the larger plot. I'm actually re-reading it again just because I remember it so fondly. With all the superhero/game-lore shows and movies out now, it would be a fan dream to see the Worm-verse come to life as a live-action or anime series. The serial nature of it would adapt naturally I'd imagine.

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

Three Body Problem Series - Cixin Liu

Salvation Sequence - Peter F Hamilton

(and by listing these I just realized I like stories about humanities doom)

I liked The Prefect and its sequel, which are also in there Revelation Space universe but take place during its heyday rather than in the post apocalypse.

Chasm City is also a pretty incredible whodunnit/thriller. I liked that the Reynolds books tie together but also kind of stand alone, so you're not stuck reading them in order.

Yeah I read everything written in the Revelation Space Universe. Also Chasm City is really good.

I've recently been enjoying "The Murderbot Diaries" by Martha Wells.

Just finished book 6 of "The Murderbot Diaries". I agree they are excellent.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. It feels more relevant now than ever and there is now a direct Polish->English translation.

Lem is one of the most interesting sci fi authors. He is deep and philosophical, but can also be very funny. Solaris is definitely not one of the funny ones.

I also love both the film versions of Solaris. The Tartovsky one is the best IMHO but very long, but I also really like the more recebt Soderbergh one with George Clooney.

For funny, try The Cyberiad. A collection of short stories of two robot inventors who try to outcompete one another.

There are many different genres of sci fi. Seveneves is pretty much hard science fiction, in that it deals with plausible physics, which is also one of my favourite genres.

I particularly recommend the Xeelee Sequence (a series of novels) by Stephen Baxter if you like mind bending sci fi over cosmological time).

More classically, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a great (and shorter) read.

First contact novels can also be interesting (meeting aliens for the first time). Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke is great. Also, Blindsight by Peter Watts.

So many others!

Replying to self, but also classic sci fi that I loved:

The Mote in God's Eye (Niven/Pournelle)

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks ,starting with Consider Phlebas.

Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds.

Here’s a book I don’t expect to see on too many lists (and I’m surprised it’s on mine, as I don’t typically like big-property universes like Star Trek): The Final Reflection, John M Ford. It’s an ancient book (by Star Trek standards-1984) set in the original ST:TOS universe, but it did Klingon world-building before that was a thing (it’s not canon, as it did this long before Klingons were fleshed out in any real way). Loved the worldbuilding, loved that it made a then 2-dimensional alien into a rich 3-d society.

Fair warning, I only liked the first part of Seveneves; I thought the second part was stupid. You'll get a lot of recommendations for Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" which I personally hate (though the first part of the first book is very well written), but if you like all of Seveneves then it might suit you.

My personal favourites that might not already be on everyone else's lists:

Fiasco - Stanisław Lem

This is how you lose the time war - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Feersum Endjinn - Iain Banks

The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett (yes, that one)

Blindsight - Peter Watts

Bloom - Wil McCarthy

Good luck!

Feersum Endjinn is great, but would recommend starting with other culture novels first.

Feersum Endjinn isn't a culture novel, so "other" doesn't really apply. I like the rest of his works, but this is my actual favourite of his SF genre stuff. Plus it's relatively short and self-contained which is often a plus for someone new to an author.

Of the Culture novels, my favourite is Excession - but I can't see it appealing to someone who hasn't already read any of the others.

I loved the first part of Seveneves. The second part… felt like a different book?

I loved all of Seveneves, and hate Three Body Problem. The biggest difference in theme being, optimism that humanity can overcome any obstacle and flourish. If you want more in that vein, see:

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Delta-V - Daniel Suarez

Have you read other non-American/non-Western Scifi?

It's not a universal assumption that the future is good and technology will make us better. I love Soviet sci-fi for the completely different perspective.

The Expanse books are great. The TV show is a pretty good adaptation too, but I love the portrayal of the characters in the books.

A recent thing I started reading (first book release this month) is The Last Horizon series by Will Wight (author of Cradle, and Elder Empire books). This one's more of a sci-fi and fantasy blend, if you're into that sort of thing. In a nutshell, it's magic-as-technology, but with space travel.

I have only watched the show. In hindsight, I should have read the books. However, as the show hasn't been greenlit for further adaptations, I have been debating if I should just follow through with Persepolis Rising and the remaining books or start from scratch including all the novellas.

The Novellas are amazing! So, I definitely recommend them. I loved The Churn personally, because I really enjoyed finding out more about Amos.

I'd recommend reading all the books anyway. They flow quit differently to the show, even if they are a faithful adaptation. So, I think you'll enjoy the experience even if you think you know what's coming.

You have convinced me. I don't think I can glean much more from re-watching the shows at this point. It is good to know that the books have some added dimensionality.

So many listed here are already in my top list, what I haven’t seen is the Luna Trilogy by Ian McDonald. Neat ideas from corporate run future moon colony.

Desolation Road is even better

I getting thought anything by Kim S. Robinson. I read the Mars trilogy 20 years ago and plan to re-read it once I'm done. Recently went thought "Ministry for the future" from him. Weird mix of factual non fiction and SF. Read like a fan fiction of a iPCC Report.

Outside of hard SF, Ursula K Leguin. Great world building.

Leguin was one of the most imaginative and skilled scifi writers ever. She also has fantasy series Earthsea which lots of Harry Potter was inspired from but it never got so popular even though it might be as good or better.

Oh. It’s better. I mean I vastly prefers it. More coherent and less excuse / deus in machina

“The Left Hand of Darkness” besides having one of the coolest titles of all time completely blew me away. Which lead me to reading “the dispossessed” which also blew me away and has maybe further radicalized me.

She has a beautiful way with words and also all of her stories are so recognizably human. Two qualities I find woefully lacking in most sci fi.

Many of Philip K. Dick books and short stories, but Ubik and A Maze of Death are my favorites.

William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)

Douglas N. Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Frank Herbert's Dune books

Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human

Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin trilogy

Frederik Pohl's Heechee books

- A Fire Upon The Deep

- Brave New World

- The Dispossessed

- The Sirens of Titan / Slaughterhouse 5

- Recursion

- Exhalation

- There Is No Antimemetics Division

- Foundation Series

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Avatar definitely was inspired by this one)

Avatar was actually inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_on_the_Slope

Source (i dont have one for my claim lol)? Thematically, Le Guin’s fits Avatar’s world mythos and some of the characters are extremely similar (the colonel from avatar is basically the same as one of the narrators of Word for World). Also, Le Guins book would have been much more available and popular than the Strugatsky brothers at that time

A few favourites off the top of my head:

The Difference Engine - William Gibson & Bruce Sterling Diaspora - Greg Egan Flashback - Dan Simmons Timescape - Gregory Benford Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke (but the "co"-authored sequels are too terrible for words)

I've read Sphere by Michael Crichton several times and always enjoy it. I particularly like the way things are seen by some characters and then another character brings an alternate perspective that changes the reader's perception.

A recent favourite is "There is no anti-memetics division". You can read it over here, for free. Or buy a physical copy (which I did, and was very happy to)

https://qntm.org/scp

Outside of some of the ones listed here, here are a couple of others:

* Alan Dean Foster -- Call to Arms, in this case the we are the strong ones.

* Hal Clement -- Nitrogen Fix, replace Nitrogen with CO2 in your head and this could be rather current :)

* An obscure one I liked, but I forgot the Author and Title --

Seems Interstellar Travel could be achieved with 15th Century Tech.

So Aliens landed on late 20th Century Earth with the goal of taking it over. But were easily defeated due to how advanced Earth Tech was compared to what they had. We analyzed their spacecraft and learned how easy it was to achieve interstellar travel. Was a rather interesting read IIRC.

"The Road Not Taken," by Harry Turtledove

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_st...

Thank you, that is it, off to the Library :)

Turtledove's alternative history books are quite good. In The Balance was especially fun.

Quite a few of my faves already mentioned in this thread so let me throw in a couple of relatively lesser-known ones:

   - City by Clifford Simak
   - Everything by M.A.Foster, but Waves and the Transformer Trilogy in particular
   - You Must Remember Us...? by Leonard Daventry
   - The Green Man and Other Stories by Rand B. Lee (in particular the story Knight of Shallows)
   - The Star Wolf series by David Gerrold

And a few easily overlooked ones by Philip K. Dick:

   - Clans of the Alphane Moon
   - The Game-Players of Titan
   - Now Wait for Last Year.

By far it is Pandem[1] by Sergei and Marina Dyachenko.

Unfortunately, I don't think it was ever translated to English.

1. https://fantlab.ru/work1052

I really enjoy(ed) Neal Asher's "Transformation" series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Intelligence) and the Polity universe.

I enjoy sci-fi series, interesting spacecraft, compelling aliens and am a sucker for machine-based intelligence.

This series combines all these and re-engaged in sci-fi. I went on to read most of Asher's other books including "Agent Cormac" and "Spatterjay" series.

I've read a lot of scifi but I'd recommend only one to make sure you get the point:

The "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Pas...) which is more known as "the three body problem". All the books are great but my favourite by a large margin is "the dark forest" (part 2)

Conversely I think these are some of the worst books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read basically everything mentioned in this thread). The characters are uninteresting, the plot is haphazard and the ideas are derivative. I can see how it would be appealing if you don’t read much at all but once you’ve experience some higher quality stuff it’s just bad.

It depends. I found them very enjoyable. I'm perhaps not an avid sci-fi reader but I did read some classics.

I try to not be pedantic about plot holes but i’ve felt there were so many ilogical and unexplained decisions. Author just moves on and does not care that it was very distracting.

I liked some of the ideas although i think you can find books that dig into similar ones a bit deeper.

What also doesnt help is that this seems to be the book that people that dont read sci-fi (because its for kids) all read and they love it. I got so many raving reviews from people telling me if scifi was like this they would read sci-fi… annoying as hell.

It says something terrible about the current zeitgeist that these books are as popular as they are.

I look forward to a day when the top scifi is unabashed optimism about humanity's future.

I loved the series the first time through. Great concepts. First use of “dark forest” that I am aware of. Very specific arc of what could happen in the deep future.

I went to read it a second time and found I simply could not get through it. That which I found so exciting was significantly less so the second time around.

Has anyone mentioned the Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe? If not, I will, and if so, I second it.

Other favorites are Ted Chiang's stories, Children of Time, Dune, and if you want some real escapist but thoroughly fun pulpy hilarity: Dungeon Crawler Carl

The Unincorporated Man

(Ender's Game too, but haven't read the sequels, but I also recommend Ender's Shadow - a parallel novel from a different character's perspective.)

It's not exactly sci-fi but there are sci-fi elements and it's one of my favorite books so I'll just mention it anyway: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

I normally love heavy, chewy, thought-provoking sci-fi books, but lately i've been fighting burnout and wanted something lighter.

I stumbled into the Pip and Flinx series by Alan Dean Foster. Easy and enjoyable sci-fi, great world-building, and interesting adventures broken up into about 15 books. And free for kindle via my public library.

Can recommend if you want to skip the gaudy 7 layer chocolate cake and just want a tasty madeleine instead. :)

You've got me intrigued. Care to list a few of your favourite "heavy, chewy, thought-provoking sci-fi books"?

Half of this thread to be honest. Asimov and Dick, Stephenson and Gibson. I never liked Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett but I've read their books trying to understand the hype.

It was after failing to get engaged by the three-body problem (again), frustrated, and recognizing that I was dealing with unusually high professional and personal stress which likely robbed me of focus for reading "good" fiction, that I went looking for lighter fare and found this series. The author apparently was a ghost writer for the original star wars series. It doesn't surprise me a bit.

$0.02 :)

Thanks for your reply. Yes, Alan Dean Foster has written some of the better Star War series stuff.

I only read a little bit of Three-body Problem a few years ago. Perhaps more character based stories are more your thing.

Philip K Dick, Adjustment Team, https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Adjustment_Team

my comment: Wonderful scifi, highly recommended, short and sweet. The story which the Matt Damon movie Adjustment Bureau was based upon. This story is shorter than the movie plot tho. Theres a wonderful audiobook tape recording of this book as well.

Lots of good recs about, throwing in a couple more mentions. Just finished Red Rising, which I could not put down. Kept feeling like it was on a good arch, then exceeding expectations. Looking forward to more.

Not enough Heinlein on the lost here. I'm not sure what specifically I'd recommend though.

Quantum Thief is probably some of the most imaginative & epic Sci fi I've read, engrossing world.

Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series was such a delight too, starting with Too Like the Lightning. Beautiful threads of high Rennaisance drama in a interesting speculative future earth.

And I keep find myself recommending Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. Amabassador from the independent sparse asteroid mining frontier sent in to the great core of expanding empire. Intrigue & outsiderdom & culture.

Red Rising is guily pleasure. First three books are for teens so it’s a bit naive but then it turns to be more serious…

Anyway i loved it more than i probably should have. For some reason one cant stop put these down.

I was just reading William Gibson's short-story collection, "Burning Chrome." The first story is "Johnny Mnemonic", and the last one (a story also titled "Burning Chrome") is supposed to be the very first use of the word cyberspace.

And there's also three stories he co-wrote with other authors -- Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Michael Swanick.

I’ve seen Greg Egan mentioned a couple times. I love most of what I’ve read by him, but “The Clockwork Rocket” trilogy stands far above for me. A multi-generational hard sci-fi story. Characters who are intelligent, curious researchers who set out to learn and unravel the nature of their universe to try to save their world, set in alternate physics.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. The world building in this one book is amazing, wish he'd made a series out of it.

As an author better known for other genres, C.S. Lewis wrote an exceptional as Sci-Fi trilogy beginning in the 1930s. He would finish it in by the 1950s. Heavy in philosophy and combatting the currently popular ideas of eugenics and Wells’ ideation of human conquering of the solar system and eventual universe, it was a great read.

Many great books are already enumerated here.

If I am not wrong, nobody mentioned Roadside picnic yet.

Also liked Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by S. Lem.

(full citation)

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. A philosphical science fiction book on the theme of aliens visiting earth which also influenced the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I am currently reading The Long Mars by Terry Pratchett and Steve Baxter (it’s part of the Long Earth series)

For fun -

Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde Hitchhikers guide is a given The Chronicles of St Mary by Jodi Taylor (and Time Police)

If you can make your way over to more fantasy, then:

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacks

Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell. It's not a grand epic space opera - its more like a grand "learn what life on a space freighter is like" opera. The books are strangely relaxing and calming.

Love throwing on an "ambient spaceship sounds" youtube and re-reading these.

Some recent favorites:

- Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)

- A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Chambers)

- Project Hail Mary (Weir)

- The Culture Series (Banks)

- The Expanse Series (Corey)

- The Red Rising Series (Brown)

Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, or the Solar Cycle (New Sun, Long Sun, Short Sun) as a whole.

The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin

Rendezvous with Rama. Arthur C Clarke

Consider Phlebas. Iain M Banks

Dune. Frank Herbert

Kiteworld. Keith Roberts

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams

The Nights Dawn trilogy[1] is my all time personal favorite.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy

City - Clifford D Simack

All of Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold

Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh

Stand in Zanzibar John Bruner

Adiamante - LE Modesitt Jr

Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen

Known Space series by Larry Niven and ALL of his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle

Midshipman’s Hope by David Feintuch

Gateway - Fredrick Pohl

Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg

And how could I forget Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Anything Neal Stephenson. I've read them all. Multiple times.

But some other stuff that people haven't yet mentioned that I enjoyed:

- Matt Haig: The Humans, How to Stop Time

- Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon trilogy

- Ramez Naam: Nexus Trilogy

- Hugh Howie: Silo series

- Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice

- Ernest Cline: Ready Player 1

Bobiverse series (Dennis E. Taylor)

Old Man's War series (John Scalzi)

The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

I haven't read any of the Bobiverse books, but I recall reading a review that stated something like "I realise this isn't going into what's so bad about it, but I honestly don't know where to start. It would be like explaining why murder was bad." :D

Annoyingly I can't find the original any more, but I do note that most of the 1 star reviewers are angry about anti-religious tone, so perhaps that was the bee in their bonnet?

I've read and enjoyed the other two as amusing romps (albeit of otherwise quite different tone). So you might possibly enjoy the Lady Astronaut Universe Series by Mary Robinette Kowal. Just a thought.

I really enjoyed the Bobiverse books, but could understand why folks who favor authoritarian theocracies as a government structure might feel that the novels don’t convey zealots that start planet-destroying conflicts optimistically.

The Bobiverse series is amazing. Yes, there is a faction of religious extremists, but honestly it came off as pretty realistic to me, lol.

Roger Ebert always tried to review movies on what they were trying to do and not on an absolutist scale of good/bad.

IMO the Bobiverse books are trying to have a fun go at a few different big sci-fi concepts and on that basis I think they're fairly successful.

I'm travelling a lot this week; time to give them a go I think!

Well, I duly did get and read the four extant novels. They're not the pinnacle of fine writing, but they're a pleasant time passer.

The first one in particularly did feel a bit too mary-sue ish. That plus the slightly excessive nerd-referencing might put someone off. I wondered several times whether a litigious rightsholder might go to battlestations on some of the use of trademarked franchise names!

Just finished part 4 of the Bobiverse. It's a nice read. And it seems to be getting better as the series progresses.

A few lesser known but great sci-if books:

-Permutation City

-Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

-The Egg (Andy Weir short story)

The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson: https://www.librarything.com/work/18463533

Linda Nagata's works, particularly The Nanotech Succession series.

I'll plug some excellent work that is underrepresented here:

CJ Cherryh's "Cyteen". Won the Hugo for best novel in '89. The backdrop is Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe -- which is arguably one of those classic "cold war in space" type space opera settings of science fiction of a certain vintage -- but that conflict isn't the focus of this novel. Cyteen is set in the research organisation that designs, grows and conditions the "azi" clone slave caste that generates population of labourers and specialists required to keep the Union society running. I found it initially slow going, but it turned out to be one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The plot is a kind of coming-of-age / political-intrigue / murder mystery tale. Not a space opera - power games, paranoia, abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyteen

Yoon Ha Lee's "Ninefox Gambit" (first of a trilogy, each book in the trilogy shortlisted for Hugo best novel 2017/2018/2019). Space opera / military sci-fi. The political stability of the empire depends upon adherence to the empire's standard 'calendar', which is maintained through ritual torture of heretics. Much exotic technology depends upon calendric properties, and fails in regions where populations are following a nonstandard heretical calendar. The outcomes of battles depend not only on how many fleets or waves of infantry can be expended, but each side's mathematical ability to understand the local calendrical properties and adapt their tactics and technology accordingly. The plot follows a military officer's mission to quash a rebellion at a key star fortress -- and her attempt to improve the chances of success by having the mind of a dead undefeated war-criminal general loaded into her head. Space opera / military sci-fi.

Arkady Martine's "A Memory Called Empire" (won Hugo best novel in 2020). A tiny independent station sends a replacement diplomat into the heart of a neighboring empire, in an attempt to direct the empire's attention elsewhere and maintain independent station sovereignty, and discover what happened to the previous diplomat. Backdrop is suitable for a space opera, the story is political intrigue. The station society is one where memories and personalities can be artificially recorded and stored, and then re-implanted into future generations to preserve skills and knowledge. The novel explores attraction and intoxication with the culture and language of a dominant foreign power that is threatening to engulf one's own home.

Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Stephenson, William Gibson. Though Vonnegut would fight the label, his first free novels could be considered sci Fi. I like them better than the later ones

1) Three-Body Problem series 2) Hyperion series (first two books especially) 3) Cryptonomicon 4) Cloud Atlas 5) Wandering Earth (collection of short stories)

Galactic North - Alastair Reynolds

House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds

Lilith’s Brood - Octavia Butler

The Expanse

Anything by Neal Stephenson. (Except Fall, maybe.) Cryptonomicron is my fav modern novel.

Project Hail Mary. The Martian. Artemis.

Expanse series.

William Gibson,s stuff. Loved Peripheral, and it's sequel Agency.

Dragon's Egg, by Robert L. Forward

Nexus Trilogy, by Ramez Naam

Anathem, By Neal Stephenson

Many already listed.

Would additionally recommend for fun Blake Crouch, esp Dark Matter. I also enjoyed the Wool trilogy by Hugh Howey (now an Apple TV series called Silo)

1632 - Eric Flint

Not quite science fiction, but it's an alternative history that teaches a lot about infrastructure and science along the way.

Can anyone recommend some good Soviet/Russian Sci-Fi? Obviously, it would have to be available in English translation.

Solaris is a classic, and anything else by Stanislaw Lem is probably good. Not Russian, but he wrote in Polish in the USSR.

my favorite so far is The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell.

but the best thing i have done to get good book recommendations is to join a scifi book club where we pick a new title every month.

here is what we read until now:

    Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary
    William Gibson: Neuromancer
    Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human
    Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
    Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee: AI 2041
    David Wellington: The Last Astronaut
    Nathan Lowell: Quarter Share
    Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built
    Octavia E Butler: Parable of the Talents
    John Scalzi: Kaiju Preservation Society
    David Brin: Kiln People
    Emma Straub: This Time Tomorrow
    Ursula K Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness
    Dennis E Taylor: We are Legion
    Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility
    William Gibson: The Peripheral
    Dan Simmons: Hyperion
    Elisabet Moon: The Speed of Dark
    Alastair Reynolds: Eversion
    Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children Of Time
    Andromeda Romano-Lax: Plumb Rains

everyone of these was selected by popular vote from a handful of nominations, which means each is endorsed by half a dozen or a dozen people.

unfortunately i had to move and am no longer part of that club, and getting updates on their current selections is difficult.

anyone know of a similar club running online? (telegram, matrix or a forum maybe)

or is there interest in forming a club?

we could have a monthly HN post with recommendations, making selections by upvotes/downvotes, and a jitsi meetup to discuss the book afterwards.

Hyperion

Ringworld

Titan

Perhaps a standard list but: Hyperion, Deepness in the Sky, Snow crash, Permutation City, Exhalation and other Ted Chiang

When younger, Ender's Game was big for me.

I read a lot of the scifi/fantasy section in our local library.

Tom Swift was pretty good too.

I like Ivan Efremov’s works, if you can find those in English.

Wool by Hugh Howey (Silo is now steaming on AppleTV).

Screenplay for "A Topiary"

"Mimsy Were the Borogroves," by Lewis Padgett, is short and excellent.

- Project Hail Mary

- Children of Time

- Accelerando

- The Forever War

- Axiomatic

I recommend: William Gibson, China Miéville, Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks

I just love all those except Neal Asher so i guess i have to check him out. Anything you recommend in particular?

Neal Asher writes (mostly) about The Polity:

Which is similar in concept to Ian M Banks The Culture series. (which I also love).

Asher tends to be darker and more violent. I dont think he is for everyone.

I would start with GridLinked. His books are not a progressive timeline. Some take place in earlier times, some farther into the future of the Polity. I dont think it is intended så read them based on the timeline though.

(Cut and paste) The Polity is a far-future society run by artificial intelligences. In the early years of space travel, as we spread out into the solar system, the political make-up of humanity is a mixture of national and world (or moon) governments, and large corporations. However, these separate political entities – polities – employ AI for gain. During this time Iverus Skaidon, a scientist, directly links his mind to the AI Craystein Computer and invents underspace travel, just before his mind blows like a fuse. The invention of this faster-than-light travel results in a diaspora from the Solar System.

Daniel Keys Moran

  + Emerald Eyes
  + The Long Run
  + The Last Dancer

I don’t reread books as a rule, but I’ve reread these, and TLR at least five times.

I can rattle of an endless list of authors I like, but by organic evidence of “favorites” these stand out.

For light comedies:

The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

Hitchhiker's Guide series (Douglas Adams)

Many of the books already mentioned plus A Canticle for Leibowitz

His Masters Voice by Stanislav Lem

Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers

Cyteen by CH Cherryh

Solaris got me into sci-fi and it is still one of my favorite.

All of Asimov, Philip K Dick, Jules Verne.

Asimov wrote too widely to recommend “all of him”.

For an entrance into Asimov and his incredible Sci-Fi voice, check out “I, Robot” and the Robot detective series. He was really the originator of the term and popular idea “robot” and “robotics.” He would eventually turn to writing popular science to mixed results.

My intro to Asimov's work was through the short story, The Fun They Had. It was part of our English Reader at class.

After I grew up, I picked up the Robot Series and Foundation Series. I didn't find any fictional work of his to be uninteresting. So, perhaps this comes down to individual preferences.

Why if it's all good? Brothers Strugatsky wrote wider than Asimov and I may wholeheartedly recommend all of them.

(Read ~12 tomes of Strugatskies and perhaps a dozen titles by Asimov)

Stranger in a strange land by Heinlein

Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama

1984

Snow Crash

Gene Wolfe - "The Shadow of the Torturer" - 4 books series called The Book of the New Sun

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