Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the 21st Century (So Far) | Hacker News Reader

Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the 21st Century (So Far)

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56 pointskaycebasques23 comments

I love when books keep making me think about the world we live in now, that keep feeling pertinent. To that, some of the #hopepunk / #solarpunk style books have been really fun. Malka Older's Infomocracy, Emry's A Half Built Garden.

I also loved being transported to the space-Byzantines in Arkady Martines's A Memory Called Empire; a reverberation of the past set far in the future. The interwoven Hives & world of Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning / Terra Ignota are an incredible backdrop for such a story of many powers of the intersecting and overlapping and coming against each other.

Or the rollicking fun and action, the oppressive decadent space elites & politicking and rebelling of young-adult+ Pierce Brown's Red Rising.

thanks for the "half built garden" rec, I hadn't come across that one!

I’ve read most of the SF on this list so I’ll throw out my other recommendations:

I like Chambers’ Wayfarers series but IMO Closed and Common Orbit is the best one.

Another recent book that stuck with me is Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, which is told from two perspectives as both a sci fi and a fantasy story. It’s great and a quick read.

I enjoyed All Systems Red but for whatever reason have no desire to read the sequels. Same with Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Both good stories but something about the settings just didn’t pull me in.

And I can never help but plug the Vorkosigan saga, which started in the 80s but still has a few recent books. Anyone who hasn’t read them should start with the early books though.

A Memory Called Empire is another great one that I’m actually surprised isn’t on this list.

Tchaikovsky is probably better known for his novels (eg Children of Time) but I second your recommendation of The Elder Race. It's one of my favorite science fiction/fantasy novelas. The other one that really stuck with me and that I randomly think about from time to time (which IMO is the sign of a good thought provoking one!) is The Merchant and the Alchemists Gate, which in included in Exhalation from the list.

Edit: I'll also mention that Network Effect is my fav in the Murderbot Series, the novel length was a nice change of pace. Id avoided the series for a while because the name sounded cringy, but I'm glad I finally gave it a shot.

agree about "closed and common orbit", I really thought that one was going to pull off a hugo-and-nebula when I read it.

btw, even if you bounced off murderbot I would say check out wells's earlier fantasy novels, especially the books of the raksura.

I am glad to see Ted Chiang listed as well as Martha Wells with the murderbot "All Systems Red".

I would like to add Diaspora: A Novel by Greg Egan. The bit about Wang's carpets (sort of Wang's Tiles) was my favorite bit.

I plan on reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

The science fiction that is a little less about military prowess saving the universe and more science and interesting ideas are the stories that I like the best.

Gideon the Ninth - this was a huge surprise to me and lots of fun. I've never read anything else quite like it.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - This is usually my go-to book recommendation for "whats your favorite book"

Mortal Engines - The first book of a surprisingly poignant YA series which is not only fun throughout, but has one of the greatest and most thought provoking endings of all time.

Cloud Atlas - A beautifuly written story that somehow manages to intertwine separate narratives across time.

Children of Time - A wonderful story about time, evolution, survival and what it means to be human.

Hard agree on Harry August, also the book I usually recommend to anyone who wants a suggestion. If you liked it, I also seriously think you should try "Replay" by Ken Grimwood, similar, slightly, but an entirely unique and wonderful novel of its own. Also, a very poignant look at love in the context chaotically living your live again and again.

The Expanse books - James Corey

Books about the Culture - Iain M. Banks

Peter F. Hamilton's books.

I have three chapters left of the last book in the Expanse-series and it feels like the end of an era. I started reading them a couple of years ago and since then I’ve always known I have some good reading to fall back on whenever I read something else.

The Expanse on Amazon video are as good as the books too.

I liked the halt catch fire TV series too.

About a month ago started reading the first book of the Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red) after seeing it recommended multiple times. I have to admit that it didn't sound all that interesting, but I'm glad I gave it a try.

It's really good, and I've since read the next two books. They are all more of a novella length, so I've been finishing them much faster than the average novel.

I wanted to call that one out if anyone is looking for a good read.

Also, Mistborn has been memorable since I first read it about 8 years ago. That's a very good story. I'm considering reading it again, which I rarely do with books I've read within the past decade.

I would choose Anathem over Seveneves for a NS pick.

I've read both, and I enjoyed both. That said, I read Anathem straight through, but I read Seveneves after a short break in the middle.

This anthology remains my perennial favorite. The Moon Moth, The Martian Way, Earth Man Come Home; these short stories have held up. They all have that emotion and mouth feel that led many of us to the work we do.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 2-B

I’m including a link so you know the ISBN and what the cover looks like: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-science-fiction-hall-of-fa...

Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is must-read IMO. (The Three-Body Problem is the first book in the series.)

The Darth Vader graphic novels by Charles Soule were quite good, IIRC.

I loved American Gods. Seeing that book listed, in addition to The Three-Body Problem and Exhalation, were my clues that this is probably a good list.

There's a bunch of books on this list that weren't on my radar. I'm going to start with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

No culture, no expanse, no red rising, no game of thrones, no powder mage, no stormlight, no first law etc.

The whole list is too woman protagonist and woman author focused.

I think definitely Culture, Expanse and Game of Thrones should be there.

Stormlight is great, but not that good, as is Red Rising.

First law is so weird, as I really enjoyed it the first time I read it, but just can't read it again, I bounce off it within a hundred pages or so.

Maybe, but the good books in ASOIAF all came out in the 20th century. Did you really like A Dance with Dragons that much?

It’s been so long I don’t remember. My general takeaway was that I enjoyed them all.

The blurb The Three Body Problem left me 110% sure that person never read the Three Body Problem.

This is a fairly silly list really, missing the bulk of what's been good reads for the last quarter century(!). It's heavily biased tothings that have sold well in the past few years. That said, the books on here are quite good. I'd definitely recommend Black Leopard, Red Wolf if you want fantasy from completely different story genetics (non-Tolkien). Priory is more traditional but good fun.

Not on this list that I thought were particularly excellent, [goodreads rating in brackets]:

[4.26] Between Two Fires by Christopher Buhuelman https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13543121-between-two-fir... Horror-Fantasy. Absolutely loved this book, a travelogue through France in the grip of the Black Plague...inflicted upon humanity by Lucifer in the war on Heaven. See the sights as God abandons his children and devils in both man and mythic form ruin His creation. Takes on a hallucinatory, Book of Revelations, William Blake on bad acid feel and builds to a tremendous crescendo while retaining deep heart and complex characters.

Christopher Buhuelman is one of my favorite "new" authors, his new fantasy series The Blacktongue Thief[4.22] and The Daughters War[4.3] are both excellent as well. His horror chops enable him to to make what might be more traditional fantasy stories much more impactful. For example, The Daughters War is about an desperate existential war against goblins that is fucking horrifying, which is impressive for a critter traditionally deployed for comic effect or disposable fodder for the heroes to kick about. Even though you "know" that humans win in the end because of the chronology of the series (this was book takes place before the The Blacktongue Thief which was published first), it doesn't feel like it ever. Which is the magic of good horror writing, and is often missing from fantasy which can feel like there are no real stakes sometimes despite the epic scales presented.

[4.22] Piranesi by Susanna Clark https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50202953-piranesi Labyrinth-Fantasy. Another book I adored, this novel has a sense of place so tangible that I am convinced that it actually exists and Susanna has been there. Piransi lives in what amounts to a pocket dimension, an infinite labyrinthine house containing amongst other things an ocean whose tides rage through the halls, flooding and revealing them in turn.

[4.3] Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... Alien Encounter-SciFi. Omitting this from any best of list shows the list isn't particularly serious, this novel is exceptional. On a distant exoplanet being terraformed for future humans, a disaster leaves the scientist in charge alone and cut off from humanity, and rather than seeding the new world with monkeys to be uplifted, she uplifts instead a small species of jumping spider. We experience its evolution across millenia and as its society reaches the space faring age, until it's encounter with the last desperate remnants of humanity, fleeing a doomed civilization and descending into barbarism. The narrative techniques to tell a story of this scope work exceptionally well and the whole tale moves quickly and with surprising emotional heft. To bring the audience to understand a world and society entirely unlike ours, and make it relatable and poignant is truly impressive. I really don't like spiders, but by the end of this book I was rooting for them... at humanity's expense.

Because of shifting demographics in the book buying market, readers looking for good yarns outside of the current trend of romantasy and/or cozy scifi/fantasy may feel a little left out, but there are tons of great authors that may be forgotten from these lists for a while. I heartily recommend:

Anything by Jay Kristoff https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4735144.Jay_Kristoff, ex Nevernight[4.22] or Empire of the Vampire[4.35].

Anything by Joel Shepherd https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/215710.Joel_Shepherd, ex Spiral Wars series (scifi space opera with fascinating AI) [4.27-4.56], Cassandra Kressnov series (cyberpunk) [3.88-4.0], A Trial of Blood & Steel series (fantasy) [3.9-4.26].

Pierce Brown's Red Rising sci-fi series is excellent and magnificent in scope and scale.

Anything by Joe Abercrombie for gritty low fantasy with buckets of blood, humor, populated with legendary characters. The Bloody-Nine, Dogman, Black Dow, Caul mfing Shivers anyone? His latest series https://www.goodreads.com/series/211497-the-age-of-madness [4.45-4.6] was fantastic.

And of course the other books mentioned by other commenters, particularly anything by Ian M Banks.

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