Wanted: Great Sci-Fi Book Recommendations

[Webmaestro]

Looking for some good Sci-Fi book recommendations. I like when people surprise me with something I might not have heard/thought of.

I haven't read a ton of Sci-Fi, but enough that it would take me too long to try and list out all I've read thus far, so just list your favorite(s) here and I'll be a happy camper.

Don't worry about sub-genre, topic, etc. Just. list 'em and I'll do the research from there.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Will Save The Galaxy For Food by Yahtzee Croshaw

He's the guy that does all those Zero Punctuation game 'reviews' but he's also an accomplished author. That's the first book of his Sci Fi trilogy (next book is Will Destroy The Galaxy For Cash, and will end with the upcoming Will Leave The Galaxy For Good). It's good fun, and has a fair bit of Red Dwarf esque humor thrown in.

 

[narad]

I almost never feel the cost-to-reward ratio for longer sci-fi books is worth it to me these days. So with that in mind, I really like Ted Chiang's work, which is usually more short story format. Just great, thought-provoking ideas with a great deal of care for how whatever premise affects the world and characters. A few misses for me, but generally well worth it IMO.

 

[nickgray]

C.S. Friedman - This Alien Shore. You might've read it, but it is a bit under the radar. It's a pretty cool cyberpunk in space with a weird twist sort of thing. She also released a new novel quite recently in the same setting (This Virtual Night), haven't read it yet though.

Tad Williams - Otherland. Fairly well known. It's what I'm reading currently, just started the second book. It's a quadrilogy set in the near future where virtual reality technology had become fairly advanced. There are some interesting setting choices and characters (I'm only on the second book though). It is a slow burn, but having read Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, I was fully prepared for this. You have to read about 40-50% of the first book for things to start to get moving, and only around 2/3 of the way in does the plot start to truly appear. Amusingly, it's the same as in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the plot there also truly started around 2/3 of the way through, maybe even 3/4, I don't remember exactly, but way later than you'd expect.

 

[Webmaestro]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Keep 'em coming!

 

[Crash Dandicoot]

The Quantum Thief (trilogy) by Hannu Rajaniemi. As a friend of mine surmised: it does not hold your hand. Can be a bit obtuse to get into but worth it.

Also, and I know it's probably obvious, but the Dune series (in particular Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune) is 200% worth checking out.

 

[Mathemagician]

Hitchhikers guide, obviously.

Leviathan wakes. Only read the first book in the series but loved it.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries. Super fun and quick read. I haven't read the rest of the series but they're on my shelf until I finish Dune.

If you're a fan of 40k and hate yourself/having free time, there's always the 62 books of The Horus Heresy to go through.

 

[Gudbrand]

Two of my favorite authors of all time wrote some amazing sci-fi. They both also wrote amazing fantasy, if you're into that too.

Ursula Le Guin - she wrote mostly fantasy, but her Hainish cycle books are all sci-fi. They're set in the same universe, but they're only loosely related, so there's no real reading order. The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are two standouts.

Gene Wolfe - best known for The Book of the New Sun, but everything of his that I've read has been incredible. If you like that, there's a bunch of other series in that same cycle, plus lots of other books, novellas, and short stories. A standout to me is The Fifth Head of Cerebus. He definitely doesn't hold your hand. In fact, I would recommend not reading the fourth book in the New Sun series unless you want everything explained to you. From what I understand, it was supposed to be a trilogy, but his publishers asked him to write the fourth book to explain everything because so many people didn't understand it.

A few other suggestions:

I would second Dune. The sequels trail off pretty quickly though. Personally, if I were to read the series over again, I'd probably not read any of the sequels.

A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

 

[nightflameauto]

Dan Simmons - Hyperion / Endymion books. Also from him, Olympos / Illium

Frank Herbert's Dune books. I won't recommend the follow-ups by his kid.

The previously recommended Vernor Vinge books. Great books, but they could use a follow-up.

Greg Bear - don't remember ever reading one of his books that wasn't greatly entertaining

Blatant self-promotion:
If you like goofy self-aware sci-fi, I'd send ya my first two (still got three copies available in my review copies pile, so they'd be free). They kind of play with the idea that everything in sci-fi/horror/fantasy is super silly, at its root, and even some of the characters realize it in my stories.

They ain't perfect, but they're fun and filled with TV and metal references from the 80s to today. I've gotten positive response from everybody from teenagers to seventy year-olds. Wasn't even related to all of them. *shrug*

 

[ShredmasterD]

Cats Cradle - kurt vonnegut

Rendezvous with Rama - aurthur c clark

 

[Drew]

Ursula Le Guin - she wrote mostly fantasy, but her Hainish cycle books are all sci-fi. They're set in the same universe, but they're only loosely related, so there's no real reading order. The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are two standouts.

That's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time. I remember reading something by her as a kid and liking it - I should figure out what that was. I remember Madeliene L'Engle being in the same sort of vein, and while I don't know how sci-fi that is, it's probably worth a nod here as well.

Cats Cradle - kurt vonnegut

Vonnegut almost feels unfair to include here. Sci-fi gets a bad rap in "serious" literature circles, but Vonnegut is a notable exception where it almost feels like the sci-fi is incidental; I think a lot of sci fi and a lot of fantasy can kind of come off the rails a bit when it gets too caught up in the technology or the magic or whatever, and loses track of the story. Vonnegut, whatever he was writing about, was fundamentally writing novels about what it meant to be human, in whatever time or place that might be. I'd maybe put Sirens of Titan a hair above Cat's Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five is the one where you kind of have to know it (and, the scene where Billy Pilgrim comes unstuck in time and watches a war movie in reverse is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read), but it's REALLY hard to go wrong with Vonnegut.

Pertinent to the above, one of my favorite XKCDs, nominally about fantasy but just as true about sci-fi:

Fiction Rule of Thumb

xkcd.com

 

[BlackMastodon]

I've written him down years ago as I saw quite a few recommendations, but has anyone ready any Alastair Reynolds?

 

[Xaios]

I haven't actually read it yet (have purchased though), but my old boss swears by The Three-Body Problem and its sequels.

 

[Furtive Glance]

The Expanse series as a whole is really good. Weakest books for me were 1 and 9.

If you have even a passing interest in Halo, I love the Kilo-5 trilogy by Karen Traviss. Maybe read The Fall of Reach first just in case you want some more background lore before diving in.

 

[Wynseun]

Anathem by Neal Stephenson is one of the most unique and best sci-fi books I've ever read. Highly recommend it. The Three Body problem series of books are also pretty decent.