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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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 ...
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) - the length shouldn't be a problem if you like Peter Hamilton :-)
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 :)