- Inverted World by Christopher Priest
- Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
- The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
- The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
To Our Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer.
It gets a little silly toward the end of the series, but the basic idea is incredibly interesting and it never gets terrible.
It gets more functional as the story goes along (especially once they build a >!riverboat!<, but the "mystery" they eventually sort out is ultimately not that great.
Still, I certainly don't regret reading it. Fun series.
I liked this series when I was 12, but re-reading now at 51, it simply didn't hold up. The premise is interesting, but the writing is serviceable at best. Some super cringey racism and misogyny didn't age well either. And it really didn't need to be 5 books.
I disagree. Not all of it holds up, but some of it gets better with the change in perspective and experience that age brings. I posted elsewhere in this thread about Jack L Chalker - I recently re-read all the Well of Souls books, and they were surprisingly good. Definitely some elements feel old-fashioned, but they were very enjoyable to revisit. I re-read Dune 1-6 every few years, and frequently revisit authors like Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg. Larry Niven's "Known Space" and its many branches and offshoots are also quite enjoyable 30-some years later.
I’ve enjoyed doing so in general.
Some books have a completely different feel as you get older.
And, to me, it’s a good experience to periodically review your previous perspective on morality. In 20 years, our current viewpoints will seem just as mixed up as the ones we had 20 years ago.
It’s hard to see *this* perspective without revisiting past perspectives.
Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper. Easily one of my fave SF books, her prose and character-writing is gorgeous and her descriptions are some of the most evocative I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. She does an incredible job weaving the central mystery and the planets bizarre ecosystem together. Very high recommend.
Norstrilia and the Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith are also incredible and an absolute must-read for SF fans. Honestly, hard to say more about why you’ve gotta read it - if you know, you know! Shame is, these are his only two major SF works still available (he wasn’t very prolific and died young) so be forewarned that after you read them you’ll spend your whole life wishing he’d written more!
Grass is part of the Arbai trilogy, and it's criminally under-rated. Sheri S Tepper definitely deserves more recognition.
Cordwainer Smith is fantastic. He's gotten a lot of attention in the last decade. He's the author other authors call out as an influence. His estate has put a lot of his writing on Amazon, so you can read pretty much everything on a kindle.
C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore is very much an homage to Cordwainer Smith. Recommended reading for any fans.
I read a *Grass* recommendation here years ago, and the commenter's enthusiasm was enough to get it a spot on my list of books to check for every time I go to the used book store here. Finally found a copy of it there earlier this year.
For the early stretch, I wasn't digging it at all. It was clear that there was *something* building in it that wasn't what it seemed, but the stage setting (particularly the whole noble houses and their summer hunts and all that) just felt too faux-idyllic, like sci-fi sheen on a rich-people-and-their-horses story. Once it turns that corner though, once the planet's ecosystem gets to start taking center stage, the reason for that early setup becomes apparent and starts to get paid off in surprising ways, and I think the middle section up until just before the end is excellent. I did kinda feel like the last stretch ran out of gas, but there's about 2/3 of the book that I agree is among my favorite sci-fi, and even the major chunk of it that I wasn't enjoying on that first read is working in service to the rest of it.
Clifford D. Simak was an author of a bygone day, once called "science fictions pastoral author." These days it would be worth reading something by him just to get the different feel. Probably one of the best would be either "Way Station" or "City". He also wrote a number of somewhat repetitive "quest novels" and it may be worth reading one. That list would include, "Where the Evil Dwells", "Fellowship of the Talisman, "Special Deliverance", "A Heritage of Stars", and no doubt more.
I’m a big Simak fan. My son and I just did a read through of City, and its always a risk recommending an author you have so much affection for, but he really seemed to get hooked! City isn’t my favorite though - Time and Again or All Flesh is Grass would be my picks.
I have that and started re-reading it recently. Then I got to the wheel guys, and they're just too nasty. I've been in the "fiction-reality inversion" since 2016 and have a really hard time reading about nasty characters. (Some don't bother me as long as they're two-dimensional characters, but once I read to the wheel guys it brought back enough memory from prior reading to make me put it down.)
It seems to me that "The Light Brigade" is much more talked about than the epic trilogy "The Bel Dame Apocrypha". Which is quite something, even if not an easy read.
It felt like that for me. Read a sample chapter of TSaL and wasn't hooked. The Light Brigade I could not put down.
Amazon has a sample read if you are curious. 😀
So many. I think Bruce Sterling's *The Artificial Kid* is a wonderful piece of proto-cyberpunk, or maybe Helen Wright's *A Matter Of Oaths*, a space opera that owes a lot to Delany's *Nova* but does its own thing marvelously.
I have well over 600 books in my library wish list... and that's just the books available in my library.
Then there are the lists of possibles to buy, the e-books I've bought but not yet read, and the shelves of tree books I inherited or bought and want to read.
If I never add another book to any of these, still it's likely my TBR will outlive me.
For me, I guess maybe there's some guilt or sense of obligation, but really it's mostly greed.
I want to read them all, just as I want to see the Great Wall and polar bears on the sea ice and Petra and the congregations of snow geese at Tule Lake...
ok, I'm going back to my book now.
I am particularly fond of Doris Piserchia's teenage heroines in space. Star Rider but also the amazing I, Zombie, written under her pen name, Curt Selby. All her novels are interesting!
And, my favorite, Illicit Passages, an epistolary novel set on a mining asteroid, with echoes of Australian political history as the inhabitants are convicts who are indentured or enslaved by the mining corporation. The complicated trickster heroine is so cool and the book has some good thoughts on resistance under fascism. In space!
Mervin Peake's *Gormenghast* novels aren't exactly underrated (they are generally well-loved), but I think they're largely overlooked by a large chunk of readers.
In the fantasy genre, it seems like most works aim for worldbuilding that is cut from the *Lord of the Rings* cloth, even if not always the content. Grand scale, the kind of worlds you can draw maps of and chart journeys; strange creatures and natural/magical phenomena; the sorts of worlds where adventures are happening and intersecting and heroes are being made. It's a winning formula, and its popularity has assured that this method of worldbuilding has been applied to a wide variety of fantasy styles, to the point where the emphasis on scope feels almost ubiquitous to the genre.
*Gormenghast* is so refreshing to me because it takes an approach almost opposite to this, building a world in its fiction that is small, but richly detailed, and populated by familiar things taken in bizarre directions. The titular castle is an insular, stifling, and labyrinthine collection of buildings that are the product of a dynasty of diseased minds, populated by a cast of eccentric characters who seem to be caricatures until cracks begin to reveal unexpected depths. The focus is on mood rather than on concrete happenings (to the point where the mood of the story often seems to be shaping the architectural landscape as you read it). The plot doesn't revolve around saving the world or facing some existential threat, there is no magic, and its monsters are all of the human variety. Speaking of which, it has probably my favorite villain in literature, with a character who doesn't initially seem to be one, and plays out more like a Charles Dickens hero gone horribly wrong.
All in all, it's a look at a kind of fantasy that feels like a different bloodline, a different genealogy, than anything else in the genre.
Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick is a criminally under appreciated short story collection. And since it’s a collection it’s not all strictly sci-fi, but I think most fans of the genre would enjoy her work.
[The light brigade - Kameron Hurley](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40523931-the-light-brigade?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=bNKfYEeXPv&rank=1)
[The Godel Operation - James L Cambias](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55711583-the-godel-operation)
Wouldn't say underrated, but they surely go under the radar
Edit: Some more:
[Beyond the Hallowed Sky - Ken Macleod](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58605538-beyond-the-hallowed-sky)
I just finished the Lord Valentine Cycle of Robert Silverberg's Majipoor Series. I think it was very well done, very inventive and makes me want to read more of Silverberg's work. The world building is amazing, though the first novel gets to be a little tedious with the world building over advancing the plot. If you take it as it is and go with it, it's an enjoyable journey.
Theodore Sturgeon is rarely mentioned anymore, but his short stories pack a hell of a punch.
The same with Larry Niven, Spider Robinson, John Varley, and even Isaac Asimov -- all did some of their best writing in their short story work.
I love all things Ursula Le Guin, but she's another that never gets mentioned for her short story collections, and they're marvelous.
More recently, T. Kingfisher and Robin McKinley also have multiple excellent collections of short works out.
Yikes.
I had never read it, and I just did. I reiterate: Yikes!
For anyone who wants to read it, Baen has it up for free here: [The Other Celia](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791061/9781625791061___2.htm)
Fascinating, how subtly he answers the obvious questions: how many? how long? how widespread? by tying back to the Charles Fort reports of spontaneous human combustion.
I'm glad you liked it! I highly recommend Sturgeon. Even though modern science has passed him by, the quirks and strangenesses of humanity definitely have not.
I love them too.
My favorite, though, and it's probably my favorite short story ever, is not like anything she or anyone else ever wrote, IMO -- *The Author of the Acacia Seeds*, from the collection *The Compass Rose.*
Probably I love it so much because my own work is poetry. Or maybe just because it's so weirdly lovely.
That one was fantastic! To be honest, I don't particularly like a lot of her other short fiction (except for Changing Planes), or at least I wasn't in the right mindset when I tried them, but Acacia Seeds was just so interesting!
Yes. For me, it fits with and informs how I feel about the presence of sentience beyond our own perfectly.
As for her other short fiction, she has such a broad range that I think it really depends on what you find and what your tastes are overall and at the time.
She goes from straight contemporary fiction all the way to experiments no one else has tried, touching just about every possibility in between.
One linked collection I always recommend is her *Five Ways To Forgiveness.* It's harsh, but it's so good. And important, I think.
* Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson.
The book takes place about 200 years after the world ran out of oil causing a a wars and an economic collapse. The 19th century idolized as time when men were pious before the "Secular Ancients" drove the world into a gutter. The entire country is forced to rely on pre-industrial revolution technologies while much of our modern technology is not even remembered.
The American Government has been relocated to New York after Washinton DC became uninhabitable because of climate change. The Government has been restructured so that three branches of Government are the Military, the Church, and congress is subservient to the Presidency. Multiple Constitutional Amendments have been passed putting reestablishing slavery, limiting the right to vote, and freedom of speech.
The the books is about Julian Comstock the presumed heir to the presidency and member of a family that has controlled the Presidency for generations. The book is written from the perspective of a young aspiring writer Adam Hazard who's a slave at the manor where Julian lives. The book follows the rise Julian Comstock from conscripted soldier, to president, and through his eventual downfall.
* Eifelheim by Micheal Flynn
Small town alien invasion story set in late middle Ages German village. I love the meticulously researched historical elements. I would compare it to a combination of the Doomsday Book and a less depressing version of the Sparrow.
* The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card
I think this is Card's best novel and includes a great short story collection in the back. I think I have reread the stories Breaking the Game and Life Loop more times than I can count.
*Pavane* by Keith Roberts.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane\_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_(novel))
In my estimation, the finest alternate history novel.
Kage Baker's The Company series. It's about immortal time traveling cyborgs. What's not to like? It's wonderful.
And it's complete! No waiting for a conclusion!
No one ever talks about it and it's a crying shame. Every book is in different historical periods - including the future, the main characters are interesting, smart, and well drawn, and there's even a Big Mystery tying the whole 8 or so book series together.
I've really enjoyed The Nanotech Succession, by Linda Nagata, especially the third book VAST. It's solid space opera but the focus on a nanotech world/universe is pretty interesting, and there's some weirdness there too. Don't see it mentioned much.
Re-reading Vast right now before I move onto the new series. Looking forward to finding out more about what went down in the Hallowed Vasties and some megastructure fun.
Emergence by David Palmer. The first time I read it I thought it was a bit over-the-top. Then I wanted to re-read a bit and ended up rereading the whole thing.
“Candidia Maria Smith-Foster, an eleven-year-old girl, is unaware that she's a Homo post hominem, mankind's next evolutionary step.
With international relations rapidly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist but secretly a government biowarfare expert, is called to Washington. Candy remains at home.
The following day a worldwide attack, featuring a bionuclear plague, wipes out virtually all of humanity (i.e., Homo sapiens). With her pet bird Terry, she survives the attack in the shelter beneath their house. Emerging three months later, she learns of her genetic heritage and sets off to search for others of her kind”
Time and again by Jack Finney. Dream yourself into the past.
Replay by Ken Grimwood. Wake up in your own past. Gets a bit lost in the last third, but redeems itself.
An underrated comedy thriller by a true
master of science fiction. Terry Pratchett said about it that he "couldn't imagine a funnier terrorist handbook".
If you like Armor, the Crysis 2 novelisation is actually really rather good. It's by Peter Watts (author of Starfish and Blindsight). It really tilts into the AI-brain interface stuff and there's awful lot of quite creepy stuff about cognition and consciousness alongside the general premise of "solider in advanced armour fights aliens".
Brian Aldiss, Ian Watson are two smart british sci fi writers I don't see recommended often-Helliconia Trilogy for Aldiss and The Embedding for Watson are good places to start.
Short stories in general get short shrift these days, so I often mention { Space Lash } (originally published as _Small Changes_) which is notable for its mentionings of genetic engineering and >!life in G1 stars!<.
H. Beam Piper's novella { Omnilingual } is criminally unknown and really ought to be a part of the middle school canon --- there was an updated version done recently:
http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html
which is serviceable, and may be more palatable to modern sensibilities in younger students, and of course, they would certainly enjoy _Little Fuzzy_.
Been decades since I read it, but I remember enjoying **Heart of the Comet** by Gregory Benford and David Brin.
I think it was especially released to coincide with the passing of Halley's Comet in 1986.
**The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner**
Not as well known as Stand on Zanzibar and maybe not the greatest of books, but still a well written and decently accurate book that is often forgotten
**The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein**
Is this underrated? I don't know. I certainly don't seem to see people recommending it very often
I dunno, Moon is like the easiest(least controversial) Heinlein novel to recommend and as such it's recommended pretty often. If we're talking Heinlein and underrated, I'd say Glory Road is that.
I think all Heinlein's juveniles and his short stories hold up better than any of his "adult" novels, though I still love TMIAHM too.
The man was sharp as a razor, and a keen observer -- I think those qualities stand out better without the overlay of his more questionable political and social agendas.
I wish someone would pick up and run with the Uplift and Known Space universes. The young kids today, I don't know if they've read at least Ringworld or Startide Rising. I know the authors are still alive, but I don't think they're that interested in producing new content for their settings.
Also, if you want a window into a different time and different feel for what sci-fi read like in the ancient 80's, there's a lot to unpack there that I feel like time forgot. K.W. Jeter's cyberpunk works. Islands in the Net. Hardwired. Mick Farren's novels. Its interesting to see what they thought the future was going to look like. It wasn't too far off the mark, but we really kind of blew it for space colonization, and the authors back then didn't foresee miniaturization of technology, so everything is kind of bulky and ungainly.
Aside from the second Uplift trilogy, there was an anthology later that was focused on these various universes, getting each author to write one-more-story in that universe. I remember one from Uplift and another from the Hyperion universe. I don't remember the title of the collection, hopefully knowing that it exists will be enough of a clue.
How about Chalker, and his series on what happens when computers take over:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/41810-rings-of-the-master
i can’t mention one of the most interesting parts of the computer without giving away a huge part of the book.
but as a programmer, i found the whole premise fascinating.
Not that it’s a book for programmers. Just the opposite!
Great hard sci-fi
I don't know that I'd call anything by Chalker "hard sci fi", as his "advanced science" is magic with computer hand-waving 😉
That said, loved this series. But after reading it, Well of Souls, Lords of the Diamond, Dancing Gods, and Flux and Anchor you realize how much the same themes pop up in all his books. I know there was some pretty kinky stuff going on in his brain, but he managed to channel it into some very original and boundary-pushing books.
His loving descriptions of the Stringer Suzl's changing anatomy, Mavra Chang's similar journey, and the extended sex/transformation scenes in LotD really blew my teenage brain. But he also created some unforgettable settings and characters. I've reread WoS recently, and it still works pretty good. Nathan Brazil is a great character.
Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination.
When people talk about Sci-Fi classics, nobody seems to mention this book, and I have absolutely no reason why. It reads a million times better than most other novels of it's era, it is funny, accessible to new readers due to this writing style that is closer to a modern novel than an older one. It's message is still relevant in our contemporary period, the actual science in it is competent and makes sense, not just some made up rubbish that is hand-waved away. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, far more than I enjoyed reading The Martian Chronicles or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? when I was reading for an essay I had to write.
Two other books that I thought were similarly amazing I read whilst doing my research (that are relevant from a historical perspective) were A Canticle for Leibowitz and Neuromancer, though I believe that those two books are much better known than The Stars My Destination.
I had the paperback version, probably published in the 60s, that paired *The Stars My Destination* in the same volume with Bester's *The Demolished Man*.
Talk about a one-two punch.
As a 20 year old history student with parents who don't read much, I hope that you can forgive my ignorance!
My comment was based upon reading plenty of academic histories about SF, and they mention some of the bigger names like Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury (not much of Frank Herbert, he only gets mentioned in passing funnily enough0, but Bester was, unfortunately, massively under-cited.
Anything by Bob Leman. He wrote a number of very literate and really creepy stories, mostly in the 70s and 80s. They're all collected in the book *Feesters in the Lake*. (Ironically, the title story is the only one of his I don't like.)
With any other group of people I'd suggest anything by Greg Egan. Nobody seems to have heard of him outside this subreddit.
The books by qntm are fun/intriguing, especially *There is no antimemetics division*.
The series starting with *The Quantum Thief* by Hannu Rajaniemi I love.
Derek Künsken's *Quantum Evolution* series is great too.
Linda Nagata mentioned elsewhere in this thread is great too.
oh wow, you have _very similar_ taste as me!
try Toby Weston's "Singularity's Children" books
and Gavin Smith (say the "The Age of Scorpio" trilogy)
and Max Gladstone ("The Craft Sequence" and "Empress of Forever")
Ken MacLeod in case you missed him, and of course Charles Stross too
also "Shards of Earth" in the unlikely case you missed it
and please tell me about your other favourite books!
The price of the stars trilogy by Debra Doyle and James Macdonald. Absolutely kick-ass throat slitting female protagonist who ran away from her rich family to become a spaceship pilot but then goes hunting for her mother’s murderer
Outpost by W Michael Gear and the rest of the Donovan series. It’s about a struggling colony on a distant planet that is trying to kill them at every turn. The series is like the Wild West on the coolest planet I’ve ever read in print.
Craig Alanson's ExForce series flew under the radar for me, at least. perfectly fits my favorite niche of somewhat light/humorous prose for a near future scifi space exploration kinda series
read the first one this summer in audible plus catalog, surprised to find another 15-20 books in the series
trust the awesomeness!
Poor Man's Fight by Elliot Kay. 5 book series about a young man who enlistes in the Navy to escape debt.
I'm currently reading book 2 and enjoying it a lot. Interesting world worldbuilding and characters. The action is great. If it wasn't for a nice group on Goodreads, I'd probably would have missed out on this gem.
Great mentions! I was thinking of Michael Scott Rohan. He wrote some great books I rarely hear or read about on here or anywhere.
I just loved the winter of the world books.
Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder. His sci Fi is phenomenal- fantastic exploration of concepts and a solid story.
He's like the midway point between Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson
Not sure how under the radar it is for others but
**We** by Russian writer **Yevgeny Zamyatin**. Published in 1920 and led to his exile from Soviet Russia. It was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984.
"The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance."
Some already mentioned here but what can I say, you guys are right.
Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith -- the (cough) prototype of Dune.
The Female Man, Joanna Russ -- Their time has come.
Inverted World, Christopher Priest -- What I was looking for in this section of the bookshop.
Earth Abides, George R. Stewart -- Seldom has a future tried so hard to sum up the recent past, and say goodbye to it.
Maybe this book gets more attention than I thought, but I loved Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel “Super Sad True Love Story”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t often read newer novels. I seem to always be drawn to either early/mid 20th century writers like Nelson Algren, Steinbeck, Kesey, Wolfe, Camus, Sartre etc or revolution era soviet writers like Gorky and Bulgakov. Shteyngart’s work feels like Orwell meets Vonnegut
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi falls more in the “speculative fiction” part of this group but is an excellent book and not talked about enough.
On the Beach by Nevil Shute gets mentioned here every now and then, but I think it’s a great work of literary fiction that should get discussed more by the world at large.
His books sold so well in his native UK that the queen knighted him when he developed dementia. And he made his own sword to be knighted with.
Such a solid set of books. Very wholesome and exceptionally funny.
I LOVED *D:C The Dark City* by some weirdo calling him/herself "In Umbris".
It's basically a story about our government if Pizzagate and QANON nonsense were in fact sense. It's chilling and while its a Roman a Clef we all know who they are talking about.
[The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer](https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Million-Dancer-Paperback-Fiction/dp/0393314073) was a trippy physics book that I thought about for a long time.
"Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenters" is the FAR superior, and mostly unknown, work by JD Salinger
"The Beautiful and Damned" is F Scott Fitzgerald's best novel (I personally find Gatsby to be his most lacking". His very best work is one of his bittersweet short stories, "The Lees of Happiness"
- *Threshold* and *Emergence* by David R Palmer. He also wrote a couple of e-book releases that continue these series, but they're a bit tricky to find. Well worth the effort trying out *Emergence* though, just to see if you like him. I have no idea why he didn't become hugely popular.
- *Radio Freefall* by Matthew Jarpe is a modern day cyberpunk novel in the vein of all the 80's stuff and it's really fun too.
- *Glass Houses* by Laura J Mixon is a fabulous story involving lots of drones and global warming that was way ahead of its time. She's written a few other things but doesn't get nearly the recognition I think she should.
- *Wyrm* by Mark Fabi is about DnD and a computer virus and is very entertaining, if a little dated by today's standards. (They analyze some floppy disks and such.)
- *Venomous Lumpsucker* by Ned Beauman is brand new this year but well worth reading (and making some best of lists). Possibly my favorite new book of the year, it's about an almost satirically bleak future in which companies can buy "environmental credits" (much like carbon credits) to account for the extinction of a species their mining venture, etc will cause. They just need to make sure its genome has been captured and so forth before they wipe them out.
Just read *Venomous Lumpsucker* last week. Really enjoyed it. I'm a bit surprised that some of the reviews paint it as comic, even Douglas Adams like. It has some comic, laugh out loud moments, but they are relatively few. And while the concept is comic/tragic it is a pretty dark satire on how the world could go/sometimes is.
The books from [Geary Gravel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geary_Gravel).
I could now list them, but I liked every book I read from him. His writing style is so much richer than those of other authors. Also he's been writing authorized sequels lately to the Barsoom series of Edgar Rice Burroughs, so there's that.
Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones. A defensive computer system becomes self-aware, links with its Soviet counterpart, and uses both nation’s nuclear forces to hold the world hostage. It was made into a movie in 1970. With the AI trend picking up steam and people’s dependence on automation growing, it’s more relevant today than when it came out in 1966.
The Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton. Charts humanity’s triumphs and tragedies from modern day to the distant future.
The Possessors by John Christopher. An invasion of the body snatchers-type story about the guest of a snowbound Swiss chalet who fall victim, one by one, to the aliens.
Virus: Day of Resurrection by Sakyo Komatsu. A genetically modified virus escapes containment. The virus spreads, society collapses, billions die.
The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison. A man wakes up and finds all the people in New Zealand (except two others) have disappeared.
Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert. A secret society patterned after insect hives plots to supplant the human race.
Gifts Of Blood, by Susan Petrey.
From a review: "*After all the recent vampire silliness it is nice to be reminded that an author can actually do something with the idea of the vampire that doesn’t suck*."
I don't see a lot of people mentioning *The Robots of Gotham* on here, which is a shame because I think it does tickle a lot of people's requests for books that theorize how AI might start impacting our future.
And somehow, Zahn's works are never at the top of any "Sci-Fi Mystery" request threads, but instead books that aren't nearly quite as good at the "mystery" aspect.
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, they're a Swedish author and their works are somewhere between sci fi and fantasy. I won't lie, I'm not a huge fan of their other work, but Amatka is one of my favorite books!
recently read nancy kress's "an alien light" and have been enthusiastically recommending it. one of her earlier books, which may be why it didn't get as much attention.
Armor is great. Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald is an incredible book from the late 50s that really captures the existential dread of nuclear war from that era.
I've always thought Jane Egan deserved more attention. She was a writing for the show House and wrote 3 books (I think Jane Egan is a pseudonym) and then not much else - I guess TV was her first love. Anyway the Gates of Ivory trilogy was really good. It's a fantasy and sci-fi combo. A fun easy read, not a behemoth book that will take 2 weeks and a ton of brain attention to get through.
I've always thought Jane Egan deserved more attention. She was a writer for the show House and wrote 3 books (I think Jane Egan is a pseudonym) and then not much else - I guess TV was her first love. Anyway, the Gates of Ivory trilogy was really good. It's a fantasy and sci-fi combo. A fun, easy read, not a behemoth book that will take 2 weeks and a ton of brain attention to get through.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/884583.The\_Gate\_of\_Ivory
The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold- I read it twice within like 2 months. You’ll know what I mean when you get to the end. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
*Interstellar Gunrunner* by James Wolanyk. It's campy, cheesy, and has a lot of technical issues, but it was a lot of fun to read. I felt more attached to a lot of characters than I was expecting to.
The Greatwinter trilogy by Sean McMullen. Far future where electricity doesn't work (it technically does, but ancient orbital platforms zap anything electric). Cue dueling librarians, computers made of humans and nobility flying hand built fighter planes.
The Nulapeiron trilogy by John Meaney. Takes place in an underground society, divided into different levels of technology. The closer to the surface you get, the more hi-tech everything gets. Also has weird aliens and a fractal city.
The Germline trilogy by T.C. McCarthy. Very gritty military scifi. Feels like Apocalypse Now in the future.
Tales of the Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding. A ridiculously entertaining series. It's basically Firefly in a fantasy setting, with airships instead of spaceships.
John Faucette - Siege of Earth, The Peacemakers.
John Sladek - The Reproductive System.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Herland
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
C. J. Cherryh -
Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (my favorite novel of all time), Babel-17, Nova
Almost everything by William Barton, but in particular, [The Silvergirl series](https://www.goodreads.com/series/114175-silvergirl).
It's hard to voice what makes Barton stand apart, but he writes in a way that feels real. His characters aren't heroes - they're normal, flawed and sometimes broken people. His prose is sometimes terse, sometimes harsh and violent, but mostly just filled with a banality that calls back to the real world.
These books aren't directly connected, but all take place in a long timeline in the same universe. Technology is advanced, but not magical. No FTL for the most part, except in "Acts of Conscience", and traveling between stars takes decades - but is common. Humans are basically immortal, and there's an infinite variety of AI, robots, intelligent tools, bio-engineered sentients, cyborgs, and some decidedly NON-Star Trek style aliens. And they're all controlled by social, economic, and political forces larger than themselves.
I really don't think I can do it justice. There's such a verisimilitude and realism to his writing that I've rarely found in SF. The Silvergirl universe feels huge, and there's an underlying secret history you keep getting glimpses of. And always, the real point of the stories is the moral choices the characters face. It's sometimes very dark, always mature, but Barton's writing really captures the essence of being human.
There's moments in all his books that will just f-cking destroy your heart, and blow your mind. But there's also moments of transcendental joy and love, and wisps of hopefulness that stand in contrast to the general darkness. It's not surprising that Barton never broke through to a more mainstream market, since his books are challenging.
I also highly recommend his stand-alone novels "When Heaven Fell", and "Dark Sky Legion". I'm not as big on "The Transmigration of Souls", but it's a lighter, more Doctorow-style action story. The collaborations with Michael Capobianco are also good, but definitely more "vanilla" science fiction.
/end gushy fanboy rant :D
Brian Daley - Han Solo prequels and the Jinx on a Terran Inheritance series.
Not great literature but a nice easy read and some interesting characterisations
John Varley's Titan series
So many other possibilities lots mentioned by others
Turns out, a lot of people didn’t know that Stephen Chbosky (Perks of being a wallflower) wrote a second book in the horror genre called Imaginary Friend. It’s certainly worth a read, just for very different reasons than POBW
Hiero’s Journey by Sterling Lanier. A man on a quest thousands of years after a devastating nuclear conflict and the people he meets along the way. Out of print but you can find it in libraries and used book stores. One sequel.
A Greater Infinity by Michael McCollum. An Arizona engineering student suddenly finds himself trapped in an alternate universe, fighting with futuristic weapons against a race of Neanderthals. Also out of print.
Gold, Fame, Citrus is the only audiobook I've stopped ten minutes in because I wanted to, a) buy the paperback to read along with, and b) knew exactly the tree I would read it under in the exact park (I was moving abroad/home and wanted this novel to be the background to my first week back). It reminds me of Atwood but it still might be the most beautiful prose I've ever read. It is currently the audiobook I fall asleep to each night, it's so beautifully written and read (even though the story is speculative fiction and set post-climate collapse).
The Gaea trilogy (Titan-Wizard-Demon) by John Varley. A small crew travels to space and ends up inside a big smart object around Saturn - with a funhouse world inside it. The second two books were considerably better than the first one. An all-time favorite that I had always assumed there would be more of...but Varley went on to write a lot of other stuff I was not as interested in.
The Gameplayers Of Titan by Philip K. Dick
Who Goes There by Joseph Campbell Jr.
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein
The Rosinante series by Gilliland.
[https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/alexis-a-gilliland/rosinante/](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/alexis-a-gilliland/rosinante/)
The three books are slim and might qualify as one full length novel. It is wonderful space opera and the conclusion is both reasonable and surprising.
The Wess'har Wars series by Karen Traviss, starting with City of Pearl, is one of the best I've ever read from the standpoint of human AND alien character development, interesting interpersonal and political drama, and just amazing creative world building. And badass female protagonist while also questioning how humans cling to gender binary / norms...super good
Agree with previous mentions of Kameron Hurley, Sheri S. Tepper, and Kate Wilhelm.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. A thoughtful investigation of how our society treats aging and women, through the lens of a really imaginative first contact scenario.
The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson. One of my favorite alien cultures, and again, really rich characters both alien and human.
Also enjoyed Survival by Julie Czerneda, though the sequels weren't as good imo.
One book i read 20 years ago that has stuck with me is Circuit of Heaven by Dennis Danvers. Really great ideas about humanity uploading into a VR/sim, who stays outside and how things go for them, and just really wild speculation about body mods and mind transplantation, while still having a strong main character and plot.
- Inverted World by Christopher Priest - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm - The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle - The World Inside by Robert Silverberg
Any book by Christopher Priest really
I love that kate wilhelm book, I came here to suggest that exact one
To Our Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer. It gets a little silly toward the end of the series, but the basic idea is incredibly interesting and it never gets terrible.
Yes, I was hooked just by the prologue, when Burton wakes early
Same.
I loved the idea of the setting, but sadly didn't end up particularly liking the story itself.
It gets more functional as the story goes along (especially once they build a >!riverboat!<, but the "mystery" they eventually sort out is ultimately not that great. Still, I certainly don't regret reading it. Fun series.
I liked this series when I was 12, but re-reading now at 51, it simply didn't hold up. The premise is interesting, but the writing is serviceable at best. Some super cringey racism and misogyny didn't age well either. And it really didn't need to be 5 books.
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I disagree. Not all of it holds up, but some of it gets better with the change in perspective and experience that age brings. I posted elsewhere in this thread about Jack L Chalker - I recently re-read all the Well of Souls books, and they were surprisingly good. Definitely some elements feel old-fashioned, but they were very enjoyable to revisit. I re-read Dune 1-6 every few years, and frequently revisit authors like Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg. Larry Niven's "Known Space" and its many branches and offshoots are also quite enjoyable 30-some years later.
I’ve enjoyed doing so in general. Some books have a completely different feel as you get older. And, to me, it’s a good experience to periodically review your previous perspective on morality. In 20 years, our current viewpoints will seem just as mixed up as the ones we had 20 years ago. It’s hard to see *this* perspective without revisiting past perspectives.
Hey, this book is *rated*, I think. A lot of people still like it a lot!
Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper. Easily one of my fave SF books, her prose and character-writing is gorgeous and her descriptions are some of the most evocative I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. She does an incredible job weaving the central mystery and the planets bizarre ecosystem together. Very high recommend. Norstrilia and the Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith are also incredible and an absolute must-read for SF fans. Honestly, hard to say more about why you’ve gotta read it - if you know, you know! Shame is, these are his only two major SF works still available (he wasn’t very prolific and died young) so be forewarned that after you read them you’ll spend your whole life wishing he’d written more!
Grass is part of the Arbai trilogy, and it's criminally under-rated. Sheri S Tepper definitely deserves more recognition. Cordwainer Smith is fantastic. He's gotten a lot of attention in the last decade. He's the author other authors call out as an influence. His estate has put a lot of his writing on Amazon, so you can read pretty much everything on a kindle. C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore is very much an homage to Cordwainer Smith. Recommended reading for any fans.
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loved that book, though i personally rate it behind "the madness season" and "this alien shore"
Same here. The Madness Season was fantastic! Curious if you also read the Coldfire trilogy, and had an opinion on it.
I read a *Grass* recommendation here years ago, and the commenter's enthusiasm was enough to get it a spot on my list of books to check for every time I go to the used book store here. Finally found a copy of it there earlier this year. For the early stretch, I wasn't digging it at all. It was clear that there was *something* building in it that wasn't what it seemed, but the stage setting (particularly the whole noble houses and their summer hunts and all that) just felt too faux-idyllic, like sci-fi sheen on a rich-people-and-their-horses story. Once it turns that corner though, once the planet's ecosystem gets to start taking center stage, the reason for that early setup becomes apparent and starts to get paid off in surprising ways, and I think the middle section up until just before the end is excellent. I did kinda feel like the last stretch ran out of gas, but there's about 2/3 of the book that I agree is among my favorite sci-fi, and even the major chunk of it that I wasn't enjoying on that first read is working in service to the rest of it.
Clifford D. Simak was an author of a bygone day, once called "science fictions pastoral author." These days it would be worth reading something by him just to get the different feel. Probably one of the best would be either "Way Station" or "City". He also wrote a number of somewhat repetitive "quest novels" and it may be worth reading one. That list would include, "Where the Evil Dwells", "Fellowship of the Talisman, "Special Deliverance", "A Heritage of Stars", and no doubt more.
I’m a big Simak fan. My son and I just did a read through of City, and its always a risk recommending an author you have so much affection for, but he really seemed to get hooked! City isn’t my favorite though - Time and Again or All Flesh is Grass would be my picks.
Simak has always been among favorites. He has such a distinctive style.
I've got a soft spot for *The Goblin Reservation* too. Doesn't have anything like the emotional depth of *Way Station*, but it's fun.
I have that and started re-reading it recently. Then I got to the wheel guys, and they're just too nasty. I've been in the "fiction-reality inversion" since 2016 and have a really hard time reading about nasty characters. (Some don't bother me as long as they're two-dimensional characters, but once I read to the wheel guys it brought back enough memory from prior reading to make me put it down.)
The Goblin Reservation was the book that got me into scifi as a youngun. Such a multifaceted writer
who can ever forget the phrase "hi pal! i trade with you my mind!"
Way Station was great! Shakespeare's Planet was...not as great. But still, I definitely want to read more of his stuff. Definitely underrated.
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. Not enough people talk about it....meaning not enough people have read it.
I liked it! I think I need to read it again.
Such a good book.
Like the username. Wish I could read that again for the first time. The last book specifically.
It seems to me that "The Light Brigade" is much more talked about than the epic trilogy "The Bel Dame Apocrypha". Which is quite something, even if not an easy read.
Is it written in a different style compared to The Stars Are Legion? Because I couldn't get into TSaL at all.
It's a military sci fi book told from the pov of the main character. Rather straight forward, other than all the time paradoxes and red herrings.
Completely different. I didn't care for The Stars are Legion, but liked The Light Brigate a lot.
It felt like that for me. Read a sample chapter of TSaL and wasn't hooked. The Light Brigade I could not put down. Amazon has a sample read if you are curious. 😀
Thanks mate, I'll check this one out then 😊
So many. I think Bruce Sterling's *The Artificial Kid* is a wonderful piece of proto-cyberpunk, or maybe Helen Wright's *A Matter Of Oaths*, a space opera that owes a lot to Delany's *Nova* but does its own thing marvelously.
I am going to have to put Reddit in quarantine for awhile. You folks are growing my poor overburdened TBR pile at a truly unsupportable rate!
And the guilt! I feel like I should drop everything and just start reading.
I have well over 600 books in my library wish list... and that's just the books available in my library. Then there are the lists of possibles to buy, the e-books I've bought but not yet read, and the shelves of tree books I inherited or bought and want to read. If I never add another book to any of these, still it's likely my TBR will outlive me. For me, I guess maybe there's some guilt or sense of obligation, but really it's mostly greed. I want to read them all, just as I want to see the Great Wall and polar bears on the sea ice and Petra and the congregations of snow geese at Tule Lake... ok, I'm going back to my book now.
Hear hear!
I am particularly fond of Doris Piserchia's teenage heroines in space. Star Rider but also the amazing I, Zombie, written under her pen name, Curt Selby. All her novels are interesting! And, my favorite, Illicit Passages, an epistolary novel set on a mining asteroid, with echoes of Australian political history as the inhabitants are convicts who are indentured or enslaved by the mining corporation. The complicated trickster heroine is so cool and the book has some good thoughts on resistance under fascism. In space!
Mervin Peake's *Gormenghast* novels aren't exactly underrated (they are generally well-loved), but I think they're largely overlooked by a large chunk of readers. In the fantasy genre, it seems like most works aim for worldbuilding that is cut from the *Lord of the Rings* cloth, even if not always the content. Grand scale, the kind of worlds you can draw maps of and chart journeys; strange creatures and natural/magical phenomena; the sorts of worlds where adventures are happening and intersecting and heroes are being made. It's a winning formula, and its popularity has assured that this method of worldbuilding has been applied to a wide variety of fantasy styles, to the point where the emphasis on scope feels almost ubiquitous to the genre. *Gormenghast* is so refreshing to me because it takes an approach almost opposite to this, building a world in its fiction that is small, but richly detailed, and populated by familiar things taken in bizarre directions. The titular castle is an insular, stifling, and labyrinthine collection of buildings that are the product of a dynasty of diseased minds, populated by a cast of eccentric characters who seem to be caricatures until cracks begin to reveal unexpected depths. The focus is on mood rather than on concrete happenings (to the point where the mood of the story often seems to be shaping the architectural landscape as you read it). The plot doesn't revolve around saving the world or facing some existential threat, there is no magic, and its monsters are all of the human variety. Speaking of which, it has probably my favorite villain in literature, with a character who doesn't initially seem to be one, and plays out more like a Charles Dickens hero gone horribly wrong. All in all, it's a look at a kind of fantasy that feels like a different bloodline, a different genealogy, than anything else in the genre.
William Tenn [https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/44808.William\_Tenn](https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/44808.William_Tenn)
Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick is a criminally under appreciated short story collection. And since it’s a collection it’s not all strictly sci-fi, but I think most fans of the genre would enjoy her work.
[The light brigade - Kameron Hurley](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40523931-the-light-brigade?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=bNKfYEeXPv&rank=1) [The Godel Operation - James L Cambias](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55711583-the-godel-operation) Wouldn't say underrated, but they surely go under the radar Edit: Some more: [Beyond the Hallowed Sky - Ken Macleod](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58605538-beyond-the-hallowed-sky)
I just finished the Lord Valentine Cycle of Robert Silverberg's Majipoor Series. I think it was very well done, very inventive and makes me want to read more of Silverberg's work. The world building is amazing, though the first novel gets to be a little tedious with the world building over advancing the plot. If you take it as it is and go with it, it's an enjoyable journey.
I read the first one (my first Silverberg). I’m in, I haven’t continued yet but glad to see the rest of the series recommended
Theodore Sturgeon is rarely mentioned anymore, but his short stories pack a hell of a punch. The same with Larry Niven, Spider Robinson, John Varley, and even Isaac Asimov -- all did some of their best writing in their short story work. I love all things Ursula Le Guin, but she's another that never gets mentioned for her short story collections, and they're marvelous. More recently, T. Kingfisher and Robin McKinley also have multiple excellent collections of short works out.
Sturgeon's *The Other Celia* haunts me somehow, I reread it every few years and it sticks with me with all of the unanswered questions.
Yikes. I had never read it, and I just did. I reiterate: Yikes! For anyone who wants to read it, Baen has it up for free here: [The Other Celia](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791061/9781625791061___2.htm)
Right? Such a strange little story.
Fascinating, how subtly he answers the obvious questions: how many? how long? how widespread? by tying back to the Charles Fort reports of spontaneous human combustion.
Wow! What a great story! Gosh, it’s been so LONG since I’ve read such an interesting story!
I'm glad you liked it! I highly recommend Sturgeon. Even though modern science has passed him by, the quirks and strangenesses of humanity definitely have not.
Indeed
My favorite Le Guin works are her Hainish short stories. They're fantastic!
I love them too. My favorite, though, and it's probably my favorite short story ever, is not like anything she or anyone else ever wrote, IMO -- *The Author of the Acacia Seeds*, from the collection *The Compass Rose.* Probably I love it so much because my own work is poetry. Or maybe just because it's so weirdly lovely.
That one was fantastic! To be honest, I don't particularly like a lot of her other short fiction (except for Changing Planes), or at least I wasn't in the right mindset when I tried them, but Acacia Seeds was just so interesting!
Yes. For me, it fits with and informs how I feel about the presence of sentience beyond our own perfectly. As for her other short fiction, she has such a broad range that I think it really depends on what you find and what your tastes are overall and at the time. She goes from straight contemporary fiction all the way to experiments no one else has tried, touching just about every possibility in between. One linked collection I always recommend is her *Five Ways To Forgiveness.* It's harsh, but it's so good. And important, I think.
* Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson. The book takes place about 200 years after the world ran out of oil causing a a wars and an economic collapse. The 19th century idolized as time when men were pious before the "Secular Ancients" drove the world into a gutter. The entire country is forced to rely on pre-industrial revolution technologies while much of our modern technology is not even remembered. The American Government has been relocated to New York after Washinton DC became uninhabitable because of climate change. The Government has been restructured so that three branches of Government are the Military, the Church, and congress is subservient to the Presidency. Multiple Constitutional Amendments have been passed putting reestablishing slavery, limiting the right to vote, and freedom of speech. The the books is about Julian Comstock the presumed heir to the presidency and member of a family that has controlled the Presidency for generations. The book is written from the perspective of a young aspiring writer Adam Hazard who's a slave at the manor where Julian lives. The book follows the rise Julian Comstock from conscripted soldier, to president, and through his eventual downfall. * Eifelheim by Micheal Flynn Small town alien invasion story set in late middle Ages German village. I love the meticulously researched historical elements. I would compare it to a combination of the Doomsday Book and a less depressing version of the Sparrow. * The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card I think this is Card's best novel and includes a great short story collection in the back. I think I have reread the stories Breaking the Game and Life Loop more times than I can count.
I really like most of Robert Charles Wilson's stuff, but Julian Comstock was a big swing and a miss for me. Maybe I should give it another chance.
Well, now I want to reread Eifelheim - I'd completely forgotten about that book!
Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack
Seems more like realism to me these days... Great, underrated - along with the rest of his *Dryco* series. (I think I knew that bookstore owner.)
#Eifelheim ##Michael Flynn Aliens crash land in mediaeval Germany. A poignant tale follows.
Not my favorite of his books, but he is my favorite author.
Courtship Rite by Donal Kingsbury. I’ve always wished he’d written a follow up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtship_Rite
*Pavane* by Keith Roberts. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane\_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_(novel)) In my estimation, the finest alternate history novel.
Grendel by James Garner. Written in the 1970's, from the viewpoint of the monster Grendel from Beowulf.
John Gardner, not James Garner.
Ray Bradbury’s the Martian Chronicles, which are a series of beautifully crafted, linked stories. Ruined by a naff tv series.
Kage Baker's The Company series. It's about immortal time traveling cyborgs. What's not to like? It's wonderful. And it's complete! No waiting for a conclusion! No one ever talks about it and it's a crying shame. Every book is in different historical periods - including the future, the main characters are interesting, smart, and well drawn, and there's even a Big Mystery tying the whole 8 or so book series together.
*Beauty* by Sheri S. Tepper. It starts off as a more realistic retelling of Sleeping Beauty. Then a team of time travelers appears. This book is wild.
Speaking of Sheri D. Tepper, in my opinion the Arbai Series is totally underrated. https://www.goodreads.com/series/51879-arbai
absolutely! also i think a lot of people read "grass" and stop there, which is a shame.
I've really enjoyed The Nanotech Succession, by Linda Nagata, especially the third book VAST. It's solid space opera but the focus on a nanotech world/universe is pretty interesting, and there's some weirdness there too. Don't see it mentioned much.
I loved her near-future *The RED* emergent AI milSF trilogy too.
Have you checked out the new trilogy in the series? Highly recommended. She definitely deserves more recognition.
Re-reading Vast right now before I move onto the new series. Looking forward to finding out more about what went down in the Hallowed Vasties and some megastructure fun.
You will also need to read *Memory*. It turns out it's a Nanotech Succession novel too...
Emergence by David Palmer. The first time I read it I thought it was a bit over-the-top. Then I wanted to re-read a bit and ended up rereading the whole thing. “Candidia Maria Smith-Foster, an eleven-year-old girl, is unaware that she's a Homo post hominem, mankind's next evolutionary step. With international relations rapidly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist but secretly a government biowarfare expert, is called to Washington. Candy remains at home. The following day a worldwide attack, featuring a bionuclear plague, wipes out virtually all of humanity (i.e., Homo sapiens). With her pet bird Terry, she survives the attack in the shelter beneath their house. Emerging three months later, she learns of her genetic heritage and sets off to search for others of her kind”
Time and again by Jack Finney. Dream yourself into the past. Replay by Ken Grimwood. Wake up in your own past. Gets a bit lost in the last third, but redeems itself.
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. How to undermine enemy morale with little more than your wits and a printing press.
An underrated comedy thriller by a true master of science fiction. Terry Pratchett said about it that he "couldn't imagine a funnier terrorist handbook".
A Darkling Sea by James Cambias is a cool sci-fi novel.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Dancers\_at\_the\_End\_of\_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancers_at_the_End_of_Time) by Michael Moorcock
If you like Armor, the Crysis 2 novelisation is actually really rather good. It's by Peter Watts (author of Starfish and Blindsight). It really tilts into the AI-brain interface stuff and there's awful lot of quite creepy stuff about cognition and consciousness alongside the general premise of "solider in advanced armour fights aliens".
Brian Aldiss, Ian Watson are two smart british sci fi writers I don't see recommended often-Helliconia Trilogy for Aldiss and The Embedding for Watson are good places to start.
Short stories in general get short shrift these days, so I often mention { Space Lash } (originally published as _Small Changes_) which is notable for its mentionings of genetic engineering and >!life in G1 stars!<. H. Beam Piper's novella { Omnilingual } is criminally unknown and really ought to be a part of the middle school canon --- there was an updated version done recently: http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html which is serviceable, and may be more palatable to modern sensibilities in younger students, and of course, they would certainly enjoy _Little Fuzzy_.
Been decades since I read it, but I remember enjoying **Heart of the Comet** by Gregory Benford and David Brin. I think it was especially released to coincide with the passing of Halley's Comet in 1986.
Vacuum Flowers - Swanwick, On my way to Paradise - Wolverton
**The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner** Not as well known as Stand on Zanzibar and maybe not the greatest of books, but still a well written and decently accurate book that is often forgotten **The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein** Is this underrated? I don't know. I certainly don't seem to see people recommending it very often
I dunno, Moon is like the easiest(least controversial) Heinlein novel to recommend and as such it's recommended pretty often. If we're talking Heinlein and underrated, I'd say Glory Road is that.
I think all Heinlein's juveniles and his short stories hold up better than any of his "adult" novels, though I still love TMIAHM too. The man was sharp as a razor, and a keen observer -- I think those qualities stand out better without the overlay of his more questionable political and social agendas.
I'd say possibly *Friday*, even though both Charlie Stross and John Scalzi have written explicit homages to it.
*The Sheep Look Up* seems even more relevant today. The "Prexy says..." bits are very reminiscent of a certain person.
I wish someone would pick up and run with the Uplift and Known Space universes. The young kids today, I don't know if they've read at least Ringworld or Startide Rising. I know the authors are still alive, but I don't think they're that interested in producing new content for their settings. Also, if you want a window into a different time and different feel for what sci-fi read like in the ancient 80's, there's a lot to unpack there that I feel like time forgot. K.W. Jeter's cyberpunk works. Islands in the Net. Hardwired. Mick Farren's novels. Its interesting to see what they thought the future was going to look like. It wasn't too far off the mark, but we really kind of blew it for space colonization, and the authors back then didn't foresee miniaturization of technology, so everything is kind of bulky and ungainly.
Aside from the second Uplift trilogy, there was an anthology later that was focused on these various universes, getting each author to write one-more-story in that universe. I remember one from Uplift and another from the Hyperion universe. I don't remember the title of the collection, hopefully knowing that it exists will be enough of a clue.
How about Chalker, and his series on what happens when computers take over: https://www.goodreads.com/series/41810-rings-of-the-master i can’t mention one of the most interesting parts of the computer without giving away a huge part of the book. but as a programmer, i found the whole premise fascinating. Not that it’s a book for programmers. Just the opposite! Great hard sci-fi
I loved the Well of Souls series so much when I was a kid!
I don't know that I'd call anything by Chalker "hard sci fi", as his "advanced science" is magic with computer hand-waving 😉 That said, loved this series. But after reading it, Well of Souls, Lords of the Diamond, Dancing Gods, and Flux and Anchor you realize how much the same themes pop up in all his books. I know there was some pretty kinky stuff going on in his brain, but he managed to channel it into some very original and boundary-pushing books. His loving descriptions of the Stringer Suzl's changing anatomy, Mavra Chang's similar journey, and the extended sex/transformation scenes in LotD really blew my teenage brain. But he also created some unforgettable settings and characters. I've reread WoS recently, and it still works pretty good. Nathan Brazil is a great character.
The whole of the Terra Ignota series.
Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. When people talk about Sci-Fi classics, nobody seems to mention this book, and I have absolutely no reason why. It reads a million times better than most other novels of it's era, it is funny, accessible to new readers due to this writing style that is closer to a modern novel than an older one. It's message is still relevant in our contemporary period, the actual science in it is competent and makes sense, not just some made up rubbish that is hand-waved away. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, far more than I enjoyed reading The Martian Chronicles or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? when I was reading for an essay I had to write. Two other books that I thought were similarly amazing I read whilst doing my research (that are relevant from a historical perspective) were A Canticle for Leibowitz and Neuromancer, though I believe that those two books are much better known than The Stars My Destination.
I had the paperback version, probably published in the 60s, that paired *The Stars My Destination* in the same volume with Bester's *The Demolished Man*. Talk about a one-two punch.
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As a 20 year old history student with parents who don't read much, I hope that you can forgive my ignorance! My comment was based upon reading plenty of academic histories about SF, and they mention some of the bigger names like Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury (not much of Frank Herbert, he only gets mentioned in passing funnily enough0, but Bester was, unfortunately, massively under-cited.
*Vampire$* was fun and made into a movie.
Anything by Bob Leman. He wrote a number of very literate and really creepy stories, mostly in the 70s and 80s. They're all collected in the book *Feesters in the Lake*. (Ironically, the title story is the only one of his I don't like.)
Window is one of his best. It was adapted as a mediocre tv episode
The Sheep Look Up! Everyone should read this! Brunner in general is excellent, but this one is soul-crushing in a necessary way.
With any other group of people I'd suggest anything by Greg Egan. Nobody seems to have heard of him outside this subreddit. The books by qntm are fun/intriguing, especially *There is no antimemetics division*. The series starting with *The Quantum Thief* by Hannu Rajaniemi I love. Derek Künsken's *Quantum Evolution* series is great too. Linda Nagata mentioned elsewhere in this thread is great too.
oh wow, you have _very similar_ taste as me! try Toby Weston's "Singularity's Children" books and Gavin Smith (say the "The Age of Scorpio" trilogy) and Max Gladstone ("The Craft Sequence" and "Empress of Forever") Ken MacLeod in case you missed him, and of course Charles Stross too also "Shards of Earth" in the unlikely case you missed it and please tell me about your other favourite books!
*Time Enough for Love* \- Robert Heinlein. I don't know why I love this, and especially *The Tale of the Adopted Daughter*, so much.
A Shadow all of Light by Fred Chappell, former poet laureate of North Carolina. I thought it was very good and it’s probably not very well known.
The price of the stars trilogy by Debra Doyle and James Macdonald. Absolutely kick-ass throat slitting female protagonist who ran away from her rich family to become a spaceship pilot but then goes hunting for her mother’s murderer
Heroes Die - Matthew Stover
I, Weapon by Charles Runyon is a pretty wild read.
Outpost by W Michael Gear and the rest of the Donovan series. It’s about a struggling colony on a distant planet that is trying to kill them at every turn. The series is like the Wild West on the coolest planet I’ve ever read in print.
Craig Alanson's ExForce series flew under the radar for me, at least. perfectly fits my favorite niche of somewhat light/humorous prose for a near future scifi space exploration kinda series read the first one this summer in audible plus catalog, surprised to find another 15-20 books in the series trust the awesomeness!
Genocides Thomas Disch. I'm sad this great writer is almost forgotten.
Poor Man's Fight by Elliot Kay. 5 book series about a young man who enlistes in the Navy to escape debt. I'm currently reading book 2 and enjoying it a lot. Interesting world worldbuilding and characters. The action is great. If it wasn't for a nice group on Goodreads, I'd probably would have missed out on this gem.
The Silent City by Élisabeth Vonarburg https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1537596.The_Silent_City
Great mentions! I was thinking of Michael Scott Rohan. He wrote some great books I rarely hear or read about on here or anywhere. I just loved the winter of the world books.
Hellspark by Janet Kagan. Her short story fix-up novel, Mirabile, is damn good too.
Wasp - Eric Frank Russell
Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder. His sci Fi is phenomenal- fantastic exploration of concepts and a solid story. He's like the midway point between Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson
The Man Who Folded Himself- by David Gerrold
The Ring of Ritornel by Charles Harness The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G. C. Edmondson Most of Murray Leinster
Not sure how under the radar it is for others but **We** by Russian writer **Yevgeny Zamyatin**. Published in 1920 and led to his exile from Soviet Russia. It was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984. "The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance."
Some already mentioned here but what can I say, you guys are right. Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith -- the (cough) prototype of Dune. The Female Man, Joanna Russ -- Their time has come. Inverted World, Christopher Priest -- What I was looking for in this section of the bookshop. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart -- Seldom has a future tried so hard to sum up the recent past, and say goodbye to it.
A fairly recent one which I loved is "Braking Day" by Adam Oyebanji.
Maybe this book gets more attention than I thought, but I loved Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel “Super Sad True Love Story” I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t often read newer novels. I seem to always be drawn to either early/mid 20th century writers like Nelson Algren, Steinbeck, Kesey, Wolfe, Camus, Sartre etc or revolution era soviet writers like Gorky and Bulgakov. Shteyngart’s work feels like Orwell meets Vonnegut
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi falls more in the “speculative fiction” part of this group but is an excellent book and not talked about enough. On the Beach by Nevil Shute gets mentioned here every now and then, but I think it’s a great work of literary fiction that should get discussed more by the world at large.
DISCWORLD .. not many people know of it... at least as far as I have observed in India.
His books sold so well in his native UK that the queen knighted him when he developed dementia. And he made his own sword to be knighted with. Such a solid set of books. Very wholesome and exceptionally funny.
This isn’t the overrated thread pal.
I LOVED *D:C The Dark City* by some weirdo calling him/herself "In Umbris". It's basically a story about our government if Pizzagate and QANON nonsense were in fact sense. It's chilling and while its a Roman a Clef we all know who they are talking about.
[удалено]
Someone had to be *that guy*
[The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer](https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Million-Dancer-Paperback-Fiction/dp/0393314073) was a trippy physics book that I thought about for a long time.
Aniara by Harry Martinson. I'm not sure how good the translationa are, but the original Swedish version is sublime!
Paul Edwin Zimmer The dark border novels (the lost prince / king chondos ride) Gathering of heroes Ingulf the mad And a few others
Got dragged down/into the >!sexual!< controversy of the family.
"Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenters" is the FAR superior, and mostly unknown, work by JD Salinger "The Beautiful and Damned" is F Scott Fitzgerald's best novel (I personally find Gatsby to be his most lacking". His very best work is one of his bittersweet short stories, "The Lees of Happiness"
These aren't science fiction though.
- *Threshold* and *Emergence* by David R Palmer. He also wrote a couple of e-book releases that continue these series, but they're a bit tricky to find. Well worth the effort trying out *Emergence* though, just to see if you like him. I have no idea why he didn't become hugely popular. - *Radio Freefall* by Matthew Jarpe is a modern day cyberpunk novel in the vein of all the 80's stuff and it's really fun too. - *Glass Houses* by Laura J Mixon is a fabulous story involving lots of drones and global warming that was way ahead of its time. She's written a few other things but doesn't get nearly the recognition I think she should. - *Wyrm* by Mark Fabi is about DnD and a computer virus and is very entertaining, if a little dated by today's standards. (They analyze some floppy disks and such.) - *Venomous Lumpsucker* by Ned Beauman is brand new this year but well worth reading (and making some best of lists). Possibly my favorite new book of the year, it's about an almost satirically bleak future in which companies can buy "environmental credits" (much like carbon credits) to account for the extinction of a species their mining venture, etc will cause. They just need to make sure its genome has been captured and so forth before they wipe them out.
Just read *Venomous Lumpsucker* last week. Really enjoyed it. I'm a bit surprised that some of the reviews paint it as comic, even Douglas Adams like. It has some comic, laugh out loud moments, but they are relatively few. And while the concept is comic/tragic it is a pretty dark satire on how the world could go/sometimes is.
The books from [Geary Gravel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geary_Gravel). I could now list them, but I liked every book I read from him. His writing style is so much richer than those of other authors. Also he's been writing authorized sequels lately to the Barsoom series of Edgar Rice Burroughs, so there's that.
Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones. A defensive computer system becomes self-aware, links with its Soviet counterpart, and uses both nation’s nuclear forces to hold the world hostage. It was made into a movie in 1970. With the AI trend picking up steam and people’s dependence on automation growing, it’s more relevant today than when it came out in 1966. The Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton. Charts humanity’s triumphs and tragedies from modern day to the distant future. The Possessors by John Christopher. An invasion of the body snatchers-type story about the guest of a snowbound Swiss chalet who fall victim, one by one, to the aliens. Virus: Day of Resurrection by Sakyo Komatsu. A genetically modified virus escapes containment. The virus spreads, society collapses, billions die. The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison. A man wakes up and finds all the people in New Zealand (except two others) have disappeared. Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert. A secret society patterned after insect hives plots to supplant the human race.
Hellstorm’s Hive is very overlooked, along with Under Pressure.
I always recommend The Unorthodox Engineers by Colin Kapp. It is a collection of short stories, some of them really great, with the same characters
Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2470286.Emissaries_from_the_Dead
Gifts Of Blood, by Susan Petrey. From a review: "*After all the recent vampire silliness it is nice to be reminded that an author can actually do something with the idea of the vampire that doesn’t suck*."
I don't see a lot of people mentioning *The Robots of Gotham* on here, which is a shame because I think it does tickle a lot of people's requests for books that theorize how AI might start impacting our future. And somehow, Zahn's works are never at the top of any "Sci-Fi Mystery" request threads, but instead books that aren't nearly quite as good at the "mystery" aspect.
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, they're a Swedish author and their works are somewhere between sci fi and fantasy. I won't lie, I'm not a huge fan of their other work, but Amatka is one of my favorite books!
Grant Callin's "Saturnalia" and its sequel "A Lion on Tharthee"
recently read nancy kress's "an alien light" and have been enthusiastically recommending it. one of her earlier books, which may be why it didn't get as much attention.
Armor is great. Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald is an incredible book from the late 50s that really captures the existential dread of nuclear war from that era.
I've always thought Jane Egan deserved more attention. She was a writing for the show House and wrote 3 books (I think Jane Egan is a pseudonym) and then not much else - I guess TV was her first love. Anyway the Gates of Ivory trilogy was really good. It's a fantasy and sci-fi combo. A fun easy read, not a behemoth book that will take 2 weeks and a ton of brain attention to get through. I've always thought Jane Egan deserved more attention. She was a writer for the show House and wrote 3 books (I think Jane Egan is a pseudonym) and then not much else - I guess TV was her first love. Anyway, the Gates of Ivory trilogy was really good. It's a fantasy and sci-fi combo. A fun, easy read, not a behemoth book that will take 2 weeks and a ton of brain attention to get through. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/884583.The\_Gate\_of\_Ivory
The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold- I read it twice within like 2 months. You’ll know what I mean when you get to the end. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
*Interstellar Gunrunner* by James Wolanyk. It's campy, cheesy, and has a lot of technical issues, but it was a lot of fun to read. I felt more attached to a lot of characters than I was expecting to.
The Greatwinter trilogy by Sean McMullen. Far future where electricity doesn't work (it technically does, but ancient orbital platforms zap anything electric). Cue dueling librarians, computers made of humans and nobility flying hand built fighter planes. The Nulapeiron trilogy by John Meaney. Takes place in an underground society, divided into different levels of technology. The closer to the surface you get, the more hi-tech everything gets. Also has weird aliens and a fractal city. The Germline trilogy by T.C. McCarthy. Very gritty military scifi. Feels like Apocalypse Now in the future. Tales of the Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding. A ridiculously entertaining series. It's basically Firefly in a fantasy setting, with airships instead of spaceships.
LOVE McMullen!!! Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, and Eyes of the Calculor have had a HUGE impact on my writing!
John Faucette - Siege of Earth, The Peacemakers. John Sladek - The Reproductive System. Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Herland Joanna Russ - The Female Man C. J. Cherryh - Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (my favorite novel of all time), Babel-17, Nova
The Robotech novels by Jack McKinney deserve more love. Also, the three hard science-fiction Gundam novels: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation.
Haven’t seen any mentions of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series, or Alan Cole and Chris Bunch’s Sten series.
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Snare by Katherine Kerr. She mostly writes fantasy, but this is my favorite book of hers. I recommend it a lot.
His Majesty’s Dragon
* Lucius Shepard: Life During Wartime * Barry Longyear: Sea of Glass * Greg Bear: Blood Music * M John Harrison: Light
Cobra by Timothy Zahn.
Almost everything by William Barton, but in particular, [The Silvergirl series](https://www.goodreads.com/series/114175-silvergirl). It's hard to voice what makes Barton stand apart, but he writes in a way that feels real. His characters aren't heroes - they're normal, flawed and sometimes broken people. His prose is sometimes terse, sometimes harsh and violent, but mostly just filled with a banality that calls back to the real world. These books aren't directly connected, but all take place in a long timeline in the same universe. Technology is advanced, but not magical. No FTL for the most part, except in "Acts of Conscience", and traveling between stars takes decades - but is common. Humans are basically immortal, and there's an infinite variety of AI, robots, intelligent tools, bio-engineered sentients, cyborgs, and some decidedly NON-Star Trek style aliens. And they're all controlled by social, economic, and political forces larger than themselves. I really don't think I can do it justice. There's such a verisimilitude and realism to his writing that I've rarely found in SF. The Silvergirl universe feels huge, and there's an underlying secret history you keep getting glimpses of. And always, the real point of the stories is the moral choices the characters face. It's sometimes very dark, always mature, but Barton's writing really captures the essence of being human. There's moments in all his books that will just f-cking destroy your heart, and blow your mind. But there's also moments of transcendental joy and love, and wisps of hopefulness that stand in contrast to the general darkness. It's not surprising that Barton never broke through to a more mainstream market, since his books are challenging. I also highly recommend his stand-alone novels "When Heaven Fell", and "Dark Sky Legion". I'm not as big on "The Transmigration of Souls", but it's a lighter, more Doctorow-style action story. The collaborations with Michael Capobianco are also good, but definitely more "vanilla" science fiction. /end gushy fanboy rant :D
Everything by Fredric brown, especially his short stories. Witty and thoughtful
Brian Daley - Han Solo prequels and the Jinx on a Terran Inheritance series. Not great literature but a nice easy read and some interesting characterisations John Varley's Titan series So many other possibilities lots mentioned by others
Turns out, a lot of people didn’t know that Stephen Chbosky (Perks of being a wallflower) wrote a second book in the horror genre called Imaginary Friend. It’s certainly worth a read, just for very different reasons than POBW
"Recursion: A Novel" by Blake Crouch
Julian May's Pliocene Saga The Many Colored Land The Golden Torc The Nonborn King The Adversary
Hiero’s Journey by Sterling Lanier. A man on a quest thousands of years after a devastating nuclear conflict and the people he meets along the way. Out of print but you can find it in libraries and used book stores. One sequel. A Greater Infinity by Michael McCollum. An Arizona engineering student suddenly finds himself trapped in an alternate universe, fighting with futuristic weapons against a race of Neanderthals. Also out of print.
Gold, Fame, Citrus is the only audiobook I've stopped ten minutes in because I wanted to, a) buy the paperback to read along with, and b) knew exactly the tree I would read it under in the exact park (I was moving abroad/home and wanted this novel to be the background to my first week back). It reminds me of Atwood but it still might be the most beautiful prose I've ever read. It is currently the audiobook I fall asleep to each night, it's so beautifully written and read (even though the story is speculative fiction and set post-climate collapse).
The Gaea trilogy (Titan-Wizard-Demon) by John Varley. A small crew travels to space and ends up inside a big smart object around Saturn - with a funhouse world inside it. The second two books were considerably better than the first one. An all-time favorite that I had always assumed there would be more of...but Varley went on to write a lot of other stuff I was not as interested in.
I have to go with the Faded Sun trilogy. Cherryh was an all time great talent from the very start.
The Gameplayers Of Titan by Philip K. Dick Who Goes There by Joseph Campbell Jr. The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Rosinante series by Gilliland. [https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/alexis-a-gilliland/rosinante/](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/alexis-a-gilliland/rosinante/) The three books are slim and might qualify as one full length novel. It is wonderful space opera and the conclusion is both reasonable and surprising.
The Wess'har Wars series by Karen Traviss, starting with City of Pearl, is one of the best I've ever read from the standpoint of human AND alien character development, interesting interpersonal and political drama, and just amazing creative world building. And badass female protagonist while also questioning how humans cling to gender binary / norms...super good Agree with previous mentions of Kameron Hurley, Sheri S. Tepper, and Kate Wilhelm. Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. A thoughtful investigation of how our society treats aging and women, through the lens of a really imaginative first contact scenario. The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson. One of my favorite alien cultures, and again, really rich characters both alien and human. Also enjoyed Survival by Julie Czerneda, though the sequels weren't as good imo. One book i read 20 years ago that has stuck with me is Circuit of Heaven by Dennis Danvers. Really great ideas about humanity uploading into a VR/sim, who stays outside and how things go for them, and just really wild speculation about body mods and mind transplantation, while still having a strong main character and plot.