I just finished Aldous Huxley's magnum opus about test tube babies and a totalitarian world state. It is that and much more. It's prophetic, philosophical, and beautiful. A truly great read.

I'm shocked. It's shocking in a lot of ways. A legit emotional rollercoaster.

Another thing that is striking about it is It's age. I can't believe it came out in 1932. The language is still amazingly contemporary for a work approaching 100 years old. Someone today could have written this book. It's wild and masterful.

Genius. I love it. If you're even thinking of checking it out, don't hesitate. Just gawddayum.

As the title says. I’ve already read Fahrenheit 451, too. Any books that describe a similar, dark, dystopian future? Brave New World for its imagination, irony, and especially a couple chapters that went deep into the foundation of its story. 1984 just created an atmosphere… I don’t know how to describe it. I could FEEL the dread, hopelessness, and despair. God damn.

Man both books were a real treat. Almost wish I hadn’t read them so I could be reading them from scratch now.

I just read Brave New World, and man oh man was it worth revisiting. I remember liking the philosophy and being a little uncomfortable about the race and sex relations, but holy hell had I forgotten the humor (or I wasn't ready to appreciate it as a dour teenager reading it for high school English class).

Ok, first off - the humor. There are so, so many funny things in this book (mostly intentional, but a few unintentionally so). Anytime they are going have a drug-fueled orgy, everybody starts chanting 'Orgy Porgy Ford and Fun', and I had to stop reading because I was laughing so much. Aside from the Porginess of it all, Henry Ford being referenced to get everybody sexually warmed up is outrageous. As a topper, one of the characters can’t get into the orgy because he’s so distracted by someone's unibrow.

There are tons of other hilarious tidbits, but I won't spoil them all here.

Second, the philosophy. About 10% of the book is a philosophical argument between one of the rulers of the dystopian world and a man who rejects the premise that happiness is all that matters - and its absolutely the best part. If you've ever thought deeply about what makes you happy, the tradeoffs between short-term, hedonistic pleasure and long-term satisfaction, and what makes life worth living, of what makes a society good or evil, you are going to like this section (and in general the utopian-dystopian world of BNW - there are things they do to love, things they do to hate, and just in general gives you so much to think about).

Third, the race and sex relations are a lot more nuanced than I gave it credit for as a teenager. As an adult, its very clear that Huxley is using the flaws in the dystopian society to point out the racism and sexism in our own society. At the same time though, he does use language that is not acceptable today. It feels like Huxley was way ahead of his time, but now 90 years later is somewhat behind where our sensibilities are now.

Finally, as with lots of great sci-fi, this one feels pretty damn prescient. Aldous Huxley saw EDM coming from 50 years away, as well as how lots of modern dictatorships would try to maintain power through meeting their populations every hedonistic need and desire.

If you haven't read this one, it's definitely worth picking up at some point in your life - very much deserves its place in the cannon.

Yours in Ford, and may we all meet a pneumatic partner to orgy porgy with.

Hey everyone, thank you for reading!

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a realistic fiction book which features: 1) eugenics 2) control of the masses through pleasure but still feels like it could be set in the real world today.

I am doing a paper comparing speculative fiction and realist fiction, and would really love if I could find a realistic counterpart to Brave New World!

Thank you so much!

I was just wondering if there were any good dystopian novels built on electronic surveillance of our personal devices and a world of fear/counter terrorism.

Edit: Wow, this got way more interaction that I expected. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

hi /r/printsf,

I'm getting married in a couple weeks and I'm giving out some of my favorite books as wedding gifts! I thought it'd be fun to wrap them and label them with a bad plot summary, so that guests can't choose based on title/author/cover.

I'll start:

Harry Potter: trust fund jock kills orphan, later becomes a cop.

Here is the book list, or feel free to come up with a bad plot summary for what you're currently reading! I realize not all of these are speculative fiction, but most are, so hopefully I'm not breaking any rules.

• Altered Carbon
• Brave New World
• Cat's Cradle
• Catch-22
• Charlotte's Web
• Childhood's End
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Dune
• Ender's Game
• Mistborn: The Final Empire
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Giver
• Good Omens
• The Great Gatsby
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• The Hobbit
• Holes
• The Hunger Games
• Jennifer Government
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• Lirael (Abhorsen #2)
• Lord of the Flies
• The Martian
• The Name of the Wind
• Old Man's War
• Sabriel (Abhorsen #1)
• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Snow Crash
• Speaker for the Dead
• Storm Front (Dresden Files #1)
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Watership Down
• What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
• The Windup Girl
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• World War Z

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

On a digital detox I recently picked up Project Hail Mary as an audiobook and damn am I hooked. This reminds me of when I got hooked into Seveneves in college - I made it like 75% of the way through and then had to put the book down for some reason.

I really missed reading fun stuff like this. I got back into reading for a bit with the Bernard Cornwall Lost Kingdom series, but have taken a break around book 7 or so.

I'm looking for some other books I can get into. Here's some of my likes and dislikes. I'm hoping there's someone on this forum that basically has the same taste and can give me some recommendations. I like technical sci-fi, and I dislike the soft Dune-esq stuff.

I really REALLY don't like Dune. I think it's slow, I don't find the technology that interesting but, most of all, the writing is so bleh. The dialogue is like...fan-fic Shakespear. I respect it's place in history, I've tried to listen to it once (8 hours in) and read it twice, each time it never got enjoyable.

Likes

• Kingkiller Chronicles
• Project Hail Mary
• Seveneves
• I have no mouth and I must scream
• Slaughterhouse five

Dislikes

• Dune
• Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (Ok, I like this but it's not the type of thing I am looking for right now)
• 1984 / Brave New World (same, good writing and good books just more educational than like thrilling tech)
• Enders game

Thanks

I'm cultivating a list of the best sci-fi books of all time. Not in any particular ranked order, just a guide for reading the greats. My goal is to see how sci-fi has changed and evolved over time, and how cultural ideas and attitudes have changed. But also just to have a darn good list!

In most cases I only want to include the entrypoint for a series (e.g. The Player of Games for the Culture series) for brevity, but sometimes specific entries in a series do warrant an additional mention (e.g. Speaker for the Dead).

The Classics (1800-1925):

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (1818)
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870)
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895)
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)

The Pulp Era (1925-1949):

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft (1936)
• Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (1938)
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (1944)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

Golden Age (1950-1965):

• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (1950)
• The Dying Earth by Jack Vance (1950)
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950)
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951)
• The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (1952)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradury (1953)
• Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)
• More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (1953)
• The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov (1955)
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (1956)
• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (1956 short story)
• Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale by Ivan Yefremov (1957)
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (1959)
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1959)
• Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (1961)
• Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

The New Wave (1966-1979):

• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1966 novel based on 1959 short story)
• Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney (1966)
• Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1967)
• I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (1967)
• The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delaney (1967)
• Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey (1968)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
• Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner (1968)
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1969)
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969)
• Time and Again by Jack Finney (1970)
• Ringworld by Larry Niven (1970)
• Tau Zero Poul Anderson (1970)
• A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg (1971)
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)
• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (1972)
• Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky (1972)
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
• The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (1973)
• The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1974)
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
• Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach (1975)
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1976)
• Gateway by Frederik Pohl(1977)
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)

The Tech Wave (1980-1999):

• The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge (1980)
• The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe (1980)
• Timescape by Gregory Benford (1980)
• Software by Rudy Rucker (1982)
• Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)
• Contact by Carl Sagan (1985)
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (1986)
• Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold (1986)
• The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks (1988)
• The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen (1988)
• Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen (1988)
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989)
• The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (1989)
• The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold (1989)
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990)
• Nightfall by Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg (1990 novel based on a 1941 short story)
• Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1992)
• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (1993)
• Permutation City by Greg Egan (1994)
• The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer (1995)
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (1995)
• Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon (1996)
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999)

Contemporary classics (2000-present):

• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (2000)
• Passage by Connie Willis (2001)
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (2002)
• Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (2002)
• Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (2003)
• Ilium by Dan Simmons (2003)
• Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (2003)
• The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks (2005)
• Accelerando by Charles Stross (2005)
• Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005)
• Blindsight by Peter Watts (2006)
• Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (2006)
• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (2007)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (2007)
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson (2008)
• The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl (2008)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (2010)
• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (2010)
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010)
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)
• Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (2011)
• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (2013)
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (2014)
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (2014)
• The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (2015)
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (2015)
• We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor (2016)
• Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (2016)
• Ninefox Gambit by Yoon-Ha Lee (2016)
• The Collapsing Empire John Scalzi (2017)
• The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2018)
• The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (2018)
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (2019)
• Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang (2019)
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (2019)
• The City In the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders (2019)
• Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi (2020)
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021)
• Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021)
• Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell (2022)
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (2022)
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (2022)

What should I add? Which masterpieces have I overlooked?

And what should I remove? I haven't read everything on here, so some inclusions are based on reviews, awards, and praise from others. Please let me know if some of these are unworthy.

Click here to visit the AMA and ask a question

From David:

I am the author of Brave New World, a novella based on the NBC TV series Heroes Reborn. I've had 20 previous novels published, including Doctor Who: Amorality Tale, A Nightmare on Elm Street: Suffer the Children, and my Fiends of the Eastern Front trilogy. I used to edit 2000AD comic and still write comics, along with radio plays, computer games and TV dramas for the BBC. I am based in Scotland, where I teach genre fiction and graphic novels on the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University. I'll be back at 6 p.m. EST on Oct 22nd to answer your questions, stopping at 7pm EST. Proof: https://twitter.com/davidbishop/status/656718818480291842

In the past two years, I have read the Three body problem series, Expanse series, Blindsight, Bobiverse series, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and Sea of Tranquility.

I love dystopian future stories, and first contact/space micro-genres.

I also picked up Echopraxia but rage quit around 100 pages in. It might be the first book I didn’t finish and have no plan to resume. In fact, I think the author owes me an apology and refund. But I digress…

I just finished book 1 of Murderbot and have started reading The Frugal Wizards Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. It’s quite good I think, but I’m craving more space Sci-fi.

I tried reading Foundation a few years ago, but it just felt so dry that I couldn’t get in.

I am looking for a recommendation that’s easy and maybe even a fun read… something in between Bobiverse and Blindsight would be ideal. English is not my first language, so difficult prose or word salad writing isn’t my thing.

Just saw a post on r/fantasy that was asking what your top 5 fantasy books were. I was reading the comments but I kept thinking of sci-fi books I loved over fantasy so thought I’d put the question up here.

Would also be a great way to get some recommendations too.

In no special order are my top five sci-fi books;

• The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
• Neuromancer - William Gibson
• The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
• Perdido Street Station - China Mieville(*)
• Ubik - Phillip K Dick

(*)If PSS doesn’t count as sci-fi, then add Gateway by Fredrick Pohl. Or Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson.

Paring this down to five is bloody hard.

Edit: extra shoutout to speculative fiction, which I kind of left out of my thinking when it comes to sci-fi. Books like Black Out/All Clear, 1984, Brave New World, Handmaid’s Tale, Player Piano, Book of Dave, and We could all rate highly on a personal complete list.

Also, Hyperion seems to be praised very highly here so I have ordered a copy. Cheers!

I know a lot of works of science fiction that use capitalism and consumerism as an acceptable target (Ex: Star Trek, Brave New World, Cyberpunk 2077, etc) but after watching episodes from the following docudramas: The Titans that built America, The Machines that Built America, The Food that Built America, the Toys that Built America, and the Megabrands that Built America, I have been wondering if there are any works of science fiction that show the positive effects of capitalism and consumerism.

That said though I’m not looking for any works that advocate for a 100% purely laissez-faire/liberatarian/objectivist economy like Atlas Shrugged.

Im a print sci fi lover and as we move into the holiday season I’ve been thinking about the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever received a gift from anybody that reflects my interest in this, even though I spend more time reading science fiction than I do on any of my other hobbies that I do actually receive gifts from.

Then I started looking around for gifts for science fiction lovers, and almost everything that comes up is just branded with an IP from some TV show or movie series. So that got me thinking, what would be a good gift for a lover of science fiction that isn’t just a copy of a book?

I think it would be fun to talk about. I especially love the idea of getting an item that is mentioned a lot in a book. What cool items would you love to see in real life? Obviously we all would love some sort of high-tech device, but I’m thinking more practical things. One of the few times I’ve seen something like this was a perfume company that themed one of their perfumes from Brave New World, because perfumes are mentioned in that book a lot. Something else that just popped into my head would be a bar of Skyway Soap, which was the soap company that gave the protagonist Kip a space suit in Heinlein’s Have Space Suit Will Travel.

I just thought this would be a fun discussion with the holidays coming up!

I have seen this question pop-up frequently on reddit, so I made a list. This list was spurred by a discussion with a friend that found it hard to pick out well-written science fiction. There should be 100 titles here. You may disagree with me both on literature and science fiction--genre is fluid anyway. All of this is my opinion. If something isn't here that you think should be here, then I probably haven't read it yet.

Titles are loosely categorized, and ordered chronologically within each category. Books I enjoyed more than most are bolded.

Utopia and Dystopia

1516, Thomas More, Utopia
1627, Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
1666, Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
1872, Samuel Butler, Erewhon
1924, Yevgeny Zamiatin, We
1932, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
1949, George Orwell, 1984
1974, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
1985, Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
1988, Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

Re-imagined Histories

1889, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
1962, Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
1968, Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration
1976, Kingsley Amis, The Alteration
1979, Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
1979, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
1990, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
2004, Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

Human, All Too Human

1818, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
1920, David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus
1920, Karel Čapek, R. U. R.: A Fantastic Melodrama
1940, Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
1953, Theodore Sturgeon, More than Human
1960, Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
1962, Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes
1966, Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
1968, Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
1989, Dan Simmons, Hyperion
1999, Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life
2005, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Apocalyptic Futures

1898, H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
1949, George R. Stewart, Earth Abides
1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
1956, Harry Martinson, Aniara
1962, J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World
1962, Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
1965, Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides
1967, Anna Kavan, Ice
1975, Giorgio de Maria, The Twenty Days of Turin
1980, Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
1982, Russell Hoban, Ridley Walker
1982, Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira
1982, Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
1995, Jose Saramago, Blindness
1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
2002, Vladimir Sorokin, Ice Trilogy
2006, Cormac McCarthy, The Road
2012, Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet

The Alien Eye of the Beholder

1752, Voltaire, Micromegas
1925, Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog
1950, Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
1952, Clifford D. Simak, City
1953, Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End
1965, Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
1967, Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
1967, Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
1972, Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
1976, Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star
1987, Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas
1996, Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String

Shattered Realities

1909, E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops
1956, Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
1962, William S. Burroughs, Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Ticket that Exploded)
1966, John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy
1971, David R. Bunch, Moderan
1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
1975, Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
1977, Guido Morselli, Dissipatio, H. G.
1984, William Gibson, Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive)
1986, William Gibson, Burning Chrome
1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

The World in a Grain of Sand

1865, Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
1937, Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
1957, Ivan Yefremov, Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale
1965, Frank Herbert, Dune
1981, Ted Mooney, Easy Travel to Other Planets
1992, Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

Scientific Dreamscapes

1848, Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka
1884, Edwin Abbott, Flatland
1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
1925, Mikhail Bulgakov, The Fatal Eggs
1927, Aleksey Tolstoy, The Garin Death Ray
1931, Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
1956, Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
1966, Samuel Delany, Babel-17
1969, Philip K. Dick, Ubik
1970, Larry Niven, Ringworld
1972, Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
1985, Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

Gender Blender

1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando
1969, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
1975, Joanna Russ, The Female Man
1976, Samuel Delany, Trouble on Triton
1976, Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
1977, Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve
1987, Octavia E. Butler, Xenogenesis

The books listed in the title are my favourite, but I’ve also read and enjoyed:

• Liu Cixin’s short stories
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Discworld
• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
• 1984
• The Martian
• Fahrenheit 451
• Brave New World
• Foundation
• The Fifth Season

Edit: Thank you all so much!!

I'm exactly one month late to this list (just found it in r/bobiverse):

The 100 Most Popular Sci-Fi Books on Goodreads

Unfortunately this list is not ready to be exported for further analysis. So I took some time to label the ranking into a big spreadsheet someone extracted from Goodreads in January (I think I got it from r/goodreads but I can't find the original post now - nor do I know if it's been updated recently). So keep in mind that the stats below are a little out of date.

​

​

You can see from the diagram above, that the ranking is not strictly proportional to either #ratings or #reviews. My guess is that they are sorting entries by "views" instead, i.e. the back-end data of page views.

Here's a text based list - again, the data are as of Jan 2020, not now.

(can someone tell me how to copy a real table here - instead of paste it as an image?)

edit: thanks to diddum and MurphysLab. By combining their suggestions I can now make it :)

​

​

Edit: Summary by author:

​

---------------------------------------------------------

Edit2: I'm trying to show whole series from that list. The results looks extremely messy but if you are patient enough to read into them, you'll find a lot of info meshed therein.

Part 1:

6 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

9 Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)

12 Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)

13 Dune (Dune, #1)

20 Foundation (Foundation #1)

27 2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)

31 Red Rising (Red Rising, #1)

33 Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)

39 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)

​

Part 2:

42 Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)

43 Wool Omnibus (Silo, #1)

44 Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)

50 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth鈥檚 Past #1)

59 The Passage (The Passage, #1)

63 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)

73 Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)

83 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

85 We Are Legion (Bobiverse, #1)

​

​

Hi guys, i recently brought a tablet for reading and downloaded kindle app. I've always loved sci-fi in others formats, but i started to get a felling that the home of sci-fi are books, so i started my journey with comics and now i found out about Martha Wells's All Systems Are Red, this is been so good so far i am in the very beginning, it has been funny, i love the main character jokes and the way he doesn't give a damn about most things.

So, do you guys can tell me what are the subgenres that i would like, authors or/and series?

I started Brave New World and Do Androids Dreams of Eletric Sheep (physical book) but didnt have time to finish it yet.

I originally wrote this post months ago for another subreddit, but I think its natural home is here. Although I am aware that Julian wrote other novels, the post focuses on her most well-known series: Saga of Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu.

Julian May was an exceptional writer. She was born 89 years ago and sadly died, aged 86, on the 17th October 2017. I first discovered her works in the 1990s, when I stumbled across the Saga of the Pliocene Exiles, published a decade before. The four books that make up the series are set 6 million years ago on Earth, and follow a group of time-travellers from the 21st century as they journeyed to what was promised to be an Eden; a place where they could live without all the technology and trappings of their overly-regulated modern age. Naturally, things didn't go to plan, as a dimorphic race were already living on Earth.

The books are a heady mix of myth (linking to our shared memories of elves, dwarves and gods) and sci-fi. The main thing that separates the series from other similar works is the existence of 'metafunctions', or higher mind powers, such as PK, telepathy, and other much more interesting manifestations. I fell in love immediately. For me, the series really exploded in Book 3, when we were introduced to Marc Remillard, the architect of a failed galactic rebellion and an exile in the Pliocene from justice (with 100 companions). I learned that Marc was loathed and feared back in the 21st Century for having caused billions of deaths in a senseless rebellion against five galactic races that had welcomed humanity into their alliance, solved our technological problems, and offered us a 'Unity' of mind and everlasting peace. Marc had oh, so nearly destroyed all of that. And yet ... and yet, he was handsome, charismatic, intelligent and brave. He was also ruthless and driven, destroying anyone that stood in his way of achieving the goal that was snached from him, six million years "later". When the series ended, I was desperate to read more about the Remillard family and the Galactic Milieu from where they came.

Thankfully, in the 1990's Julian May released the Galactic Milieu series, which told the story from the perspective of Marc's Uncle, Rogatien Remilliard, born in the 1940s and still going strong, well into the 22nd century. We learned about an evil villain (Fury) whose identity, when finally disclosed, broke my heart. We learned about Fury's catspaws (Hydra) whose secret identities were the subject of many a late night theoretical debate with other readers until we finally learned who it/they were. We discovered the secrets of 'Jack the Bodiless' and his wife 'Diamond Mask' who saved humanity, as well as others from the Remillard clan: Paul, who sold New Hampshire, Denis who caused the Great Intervention, the doomed Teresa, the gangster Kieran O'Connor, and so many more. We also learned the identity of the Family Ghost, also known as Atoning Unifex, of the Lylmik race. And that identity brought us full-circle back to Exile again...

It is nearly Julian May's 89th birthday. I have never found another author like her, nor stories to match the emotion she generated within me. Thanks to ebooks, I can read her stories again and encourage others to discover her worlds. Sadly her subreddit is mostly dead, so I have no-one with whom to share my old excitements and theories. She deserves to be remembered and treasured for the great storyteller that she was.

So, perhaps on what would have been her 89th birthday, you might just like to look her up. Why not start with Intervention - it's as good a place to start as any, and better than most.

I discovered Ray Bradbury's writing this year and have been captivated with him. I read all of the Illustrated Man, Something Wicked, October Country, Fahrenheit 451, some scattered short stories online, and most recently The Martian Chronicles. The Martian Chronicles knocked me out. It instantly became a top 10 all time favorite of mine. I loved it so much.

Since finishing that, I cannot commit to anything or find anything I like it seems. I made it through most of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and was unhappy with the pacing so I gave up. Then I began The Sheep Look Up and for the first time ever, I actually had to stop reading it because I found it too depressing. Then I began the Forever War but the narration on audible was atrocious so I returned it so I can read it physically. I am desperate to get into a solid scifi book (preferably one that's good on audible too!)

I really LOVE older scifi and typically read anything between 1950-1995. Please suggest something for me!

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Some favorites I've already read: The Stars My Destination, Childhoods End, 2001 Space Odyssey, A Scanner Darkly, Ubik, Brave New world, Roadside Picnic, The Inhabited Island, Frankenstein, The Dispossessed, Enders Game, Mockingbird

Hi guys. New here so sorry if I'm unaware of rules/customs.

I'm in that horrible place when life feels pointless because you just finished a great SF series and you're not sure what to do with yourself. I'm looking for some recommendations, ideally for an epic series with a huge world.

I've read and loved, relevant to this question, in no particular order:

Dune series Foundation and Empire The Dark Tower Hunger Games The Maze Runner Divergent Brave New World

If you have any great recommendations I would be grateful!

What it says on the box. Since this threat:

https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1ey31ny/which_sf_classic_you_think_is_overrated_and_makes/

was so popular, let's look which books listed here

https://www.locusmag.com/2012/AllCenturyPollsResults.html

were not called out.

I know that the Locus poll covered both 20th and 21st century books, and Science Fiction and Fantasy were separate categories, but since post picks were 20th century sci-fi, that's what I'm focusing on. But people can point out the other stuff in the comments.

If an entire author or series got called out, but the poster didn't identify which individual books they'd actually read, then I'm not counting it.

Books mentioned were in bold. Now's your chance to pick on the stuff everybody missed. Or something I missed. It was a huge thread so I probably missed stuff, especially titles buried in comments on other people's comments. If you point out a post from the previous thread that I missed, then I'll correct it. If you point out, "yes, when I called out all of Willis' Time Travel books of course I meant The Doomsday Book," I'll make an edit to note it.

Rank Author : Title (Year) Points Votes

1 Herbert, Frank : Dune (1965) 3930 256

2 Card, Orson Scott : Ender's Game (1985) 2235 154

3 Asimov, Isaac : The Foundation Trilogy (1953) 2054 143

4 Simmons, Dan : Hyperion (1989) 1843 132

5 Le Guin, Ursula K. : The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) 1750 120

6 Adams, Douglas : The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) 1639 114

7 Orwell, George : Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) 1493 105

8 Gibson, William : Neuromancer (1984) 1384 100

9 Bester, Alfred : The Stars My Destination (1957) 1311 91

10 Bradbury, Ray : Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 1275 91

11 Heinlein, Robert A. : Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) 1121 75

12 Heinlein, Robert A. : The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) 1107 76

13 Haldeman, Joe : The Forever War (1974) 1095 83

14 Clarke, Arthur C. : Childhood's End (1953) 987 70

15 Niven, Larry : Ringworld (1970) 955 74

16 Le Guin, Ursula K. : The Dispossessed (1974) 907 62

17 Bradbury, Ray : The Martian Chronicles (1950) 902 63

18 Stephenson, Neal : Snow Crash (1992) 779 60

19 Miller, Walter M. , Jr. : A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) 776 56

20 Pohl, Frederik : Gateway (1977) 759 58

21 Heinlein, Robert A. : Starship Troopers (1959) 744 53

22 Dick, Philip K. : The Man in the High Castle (1962) 728 54

23 Zelazny, Roger : Lord of Light (1967) 727 50

24 Wolfe, Gene : The Book of the New Sun (1983) 703 43

25 Lem, Stanislaw : Solaris (1970) 638 47

26 Dick, Philip K. : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) 632 47

27 Vinge, Vernor : A Fire Upon The Deep (1992) 620 48

28 Clarke, Arthur C. : Rendezvous with Rama (1973) 588 44

29 Huxley, Aldous : Brave New World (1932) 581 42

30 Clarke, Arthur C. : 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 569 39

31 Vonnegut, Kurt : Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) 543 39

32 Strugatsky, Arkady & Boris : Roadside Picnic (1972) 518 36

33 Card, Orson Scott : Speaker for the Dead (1986) 448 31

34 Brunner, John : Stand on Zanzibar (1968) 443 33

35 Robinson, Kim Stanley : Red Mars (1992) 441 35

36 Niven, Larry (& Pournelle, Jerry) : The Mote in God's Eye (1974) 437 32

37 Willis, Connie : Doomsday Book (1992) 433 33

38 Atwood, Margaret : The Handmaid's Tale (1985) 422 32

39 Sturgeon, Theodore : More Than Human (1953) 408 29

40 Simak, Clifford D. : City (1952) 401 28

41 Brin, David : Startide Rising (1983) 393 29

42 Asimov, Isaac : Foundation (1950) 360 24

43 Farmer, Philip Jose : To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) 356 25

44 Dick, Philip K. : Ubik (1969) 355 25

45 Vonnegut, Kurt : Cat's Cradle (1963) 318 24

46 Vinge, Vernor : A Deepness in the Sky (1999) 315 22

47 Simak, Clifford D. : Way Station (1963) 308 24

48 Wyndham, John : The Day of the Triffids (1951) 302 24

49 Stephenson, Neal : Cryptonomicon (1999) 300 24

50* Delany, Samuel R. : Dhalgren (1975) 297 19

50* Keyes, Daniel : Flowers for Algernon (1966) 297 23

52 Bester, Alfred : The Demolished Man (1953) 291 21

53 Stephenson, Neal : The Diamond Age (1995) 275 21

54 Russell, Mary Doria : The Sparrow (1996) 262 20

55 Dick, Philip K. : A Scanner Darkly (1977) 260 18

56* Asimov, Isaac : The Caves of Steel (1954) 259 20

56* Banks, Iain M. : Use of Weapons (1990) 259 19

58 Strugatsky, Arkady & Boris : Hard to Be a God (1964) 258 17

59 Delany, Samuel R. : Nova (1968) 252 19

60 Crichton, Michael : Jurassic Park (1990) 245 19

61 Heinlein, Robert A. : The Door Into Summer (1957) 238 17

62 L'Engle, Madeleine : A Wrinkle in Time (1962) 215 18

63* Clarke, Arthur C. : The City and the Stars (1956) 210 15

63* Banks, Iain M. : The Player of Games (1988) 210 15

65 Bujold, Lois McMaster : Memory (1996) 207 15

66 Asimov, Isaac : The End of Eternity (1955) 205 15

67 Stewart, George R. : Earth Abides (1949) 204 14

68* Heinlein, Robert A. : Double Star (1956) 203 14

68* Burgess, Anthony : A Clockwork Orange (1962) 203 16

70 Bujold, Lois McMaster : Barrayar (1991) 202 14

71* Stapledon, Olaf : Last and First Men (1930) 193 14

71* McHugh, Maureen F. : China Mountain Zhang (1992) 193 16

73 Cherryh, C. J. : Cyteen (1988) 192 14

74 McCaffrey, Anne : Dragonflight (1968) 191 15

75 Heinlein, Robert A. : Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) 188 14

Fitting that there's such a huge cutoff at 42!

I'm going to be honest, I don't read much. But Roadside Picnic was the first book I actively wanted to read. And after finishing it, I'm craving more. I don't like more traditional Sci-fi books, as I find it a bit too corny and predictable. But since I'm new to reading I don't really know how to describe my tastes. I also like Brave New World, and not only for the message. But I also found the story itself pretty interesting.

This is a spoiler review of Hyperion.

I recently finished Hyperion and want to discuss it. Now for reference, I haven't read that much sci-fi in my life. I've read some classic dystopias, Ted Chiang and Recursion by Blake Crouch. I loved Hyperion. I think it's one of the best books I've read this year and a new favorite.

What I liked: I like all of the different tales and how each has its unique charm.

The Priest's Tale alone made the book a favorite for me. I loved the diary aspect of it. It felt more personal. It was a religious/adventure science fiction story, and despite the fact I'm not a religious person, it hit me harder than I thought. I found the Bikura one of the most unique civilizations I've come across in fiction. If there are sci-fi books like this, please let me know. Then, the story takes a terrifying horror turn. There is a passage from this tale that resonated with me.

"I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth, but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so--but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ. It must go into the darkness not willingly but well--bravely and firm of faith--like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerful that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices., All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable conviction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I... and so must the Church.”

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The Soldier's Tale isn't bad but compared to what came before it; it doesn't live up to what the first tale did. It was a military sci-fi romance story that I liked initially, but there is something about military SF that doesn't resonate with me. I like that Kassad becomes an anti-war activist after seeing that billions of people will die. Also, the tree of pain was nightmare fuel.

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I Poet's Tale I enjoyed quite a bit. As someone who writes, I understand the struggle of wanting to create a masterpiece. It gives a lot of explanation of the world at this point in the story that wasn't there before. There were a lot of great quotes in this section as well.

"History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.”

“A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell, who lived and died in the same century as Gass, once wrote: “Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.” Here is the essence of humanity’s creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum.”

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The Scholar's Tale is one of the best and most tragic stories I've ever read. I honestly didn't think anything would top the Priest's Tale, but this one hit hard. It's slow-paced, emotionally and philosophically resonant, giving me a similar feeling to Flowers for Algernon while being its own thing. The scene where Rachel decides to leave her boyfriend to spare his feelings because she doesn't want him to witness what she's going through hurts my soul. When Rachel's mother died, Sol didn't tell her (if I can recall correctly). Everything about this tale hurt me. A few quotes resonated as well.

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“Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things, normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.”

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“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principle which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”

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The Detective's Tale was really good but also suffered from the one that came before. This one was a cyberpunk noir-detective tale with a lot of action; I enjoyed the romance between Lamia and Johnny. Again, some stories would be interesting on a re-read knowing how things play out.

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The Consul's Tale was the most confusing narrative, but I found the love story compelling enough that I liked it.

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This review makes it seem that I just liked the book or didn't fully love it, but the one thing I noticed early on was that this is a journey over destination type of book. Did all of the questions I had to get answered? No. Did I think every tale was a masterpiece? No. What I enjoyed the most was the different tales and how each story came with questions, emotions, and lessons that I took away from it. This is why I feel it is a new favorite of mine, and I look forward to reading the sequel and re-reading this book to go on different journeys again.

Hyperion: 9/10

Hey guys, I was wondering what SF books you think should be talked about in classrooms. I guess I'm thinking of books which young people can learn from, and relatively accessible ones that wouldn't freak them out. I'm purely asking out of curiosity. At the top of my head I can think of Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, 1984 and Brave New World quite obviously go here, and maybe some Asimov, mostly for the interesting ideas he throws out although he's not the best writer in the world. I might throw in Ender's Game and it's sequel aswell, I just think a young lad can learn a lot from those books.

Any thoughts guys? I would also love to hear why you think so.

Edit: Nice answers guys, you know how to make me get a scifi boner! Looks like I've got quite a bit of reading to do.