I read the first 3 Dune books after seeing the movie and hearing about the challenges of getting that story on the screen. Love the first 2, the ending of the 3rd was ok.
I’m 3/4ths through the 4th and final Hyperion books. Absolutely incredible, I’m disappointed knowing I’ll be done with it soon. I highly recommend it if you’re at all curious. The author does an excellent job sneaking deep references into the colorful narrative; Keats and Ancient Greek mythology among them. The characters are vivid, varied, and somehow all relatable.
When I was younger I liked Vonnegut, specifically Galapagos, cats cradle, and slaughter house 5. I recently read Philip K Dicks “do androids… electric sheep” and wasn’t a fan. I loved the film blade runner, but the book kind of trudged on for me with, what I felt was, a let down of an ending. Asimov’s foundation was ok, but it lacked action and the characters seemed thin; I do like the concept a lot, it was just missing something for me.
So what’s next? I read a few classics in school and wasn’t terribly moved by most of them. I’ve considered giving Philip K Dick another chance, and possibly exploring the Dune books not authored by Herbert. I’m not a big fan of fantasy- at least in the horse riding, sword wielding, magic and sorcery vein.
Thanks for any suggestions
Roadside Picnic is awesome. It inspired the film stalker. I loved it.
The sparrow by Mary Dora Russell. Jesuit and his friends make first contact with not one but two alien species on a planet 4 light years away
Read this one recently. I honestly didn’t really get the point.
(spoiler warning)
Like what was the point of the suffering the guy had to go through? Is it just a critique of religion? It just seemed kinda pointless to me.
Sue Burke’s Semiosis was an interesting read (go in blind is my recommendation)
I wouldn’t recommend Anderson Dune books.
Pohl has some classics Heechee Saga Space Merchants Man Plus
Ringworld
Vernor Vinge: Fire Upon the Deep
John Scalzi: Old Mans War Series
You read the expanse series?
While nothing like Dan Simmons, The Three Body Problem is the only one that has knocked my socks off in the last 10 years. If you want to stick with Simmons I recommend Song of Kali.
I put down three body after first book, perhaps I should push through
The escalation of story/plot stakes from Three-Body to Dark Forest is huge, but if you don’t like the writing style or the author’s voice, it’s more of the same.
I didn’t like the rest as much, it did more get more universal in scope. It’s OK to give them a miss, first book is satisfying on its own.
A lot of good recommendations already but here are some I didn’t see.
The Madness Season. Follows a vampire secretly living among humans after a alien race with a hive mind conqueres Earth.
Eight Worlds series by John Varley. Aliens with reality warping powers show up and kick humanity off Earth and Jupiter. Humanity has now colonized all the other planets. People and society have evolved in strange ways.
The Final Architecture. giant aliens sometimes show up and reshape planets with life into giant sculptures.
Dang are you me? Galapagos is one of my favorite Vonneguts. I recently finished Hyperion cantos too, and am now on book three of the Xeelee sequence which so far have been very good and give similar vibes as Hyperion.
Someone else mentioned Blindsight which is maybe a top three for me. Different tonally than the Hyperion Cantos but still excellent. Same goes for Children of Time.
That is wild, Galapagos was my favorite novel for a while; one of the few I’ve read more than once
I’m you! Just finished rereading The Hyperion Cantos and started Vonnegut again.
… fine, noted, seems now I have to read these.
I believe the most popular PKD is Man in the High Castle, my favorite is Ubik. But to be honest, if you disliked Do Androids, PKD may just not be your thing.
Hmmm… maybe next go for something a little less ponderous, try some Neal Stephenson, maybe Diamond Age.
Ubik is a lot of fun. I enjoyed high Castle, but man that tv show soured me on it big time. (Which is stupid, i know, but here i am)
I read Snow Crash last year and it was one of the worst slogs I’ve ever endured. I get that people like Stephenson, but definitely not for me.
Haven’t done Ubik yet, but I loved a Scanner Darkly. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep didn’t really appeal to me either. It’s got a bunch of cool stuff, but doesn’t really manage to tie any of it together in a satisfying way.
I didn’t really like the Hyperion series much myself, but both Dune and Hyperion are sci-fi with religious elements. Maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Maybe Flowers for Algernon? I read this for the first time near when when I read Canticle. I much more connected to Algernon.
MaddAddam trilogy also touches close to home for me, not least because Atwood is Canadian.
I was also late to Childhood’s End and The Chrysalids.
Flowers for Algernon is one of my top books of all time.
That being said, it’s definitely a different vibe than Hyperion or Dune. It’s a lot more personal and almost doesn’t read like scifi.
Just bought that book, you will be hearing from me when I am 12 beers in after finishing it
After the end of that book you’ll probably need 12 drinks.
12 more drinks.
Honestly, now — not promoting binge drinking or alcohol consumption at all — but that book tears something in you. It can’t be undone.
I loved Canticle. I recommend it to everyone
Similar in nature, but a bit more space focused would be the Foundation Series. It’s a series by Issac Asimov where a mathematician sets up a planet to try to speed up a galactic dark age due to an empire collapsing.
Apple TV has a series on it, but it actually focuses on what happens leading up to the main story of the first book.
Foundation Series and the Caves of Steel series are so good.
Some of my suggestions:
- Forever War - due to time dilation this story follows combatants that spend decades at war while on earth hundreds of years pass (inspired by the Vietnam War).
- Stanger in a Strange Land - Story of a human raised by Martians coming to earth. Has similar religious notes as dune and hyperion, but also has a weird Ayn Rand vibe (in my opinion, also not necessarily in a bad way).
Both of these are excellent but very different thematically. Forever War is much more “space” and “time” where Stranger in a Strange Land is a mostly an Earth story with a critical eye on the being/psychology of humanity (albeit from an “alien” perspective).
Yeah, that’s why I added the descriptions. Given Dune and Hyperion, I think OP could enjoy both of those, but they are different (from each other and Dune/Hyperion).
The Forever War is such an important and great read. I’d put it alongside Catch-22 and Johnny Got His Gun for an anti-war novel.
I’m surprised I don’t hear about it more. I only stumbled upon it somewhat recently and am amazed it doesnt get brought up more. While you can feel the Vietnam War influences, it transcends that war and give a compelling story about the costs of war writ large.
If you’re going with Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was awesome too. One of the only Heinlein ones that didn’t make me feel weird after I learned more about him.
I haven’t read that, but adding it to my list.
Haven’t seen these mentioned here, but the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi is great as are “The Expanse” books by James SA Corey. I’d highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn’t lose the reader or become overly technical.
I highly highly recommend Old Man’s War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you’ve seen the TV series… the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she’s an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).
Thanks, I never considered myself a sci-fi fan so what you mentioned about old man’s war is appealing. That’s interesting the Expanse show added a character and still gets love from the book fans, speaks volumes to their adaptation
I don’t want to hype it up too much, but the Expanse show is really great… IMHO some of the best sci-fi television in decades. I’d say it’s easily up there with “Battlestar Galactica” (the RDM or “re-imagined” series) and “Farscape” as a triumph of what I’d guess you would call “post-9/11” science fiction story telling. Most fans of the books would tell you to read them first, but I think either is fine because both are great (I read them as the show was airing and it was awesome all the same). My favorite character in both the books and TV series is hands down Amos Burton… Wes Chatham is the actor that plays him; he has said in interviews that he read the books before filming season 1, fell in love with the character, and it really effing shows. From the writers and show runners to the actors, costuming, and set design… they took great care to be loyal to the books while creating something new at the same time.
I think the original idea by Joe Haldeman is superior. I definitely like both though.
If you’re looking for something epic but self-contained I really liked “Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson. If you want something that’s got a similar level of art to Hyperion I’d suggest “This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This is how you lose a time war is fantastic I haven’t read Hyperion yet but that’s definitely another vote for Time War.
Blindsight by Peter watts.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,” recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist – an informational topologist with half his mind gone – as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.
Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. --Wikipedia
My all-time favorite book, read it 14 times or so.
It’s been long enough that I can reread it. East of eden is on the list as well
It’s blind sight the one that has vampires in it for absolutely no reason? I couldn’t get through it.
If you haven’t finished it how can you know they’re there for no reason?
I just said i couldn’t get through the book, so no i did not get far enough to see the point in it.
Right, my point is that you didn’t get far enough to learn why they’re there so you can’t say they’re part of the story for no reason.
I found the book to be a fascinating thought experiment on the evolution of human consciousness, how we think and interact, and what it means for us as a species. If you can suspend your disbelief about the vampire I think it’s worth the read, it’s one of those books that made me stare off into space lost in thought after I finished it.
Correct. I did not like the book. It happens. Move on.
It’s kind of weird you even have an opinion on it since you didn’t read it in the first place. Like, why even comment if you didn’t want to talk about it?
Are you daft?
You missed the point of, everything about Blindsight? Did you think they were sparkly vampires?
They’re a forgotten anciant race of vampires that suddenly woke up and are now piloting space ships lmao it’s incredibly cringy.
I just said i couldn’t get through the book, so no i did not get far enough to see the point in it.
Awesome book. Text rarely gives me such impressions of genius artistry as Blindsight does. It’s clever without being obnoxious.
I fucking did not like that book. I did not like any of the characters. Grrrr to that book. That is all. I guess in saying I wouldn’t go more Hyperion. Do Revelation Space Series. Much better.
I gave Hyperion about 200 pages and they were STILL world building and offering leading secrets the author didn’t think the reader needed to know. So I just gave up.
Couldn’t agree more. I guess what baffled me was all the years it was pushed on me. Canterbury Tales in space. Got it. Didn’t much care for the thing when Mrs. Baker was pushing allegorical shit and what not and I’m not digging it now that everyone is nothing I’m interested in rooting for. Harumph!
Yeah, if there’s not a character I can relate to, sympathize with, or cheer for within 200 pages, I’m not going to keep reading.
It really comes together at the end in an amazing way. However it’s such a chore to get there. Simmons doesn’t ever write characters I care about.
Yeah revelation space is what I’m reading now. The series is great
I loved the first two books, it felt like an adventure and a puzzle piece. Then the last 2 are 😬
Same. Simmons fucks up a landing. Idk what it is. I like Ilium and hated Olympos.
I liked the series until the point OP is at. The third book was okay but I just could not like Raul Endymion no matter what.
The ending fourth of Rise felt like Disney wrote it. “Oh but you see it’s bittersweet and–” okay but ::: spoiler plot spoilage Anea fucking died and now she’s back in Disney “everything’s okay!” fashion for like 2 years or whatever, yeah she’ll be gone but the book doesn’t bother making even an ounce of progress towards that happening. “And Earth is back, and no one is allowed to visit it while it’s just you and I and then and then and then”. It’s like a fucking 8 year old wrote the ending. :::
I’m with you. I was pretty close to giving up on it several times, but slugged through it at first because so many people said it was so great, and then because the next book was meant to be better, and then because I was over halfway so I may as well finish it. I wish I hadn’t.
I felt the Culture books by Iain Banks were a similar tone and style, but I found them much more enjoyable.
I also didn’t like Hyperion. Just couldn’t get into it for whatever reason and I gave it a fair whack. Thank you for the recommendation. I’ll check it out.
