Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

Greg Egan. Agree with others in this thread that Permutation City is the most important. But Diaspora is not to be missed either. Egan's unique value prop is: crazy-thought-experiment sci fi (2D world with 2 time dimensions is his latest and is typical) but hard, harder than you can believe. Sci fi so hard, you don't find any cracks and are left thinking wait a minute ... This must be true then?

Gene Wolfe. Book of the new Sun. Wolfe's unique value prop is, create an interesting sci fi or fantastical setting, and tell it through special narrators (unreliable, liar, child, amnesiac, etc) with wonderful skill, producing a puzzle with a lovely solution (that you will only partially solve).

If you liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary, two books I cannot recommend enough are Daniel Suarez' Delta-V and Critical Mass. Highly technical focused hard-sci-fi about asteroid mining and human dynamics in high-risk envrionments. I can't vouch for the absolute factual correctness, but it has an appendix listing the papers the author indirectly references for the book.

https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html

It's strange to start a list of "books that you may never have heard of" with a novel which is a nominee to the 2020 Hugo Awards. I suppose that most of the regular readers of sci-fi haver heard of it.

A nitpick about the third recommandation with "robots modeled on Karel Čapek’s designs". I suppose that they have not read Čapek’s novels. His robots were not pure machines, they were made from a biological substrate. In a way, they were closer to golems than to what we're now calling robots.

If you want to read really different and lesser known novels, Karel Čapek’s are a good choice. I did not enjoy "R.O.R." much except for his surprising concept of robots, but I highly recommend "War with the newts".

The Bobiverse series is one of my favorites, sense of humor meets Bob the von Neumann probe. Well written and plenty of theory explanations of technology. They even pull in Expeditionary Force's AI Skippy as a faction group, which is another good series if you like technical theory in detail explained mostly by the asshole AI.

Murderbot has become a must listen at bedtime, the self deprecating, funny and lovey dovey killing machine. He loves his solitude and media, and has an emotion from time to time.

One of "you may never heard of" sci-fi books I can recommend is The City & the City by China Miéville. Perhaps not traditional science fiction, but so original and strange, it's beautiful.

No mention of Peter Watts' Blindsight? That book changed all sorts of notions of first contact and consciousness for me. I'm still thinking about it to this day. Absolute must read for anyone concerned with such things

Greg Egan's Permutation City is #1 for me. It's not only a good read, it may be the most important work of late 20th century philosophy. (Among other things, it completely anticipated Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, and totally obviates Bostrom's latest work.)

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4711854-the-machine-stop...

35 page short story and eerily reminiscent of today's world.

It was written in 1909.

I recommend The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher. As a kid I read The White Mountains blind and the story unfolded in a fantastic way for me. It is YA sci-fi and a lot of the themes are well-trodden at this point, but the story is strong and clear, kind of a coming-of-age-amongst-aliens.

Roadside picnic is a favourite of mine. I’m currently learning Russian to reread it in the original Russian. But the translation is very good and done by the authors themselves.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is a rare gem that I've come across lately, very unique, paces well and I couldn't put it down - https://www.goodreads.com/series/309211-dungeon-crawler-carl

The audiobook is also really well narrated.

I love this genre, and there is such a plethora of interesting reads. I think one of the most interesting, in terms of presenting technology's role in varied societies, is A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Great read if you are bored of the classic space opera.

The Wandering Inn [1], Stories of an alternate world somehow connected to a certain innkeeper of the said inn.

Features extensive world building, character building, Lots of fleshed out characters, contains humour as well as serious stuff, has dragons, fae, aliens, time travel, hiveminds, automatons, cute pets, cosmic horrors, history lessons, magic, alchemy and steampunk engineering.

It's a bit longish and not finished yet, 2/3 done as of this year.

[1]: https://wanderinginn.com/

The SF Masterworks series is a good source of forgotten classics in amongst the many super popular picks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks

Here are some which, though perhaps not the best, haunt my memory through unique nostalgia.

Glory Season, David Brin. Ok, this is one of the best. A heartrending saga of epic scale.

Carve the Sky, Alexander Jablokov. Scifi feudalism.

All of an Instant, Richard Garfinkle.

Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko. Though very different, it somehow reminds me of Roadside Picnic.

Spin, Robert Charles Wilson.

Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling.

Interstellar Pig, William Sleator.

The Carpet Makers, Andreas Eschbach

The Threshold series (Peter Clines) doesn't really belong in this list, but it is excellent and from what I gather, commonly overlooked by fans of Lovecraft.

I'd also throw in The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel, if it wasn't so well known already.

In a different vein, if you seek good-old action-packed, kick-ass never-ending fun, pick anything by Larry Correia. Even if it appears fantasy, it might turn out to be scifi...

hi all, founder of Shepherd here :)

If you want to share your 3 fav reads of the year, you can do that here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads

You get a cool page like this -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb

Plus, it goes into our "best books of 2024" voting -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024

I am slowly getting more into place on this website, I have been working on it for 3.5 years now.

Let me throw my hat in the ring. I'd recommend Grass by Sheri S Tepper. It felt fresh and original in a way few science fiction books are, the characters are really well done and it just stays with you. Despite being the first book of a trilogy, it works well on its own.

I want to do book recommendations from the other direction. I need to know which books to avoid based on the books people like.

For example, if I hated The Three Body Problem and you loved it, then I'm probably going to hate the other books you love.

More modern / post cyberpunk maybe but would add Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan. I really liked the premise and the organic feel vs a lot of other science fiction.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374175412/infinitedetail

The Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor.

These books aren't anything that will change your life, but they're well written and a lot of fun.

"Too Like the Lightning" by Ada Palmer. (First of four books called the "Terra Ignota" series.)

It's one of the handful of books that genuinely changed my mind about serious questions -- in my case, relating to gender, politics, & religion. But it's definitely not coming from anywhere you'd expect.

I compare it loosely to Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed". The author paints a picture of a utopia, and gradually we see deep human flaws tear it apart. It starts off with investigation of a puzzling criminal tresspass, which slowly spirals upward into greater and greater consequences -- and it intensely rewards careful reading, or a second reading, as major reveals are subtly foreshadowed early and often.

Just because they're both books that are hard to stumble upon and are a bit out of the usual recommendations, and yet everyone I have recommended them to have /deeply/ enjoyed them:

"Constellation Games" by Leonard Richardson (also known for the Beautiful Soup Python library!) https://constellation.crummy.com/

"Happy Snak" by Nicole Kimberling https://www.nicolekimberling.com/happy-snak

After I finished the two Frank Kittridge novels from S.J. Morden I was surprised I haven't heard of him until now.

They start as a "The Martian" cribbed story, but the development arc takes in better places. It was less geek/efficiency porn and more character development and required less strain on my suspension of disbelief overall.

Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogy by Robert Thurston: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/488118.The_Legend_of_the...

Legend of Zero quadrilogy by Sara King: https://www.goodreads.com/series/103017-the-legend-of-zero

An old but excellent book (written in the 1920s in Soviet Russia) is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I also like Solaris though I suppose everyone has heard of that one.

I'd throw in The Saga of Exiles by Julian May. Excellent exploration of psi power, set in Pliocene Europe (by way of time travel). Sounds mad, but May both grounds her characters and casts them archetypes, and it's fantastically dramatic.

One of the first books I read where the cumulative trauma and psychologies of the main characters inform their actions.

Actually I made a website that’s mostly sci-fi books I’ve read

https://mnky9800n.github.io/booklist/

It uses a google spreadsheet as a database so you just need to update the spreadsheet and it adds a book to the website.

I have a life goal to read every thing written by Phillip k dick as well as every book on David Pringle’s 100 best sci-fi list. Some of the books are hard to find though. Like I’ve been searching for years for the peoples republic of Antarctica.

I would suggest the following novels if you haven’t read them yet

Gene wolfe shadow of the torturer series aka book of the new sun

A scanner darkly by pkd, this, imo, is his best book even though all his books are compelling. But I think also, yes we can build him, its amazing because it really shows off pkd ability to come up with a wild premise but that’s simply the universe the characters live in and they don’t really care about that premise they have other problems.

Herovits world by malzburg, this book is hilarious and about how you must be a terrible narcissist to believe someone should read your fiction especially science fiction

The Brian Daley series about Han Solo, these are super interesting because they were written in 1979 so before empire strikes back came out. So Daley basically only had Star Wars to go on to create a whole trilogy of novels starring Han Solo. I think these are probably my favourite Star Wars novels because they have such little constraints.

The most unusual book I read this year is Radiance by Catherynne Valente.

It's set in an Art-Deco "future" of our fully habitable Solar system (jungles and oceans on Venus, flowering fields on Pluto, etc), that started to be colonized in the 1860s. Of course, it is a play on early science fiction tropes, but somehow, it all fits together.

The problem with Project Hail Mary is that the audio book is good but the book is not. First read the book and then listen to the audio book and you know what I mean.

Not a "book", but a short story: The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.

I read that story when I was pretty young, and it's shaped my opinion on cold, uncaring bureaucracies in a way that I'm not sure anything else could.

These are all painfully mid reads. (The alien in Hail Mary is about as alien as a rival fraternity brother.)

If you want real alien aliens, read Blindsight (Peter Watts).

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley is a really great, and different read. Totally different world than a lot of sci-fi.

Credit for not assuming to know the reader by saying something like "Sci-fi books that you've never heard of!". I now routinely block youtube channels that do such things.

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith Hospital Station by James White

More recent read, you may have heard of it since it won an award - In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Shipwreck by Charles Logan.

Magnificent hard sci fi about an astronaut crashed on a distant world after their colony ship suffers a catastrophic accident as it reaches a distant star system.

https://www.amazon.com/Shipwreck-Panther-science-fiction-Cha...

You will never feel more bleak and alone.

The Nexus Trilogy is extremely entertaining fast paced sci fi you can't put down with very interesting ideas on upgrading humans.

I really like the shepherd.com way of curating the recommendation. Browsing trough books and picking something to read has become much easier this way.

One scifi book that was very impactful to me is the black cloud by Fred Hoyle. It's such a well thought out story and has held up remarkably well for a 50 year old novel.

Any recommendations for books with good made up technology/programming/cyberspace? I love alternate versions of the internet and ways to navigate it. I love hearing completely original but coherent technical babble with 0 connection to it's real world counterpart.

A good sci-fi book is Birds of Paradise by Rudolf Kremers, who was one of the developers for the PS3 game Eufloria back in the day:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8XVRQBC

The Stars are Legion and Alien Clay are the two best sci-fi books I've read in the last year and I don't think they've shown up on any lists, although the latter is another first contact book by the author of Children of Time which has gotten a lot of acclaim (although I didn't care for it).

FWIW Beacon 23 has an adaptation on Apple TV+ and Project Hail Mary has a film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling that's already finished shooting, so I don't know how long they'll stay in the category of "you may never have heard of"

For me:

- His Master's Voice by Stanisław Lem

- Permutation City (and the whole trilogy) by Greg Egan

- Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Late to the list party but, "The First 15 lives of Harry August", by Claire North.

It's a wonderful exploration of reliving your life over and over and over again, but also finding out that there is a small number of others who do the same and communicate with each other across the centuries of past and future. She forms her character dialogue well too, which is always good.

Nunquam by Lawrence Durrell. Not generally heard of because you have to read Tunc first which is not science fiction. Both are great and stylistic masterpieces. Numquam is my favorite robot book along with Caves of Steel.

Red Rising is a pretty great one, I would have added it to my list.

I'm surprised Greg Bear never came up here. I started with Blood Music, but I've enjoyed many of his books.

Samuel Delaney - Nova, Babel-17

Clifford Simak - City

Alan E Nourse - The Universe Between

I'd suggest The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

It's good stuff. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

Just finished a very good audiobook, Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini and started another, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by the same author.

Hugh Howey is a tremendously talented author.

I didn't love Beacon 23, but his Wool series (apparently now a TV series, which I haven't watched yet) is very, very good. Sand is another great novel. Both feature humanity surviving in incredibly hostile environments, doomed to them by their predecessors.

Random Acts of Senseless Violence - Jack Womack. See https://reactormag.com/randomacts/ for a great review by Jo Walton (also a great scifi author who deserves more attention).

Then there are all of the sci-fi books you have -not- heard of, and that's a good thing.

Anyway, there are a few missing in this list. Today, I'll pimp for Farmer's Riverworld series. The first got a Hugo Award, and that's a list worth mining.

> Ever since reading Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), I’ve been fascinated by science fiction stories with amazing characters and intriguing concepts.

Did an LLM write this? "Amazing characters" and "intriguing concepts"? This sentence says nothing.

Is Beacon 23 the book better than the show? I thought I was a general fan of sci-fi, but I realized that I was generally bored all through the first season and had begun hate watching it in season 2 before I stopped all together.

Project Hail Mary is soon to be a movie...

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt12042730/

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.

This guy figured out the meaning of life back in 1937.

Can't really take the recommendation for Beacon 23 seriously after seeing the 1/2 half of the first tv episode. That was utter crap and nonsensical. :(

Eric Nylund: Signal to Noise, A Signal Shattered

I find it disappointing how A.E. van Vogt has been almost completely forgotten. And to a lesser extent, Poul Anderson.

Another set is CS Lewis' Space Trilogy

Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength

Note that like a lot of CS Lewis, there is a very heavy Christian view.

Project Hail Mary was good, but I thought Artemis (also by Weir) was amazing. I wish he'd make a sequel.

Author Brian Guthrie shares some of his favorites and happy to see that I have only read one of these.

Planetside by Michael Mammay

>Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read

HN thread is full of books I've heard of and that get recommended literally anytime books are mentioned.