I’m with you though.
Always annoys me having to wade through fantasy to find the sci fi on bookshop shelves. At least you can filter to just sci fi for ebooks mostly.
While that may have been true historically, fantasy has a new, blossoming, largely female readership, although you could consider this to be overloading the term 'fantasy' as these new BookTok books seem to have little in common with the old school sword and sorcery.
Characters are all interchangeable and quirky because he says so. The science is tacked on like a chemistry teacher putting their kids to bed.
SciFi: Read Larry Niven and James Blish if you like feats of engineering, read Ann Leckie and Nancy Kress if you like characters defined by their actions.
Don’t tell me to be excited Andy just because you wrote “THAT’S SOO COOL!” after revealing some tidbit. I’m not a fucking child.
I had the same vitriol you do for Weir toward Ernest Klein. Absolute shit author in my opinion...but my opinion doesn't matter. His first book was still a wild success with a movie adaptation despite having one of the weakest plots and and some of the flattest characters I have ever seen in print, dressed up in a patchwork coat of nostalgia, which is the only reason it had the mass appeal that it did. But the book was not written for me, was it?
I think we forget, sometimes, that authors don't really owe us anything, that they're trying to pay the bills doing what they do, so our approval means little and only makes us look like self-rightious jerks so I had to learn to let that go and just not read those books that weren't jiving with my tastes or demands. In the end, let people have their books they like because, well, at least they're still reading and not watching TikTok or whatever.
I can see that you wouldn't like him if you're more into characters than plot, but that's not what everyone wants.
A Canticle for Liebowitz for example mostly feels like some kind of fantasy but for the fact that the reader knows it's set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.
Big chunks of the Peter F. Hamilton Void series is basically more or less set in a slightly magical Early Modern Venice.
The Laundry Files is strongly and deliberately in the middle ground of technology and magic, despite being ostensibly set in the present-day.
Stone Spring is an alternate history set in the Stone Age, but is not substantially more ahistorical than a non-fantasy historical novel about a person who didn't exist in reality doing things that never actually happened. Perhaps there's more focus on the engineering rather than fighting, romance, politics, murder and whatever else historical novels often revolve around, but building is as valid a human thing to do as plotting a regicide, say.
Generally, the concepts in both are the same: construct an "unreal" world and set a story in there, often with a projection of real-world issues onto the hypothetical substrate. Often the only real difference is if the unreal element is driven by magic, technology or a small change in a historical event. Sometimes it's a mixture. Sometimes the technology is treated as magic because the users don't understand it. Sometimes the magic is treated as a technology. Sometimes the historical divergence was thousands of years ago, sometimes it has only just happened in the story.
It would probably be more accurate to lump the whole lot under something generic like "speculative fiction" but that's not really a well-known term and has a slightly different meaning that blends into things like historical settings which may not be generally considered fantasy.
You might compare The Sword of Shannara, which is a character-for-character, scene-for-scene copy of Lord of the Rings, but which is technically set in the postapocalyptic future (it's easy to read the book without noticing this) rather than the legendary past.
The distiction isn't clear anyway. Some "fantasy" book are more scientific than some "sci-fi" books - if they have a system of magic then is that any difference to FTL travel, or Vinge's Region's of Thought?
> I’m merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain weathers, we already are. I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist’s way, which is by inventing elaborately circumstantial lies.
This is how I think about both science fiction and fantasy. Elements of world building are different, even within each sub-genre, but this element of incorporating elements that are inconsistent with our world to tell stories is common to both. It's also why the term "speculative fiction" persists: a category that subsumes sci-fi and fantasy.
[1] Read that full preface here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand...
and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!"
The preface is as valuable as the book that follows.
On a more serious note, yeah scifi and fantasy can usually be distinguished, I get why it so often gets lumped in together as speculative fiction, even though it annoys me when I'm looking for one and have to sift through the other.
Just one small example...
And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which case it acts more like technology that we haven't discovered yet. I haven't read it yet myself, but I've heard of Wizard's Bane, where a programmer is transported to a magical land and becomes really powerful because he treats the magic system like a new programming language.
Other things I've noticed is that scifi tends to involve spaceships and is more mystery oriented, whereas fantasy tends to take place on the ground and is more hero's journey oriented. But even these aren't defining traits. Plenty of scifi books involve investigating alien planets and many contain the hero's journey (including the original Star Wars if you count that as scifi). Meanwhile plenty of fantasy books are on some sort of ship (Narnia - Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and many are more mystery oriented (Harry Potter for example).
Personally, I think a better line of division is hard vs soft. Was the world created first with actual rules and the characters molded to fit the world (Dune, Lord of the Rings)? Or were the characters created first and the rules are bent to create the story that is being desired to tell (Star Trek with its technobabble, Star Wars's prequels and sequels, the entire universe of Harry Potter)?
Awake in the Night
https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenig...
In the side panels are users/readers who drew up their own maps on what they think the Nightscape is.
It has all the romantic mystery of a fantasy tale, whilst still being firmly grounded in reality.
I remember when London's Shard was going up, and I'd see it lit up slightly at night, glowing and ominous and thinking, "this is it: this is the last holdout of humanity."
I have met very few people under 50 that have read the early Schekley short stories. That are probably one of the sci fi peaks.
But in cult and unknown works - Ticket to tranai. One of the best (anti) utopias written.
3/5 of the books in the linked article are included.
It's not perfect-- it's missing War for the Oaks, for example, and doesn't have any Iain M Banks. But there's an awful lot of good material in there.
It always surprises me (although it shouldn't) how many underrated gems there are still in the world. And new ones are produced every day.
E.G: I still think QTMN will deserve a place as a classic sci-fi author among the great ones, for "there is no antimemetics division" alone. And yet despite a solid fan following, it has never exploded in popularity. It is 10 times better than the 3 body problems, which comparatively had stratospheric success.
In movies, "Amelie" has been a planetary success, but from the same author, the excellent "The city of the lost children" is practically unknown.
Even last month, a tv show named "Nero" came out on Netflix, and while not revolutionary, is clearly above most of the crap that regularly comes out. Yet, nobody talks about it.
Popularity is a cruel mistress.
- "A voyage to Arcturus" tried hard at being strange and philosophical, but it seemed shallow and I did not feel interested.
- "The worm Ouroboros" was better, with a very unusual epic style, both in writing style and in the story. But some points made me cringe, e.g. the focus on nobles and the despise of common people, even heroic characters. Then it got repetitive, with a final trick that felt like a mockery of the whole story.
- "The dying Earth" was a good book, but it is far from my favorites. I prefer continuous novels to collections of short stories, even when they share a common setting. The book sometimes felt like a poetic tale, with nature and nostalgia as strong themes, though it was also quite brutal.
Since anonymous suggestions aren't very useful without any context, I'll match little-known books with famous books:
- If you thought that "1984" had good ideas, but also many stupid parts that spoiled the whole book, then try two older books. "We", by Zamiatin, is a bit old and naive but enjoyable. It was a source of inspiration for "Brave new world" and "1984". The Swede "Kollocain" (1940), by Karin Boye, is excellent, and much more subtle than the latter.
- If you like collections of related short stories, like "The dying Earth", then "The carpet makers" (1995) by Andreas Eschbach is a must. I remember the joy when I finally had a global understanding of the whole situation.
- If you wish for bizarre fantasy, not the epic Tolkien style, not even the dark saga of Ouroboros, but something more gothic and unsettling, then Mervyn Peake's "Titus groans" is perfect.
- I think "Brain twister" (1961) is the only funny book I've read in SF-Fantasy-supernatural.
Memoires of an imaginary friend
Dogs of war (Adrian Tchaikovsky one)
The devil's detective
Red rising
The painted man
bwb•2h ago
I need to read the new Peter Hamilton book (book 2 due out soon). And I am ashamed to admit I haven't read any Greg Egan yet, need to get on that :)
cheela•2h ago
https://mdpub.github.io/cheela/
andyjohnson0•2h ago
Permutation City is his best-known work, and while some people (including me) enjoy the density of ideas, others find the characterisation weak. I'd start with one of his short story collections, such as Luminous.
georgefrowny•1h ago
And if you like that, Phase Space by Stephen Baxter feels very similar.
notpachet•2h ago
notpachet•2h ago
iamacyborg•2h ago
auntienomen•2h ago
mwigdahl•2h ago
MattPalmer1086•2h ago
I also just discovered the short story collections of Rich Larson (Changelog and Tomorrow Factory are both recommended)
Just published as well is There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm. You can read the original on SCP [1], but it's now out in book form.
[1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
n4r9•2h ago
I also recently read Speaker For The Dead (sequel to Enders Game) and was pleasantly surprised. Possibly better than the original.
A sibling comment mentions Tchaikovsky which I strongly concur with.
NitpickLawyer•1h ago
IIRC this was the first book in the universe that the author wrote, but publishers insisted it was a bit heavy, so he wrote Ender's Game as an easier entry into the universe. On the topic of Ender's universe, the whole Ender's Shadow thread is also a great read. The first book is covering some of the same events but from the perspective of Bean.
I-M-S•1h ago
stoneman24•1h ago
auntienomen•55m ago
a_bonobo•1h ago
I'm also a huge fan of R.A. Lafferty, but his stuff his harder to find, mostly out of print.
Peter Watts' Blindsight is amazing recent-ish hard SF. (the follow-up, I did not like at all).
Anything from the Strugatsky brothers you can get your hands on!
franczesko•52m ago
raddan•47m ago
There are now multiple English translations of Solaris available. I know that there’s been a lot of praise for the newer translation, and I read it, but I do not like it. Something about the earlier translation feels more ominous.
On that note—I’ve always found it hard to believe that The Cyberiad was written by the same author! I love the Cyberiad as well but almost for the opposite reasons I love Solaris. The entire universe is charming and funny, whereas Solaris is engrossing but dreadful. I went through a phase in college, reading every Lem book I could find, and eventually discovering that my library’s stacks also included Lem in Polish. Sadly I know no Polish, and was not motivated enough to learn it, so those novels remained off-limits to me.
0xEF•1h ago
Dune by Frank Herbert - I'll get the obvious one out of the way. Everyone needs to read at least the first book. The world-building is a commentary on our own and none of the movies, series or games will every really capture the books in their entirety. There is just so much more to Dune than the barely-below-the-surface treatments we get with film because they have to appeal to a mass audience that tends to have the relative intelligence of my left shoe.
Candy Man by Vincent King - take PKD's Electric Sheep question of what makes a human a human, then explore the answer in a far-flung future that ends up being a bit of a nightmare circus. Great world-building, here, but King reveals in slow morsels that leave us with questions and fuel turning the page. While his other works are not really that prolific, he hit the nail on the head with this one, bringing some dialect playfulness to the writing that just adds to the immersion. It's a haunting world, unsure of why it exists due to short memories and withholding of information, and unintentionally hints at the modern day disquiet of man as we race toward whatever Singularity we have accidentally or intentionally created.
Colossus by D. F. Jones - a bit like Wargames but more swanky, the US and Russia each create artificial super-intelligence then let them talk to each other, which goes about as well as you can imagine. The story hints at the notion that as soon as politics gets involved with science, things tend to get really cocked up, resulting in hostile takeovers, or worse, annihilation. It's a short read, and should be on the to-do list of anyone experiencing existential dread over the AI race today.
A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller - everyone needs a bit of post-apocalypsia now and then and I always recommend this one to get your fix. Here's an extreme treatment of what happens when anti-intellectualism becomes the modus operendi as we are thrust into a harsh and desolate world brought about by global nuclear war, roaming mobs blaming science (rather that politics, as Simpletons will do) for getting humanity into the mess it's in, going so far as to forbid pretty much any book-learning or education beyond the church. As artifacts from the past (our present, more or less) are uncovered, things get a bit hectic.
I'm also happy to take any recommendations, enjoying other authors like Stanislaw Lem, John Brunner, Robert Heinlein, Vonnegut, Jack Vance, etc. Reading books is probably one of the few things in my life that makes me feel a little less alone.
beardedetim•1h ago
lanfeust6•1h ago
logicalshift•1h ago
First Contract (Greg Costikyan) - a book about the economics of first contact
John Courtney Grimwood (author) - science fiction, generally cyberpunk, told from the point of view of characters who don't understand the tehcnology, which gives his work a kind of mystic vibe. (Eg, Nine-tail fox is about a detective trying to solve his own murder)
Footfall (Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle) - was a big release back in the day, but not so well known these days. Hard SF alien invasion novel (Independence Day might have ripped this off a bit)
The NASA trilogy (Stephen Baxter) - dark alternative future books, with bleak endings but great science. I think not so well known these days because of the bleakness, but that's also part of what made them memorable when I read them.
OisinMoran•52m ago
The 1950s was a particularly good time for sci fi I think.
wmil•25m ago
- All 18 Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson
- The first 5 Starship's Mage books by Glynn Stewart. UnArcana Stars (book 6) went in a direction that made the government look extremely incompetent.
- Jacques McKeown series by Yahtzee Croshaw
- Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
- Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor
tetris11•3m ago
> Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series.
> Culture, gender identity, hive mind, all rolled up into one extremely dense universe with a rich history told through warfare and cutting remarks, humanising potentially inhuman central characters with a vague number of limbs.
> It takes ten pages to get used to the dense yet clipped writing style, but once it clicks, you cannot put the book(s) down: the plot moves forward at breakneck speed.