Commonwealth Saga & The Night's Dawn series both by Peter F. Hamilton
This a million times. Brilliant and epic in the true meaning of the word.
Commonwealth Saga & The Night's Dawn series both by Peter F. Hamilton
My personal favorite novel by one of the best speculative fiction writer to ever live
First 3 Dune novels and you can read Foundation from 1 until Foundation & Earth.
Edit: id also recommend the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.
This is an excellent post. Good all around! 👍I can't say what is the best but I can recommend my favorites:
Dune Series by Frank Herbert - I loved all of Frank Herberts Dune books. It's Sci-Fi's most important saga. Ignore his son Brian's shitty cash-ins
The Zones of Thought Trilogy by Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon The Deep, A Deepness In The Sky, Children of the Sky - I love these books dearly. Some of my favorite characters (and aliens) in fiction.
Stranger In A Strange Land, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein - "Stranger" is a must-read iconic work of the 20th century
Childhood's End by Arthur C. CLark
Pretty much everything by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester - awesome story of a man's obsession with revenge
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman - a not-so-subtle commentary on Vietnam
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson - brilliant, hilarious, thrilling satire
Neuromancer by William Gibson - unorthodox heist story, foundational cyberpunk novel
The Cadwell Chronicles by Jack Vance: Araminta Station, Ecce and Old Earth, Throy - Just a really fun and jaunty mystery/conspiracy/adventure saga set in humanity's distant future
The Demon Princes series by Jack Vance: Star King, Killing Machine, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams - Again, just really fun, by no means "deep". Another story about a man's life-long quest for revenge but in breezy 200 page episodic tales. In many ways it feels like James Bond in space.
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - A short book and an imoortant story for the genre. A classic.
The works of H.P. Lovecraft - generally considered horror but many of his stories equally fall under the Sci-Fi bill and have had big influences on the genre. At The Mountains of Madness being a key story in that regard, it's straight-up science fiction.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Comedy-adventure, dry wit, delicious satire. Another classic.
I'm sorry but the latter 3 Dune novels are also excellent and God Emperor of Dune is my favorite book in the series.
Makes me angry that people tell other people not to read them, let folks form their own opinions. I can see why they alienated fans but they are good stories in their own right.
This series isn't getting nearly enough attention in this thread.Anything and everything of Iain M. Banks. The Culture series is just amazing.
I just finished the Three-Body Problem Trilogy by Cixin Liu, and I can really recommend that too. It can be a bit depressing at times though, haha.
For grand Space Opera, I consider Peter F. Hamilton to be the top of the game. Some of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. They're huge though, so you shouldn't be afraid of books with 500+ pages!
Asimov, Hyperion, etc. have already been mentioned. I also like the Long Earth series by Pratchett (RIP) and Baxter, but it's a bit more playfull in a sense.
Ringworld, Solaris, Red Mars, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Forge of God, The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, Hyperion, The Stars My Destination, Use of Weapons, A Fire Upon the Deep, Neuromancer, Ancillary Justice, A Case of Conscience, Stand on Zanzibar, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Gateway, Startide Rising, Shards of Honor, To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Most of these are Hugo winners. Some are Hugo/Nebula winners.
Foundation trilogy. Don't bother with any of the other Foundation books.
Never read a science fiction novel?
Man, you got a good two centuries to catch up on (if we're counting as far back as Frankenstein)
I'd recommend:
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
- The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
- Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky bros
- Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
- When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
- Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Anything by Octavia Butler, but especially Lilith's Brood.
I really liked the slow cautious exploration of the first half of Redezvous; the second half felt faster-paced and more plot-focused compared to the awe and wonder and descriptions of the firstI'm a Clarke man myself. Rendezvous with Rama is probably my favorite book by any author, Childhood's End is a close second in sci-fi.
OP please do not read Arthur C Clarke. He's even worse than Asimov. Both are extremely boring. Do not read Richard Morgan either. He writes terrible books.
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His book Last and First Men is just as impressive and ambitious too. He explores genetic engineering in the book's later civilizations, twenty years before the term "genetic engineering" even existedStar Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Not a traditional "story," basically a series of elaborate descriptions starting with life on other planets and increasing in scale from there. Incredibly imaginative and even more impressive given that it was written in the 1930's.
Well, that's like your opinion... man.
True but its the correct one.
Arthur C Clarke is a paedophile first of all. And he looks like a disgusting creep too. You should not be reading the works of a child rapist. Especially when they are also boring.
And there's a reason his popularity along with Assimov has waned while Philip K. Dicks has dramatically increased. The concerns of Arthur C Clarke and Assimov were boring or irrelevant, compared to Philip K. Dicks dealing with issues like advertisement, memory and identity.
Trust me on this. Read this book. It's better than almost any other sci fi book you have read. Its written by one of the greatest American writers of our lifetime. Perhaps the greatest.
This post is full of bad information. I like Jonathan Lethem, but his science fiction is largely a pastiche of other writers, and nowhere near either his best work or the best science fiction has to offer.True but its the correct one.
Arthur C Clarke is a paedophile first of all. And he looks like a disgusting creep too. You should not be reading the works of a child rapist. Especially when they are also boring.
And there's a reason his popularity along with Assimov has waned while Philip K. Dicks has dramatically increased. The concerns of Arthur C Clarke and Assimov were boring or irrelevant, compared to Philip K. Dicks dealing with issues like advertisement, memory and identity.
Trust me on this. Read this book. It's better than almost any other sci fi book you have read. Its written by one of the greatest American writers of our lifetime. Perhaps the greatest.
Blindsight by Peter Watts. Rock hard sci-fi. Bleak as hell but very well-written. Great alien designs, vampires, transhumans and mind-blowing science about consciousness.
If you believe in free will, this book will rip that belief to shreds.
I'll throw a shoutout to one of my recent favorites from the last few years:
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Best dressing down of the "consciousness vs intelligence" dichotomy in narrative form I've ever read. Features also: future vampires (not as cringy as you think), terraforming superjovians, and non-human alien intelligence that is both frighteningly intelligent and wholly non-conscious.
Author is a former marine biologist and treats space as just another great ocean.
Highly recommended.
Well, for a huge fan, it's hard... in those books, you have a glimpse of some of Frank Herbert ideas, and at the same time you wish he was the one writing about them. I don't really enjoy the books, but I still want to read them somehow... Hard to explain.Frank Herbert - Dune (Yes, OP, go read Dune. Don't touch any of Brian Herbert's books though).
I think the prequel are interesting, but AFTER the first three Fundations books. And indeed, the last two are disappointing.Foundation trilogy. Don't bother with any of the other Foundation books.