Bros I need some sci-fi recs

[Anonymous No.20382253]

I have tried time and time again, with films and games and books and comics and et cetera, but I have never found a piece of science fiction that I have truly enjoyed. The 'big' authors in the business haven't really hooked me. I've found sci-fi is either pulpy kitschy shite or super in-depth worldbuildy type stuff which takes itself way too seriously. I could go on but I'm not in a good enough mood.

Just tell me what the best sci-fi books you've read are. Please and thank you

[Anonymous No.20382476]

i like star wars books

[Anonymous No.20382511]

>>20382476

[Anonymous No.20382519]

>>20382253
Blindsight by Peter Watts

[Anonymous No.20382540]

>>20382519
cool name

[Anonymous No.20382610]

Book of the new sun and it's not even close

[Anonymous No.20382647]

>>20382610
what iyo puts it so high above the rest

[Anonymous No.20382825]

>>20382647
guess i'll never know :(

[Anonymous No.20383220]

:(

[Anonymous No.20383227]

>>20382253
solaris

[Anonymous No.20383255]

>>20383227
mr lem is pretty nice

[Anonymous No.20383303]

>>20383227
this. also, what exactly are you seeking in the genre? character driven stories, effort in worldbuilding, etc.

[Anonymous No.20383310]

Try this. Don’t be fooled by the “a horror novel” tag. I read it and it’s both sci-fi and horror.

[Anonymous No.20383313]

read the house on the borderland by william hope hodgson

[Anonymous No.20383321]

>>20383310
real funny >:(

[Anonymous No.20383351]

>>20382253
Ubik

[Anonymous No.20383378]

The first Berserker novel by Saberhagen

It's a collection of short stories that I find genuinely fun and interesting. It's pretty pulpy but what the fuck ever

Give it a try

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.20383441]

Check out Clark Ashton smith’s “the eternal world” and basically any MP shiel. Smith’s prose and aesthetic in the eternal World is probably the absolute sci-fi-mystical vision I’ve come across, and shiel’s prose comes off like an insane Melville crossed with poe, the biblical and logorrhea aspects of his sci-fi you won’t really find replicated anywhere else.

If you want something a bit more normie friendly, I’ve liked what bits I’ve seen of Roger Zelazny‘s prose style, even if he’s one of those “ah yes here is my 10 book series “ type of writers.

[Anonymous No.20383465]

Here are excerpts from the authors I’ve mentioned.

First from the eternal world by smith

“ He saw the giant evergreen forests of lichen, the continents of Brobdingnagian grasses, in planets remoter than the systems of Hercules. Before him there passed, like an architectural pageant, the mile-high cities that wear the sumptuous aerial motley of rose and emerald and Tyrian, wrought by the tangent beams of triple suns. He beheld unnameable things in spheres unlisted by astronomers. There crowded upon him the awful and limitless evolutionary range of transtellar life, the cyclorama of teeming morphologies.

It seemed as if the barriers of his brain had been extended to include the whole of the cosmic flux; that his thought, like the web of some mammoth and divine arachnidan, had woven itself from world to world, fron galaxy to galaxy, above the dread gulf of the infinite continuum.

Then, with the same suddenness that had marked its beginning, the vision came to an end and was replaced by something of a totally different character.

It was only afterwards that Chandon could figure out what had occurred, and divine the nature and laws of the new environment into which he had been projected. At the time (if one can use a word so inaccurate as time) he was wholly incapable of anything but a single contemplative visual impression — the strange world upon which he looked through the clear wall of the cylinder: a world that might have been the dream of some geometrician mad with infinity.

It was like some planetary glacier, fretted into shapes of ordered grotesquery, filled with a white, unglittering light, and obeying the laws of other perspectives than those of our own world. The distances on which he gazed were literally interminable; there was no horizon; and yet nothing seemed to dwindle in size or definitude, whatever its remoteness. Part of the impression received by Chandon was that this world arched back upon itself, like the interior surface of a hollow sphere; that the pale vistas returned overhead after they had vanisbed from his view.

Nearer to him than any other object in the scene, and preserving the same relative distance as in his laboratory, he perceived a large circular section of rough planking — that portion of the laboratory wall which had lain in the path of the negative beam. It hung motionless in air as if suspended by a field of invisible ice,

The foreground beyond the planking was thronged by innumerable rows of objects that were suggestive both of statues and of crystalloid formations. Wan as marble or alabaster, each of them presented a mélange of simple curves and symmetric angles, which somehow seemed to include the latency of almost endless geometrical development; They were gigantic, with a rudimentary division into head, limbs and body, as if they were living things. Behind them, at indefinite distances, were other forms that might have been the blind buds or frozen blossoms of unknown vegetable growths.“

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.20383481]

>>20383465
From vaila by mp shiel

“ Can a straw ride composedly on the primeval whirlwinds? Between chaos and our shoes wobbles, I tell you, the thinnest film! I knew a man who had this peculiarity of aural hyperæsthesia: that every sound brought him minute information of the matter causing the sound; that is to say, he had an ear bearing to the normal ear the relation which the spectroscope bears to the telescope. A rod, for instance, of mixed copper and iron impinging, in his hearing, upon a rod of mixed tin and lead, conveyed to him not merely the proportion of each metal in each rod, but some strange knowledge of the essential meaning and spirit, as it were, of copper, of iron, of tin, and of lead. Of course, he went mad; but, beforehand, told me this singular thing:

that precisely such a sense as his was, according to his certain intuition, employed by the Supreme Being in his permeation of space to apprehend the nature and movements of mind and matter. And he went on to add that Sin -- what we call sin -- is only the movement of matter or mind into such places, or in such a way, as to give offence or pain to this delicate diplacusis (so I must call it) of the Creator; so that the 'Law' of Revelation became, in his eyes, edicts promulgated by their Maker merely in self-protection from aural pain; and divine punishment for, say murder, nothing more than retaliation for unease caused to the divine aural consciousness by the matter in a particular dirk or bullet lodged, at a particular moment, in a non-intended place! Him, too, I say, did the Harpies whisk aloft."

My recital of these cases to my friend, Harfager, I have mentioned. I was surprised, not so much at his acute interest -- for he was interested in all knowledge -- as at the obvious pains which he took to conceal that interest. He hurriedly turned the leaves of a volume, but could not hide his panting nostrils.”


Another author who I do not see ever mentioned, who nonetheless had a considerable influence, who borges loved also, is a fellow by the name of James Elroy Flecker, a poet whose short story “the lost generation” (which you can find on the internet archive.) is an extremely successful aesthetically and philosophic tale. His long poems are also worth the read.

[Anonymous No.20383495]

The best living fiction author also wrote one of the best sci fi stories
Sandkings
Thank me later

[Anonymous No.20383541]

>>20382253
Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.20383700]

>Sandkings
I’ll be damned. I remembered reading this story in an Omni magazine anthology decades ago but could never remember the title and had no idea that the author was George R. R. Martin.

Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.20383825]

>>20382253

Anything and everything that Cordwainer Smith ever wrote.

http://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithcordwainer-crimeandthegloryofcommandersuzdal/smithcordwainer-crimeandthegloryofcommandersuzdal-00-h.html

>Mankind could not meet the terrible people of Arachosia without the people of Arachosia following them home and bringing to mankind a grief greater than grief, a craziness worse than mere insanity, a plague surpassing all imaginable plagues. The Arachosians had become un-people, and yet, in their inner-most imprinting of their personalities, they remained people. They sang songs which exalted their own deformity and which praised themselves for what they had so horribly become, and yet, in their own songs, in their own ballads, the organ tones of the refrain rang out,

>And I mourn Man!

>They knew what they were and they hated themselves. Hating themselves they pursued mankind.

[Anonymous No.20383869]

>>20382253

[Anonymous No.20383876]

Can recommend canticle and Solaris, try the kefahuchi tract books by M. John Harrison too.

[Anonymous No.20384079]

>>20382253
I really enjoyed I Am Legend. I also really liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but that's a completely different tone and style. You could also try YA like Scythe.

[Anonymous No.20384087]

>>20382253
Roadside Picnic
Blindsight
A Canticle for Liebowitz
The Waystation

[Anonymous No.20384094]

>>20383869
Ayy, I just started this today. I'm digging it.

[Anonymous No.20384133]

>>20383869
I second Canticle.

>>20382253
It'll help if you specify that you're looking to get recommendations for hard sci fi or sci fi fantasy.

For the former, I recommend Three Body Problem. For the latter, I recommend Foundation.

I'd also suggest Hyperion and Dune.

[Anonymous No.20384258]

>>20382253
The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter

[Anonymous No.20384325]

>>20382253
Neuromancer is pretty fun, OP.

[Anonymous No.20384668]

>>20383869
That one is very unique, I could never find another book that has the same particular feels as A Canticle for Leibowitz.

[Anonymous No.20384927]

>>20384258
finally someone else recommending this. It's got problems sure but unlike literally every other cyberpunk trash I've ever tried reading (IE neuromancer and everything that it inspired) this one at least tries to have some thematic consistency and logic behind its technology. Make up all the words you want but when your technobabble becomes indistinguishable from actual unironic babble like a fucking baby thats where it ends up being a no from me dawg. Neuromancer is just like that.

but yea this book doesn't have those issues. It has a crazy amount of incredibly advanced tech in a highly developed cyberpunk future but I NEVER found myself questioning what was meant by some Neurofied TechCola injectomator. It all made sense because they

And the plot is actually complex, well crafted and interesting again unlike most cyberpunk which sacrifices literally everything else in favor of making up more technobabble. How hard is it to realize that a story can't just rely on some made up technology in lieu of actual plot.

[Anonymous No.20384947]

>>20382253
I like Roadside Picnic & Starship troopers. Feels like scifi made by men that you can drink with and have a stimulating discussion. Grounded enough but also scifi enough to be sort of novel.

[Anonymous No.20384977]

>>20383825
his short story Think Blue Count Two is a password to I believe the Dads computer in Serial Experiments Lain. Fun Fact. I read it because I love Lain and it was decent and interesting.

[Anonymous No.20385094]

>>20382519
This shit sucks and ending is a let down. Bunch of autists on here seem to think it's hot shit, it isn't.

[Anonymous No.20385111]

>>20383465
This is terrible, it doesnt point towards anything real, so it just ends up being a list of hollow descriptions.

[Anonymous No.20385212]

>>20383700
your welcome, there’s a 90’s film adapted from it which is kinda okay

[Anonymous No.20385216]

All these shit recommendations
The stars my destination

[Anonymous No.20385597]

>>20382253
Read real literature

[Anonymous No.20385606]

Galapagos by Vonnegut. Everyone talks about Slaughterhouse 5 but Galapagos is my favorite of his.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.20385616]

>>20385111
Give it a shot, yes its not based on speculation of the future or the like, its an orgy of imagination and beautiful imagination, well developed, well written and sensuously explained. I think if people gave it a chance they’d see smith really did an amazing job in that story of capturing the sci-fi-mystical.

[Anonymous No.20387035]

three body problem and most of liu's work is good

[Anonymous No.20387140]

>>20387035
Isn’t that Chinese?

[Anonymous No.20387170]

>>20387140
it's translated

[Anonymous No.20387210]

>>20385094
bad taste desu

[Anonymous No.20388448]

>>20383869
...second Canticle. If you want more Monk but with an entirely different plot than Canticle, try Anathem.