I liked Trail of Lightning, been meaning to pick up Storm of Locusts. As you say, an uncommon perspective.
@LutherBlisset - if you haven’t read Rudy Rucker’s Ware tetralogy, it’s worth a try. The books are short but build an odd view of the future that I haven’t encountered anywhere else. Not uplifting, but interesting.
Which is clearer to you:
“In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving,
the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her
singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!”
or
“The signals from space began a little after midnight,
local time, on a Friday. They were first picked up in
the South Pacific, just westward of the International
Date Line.”
?
The first quote is from “Finnigan’s Wake”, a “masterpiece of literary prose” by James Joyce, and the second is from “The Wailing Asteroid”, a science fiction short story by Murray Leinster.
science fiction once benefited from a vague belief (among parents and other mundanes) that it might have some educational value, because “science”
by comparison the word “fantasy” could hardly escape the connotation of being something frivolous
these days, after “nerd culture” has taken over the world, things might be different
I don’t recommend the last one—it lacks the nihilistic bite of the first three (as we might expect if we happen to know Rucker wrote it shortly after he found Jesus and stopped doing drugs)
Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. All the superlatives apply. If you haven’t read them, and you’re a happy mutant, I suspect you will like at least most of them. (Feersum Endjinn takes some work to get into linguistically, and Use of Weapons is challenging for entirely other reasons.)
Huh- I didn’t know about that. Goes some way to explaining why White Light was so unreadable.
Mickey 7! Total spam, but my brother just released his new book, and has it optioned by Warner Bros to make a movie of it.
I read multiple iterations of it along the way, and make no claims to objectivity, but it is a really interesting meditation on the “human life as Ship of Theseus” theme, plus being cool hard sci-fi.
Edit for wrong Greek. Thanks, @chenille !
Do you like humorous science fiction? I’ve been recommending EM Foner’s Union Station series. There are something like 20 books in the series. They’re fun. The story is set in the near future, when Earth joins the interstellar community. AIs run things and the humans are the backwards, red-headed stepchildren of the universe. Rather unique because there’s no sex, violence or alien invasions…just interactions between species, everyday living, family values, diplomacy,…all fascinating, entertaining and somehow believable.
If you’re an Amazon Kindle Unlimited member, they’re free on that service.
If you want something more intense, Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves is worth the time but it’s not an easy read. I expected not to like it, but I was wrong. Which is weird because I hated his Fall, or Dodge in Hell.
Sometimes artists want another paycheck after they should really just let a series be finished
Besides a ∗ware trilogy I’d like to see a three-volume set of The Hitchhiker’s Guide with the first two “books” as one volume and “So Long & Thanks for All the Fish” as the conclusion 
The Commonweal series by Graydon Saunders is the best example of incredibly well considered worldbuilding I’ve ever come across. I don’t read books multiple times, and I definitely don’t read series multiple times - but I’ve been through all of these about 4 times and will reread them all again when the next one comes out. Start with Under One Banner, which functions as a prequel as much as anything else.
Chine Mieville’s New Crobuzon series is also excellent, and is simultaneously dark, brilliant and revolutionary (in multiple senses). In fact I’d recommend most of his books - Embassytown is amazing sf in its own right.
I second someone else’s recommendations for Charles Stross. Halting State and Rule 34 for good near future SF, Accelerando, Iron Sunrise, Saturn’s Children and Glasshouse for a range of far future SF, the Laundry series for office horror noir (ish), and the Empire Games series for a cracking good portal series based in, well, now.
Well, yes. The Gods Themselves is still pretty impressive. It didn’t lend itself to having its elements spun out and recycled into other stuff repeatedly, so someone reading it for the first time now will likely find new stuff.
The same can be said of Foundation. “Why the heck is this an EMPIRE?” is a legitimate question (probably because it’s based explicitly on the fall of Rome.) There are other stories about preparing for and surviving the fall of the current regime, but those that aren’t boring apocalypse porn are pretty different from each other.
I’ve been reading science fiction for sixty years. I can’t imagine anyone so deprived.
The Bickford Fuse by Andrey Kurkov is science-fantasy wrapped with satire.
When I grow up I’m going to write a novel about Isaac Newton, pilot of a Mecha that he built with his own Restoration technology (and steers from shoulder level). He patrols the beaches of England, sometimes fighting Kaiju and sometimes picking up smoother pebbles and shinier shells.
Memo to self: Time to re-read Riddley Walker.
I had a sketch for a story where people come to a planet covered with a single life-form. It has no empathy, because it had been the only sentient thing since forever. I wanted to describe how the planet felt as it came to terms with the idea of something else. Do you use the first person? The third person? The zeroth person? Do different parts of it have dialogue? Or do you try something easier?
It wa inspired by the creature in the abyss of no dimensions, in Flatland.
He’s gone into a reboot of that, I recently read the first of the “New Management” arc and I would suggest that it is not a place to escape the horrors of today in. The Lovecraftian horrors are now the British government and London is run by billionaire klept with no brakes on their worst impulses and their rapacious power (quite like London post Jackpot in the current William Gibson novels). It’s more vicious satire and very recognisably relates to Britain now. I don’t think that’s what @LutherBlisset was looking for.
i’m just about to start the third of Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series. It’s about a genetically engineered augmented security unit that overrides its programming to become independent. Good clean fun for all the family and a comfortable evening’s read.
How do you feel about humorous fantasy/horror?
I can heartily recommend Christopher Moore’s vampire trilogy Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck: A Love Story, and Bite Me: A Love Story.
Or his Pine Cove series Practical Demonkeeping, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and
The Stupidest Angel.
Or the Death Merchant Chronicles, A Dirty Job and Secondhand Souls.
Or any of his standalone books, especially Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Which is pretty unfortunate, given how critical mythology is the human history.
To some degree, but there still seems to be some who still think that way.
ETA: Whoopsi. I realised after writing all that comes.below that you were commenting on fantasy being scoffed upon, most likely. Well, then. Stupid me, but I don’t want to waste that what was written… 🫣🤪
Lem, e.g., never wanted his writings to be classified as SciFi for several reasons. After some time, he stopped writing and (AFAIR) reading the genre of speculative prose known as SciFi because he (again, AFAIR) thought it was dead as a doornail.
If we understand Lem and some others as an author of Science Fiction, then readers would have had educational value. (Personally, I bet it still can, today. But I’m not sure I could have convinced Lem…)
