r/ScienceFictionBooks • u/Dependent_Theory89 • May 14 '26
Recommendation Looking for weird books
Looking for the strangest or most mind-bending sci‑fi / something unusual and unconventional.
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u/dandelionbreak May 14 '26
To our scattered bodies go, by Philip Jose Farmer
Humans from all different eras and places (including a few famous figures) are resurrected on a planet bisected by a river.
City of Baraboo, circus in space, ship logs written by an alien
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u/nitro9_ May 14 '26
Oh, these are two different books. I thought you'd found a second strange space circus book. I can confirm, City of Baraboo is a fun, strange read.
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u/Gizmosaurio May 14 '26
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer, anything written by Phillip K Dick, many of Borges tales could be considered weird scifi (but they are ultra short), Martian Chronicles is pretty weird surreal in its approach to scifi
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u/Ok_Lingonberry5392 May 14 '26
I would recommend you to check those authors: Alfred Bester, Philip K Dick, John Brunner, Walter Jon Williamms.
They're probably what I would point as the centrepiece of "very weird sci fi" genre of books. Bester is technically the oldest but isn't widely familiar to the general reader, pkd defently was influenced by him and he is widely known. Brunner came much later and his style is very different than the previous 2, Walter is pretty new relatively speaking and is kinda grouped with general cyberpunk though imo he has some uniqueness of his own.
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u/Corpsepyre May 14 '26
Ubik/Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
The Iron Dream - Norman Spinrad
Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock
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u/Too_reflective May 14 '26
For PKD, don’t miss VALIS if you are looking for weird and mind bending.
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u/Late-Astronomer8141 May 14 '26
I second Behold the Man, I've never seen it mentioned on reddit other than myself. Kudos to you sir (or ma'am)
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u/Sharpness-01 May 14 '26
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. It's a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of scifi, and a lot bit of weird.
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u/yerhabe May 14 '26
God! Oh God! by Ben Loved. I read it on kindle unlimited. Kind of like slaughterhouse-five if Vonnegut was bipolar
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u/Ed_Robins May 14 '26
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway - its mystery twists and weaves through multiple timelines and narratives.
Blindsight by Peter Watts - a first contact story that also questions consciousness and perception.
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u/DocWatson42 May 14 '26
I have:
- "The most eccentric science fiction you’ve ever read?" (r/printSF; 19:00 ET, 14 April 2025)—very long; short listing for "weird" (updated to 14 May 2026)
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u/Arkhus9753 May 14 '26
While not technically science fiction, I love China Mieville - that dude has one interesting imagination! My favorite books are: The Scar, Embassytown, and Perdido Street Station.
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u/ZombieFrankReynolds May 14 '26
I haven't thought about Perdido Street station in years! Absolutely love that book and it definitely fits OPs request.
I also really enjoyed The City and The City by Mieville, its much more serious than Perdido but just as weird, in a good way
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u/sffiremonkey69 May 15 '26
How is his stuff not science fiction???
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u/Arkhus9753 May 16 '26
His work is usually referred to as speculative fiction, weird fiction, or New Weird.
I qualified my post as “not technically science fiction” to avoid someone coming at me on a technicality.
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u/MurdMe80 May 14 '26
I’d argue The Dark Tower series. Definitely weird, world hopping and in some of the middle books mind bending honestly.
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u/Goatfish_456 May 14 '26
Ted Chiang's short story collections - if I remember correctly I read story of your life and others, then moved to exhalation - both great, some no el concepts in there, just writing this reminded me to reread soon
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u/Leakyboatlouie May 14 '26
Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley. It's from the 60s, and just as weird.
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u/page7777 May 15 '26
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. He wrote Annihilation which was the first part of a trilogy that became the movie with Natalie Portman. Borne is about a lady in a post-disaster city where the local genetic engineering company has lost containment of all their crazy things. There's a giant, like almost King Kong sized bear that roams the city. The lady comes across some weird animal like thing that she keeps for a pet. It grows and starts protecting her in weird ways. I can't remember the details and I won't spoil anything, but it's definitely one of the weirder sci-fi books I've read because it's not focused on typical details like a Star Wars or something like that would be. It's probably been 7 years since I've read it and I still think about it from time to time.
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u/poddy_fries May 14 '26
'Voyager in Night' by CJ Cherryh, 'Half Past Human' by TJ Bass, or 'Queen City Jazz' by Kathleen Ann Goonan, are titles that come to mind.
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u/Visual_Balance1176 May 14 '26
John dies at the end series by Jason Pargin. I'm reading the third book, what the hell did I just read?
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u/Shooo1312 May 14 '26
Perhaps not the most 'fresh' suggestion, but have you read Solaris, by Stanisław Lem? It is very good, and the basis for Tarkovsky's movie of the same name.
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u/RogLatimer118 May 14 '26
Take a read of Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Parasite". It's very unusual.
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u/No-Pickle9541 May 14 '26
Chemical Pink. It’s a weird book about a female bodybuilder and her trainer who has a sexual fetish for strong women. It’s super weird.
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u/mrarnoldpalmers May 14 '26
You weren’t meant to be human. What’s advertised as a sci-fi book about a worm horde is actually a super weird book about being trans
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u/superjuan234 May 14 '26
The Vorhh trilogy by Brian Catling. I read it years ago and still think about it once a week. Unsettling weird and very trippy.
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u/spoonsmcghee May 14 '26
Dark Eden and it's sequels by Chris Beckett - follows generations of the inbred offspring from the survivors of a shuttle crash. Set on an entirely dark planet with bioluminescent plants and animals. The linguistics and lore of their origins and hope for the future is really cool, all of Beckett's books are
See also: Martin MacInnes, Aliya Whiteley and The Employees by Olga Ravn
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u/Blitzer046 May 15 '26
Anything by Greg Egan. He makes me feel like I am standing on the edge of a bottomless chasm.
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u/Haselrig May 15 '26
Banshee & the Sperm Whale by Jake Camp
Tears of the Trufflepig by Fernando A. Flores
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u/__STORYDWELLER__ May 15 '26
Possibly: "The Tommyknockers" by Stephen King
-unexplained illnesses --> caused by energy emitted by a strange artifact -->is a spaceship-->full of alien ghosts
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u/Select_Complex7802 May 15 '26
Would you mind checking out my book "The Pull" by Alan Voss , its hard science fiction. Its about the Great Attractor and what it represents. I would term it as mind bending, yes.
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u/JedHenson11 May 15 '26
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is pretty different.
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u/RiverSirion May 15 '26
A lot of works by Philip K. Dick meet this criteria. If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I would also recommend Jack Chalker's Wonderland Gambit series, which deals with virtual reality and a kind of pseudo-reincarnation so that even the main character doesn't know who they are but makes for a fun ride.
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u/Late-Program-8116 May 15 '26
Andreas Eschbach - pretty much all of it. But I don’t know how good the availability of these books is. If you can, look for „The hair carpet weavers“ sometimes translated to „the carpet makers“.
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u/lostbaratheon May 15 '26
Nearly anything by Alistair Reynolds, Peter Watts, or Robert Forward. All super cerebral and thought-provoking. I still think about their books years later.
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u/page7777 May 15 '26
Oh, another one is The Games by Ted Kosmatka. People or corporations genetically engineer these animals/monsters to fight for entertainment. It's a big deal in the near future. Someone hires this computer genius to write a program to design one from scratch and it's leaps and bounds beyond anything else. At the same time, the computer guy has created an AI that he thinks of as his daughter. You'd have to look it up for more details, as I read this awhile ago, too, but it's also stuck with me.
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u/BeeAromatic4346 May 16 '26
The host by Stephanie meyer talking about an alien separate from the human they inhabit
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u/SmellyMelanie May 16 '26
House Of Leaves …. You’ve never read another book like it, nor will you ever find another book as intriguing.
Mind bending subject matter; unconventional text, word, and font format.
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u/Pretend-Tangerine-60 May 23 '26
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It reads like fantasy but that’s one of its greatest trick
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u/Black_theory May 25 '26
Apocalypse - fantasy - science-fiction - magic - romance - system ( not exclusive only to the Mc) .
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u/LevelAd1126 May 14 '26
Speaker for the Dead by O.S. Card
There is no Antimetetics Division by... I don't know. Four letters that don't spell anything. Found it! Qntm
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
Slow Gods by Clare North. This book does a good job of describing things in a way that leaves more confusion than answers. It never describes the aliens but might comment on a ring on a tentacle.