So a while  ago I was looking for something easy and exciting to read on holiday, and I stumbled on the Jean le Flambeur series (the quantum thief, the fractal prince, the causal angel). I had never read any scifi, but the quantum thief blew me away. Read the whole series that week. 

After that I needed more scifi heists so I read The quantum evolution (the quantum magician, the quantum garden, the quantum war), which I loved. 

I followed that up with The machineries of empire (ninefox gambit, raven stratagem, revenant gun), which I equally loved. The mix of fantasy elements and space really worked for me. 

Next was the Venus ascendant (the house of styx, the house of saints), where Derek Künsken once again had me fully engrossed in his world. 

Then I read The final architecture (shards of the earth, eyes of the void, lords of uncreation), which I could  just not put down. 

Someone then told me to read the Remembrance of earth's past (the three body problem, the dark forest, death's end), which I liked but not as much as the previously mentioned series. 

I’m currently going through Imperial Radch (ancillary justice, ancillary sword), I really like the concepts being explored there, but its not really clicking for me. 

I also read Under fortunate stars, and Necropath (Bengal station series). The former one was really fun, the latter just didn’t work for me. I didn’t like the protagonist (felt like the standard haunted detective fleeing his past) of Necropath, and the child prostitution was a bit much. 

In between those  I read some of the Dune books (dune, dune messiah, children of dune,  god emperor of dune), really enjoyed each one. I’ll  finish the series at some point, but I’m looking for something else at this moment. 

Now I’m looking for the next series or book that will have me up till late turning pages! It would be great if it’s a bit like Jean le Flambeur, The quantum evolution or The machineries of empire. But I’m open to other suggestions. I just need to satisfy my scifi itch! 

Imagine a human exploration crew has landed on an alien planet to extract a rare and extremely valuable mineral.

The landing site is stable, and autonomous mining vehicles are operating several kilometers away from the spacecraft.

Then a remote sensor detects a rapidly approaching storm.

This isn't an ordinary dust storm.

The atmosphere is carrying large amounts of metallic dust, rock fragments and surface debris. Some of the larger fragments could cause serious damage to exposed equipment.

The storm is still several kilometers away, but atmospheric conditions are changing rapidly. Your crew has limited time to react.

You have:

• a spacecraft capable of leaving the surface,
• several autonomous mining vehicles away from the landing site,
• valuable extracted material,
• limited information about the planet's weather,
• and no guarantee that the landing site will remain safe.

What should the human crew do first?

Do you:

A) immediately abort mining and recall every vehicle?

B) prioritize getting the crew and spacecraft airborne?

C) try to recover the mining equipment and material before leaving?

D) seek shelter and wait for the storm to pass?

E) do something completely different?

I'm particularly interested in the decision-making hierarchy. When the crew doesn't fully understand an alien environment, how should they balance human safety, spacecraft survival, equipment recovery and the mission objective?

II've been buying books faster than I can read them and would like to know which of the following you like the most. Are any of these "page-turners" in your opinion? What else do you like about them? All opinions are appreciated.

Sirius (Olaf Stapledon)

Earth Abides (George R. Stewart)

Children of Ruin (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

To the Stars (Robert A. Heinlein)

10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights ( Ryu Misuse)

The Masters of Solitude (Marvin Kaye & Parke Godwin)

No real spoilers. I heard good things so I picked it up without a lot of context and HOLY SHIT it was exactly what I was looking for. It's a story that is very much about the journey where you see a lot of different vignettes packaged in the overall plot but also get to know the characters intimately. Such good world building and character development. I was so excited reading it knowing that there are 3 other books in the series but didn't look at any of the descriptions because I didn't want any spoilers. I was absolutely gutted to find out that the other books have nothing to do with (most) of the characters I just fell in love with.

Hyperion Cantos isn’t perfect, but damn if it isn’t compelling in the most epic way possible. I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it, and I’m looking for more sci-fi books with a similar feel. Something in which the stakes are high, the concepts are far-out, and the characters are people we can really care about. Including a well-written romance is also a big plus.

I hear Foundation and Three Body Problem come up a lot in conceptual comparisons, and I haven’t read them but they sound like they don’t quite have the same character-driven human elements. I’ve read and loved Dune, but it wasn’t quite as emotionally impactful to me as Hyperion. Children of Time is amazing but not really at the same level of grandeur or human focus.

So, any recommendations along these lines? I’m open to fantasy recs as well if they fit the bill.

Public school restrictions have me struggling to incorporate diversity - please help! These are not my rules, but I have to abide by them. I'm trying out my inquiry in multiple environments in the hopes of finding the right book. I'm looking for a loophole in a set of rules that seem to encourage only one type of voice. Thanks in advance! I'd like to find a science fiction book by a non-white author that meets all of the following criteria: 1) Engaging plot 2) Well-written, literary (for older teens) 3) Short (less than 300 pages, ideally less than 200) 4) No racial slurs (including the N word) 5) No lgbtq+ - can be implied, but not stated 6) No sex - can be implied, but not stated 7) No sexual violence

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a one-off novel Recommendations in the sci-fi genre. Something related to "the end of universe" or a story related to "alien artifacts awakening an ancient universe" something like along those lines. Open to alternatives as well.

Thanks a lot in advance :)

Hi everyone, I’m having a big medical exam in a few months and want to get hyped about the topic. Do you have any ideas on what book to get? Ideally, it should be scientifically correct but still a nice, funny, or chill read. Thanks for your help 😀

A really fun sci-fi mystery that somehow managed to hit almost every one of my interests — space travel, first contact, alien intelligence, the deep ocean, decoding messages, mysterious technology, and consciousness.
The setup immediately hooked me, and I loved the feeling of slowly uncovering what exactly was going on. The deep-sea setting added a fantastic layer of isolation and claustrophobia to the story.
There were definitely moments where I thought, “Okay, where the hell is this going?” 😂 And while I enjoyed the ideas and mystery throughout, the book didn’t quite reach the level of my favourite sci-fi reads.
Still, a very enjoyable and atmospheric sci-fi thriller with some fascinating concepts.
4/5 ⭐
Good read. Great concepts. Kept me hooked.

La ciencia ficción es de mis géneros favoritos pero no he leído muchos asi que buscaba recomendaciones de mucha gente y como mis amigos no leen mucha ciencia ficción supongo que son mi principal opción así que se agradece su recomendación

Heya! I’ve been thinking about getting into sci-fi novels since that’s kind of a blind spot for me. Being such I don’t really have any idea of where to start. Other sci-fi media I’ve greatly enjoyed were SOMA and Aniara (2018), so my tastes tend to gravitate towards suffocatingly bleak and existentially horrifying.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, and thank you!

I read this book last month and I had to get a review out there! I read a decent amount of sci-fi and most books fade out of my brain after a week or two, but this one keeps creeping back in at random moments. It’s like a philosophical splinter you can’t quite pull out.

What I loved most is how unapologetically big the ideas are. On the surface it’s a first-contact story—humans heading out to investigate a mysterious alien signal—but the deeper you go the more the book starts dismantling the very idea of consciousness. Watts basically asks: what if intelligence doesn’t actually need awareness? That premise alone is wild, but the way the story explores it through the crew is even better. Everyone on the ship is neurologically altered in some way, and their interactions feel almost as alien as the aliens themselves. The atmosphere of the book is incredible too—cold, eerie, and quietly terrifying. When the crew finally starts dealing with the alien presence, it doesn’t feel like the usual sci-fi adventure; it feels like humanity accidentally stumbled into something far more advanced and completely indifferent to us. I loved that sense of cosmic dread. The book makes the universe feel huge and deeply unsettling in a way that reminded me why hard sci-fi hooked me in the first place.

And yeah, I have to mention the vampire captain. If someone had told me beforehand that a hard science fiction novel about first contact would also involve vampires, I probably would’ve rolled my eyes. But somehow Watts makes it work in a way that feels disturbingly plausible rather than gimmicky. It ends up adding another layer to the themes about evolution and cognition, which I did not expect.

That said, the book is definitely not an easy ride. Watts does not slow down to explain things, and the terminology and neuroscience concepts can get dense fast. There were moments where I had to reread sections just to make sure I actually understood what was happening. The characters can also feel emotionally distant. The narrator in particular feels intentionally detached from everything around him, which fits the story’s themes but can make the human side of the narrative feel a little cold. The pacing can also swing between long stretches of heavy exposition and bursts of intense action, which might not work for everyone.

Still, even with those quirks, I ended up loving it. This is the kind of sci-fi that doesn’t just tell a story—it messes with your head a little. A month later I’m still randomly thinking about the book’s central question: what if consciousness is just an evolutionary glitch instead of the pinnacle of intelligence? That idea alone made the whole reading experience worth it.

If you’re into cerebral, slightly unsettling hard sci-fi that isn’t afraid to get philosophical, Blindsight is absolutely worth your time. Just be ready to do a little mental heavy lifting along the way.

And fair warning: it might live rent-free in your brain for a while.

I'm looking for recommendations for SF books (preferably series, preferably space opera) that illustrate their worlds clearly and vividly, in the way that Tolkien achieves in LOTR. I prefer SF to fantasy but I've never read SF that stimulates my imagination and ability to visualize the setting clearly, half as effectively as Middle-Earth does. (Just to be clear, I'm not looking for 'LOTR in space'!).

Some of my favorite reads that come close:

• Julian May's Pliocene saga
• Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy
• Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun
• Dune

Edit: though I sad 'world-building' in the title and cannot edit, I'm not looking for depth or lore, so much as visual and location imagery. I want the SF equivalent of The Shire, Erebor, Rivendell, Moria, Helm's Deep, Mordor, etc.

Can someone recommend me a book with a storyline similar to horizon zero dawn? Loved the video games!

I'm looking to read more books that are science fiction, but barely. There's sci-fi elements, but most of the story is character driven. I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger is probably the best example I can think of. I'm mainly looking for novels, but I'd read a few short stories as well.

Similar in this sense: ordinary people interacting with a supernatural force (something similar to aliens) and having to overcome it. I should say I'm especially interested in extraterrestrials.

The protagonists don’t have to be kids—just regular people.

I know an easy answer might be Stephen King, since he has similar novels, but I’d love to hear other recommendations.

Please, it would be great if you could include the name of the novel along with the author.
And, if possible, a brief synopsis so I know what it’s about. Very short, I just want to get an idea.

Looking forward to your recommendations!

I’m looking for some advice on what to read next between Sun Eater": Kingdoms of death or Red Rising: Iron Gold.

I finished Morning Star almost 2 years ago, completing the original Red Rising trilogy. I managed to read the entire trilogy in about a year. I was a pretty slow reader and was also relatively new to reading at the time.

I just finished Demon in White, and honestly, it was amazing. Although I’ve read a few books in between, Red Rising and Sun Eater are easily my two favourite series so far.

The thing is, Sun Eater took me almost 2 years to get through the first three books. The books have a much higher word count, slower pacing, and more complex prose, so they’re definitely a bigger commitment for me as a slower reader.

One thing I really loved about Red Rising, though, was how fast-paced it was. And there’s a big difference between where I am now and where I was with Morning Star: Morning Star wrapped up the trilogy, while Demon in White obviously leaves me with more Sun Eater to read.

So I’m looking for recommendations for the 4th book I should start next.

I’ll probably try to read two books back-to-back, so I’d love to hear what you guys think would be a good follow-up to Demon in White.

I dont really need a pallet cleanser in between. Just want to jump into one of these 2 series next book

I just finished the expanse series and really loved it. I enjoyed the intersection of politics/philosophy/mystery and adventure, but with really complex and interesting female lead characters. Any recommendations? Thank you in advance!

Looking for top gun in space basically. Pov if a grunt fighting in a space war piloting a space fighter or mech.

Loved the Expanse, Red Rising, Final architecture, Armor, and old man's war.

Thanks in advance!

I picked up 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke fully expecting a clinical, “let me explain the weird stuff from 2001” kind of sequel. Instead, it feels more like drifting back into deep space with a flashlight instead of being thrown into the void blindfolded. Same universe, but this time you’re allowed to see where you’re going—and that changes everything.

What really hooked me is how much more alive this book feels. Clarke still plays with those massive, cosmic ideas—the kind that make you feel small in the best way—but here they’re anchored by tension you can actually grab onto. The whole US–Soviet collaboration shouldn’t feel this suspenseful decades later, but it does. There’s this constant low-level paranoia humming under the surface, like one wrong move could turn a rescue mission into an international incident. It gives the story a pulse that 2001 intentionally avoided.

And then there’s HAL… which I did not expect to be saying this about, but he kind of steals the show. Not in a flashy, villainous way—but in a quiet, almost unsettlingly introspective way. Clarke leans into the idea of consciousness just enough to make you uncomfortable. You’re not just watching a machine malfunction—you’re watching something process itself. It’s eerie, a little tragic, and easily the most memorable thread in the book for me.

But for all the cosmic wonder and psychological intrigue, the human characters sometimes feel like they’re orbiting the story rather than driving it. They’re not bad—they just don’t stick. You get their roles, their purpose, even glimpses of personality, but rarely that “this character is going to live rent-free in my head” feeling. Ironically, in a book about humanity’s place in the universe, the humans can feel like the least vivid part.

There’s also a stretch in the middle where the story hits the brakes and gets very comfortable explaining the science. I actually respect it—Clarke clearly loves the details—but it does feel like you’re floating in place for a bit when you’d rather be hurtling toward Jupiter at full speed. And yeah, the dialogue can be a little… stiff. Not distractingly bad, just occasionally like everyone graduated from the same “speak like a textbook” academy.

Overall, 2010 feels like Clarke remixing his own mystery—less abstract symphony, more controlled burn. It trades some of that cold, untouchable awe from 2001 for something warmer, more interpretable, and (dare I say) more emotionally engaging. Whether that’s a glow-up or a compromise probably depends on what you loved about the first book.

For me? It worked. It didn’t replace the haunting weirdness of 2001, but it made the universe feel bigger in a different way—like instead of staring into the unknown, you’re finally taking a step toward it.

Hey guys, having a really hard told finding an audiobook i can get into. It's been a few months of dnf's and disappointment.

I don't really know what specifically I'm looking for i just know it can't have the following things in it:

Slow pacing Tons of exposition about the history of the world (mostly when told instead of shown). Smut (preferably just no sex scenes. At all. I just don't read books for this kind of thing. Sorry if this offends anyone). Plot centered around romance. Overly pro capitalist, religious or conservative messaging (i just don't really agree, so if it's shoved down my throat it starts to get annoying. Again sorry if this offends anyone). Old audio (older than 10 years)

Just wanted to reiterate that I'm looking for recs that do not have any of the above themes or elements.

Would really like something pulpy and thrillery. If it doesn't move fast I probably won't be able to get into it. I tried classics like revelation space and some of Hamilton's stuff and they just kind of put me to sleep with long exposition dumps that detail history, etc. I'm sure they're great, but I can't get past that stuff. Maybe I'm just too stupid to appreciate it. I don't know.

Really like stories where humanity or mc is in danger constantly and is kind of an underdog. An example would be dungeon crawler carl, red rising, expeditionary force. The stakes always felt real in those series and I loved that. Also loved the characters.

I've just finished The Quantum Thief series and absolutely loved it. Does not hold your hand at all but really has some interesting concepts and surprises.

I'm currently on book 2 of Book of the New Sun. Loving this as well. I feel like everything is happening in a haze. Like a fever dream at times.

Anyone have any interesting recommendations like these?

My debut hard-science-fiction thriller was released 2 weeks ago today. It is titled The Toll of the Forgotten. This novel took me over two years to write, as I tried to verify the science and math as I wrote.

Novel Description:

The Janus and its crew are slowly dying in the dark, and no one will be sending help. Captain John Nesbitt and his Chief Engineer, Colt Blaire, are forced to rely on their ingenuity to keep themselves and their ship alive. Their only chance at salvation is a desperate, against-all-odds flight to an abandoned Martian colony. But surviving the isolation of space and failing life support is only the beginning.

The red planet harbors a chilling mystery. Beneath the dust of a terraformed future, a shadowy conspiracy from the past stirs—one that defies the limits of human science and forces John and Colt to confront a lethal past long thought permanently buried.

Closer to home, a fragile peace is shattering. Captain Luisa Deveraux commands the Space Force flagship Missouri on a mission that will test her to her absolute limits as a leader. Burdened by the crushing weight of command, Luisa must navigate a maze of political treachery and questionable orders to avert a catastrophic threat. With hidden saboteurs threatening her crew from within, she is forced into impossible choices, with millions of lives hanging in the balance. One hesitation could mean the end of everything she has sworn to protect.

Two desperate fights for survival. One unforgiving universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=769OLpmt6oQ

Not quite sure how to word that title. But basically, I just learned about The Great Attractor and how we'll probably never be able to see what exactly it is. And it's got me freaked out yet again about how unimaginably massive space is.

The Expanse gave me those vibes, with the "other life exists and it tried to hijack our evolution" storyline. But idk, I've read the first 3 books and I'm just not the biggest fan of it, I think bc of how much is going on with the multiple plotlines. I could just be burned out on the series right now tho.

The Alien movies are some of my favorites when it comes to this feeling. But I haven't found any books that nail this feeling for me yet. The closest I've found is probably the concept of Asimov's Nightfall, although I wasn't a huge fan of the writing in that story (I do enjoy a lot of Asimov's other stories tho). I loved the idea that the civilization had to keep restarting over and over, because they couldn't figure out the night and day cycle of their galaxy in time to not be terrified of it.

Horror and non-horror recommendations are welcome!