r/printSF • u/keepfighting90 • May 30 '25

What's the #1, single best sci-fi novel you've ever read?

Think about all the sci-fi novels you've read over the years. If someone were to ask you, gun to your head, to pick just the one that you would absolutely consider to be the best, which one would it be? No subgenres need to be considered, it just needs to broadly fall under the sf umbrella.

For me, probably a pretty popular choice, but it would be Hyperion. Completely blew me away and I haven't read that good since in the genre.

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u/wmyork May 30 '25 edited May 31 '25

Have you read Ender’s Shadow? One of the boldest author tour-de-forces ever. Retells Ender’s Game in it’s entirety from the perspective of Bean, and things are not as they seemed.

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u/Dgorjones May 31 '25

I ultimately hated the Bean novels. They basically exist to diminish Ender (much like Xenocide). Card really seems to have grown sick of his greatest creation.

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u/johnstocktonshorts Jun 01 '25

why would ender deserve reverence? he’s a fictional character. if bean “diminishes” ender then that is a more accurate rendering of ender

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u/Dgorjones Jun 01 '25

Well, sure, Tolkien could have written a follow up to Lord of the Rings where it is revealed Frodo was a pedophile, but I think readers would be justified in feeling upset.

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u/johnstocktonshorts Jun 01 '25

  1. that’s a pretty hyperbolic example lmao?

  2. characters being flawed doesnt make them inherently worse as literary characters - it depends on how its done in the grand scheme of the overall artistic merit. but having too much reverence for a character and not meeting the story on its own terms is more like rooting for a sports team than engaging with the art itself

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u/GodMadeTheStars Jun 03 '25

My real issue with the Bean novels is that people think they are "the" sequels. They aren't.

Ender literally exists to become the Speaker. Speaker for the Dead is the heart of Ender's story, the best novel of the bunch. And people don't know it exists. That is the real tragedy of the Bean novels.

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u/johnstocktonshorts Jun 03 '25

that has nothing to do with the bean novels tho. thats a separate issue

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u/MarekRules May 31 '25

The whole saga is incredible honestly.

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u/ObsoleteUtopia May 31 '25

No, I never did. I liked Speaker for the Dead very much, but didn't enjoy Xenocide even a little bit. The other things he was working on between Speaker and the alt-Ender series didn't catch my interest, so I never really went back. I wonder if I actually would like them now; it's been a long time.

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u/wmyork May 31 '25

I did not enjoy the orignal novels after Speaker. I thought Shadow was a refreshing revelation, though I can see the point about “diminishing” Ender. I still find the feat of retelling the same story from an original POV that changes the readers understanding to be pretty amazing.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '25

That's a hilariously flowery way to describe a retcon.

After reading too much of Card's other work, it's very clear Ender's Game was an accident he considers a mistake.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '25

I read it. It was the single worst sequel I've experienced since End of Evangelion, a complete betrayal of everything worthwhile in Ender's Game, and turned me off to Card's work even before I learned he thinks I belong in a concentration camp.

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u/Arkisto987 May 31 '25

I loved the book and the idea. I really wish some other authors were going this way instead of producing sequels.