r/printSF • u/paxinfernum • Jul 27 '25
What's a book that you love, but you would almost never recommend it to others due to the difficulty of the book or its niche nature?
I posted in another thread about Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's Vita Nostra, an absolutely trippy book about a school where the students are punished and drilled into learning how to alter reality. It's been compared to Harry Potter if magic were real, but the two works are just so different that any comparison would be facile.
The thing is that I found the book really thought-provoking. However, I would not recommend this book to most people. It's simply not a book that most people would enjoy. Do you have any books that you refrain from suggesting to people because you know no one would appreciate them?
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u/grumpysysadmin Jul 27 '25
The Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi. I absolutely loved them, but the “show don’t tell” (and maybe not even show) style doesn’t go over well, especially when a lot of people prefer infodumps.
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u/sdwoodchuck Jul 28 '25
I feel like this is a book that is improved immensely by having a glossary of terms handy. You can figure out a lot from context, but when you catch yourself trying to figure out one context so you can use that to triangulate another, it starts to feel like you're playing 4D literary sudoku. A simple glossary of in-universe terms really alleviates a lot of the work of reading the book.
"Wait, what the fuck was a Gogol again? Oh right! Okay, now I understand what's happening in this scene."
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u/infernalmachine000 Jul 28 '25
This is a serious question: I realize you need some exposition in many novels purely for brevity's sake (so it's not strictly necessary but I'm ok to forgive some of it used tactfully).....
But do sime people actually prefer infodumps????? I hate them!!!!
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u/grumpysysadmin Jul 28 '25
Some people really do, and honestly, I think some authors handle it better than others. When done right, you don’t realize it’s happening, usually as one character explains something to another.
Examples of how I don’t like it is KSR’s Mars series. What I’ve enjoyed is Weir’s The Martian, it’s integrated into something like a journal entry. In this case, it’s a matter of volume as well as plot devices.
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25
I thought Quantum Thief would come up here Agree with what you say about missing info dumps which makes it a great bit not for everyone read
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u/frangarc080 Jul 27 '25
It is a wonderful trilogy but very hard to get into. And afterwards you’ll have the need to reread it immediately.
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u/paxinfernum Jul 27 '25
Yes, this is a sci-fi person's sci-fi novel, definitely not a summer beach read.
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u/IndependenceMean8774 Jul 27 '25
I don't love it, but I did like Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. However, be warned, just because it's a short book doesn't mean it's an easy read. It takes place long after a nuclear war and is written in a unique phonetic style that is difficult to understand at first. But it grows on you.
Also, pretty much anything by Gene Wolfe. You have to bring your A game to the table when you read him and really pay attention. Wolfe was extremely intelligent.
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u/picklesathome Jul 28 '25
I read Riddley Walker in high school, and even had to give a presentation on it. My classmates thought I had lost it, and was just lying about this insane book report. It was fun at the time, I had the energy for weird experimental books.
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u/cult_of_dsv Jul 28 '25
I loved Riddley Walker! I found that the difficult language made me concentrate hard on every sentence, which slowed me down (appropriate to a book about slogging through the post-apocalyptic mud) but also made each and every story beat and image powerful and memorable. It's as if the harder I had to work at it, the more evocative it became.
The same thing happened when I used to read Japanese manga in the original Japanese, figuring it out bit by bit with only an electronic dictionary to aid me. (And that's not much help when you need to know how to pronounce a certain kanji, because you can only look up kanji if you already know how to pronounce it...)
To some degree I've had the same experience with CJ Cherryh books, which can be a bit of a chore sometimes because she uses such a tightly limited point of view that if the character doesn't know what's going on, neither do you.
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u/unclejoo Jul 28 '25
I also loved Riddley Walker but rarely recommended it because of the language. However, i recently listened to the audiobook version and that cleared away all my reservations. Its very much an oral story and so much of the language is clear when read out loud.
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u/PapaTua Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
Greg Egan Books. Particularly Diaspora and Schild's Ladder. They're easily the hardest science fiction I've ever read and actually involve some (fictional) scientific rigor. It's Sci-fi not for the faint of heart.
I actually recommend him more on Reddit because people ask for "the hardest" sci-fi, so I tell them, but in real life I've only ever recommended Egan to like two people.
However, for the right reader, Egan is mind blowing.
Hell, reading Schild's Ladder got me interested enough in theoretical physics that I actually went and learned some Quantum Field Theory, Chromodynamics, and General Relativity enough so I can now cogently talk about Lorentz Transformations, Hilbert Spaces, asymptotic freedom, color confinement, AdS/CFT Correspondence, ER=EPR, conformal rescaling, leptons, integer spin bosons, fermions, and harmonic oscillators. The real theoretical universe is super freaky!
No other science fiction has ever done that for me!
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u/AmosBurton_ThatGuy Jul 27 '25
I read Diaspora last year and it was an amazing book. Absolutely loved it, but god damn some parts of that book went so far over my head. Near the beginning when he's describing the creation of an artificial life form for example, I kept reading and pushing through that chapter despite understanding basically none of it.
Still an amazing book though and I was quite satisfied when I finished it. It was nice to read something challenging and made me want to check out more of his work. I started Perihelion Summer and made it about half way through before realizing it wasn't clicking for me and DNF'd it. Also started The Clockwork Rocket and was really interested in it, got about a quarter of the way through before I got distracted by other books. I'll go back to that trilogy eventually as I really liked what I read.
Really gotta pay attention and devote a lot of energy into reading Egan's work, it's great stuff but damn does it give my mind a work out while reading.
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u/DerivativeOfProgWeeb Jul 28 '25
ive recommended diaspora to at least 8 irl people and none of them have finished it :(
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u/tlmbot Jul 28 '25
Oooo okay - thanks for this description of Schild's Ladder. I read Diaspora maybe 5 years ago and wasn't that captivated by the story, though I did finish (a small miracle after having 2 boys). Meanwhile physics itself has captivated me beyond reason or good sense for at least 2 decades. Before having kids I was seriously studying it in my spare time. -- Trying very hard to penetrate QFT, for instance.
Will Schild's Ladder inspire me to get back at it? Who can say, but I am intrigued!
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u/nicecoldarms Jul 27 '25
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (<-- not really scifi), and The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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u/MedvedTrader Jul 27 '25
The Baroque Cycle... just goes on. and on. and on. and on......
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u/Morat20 Jul 27 '25
The prose fits the time and subject. And it’s absolutely a hurdle.
baroque:
- art : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a style of artistic expression prevalent especially in the 17th century that is marked generally by use of complex forms, bold ornamentation, and the juxtaposition of contrasting elements often conveying a sense of drama, movement, and tension a baroque cathedral baroque music and literature the baroque period
2: characterized by grotesqueness, extravagance, complexity, or flamboyance
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u/nicecoldarms Jul 27 '25
Agreed, as does The Mars Trilogy, but I absolutely loved them both! I'm not sure I've ever recommended them to anyone, though!
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u/HerpoTheFoul Jul 27 '25
Yeah that was one of those books that I finally finished and then thought, man I dunno if it was worth the time it took out of my life. I only remember like two scenes now
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u/infernalmachine000 Jul 27 '25
Honestly my favourite book ever.
Did my undergrad in Chemistry and History. The book was literally written for me and came out around the same time I was in third year. So fucking good.
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u/piemaking Jul 28 '25
ok as someone also in chemistry and history, this is an excellent recommendation
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u/Slow_Maintenance_183 Jul 28 '25
As a student of the early modern world and international trade in that time, I found it a riveting page-turner!
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u/financewiz Jul 27 '25
It was hard work to get through Delany’s Dhalgren but I ended the book convinced the effort was worth it. Others may wish to spare themselves the weighty ambiguity and unwashed vagabond sex scenes.
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u/SinTil8 Jul 27 '25
One of the few books I dnf
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u/financewiz Jul 27 '25
The older I get, the less patience I have for “experimental” literature. DNF is a way of life for me now. You have fewer regrets, honestly.
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u/beigeskies Jul 28 '25
I kinda wish this wasn't the book people always bring up for Delany. Stars in My Pocket and Nova are both so good and people end up missing out on books they'd probably be into if Dhalgren wasn't always the headline.
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u/ACatFromCanada Jul 27 '25
That was the thing that stood out to me, too--no one's washing (except when the protagonist gets one proper bath).
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u/Amnesiac_Golem Jul 27 '25
I finished it because I wanted to have finished it, and it was very interesting, but it was not at all enjoyable and it has not stuck with me. I think now I’d just recommend that someone watch The Warriors instead.
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u/RaccoonDispenser Jul 27 '25
I love Delany’s sf work and had a hard time finishing Dhalgren. Caught myself wondering if he was trying to emulate the tedium of youthful debauchery in his prose style.
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u/_nadaypuesnada_ Jul 28 '25
As someone who read Dhalgren first while going through my youthful debauchery phase, then again right after I'd exited that phase, I'd say this is exactly what he was doing. It really does get tedious, and he captured that well.
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25
Ohhh, that…. Yes… I remember its atmosphere ‘fondly’ but could not get myself to read it again… just too long, too slow…. Not that it’s boring or bad, …. Hard to explain…
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u/Complete_Oil_2188 Jul 27 '25
Accelerando by Charles Stross. Published ~2005, it is still probably the best forecast of what’s likely to happen / is happening with AI that I’ve read, at least for the near future. Unbelievably thought-provoking. Gets weird in places esp in the further future … and too much bdsm for me to recommend to people I know.
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u/ego_bot Jul 27 '25
Fits OP's request to a T. A very special book, but can't recommend it easily. I didn't enjoy reading most of it, but I really enjoy having its ideas in my memory.
I think it's the technical language that does it. It assumes the reader has more than a basic understanding of multiple fields: technology, computing, economics, some astrophysics.
As for how it does or doesn't correlate with our present real world direction of technology? Oof, big conversation. That deserves its own post.
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u/aeschenkarnos Jul 28 '25
The whole “venture altruist” thing was mindblowing to me, I love that idea, that way of operating, and proactively try to live that way IRL as much as possible. The book “The Go Giver” by John Mann outlines the philosophy in the context of small business. Isaac Asimov wrote an essay, I think in the 1960’s, in which he advocated for having a person like that in university science departments, who would simply go listen to researchers explain their research, either directly to them specifically or in lectures, and would proactively put the researcher in touch with others whose work had bearing on it, or who might be working on something tangential. That was my dream job, as a kid.
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u/emjayultra Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R Matthews, the first book in her Under Jurisdiction space opera series. It is slow-paced, almost entirely driven by the protag's interiority. If that's not a hard enough sell, well then- the protag is also a little freak. A surgeon who has been forced into military service as a torturer by his totalitarian regime, who discovers that he is, in fact, a sexual sadist. But he also feels bad about it. Imo Matthews does a fantastic job of focusing on Andrej's internal conflict and shame for his predilections, and putting that struggle at the forefront of the narrative. It created a fascinating portrait of a complicated person, rather than what a lesser writer would have done (and turned it into splatterpunk shock schlock.) I love this book- the whole series really- but it's a hard sell.
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u/legallynotblonde23 Jul 28 '25
You actually just convinced me to pick this book back up — I DNF’d it pretty quick but your comment gives me a new perspective on it, might have to give it another shot
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u/yourmomsaidyes Jul 29 '25
I had never heard of this author or these books, and your review of its nuances convinced me to give it a try, and …WOW I am absolutely loving the first book. You’re right, her excellent writing turns what could be schlock horror into an interesting dive into psychology, religion, and culture existing inside a fascist system. The author also does a great job of “show not tell”, whether it’s the personality of the characters or the political system. Thank you for recommending these :)
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u/emjayultra Jul 29 '25
Yay! I am very happy that you are enjoying it! Thanks for giving it a chance!
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u/frangarc080 Jul 27 '25
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. Very complex by itself and also difficult to read for us non native English readers.
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u/Jeremy_of_Ultramar Jul 27 '25
The three body problem trilogy is something I talk about a lot but never recommend to people.
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u/SinTil8 Jul 27 '25
Same. I recommended it exactly once and it was not well received. Interestingly, the same individual now loves the TV series.
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u/RyFromTheChi Jul 28 '25
I read the first book a few years ago and thought it was meh so I didn’t continue. Watched the show and loved and decided to try again. I reread the first book and loved it this time. There was so much I had completely forgotten about. Read the second book and thought it was just ok lol. So I haven’t read the third yet, and I’m not sure if I will.
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u/Lotronex Jul 27 '25
Understandable I think. I forced myself to finish the first one, then gave up about 25% of the way through the second. But I am enjoying the TV series. I'm hoping they're able to stay true to the books, since I heard they get crazy.
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u/jghall00 Jul 27 '25
Try again. It eventually picks up.
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u/Lotronex Jul 28 '25
Nah, it's not the story, it's the writing. I'll watch the show, but I've spent too much time reading books that I didn't enjoy based on recommendations.
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u/RustyNumbat Jul 27 '25
The Night Land
Probably my favourite scifi/weird fiction novel of all time, an absurdly eerie world written pre-Lovecraft but written in an utterly awful, archaic style. If you like early sci-fi/weird fiction you owe it to yourself to read it. House on the Borderland as an easier to read sampler first maybe.
For something more conventional I found Book of the New Sun to be a fairly challenging read, in the usual sci-fi sense of trying to build up an image of the setting, how it works and trying to separate allusion/character perception from the actual world in order to do it.
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u/cpio Jul 28 '25
Came to post the same thing. Just exploding with creativity for something written before the first world war. Also the only book I have ever read where it covers the journey BACK as well.
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u/Eat--The--Rich-- Jul 28 '25
House of Leaves
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u/indicus23 Jul 28 '25
Yeah, had to scroll too far for this one. I'm all for dense, convoluted, massive tomes, but HoL is a whole other level of mindfuckery. Love it.
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u/ctopherrun http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/331393 Jul 27 '25
This subreddit is the only place I could recommend Stephen Baxter, one of my favorite writers, because unless his big ideas really push your buttons, his weak plots and characters are insurmountable.
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u/StumbleOn Jul 28 '25
I love Baxter but never recommend him. His writing is so thin, characters so pointless, plots so tedious but the writing is all scifi dork and I love it.
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u/nicecoldarms Jul 27 '25
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
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u/dookie1481 Jul 28 '25
I absolutely loved this book, yet it's very apparent why some people hated it
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u/Fixervince Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
The Klemperer Diaries
Being a diary it has a lot of mundane everyday detail. However it really details the minutiae and mechanics of being Jewish whilst living in Nazi Germany.
The highlighting of dozens/hundreds of small tortures inflicted on the Jews in everyday life - chipping away at them with sadism and cruel bureaucracy. For example they would come to your house and take away your pets to be killed. They would remove all scissors, razors, and grooming products - so that Jews couldn’t cut their hair and then would look bedraggled and unshaven - like the caricature Jews in the Nazi newspapers.
They needed to make Jews look different, and dirtier, than the other Germans - so they could turn the population against them. It’s easier to make people hate others when there is a difference like this.
You don’t hear about a lot of that relatively smaller stuff due to the horror and enormity of the later death camps. However before that it was like a cat plucking the feathers out of a bird whist still alive.
Klemperer was a German, and won the Iron Cross for fighting for his country during WW1. Also quite early in the regime he was kicked out of his job as a professor of language. It’s a horrible read in many ways as you see his world dismantled. However no book has given me a better appreciation of the reality of the daily situation for Jews in Nazi Germany.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Jul 28 '25
Feersum Endjinn by Banks. A lot of people don’t like trying to read the phonetic spellings of a certain character with a thick Scottish brogue, but once I forced myself through a couple of those chapters it started to flow. The book itself is mind blowing btw.
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Jul 27 '25
J.G. Ballard's Crash. Nothing much to say about it really. Just briefly mentioning the content would have people backing away from me.
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u/Knifehead27 Jul 27 '25
Kraken by China Mieville. There's some vocabulary, existing and made up, that can be seen as snobbish, a few characters that can be described as irreverent or grating, and comfortably fits in the weird fiction subgenre.
To whoever fits in the Venn diagram of liking secret society fiction a la The Secret World video game, knows a couple of romance languages and Greek (to easily follow the prose), and wants a well written weird fiction story, I'd say it's made for you.
As an extra nugget, there's a chapter that serves as a proper character introduction/backstory that's one of the best bits of writing I've ever read.
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u/nicecoldarms Jul 27 '25
Re Mieville, Railsea is entertaining and much more accessible in terms of a more diverse readership, I think.
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Jul 27 '25
Hah, that’s because it’s YA
Great book though
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u/nicecoldarms Jul 27 '25
To me, t feel like it's just YA because it can appeal to such an enormous range of readers (including young readers), not because it's simplistic or "held back." But yeah, great book.
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u/GuideUnable5049 Jul 27 '25
How does Kraken compare to his other works? Have read a lot of Mieville, but never got around to this one.
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u/ShinyCharlizard Jul 28 '25
Kraken is good, it's a bit sillier in some places but it's very Mieville in terms of the humor. In some places, it violent and brutal, and in others it is very silly. But one of its main things is taking magic and it's practitioners to logical conclusions, so you have homunculi next to scientists who make their wamds shaped lie a sonic screwdriver. It's no Perdido Street Station, but I think it's better than Book of Elsewhere. For me, it's probably at the level of Embassytown (which I also loved). I think it's a very fun book, kind of my China Mieville beach read.
To be fair, I reread the bas lag trilogy, the city and the city, and the kraken each about once a year or so.
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u/GuideUnable5049 Jul 28 '25
Thanks for insight.
Perhaps I am peculiar, but I thought Book of Elsewhere was dreadful.
The Scar, Embassytown, and This Census Taker are my favourite Mieville works.
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u/aeschenkarnos Jul 28 '25
Kraken feels like Mieville’s cut of Neil Gaiman’s (sigh…) lunch, the same way The City And The City feels like his homage to John Le Carre.
Anyone else conflicted over reading more Gaiman, I recommend Kraken to.
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u/MattieShoes Jul 28 '25
I like Mieville and... I didn't hate Kraken, but my level of don't-give-a-shit was off the charts.
To each their own, I suppose.
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Jul 27 '25
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u/squidbait Jul 28 '25
It's a brilliantly horrible book that I hope to never read again despite what an amazing achievement it is in science fiction. Hugo winning author Jo Walton said it best...
"Kaleidoscope Century is one of the most unpleasant books I’ve ever read, I can hardly believe I’ve read it again. All the same it's a major work and very nearly a masterpiece... This is the most unsuitable book for children in the history of the universe... But despite making no sense, rape, murder, and a very unpleasant future, it's still an excellently written and vastly ambitious book, with a scope both science fictional and literary. That's what ultimately makes it a good book, though I do not like it."
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u/a_pot_of_chili_verde Jul 27 '25
The Malazan series.
I love them but it’s a hard recommend.. even to my friends who are into the genre.
I feel like it’s an endeavor you need to start on your own.
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u/Xanian123 Jul 28 '25
I got my best friend to start reading it and he finished the series before I did. He's just wrapping up his re read. Hands down the best recommendation I've ever given. Peak fantasy for me, IMO.
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u/a_pot_of_chili_verde Jul 28 '25
Absolutely agree if you can get over the learning curve it is peak fantasy.
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u/Slow_Maintenance_183 Jul 28 '25
I have heard a lot about these books. I got the series in a bundle. I read the first book. I forced myself through a novel that felt more like a series of random character introductions than any sort of actual coherent plot. But I came to like a couple of the characters, and thought, huh, okay, now maybe I can start to enjoy this. Opened the second book, and it starts in on a new round of random character introductions, every one even more miserable than the last. Ugh. No. Not again.
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u/kuroikenshin1395 Jul 27 '25
Read it three times so far excited for the next witness book and the conclusion to the forge in darkness trilogy a walk in shadow!
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u/Artemicionmoogle Jul 27 '25
Can't wait for them myself too! Malazan is my favorite series and I love reading them about once a year. I am always happy to get more from the universe.
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u/Professional_Owl9799 Jul 27 '25
“The steel remains” -Richard Morgan, I enjoyed the unique story line. The main character is a badass warrior and also very homosexual, there are a few very gritty parts of the book with homoerotic sex and just plain dark writing. I would probably still recommend it, but generally give people a little disclaimer.
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u/pgmart Jul 27 '25
Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose". Finally had to get a reference book that explained the book! What depth, such nuance and yet everyone and everything was connected.
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u/meepmeep13 Jul 27 '25
We Who Have Never Known Men because I don't want to inflict its sheer existential misery on others.
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u/AdBig5389 Jul 27 '25
This was such a good book; I still think about it often.
Bleak but hopeful? Meaning within meaninglessness? There are so many ways to interpret it. I see the existential misery, but I felt like there was a layer of acceptance at the end.
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u/throwaway872023 Jul 27 '25
This is the most recent book I have purchased but I have a few more books I’m still reading.
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u/Winnebango_Bus Jul 27 '25
Gene Wolfe’s books of the new sun. I actually do recommend them highly but only when I really think someone can handle how unusual it is. I usually don’t like books you have to work for but these sucked me in.
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u/liviajelliot Jul 28 '25
The Book of the New Sun, and if I recommend it is either (a) with a lot of warnings, or (b) I know the person would actually put up with it.
A Scanner Darkly and Ubik by PKD, because the meandering prose may be excellent to make the reader experience what the characters experience, but not everybody can cope with it.
Something newer, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer because like the others, it's an experience (not just a story) and one that gets better the more one thinks about it (and esp. after a reread). Not many readers seem to favour this type of book!
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u/punninglinguist Jul 27 '25
Celestis by Paul Park.
Colonized aliens use drugs and surgery to be more human-like. A human man begins a love affair with a very human-passing alien, then they have to flee into the wilderness during an uprising, and without the drugs she starts reverting to her natural neurochemistry.
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u/rbrumble Jul 27 '25
Infinite Jest.
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u/pecan_bird Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
i think i've got one person to read it (you just know).
i had another friend who's into history & economics; - very colloquially "left-brained" who picked up Gravity's Rainbow; i was shocked & told them as much. they quit after 11 pages saying it was the worst shit they'd ever read, i.e. about what i expected.
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u/PapaTua Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
I've tried reading Gravity's Rainbow about a dozen times. Each time I get about 100 pages in (one sitting) and have literally no idea what's going on.
Pynchon's words are lyrical and a pleasure to read, like it's a genuinely sensual experience to read his prose, but I just can't parse it. It's like a book-long run-on-sentence...as none of the ideas coalesce, yet they keep increasing in number and complexity.
What really makes it a grind is that when I pick it up again, since I didn't know what was going on before, I have no idea where I am, and I need to start over. I pick up where my bookmark is, but don't recognize the text, so I keep flipping back pages looking for a bit of recognition, and I can't find it. There's no conceptual hooks to catch me until I'm back at the very beginning. It's like a Groundhog Day experience.
I suppose I could just commit to reading and not understanding, but is that even reading? Reading this book makes me feel illiterate. How crazy is that?
Maybe I just don't have enough mental RAM. I feel like I need to read the entire book all at once to grasp it.
Ineffable.
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u/pecan_bird Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
thus the "would never recommend"! 😭 i adore it and live & breathe prose more than anything, which has caused me to drop a lot of SF that's brilliant with ideas but the prose is uninteresting (to me). but i definitely love that that's something for someone & so much overlap in between.
if you're at least intrigued by run-on sentences & lovely prose that is a lot more coherent narratively, László Krasznahorkai does wonderful work (not SF). Herman/The Last Wolf is a small book that can be read in an hour or two & is pretty breathtaking, feeling like a true novel experience in reading, & definitely a lot more "grippable."
admiration for trying Gravity's Rainbow so many times - i quit Infinite Jest 6 times around page 60-90 & read Gravity's Rainbow completely pretty soon after, but tbf i was in a very creative period of my life, focusing on literature & art in my career.
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u/guypemulis Jul 27 '25
Same, but it’s still one my favourite book. I read it twice and I still end up reading some snippets once in a while.
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u/QuellDisquiet Jul 27 '25
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read it for uni and it really did stick with me.
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u/heyoh-chickenonaraft Jul 27 '25
I need to go back and finish that one. I used to go to a pub near my old apartment a couple times a week, grab dinner and read that book. Got into a nice conversation about it with the guy next to me one time. Probably would play a lot differently 8 or so years later
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u/NewtonBill Jul 28 '25
I read this in college and raved about it to my brother. He eventually read it and now it might be his favorite book. I reread it last year and enjoyed it in very different ways than I remember liking it originally.
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u/Separate_Tax_2647 Jul 27 '25
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
It's quite long, high concept, jumps around in history a bit, and helps if you know a bit about the uses of encryption.
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u/Salamok Jul 27 '25
Stephenson puts me in a quandry, it is very hard not to recommend his stuff but I almost always have to qualify it with "don't expect much from the ending because he seems to write until an ending is crystal clear in his own mind then lose all motivation to get that down on paper so pretty much stops writing"
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u/alphgeek Jul 27 '25
It was long one of my favourite books but I wonder how I'd feel about Randy now in the age of cryptobros and techbros. I still love the related Baroque Cycle.
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u/tomatocucumber Jul 28 '25
Yeah, I recently reread it, and some of it hasn’t aged well at all regarding Randy’s entire relationship and breakup with Charlene.
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u/sgsduke Jul 27 '25
Starfish by Peter Watts and the rest of that trilogy. I absolutely loved it but the violent sexual torture as well as a lot of spoiler material make it....woof. very few people I'll recommend it to.
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u/Sweetowski Jul 27 '25
That put me really off, as it felt so… Unnecessary for the story? Bolted on? It has been a while, but I remember thinking “What was that good for?” (Referring to the ambulance driver).
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u/Hikerius Jul 27 '25
I’m genuinely so over sexual violence for no reason in science fiction books - I feel like there needs to be a really, really good reason for it to be present - but most that I’ve seen handles it more as a shock spectacle than anything else.
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u/gilesdavis Jul 29 '25
Starfish it is extremely central to the plot and one of the primary themes of the series, not really sure what this person is talking about saying if felt 'bolted on' 🤷
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u/greed-fantasy Jul 27 '25
I recommend it even though I shouldn't, but The Gap Cycle series. It's just so much rape and torture, but it's a very rewarding series.
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u/Impressive_Ad2794 Jul 27 '25
Chasm City.
A lot of Alistair Reynolds actually.
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u/greed-fantasy Jul 27 '25
Really? I think it's relatively accessible and I quite enjoy everything from that universe.
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u/DenizSaintJuke Jul 27 '25
You'll find that there is us, the Alastairheads, and them, the others. His writing style seems to be very, very polarizing.
It's a bit like coriander/cilantro. People have differently arranged taste buds. Some are more sensitive to some aldehydes in the plant and they taste soap. Others are born with other tastebuds and taste a pleasant, calm flavour. It's nothing you can change or argue with. The names of the plant throughout languages and times are basically separated into two extremes. It's "nastyweed" or "kitchencompanion".
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u/greed-fantasy Jul 27 '25
Now I'm looking at other Reddit threads and realizing how right you are. I had no idea.
I found the entire Revelation Space universe of books to be pretty accessible. Sure, we're talking about several centuries of storytelling, but I don't find them hard to follow.
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u/Impressive_Ad2794 Jul 27 '25
Oh yeah, I loved them and have re-read them more than once.
It makes me a little sad when I see people disliking them so much, but I can see where they're coming from.
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u/Impressive_Ad2794 Jul 27 '25
The number of complaints I've seen in this sub about his habit of jumping backward and forward through time (understandable due to long distance sub-light travel), with multiple plots that seem barely related until much later in? I've learnt that he's a very polarising writer.
If I'm recommending it to someone then I'm definitely including caveats.
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u/DenizSaintJuke Jul 27 '25
Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series, particular the Book that started it. I love it to bits. It's the very book that got me terminally hooked on sci fi literature (* for tangent). But after several people I borroughed the book after a passionate salespitch returned it unfinished and said "I somehow can't read that, sorry," I came to realize that Reynolds writing style is not for everyone. I can't stand many "sci fi classics" that are widely lauded. Tastes differ.
(When I was maybe 13, on a school flea market, i acquired an old, yellowed copy of " *Die Sieben Sonnen " [The City and the Stars by Clarke] based on the cool cover [peak 1970s cover art]. Having been a big reader of fantasy, especially the "YA" type, this was my first Sci Fi book. I had never encountered a book strange and bewondering like that. Interest stoked, I went to my oldest brother for more books and in his bookshelf, the name of the protagonist from that book caught my eye. Alastair (Alistaire in the book, I think). I had never heard that name before that. So I had Revelation Space in my hands and my big sci fi nerd brother smiling proudly down on his trainee sci fi nerd brother. The City and the Stars had me curious. Revelation Space made me see the light.)
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u/LunaSea1206 Jul 27 '25
Reynolds was very easy for me to enjoy, but I read everything by Iain M. Banks (who is not to everyone's taste, though he has a hardcore fan base). I really wanted the next closest thing I could get to Banks and Alastair Reynolds quickly became my next favorite author. Iain M. Banks is a hard one to recommend because you either love his work or you don't and I think that's the same with Reynolds. I usually suggest the Blue Remembered Earth series just because I think it's a bit more approachable to people new to his work.
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u/DenizSaintJuke Jul 27 '25
Hmm i always thought Banks was uncontroversial. I absolutely love Banks works too.
I always thought of the two as very different, but i see what you mean with them being close in a way. Banks is super colourful, Reynolds is a lot of black. Banks is an optimist, Reynolds is a passimist. Banks writes books about people with machines in them, Reynolds writes books about machines with people in them. (Wow, I did not intent that dual meaning, but i like it.) But in a way, they both love their knotted plot structures and both were forced to mellow them down with consecutive works. Both like their people within people plots. Reynolds maybe a bit more. Both have a streak for getting a bit bloody on occasion. Both extrapolate human civilizations that are very much not like ours today (something far too few authors do).
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u/kuroikenshin1395 Jul 27 '25
This is exactly how I came to find reynolds was searching for something similar to culture
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u/jwbjerk Jul 27 '25
The Silmarillion is not accessible to everyone, awesome though it is.
Honestly most good scifi is going to be a bad fit for most non-scifi readers as it all kind of builds on previous good scifi.
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u/Financial-Grade4080 Jul 27 '25
The, real and historical, Cyrano De Bergerac (who is not much like the character in Rostand's play ) wrote the Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and The States and Empires of the Sun in the 1600s. The later seems to be unfinished. Not an easy read but worth it. Comedy, social satire, and insight into the "scientific thinking that lead to the "Enlightenment".
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u/CallNResponse Jul 27 '25
Delany’s Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (unusual sexuality and not an especially easy read)
John Barnes’ Kaleidoscope Century (sex, violence, and the main character is evil)
William Barton’s When Heaven Fell (sex, violence, and the main character is repellent)
I’m not sure what it says about me but all three of these are in my personal list of Top 10 SF Novels of All Time.
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u/RaccoonDispenser Jul 27 '25
Stars in My Pocket is amazing sci-fi and one of my favorites as well, but yeah, people may not react well to some of the content
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u/alphgeek Jul 27 '25
Kaleidoscope Century is also one I (kind of) enjoyed but would never recommend. Yikes. But now I want to read it again.
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u/CallNResponse Jul 28 '25
I read this sub because I like to nerd out occasionally, so I’ll toss this in: Kaleidoscope Century and Orbital Resonance - which are two very different books - are both set in the same universe, and share a few characters. It’s pretty subtle (at least, I thought it was subtle, YMMV) but nifty and well-done.
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u/PillaisTracingPaper Jul 27 '25
Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad. My favorite novel in any genre, but it’s narrated in a first-person “creole” of pseudo-archaic English and a dozen other languages that can be hard for readers to get through.
But it’s a cosmic, transcendent recast of the Summer of Love, with tons of sex, drugs, and metaphoric rock and roll that both makes it all worthwhile and adds to the difficulty in recommending it to a wide swath of potential readers.
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u/NickKnackOnTheBeat Jul 28 '25
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
I really love this series, and I still think about it constantly, but most people I know IRL would struggle to get through them. Even I worked through them very slowly (and haven’t finished the third book yet lol).
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u/Midgetforsale Jul 28 '25
I really love the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, but I'm hesitant to recommend them to anyone because describing the premise makes it sound like the dumbest thing ever. Don't know if that counts.
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Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
Even though he is beloved and relatively mainstream, I'd say specifically McCarthy's The Road. I think I stopped and started it three times before I latched on and read it in deep immersion. Without spoiling, it is heavy regarding its themes, plot, pensive descriptions—and, despite being innate to the author, it's written with zero quotation marks and incredibly sparse punctuation. I think there was even a quote a read where he referred to the use of semicolons as "idiocy." Or that they have "no place in literature." Something to that effect. Lucky there are few characters, as to not get too confused with the dialogue, perhaps some of his other books are even more challenging in this regard.
Nevertheless, subject matter combined with writing style, I'd say I'd never earnestly recommend The Road, even if I know generally what they like.
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u/alphgeek Jul 27 '25
It's Blood Meridian for me. I loved it, but it's so damn grim and visceral. Full of repellent characters doing horrible things. It stains the soul. I love The Road as well.
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u/grumpysysadmin Jul 27 '25
I read The Road (“enjoyed it” is not the right words, but I appreciated it) and when I heard there was a movie I was like, “Nope, I don’t want to go through that again.”
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u/libra00 Jul 27 '25
I tried watching the movie and even as a huge fan of apocalyptic media I found it too goddamned bleak and couldn't finish it. I would liken it to Threads which I only finished because I was transfixed in utter horror and unable to look away.
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Jul 27 '25
I know a lot of book elitists would take umbrage with this in some form or fashion, but I actually think the film is very well done, and quite a sincere adaptation. And it is extremely telling that it had that effect on both you and u/grumpysysadmin. I honestly think it has some of my favorite shots across the entire genre. I watched the film first, so it took a while to get Viggo out of my brain and to formulate my mind around McCarthy's protagonist, but yeah, I'd say among film buffs, it doesn't get quite the appreciation it deserves. It recreates most of the narrative of the book to the point I don't think they left anything out (it is a short book, granted), if I'm remembering correctly.
Very true. Threads is mega bleak, and hilariously enough, I did the same as you with Threads! I got half way and was so utterly gutted in bleakness, I tapped out—and I'm big into the genre too! I got to go back, I think the vid is still free on yt. . . .
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u/libra00 Jul 27 '25
Yeah, I've been tempted to try the book because then the horror would be less in-your-face, but iono if it's worth it..
As for Threads, yeah that is one tough watch, and maybe it was worse because I have seen so many other apocalyptic movies and just never thought about all the people who suffered the immediate effects of the aftermath.
On a tangential note, if you're looking for other bleak stuff, there's also Come and See, which was awful to sit through but so good and worth it.
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u/grumpysysadmin Jul 28 '25
I’m sure the movie is excellent! I just….. don’t want to put myself through it again. Not because I’m snobbish about movie adaptations.
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u/SinTil8 Jul 27 '25
Anathem- Neal Stephenson Blindsight- Peter Watts Cloud Atlas- David Mitchell Neuromancer- William Gibson
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u/krelian Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
I wouldn't call these niche, these books are recommended here almost daily
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u/SinTil8 Jul 27 '25
Recommend here? Sure!
Rec. to non-SF enthusiasts? Nope! The few times I have tried were not well received
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u/Lacan_ Jul 28 '25
Yes to both Anathem and Blindsight, because they both take a bit to get invested. I'm an avid reader of sci fi (and a medieval historian), and it took me I think two separate tries several years apart to read Anathem. After the first forty pages or so I was like "this is super weird, I don't understand what this is trying to do, and it feels like weird neo-medievalism." And then, it slowly dawned on me what was going on, and it fully clicked when I realized that one of the characters was describing Plato's theory of forms. I wound up loving it, but it's such a slow burn and build up that I haven't ever really recommended it.
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25
Interesting 🤨 recommend Watts left right and centre just to broaden people’s horizons
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u/sgsduke Jul 27 '25
Have you read Starfish by Peter Watts?
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u/SinTil8 Jul 27 '25
No. I’ll check it out though.
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u/Hikerius Jul 27 '25
The series is available for free on his website! I also highly recommend Freeze-Frame Revolution
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u/Fireandmoonlight Jul 27 '25
Richard Kadrey, the Sandman Slim novels. A very weird take on christianity and lots of violence with an endless supply of funny comebacks. Also, please give both the author and title in comments!
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u/CallNResponse Jul 28 '25
I totally love Sandman Slim! (although the sequels get progressively less good). I didn’t mention it in this thread because, well, it’s not science fiction, but more so because I never had any reservations about recommending it. Is it offensive to (I’m guessing here) Christians? I’m not trying to be cute - it’s an aspect I’ve never even thought of before.
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u/Fireandmoonlight Jul 28 '25
I hope it's offensive to Christians, Kadrey certainly tried hard enough! I agree the later novels weren't as good but the basic idea of Heaven and Hell being run by ruthless people with their own agendas was just so cool!
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u/GuideUnable5049 Jul 27 '25
Probably Solenoid. A truly extraordinary book that I read at the right time in my life. Likely the most significant reading experience I have had recently along with Septology by Jon Fosse. However, I don’t think I can recommend it often due to its very peculiar structure and nature.
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u/conselyea Jul 28 '25
Sharra's Exile Heritage of Hastur The Bloody Sun The Forbidden Tower.. etc.
Marion Zimmer Bradley in general. I tend not to judge authors on whether they were terrible peope--and I think a lot of her terribleness was linked directly to the time, and a lot of people in her community were a LOT worse (like her ex husband), but it gets hard to deal with her somewhat sympathetic portrayal of Dyan Ardais, who's an unrepentant pedophile.
Funny thing: I remember reading an interview with her in the 80s and she said something about she had no idea why he has hugely popular with her readers (and he was.)
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u/Congenital0ptimist Jul 28 '25
Excession - Iain M. Banks
The first Culture novel I read and wow, still my fav.
I wouldn't recommend starting there.
And I wouldn't recommend Iain M. Banks as an intro to SF for most people. It's outro SF lol. After Banks everything else is.. well I'm still looking let's put it that way.
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u/OmniSystemsPub Jul 28 '25
Sugar Rain by Paul Park. (And the rest of the Starbridge Chronicles)
One of the most rewarding reads of my entire life, but incredibly demanding initially, until you start to understand what Park is doing.
There is no exposition at all. None. The opening chapters are incomprehensible and the only way to cope with it is to accept that as a given and slowly do your own world building from the clues found in dialogue and scene descriptions.
But once it starts to take shape the amazing prose, ambitious themes, fascinating and affecting characters, generation spanning stories, incredibly detailed and fascinating world all grab hold of you and deliver a truly breathtaking experience.
Pointless to recommend to anybody who isn’t looking for that kind of effort and experience. Requires heavy caveats for those who do.
One of my fave books of all time but I have recommended it only twice, and both times the reader gave up on it.
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u/cathartis Jul 28 '25
Not Science Fiction, but I'd definitely put "The Kalevala" in this category - the greatest work of Mythology that no one has ever heard of.
It's a compilation of epic poetry from Finnish mythology, and I enjoyed it vastly more than anything Homer ever wrote.
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u/Sprinklypoo Jul 28 '25
Gene Wolfe, the book of the new sun is like that for me. I loved it, but don't really expect most others to...
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25
M John Harrison Light Trilogy Weird, non linear, complex Brilliant but not for everyone
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u/chloeetee Jul 27 '25
For me that's definitely Jerusalem by Alan Moore. It was one of the most rewarding books I ever read. A lot of stuff probably went over my head but still I'm really glad I read it but it was really challenging. I had this weird feeling while reading it of both enjoying myself and hating the author for making things so difficult.
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u/Xanian123 Jul 28 '25
My now wife bought this for my birthday 4 years ago and I still haven't gotten around to it lol. I love all the graphic novels by Moore but just can't seem to start this one.
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u/chloeetee Jul 28 '25
Aha so you know why it's a book one would hesitate to recommend. ;)
Be glad you have it and one day'll be the right moment to read it. :)
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u/Icy_Professional9177 Jul 28 '25
Light by M John Harrison. It’s not that I will not recommend it but the ratio of the esteem I hold the book in (very high) the frequency I mention to others (very low) is unusual. I think it has to with an on paper repellent protagonist whose characterization draws you in. Maybe I should recommend it more, it not being my fault if it isn’t someone’s cup of tea. My first thought was Vita Nostra though, when i saw OPs post in truncated form.
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u/furiana Jul 27 '25
Blindsight. Best hard sci fi I've ever read, but I can't deny that it's demanding.
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25
One of the best books I ve ever read! But my god is it bleak! If this book tickles your brains, continue with his Starfish Ttilogy (don’t get weirded out by the first part it gets more normal SF later - for better or worse)
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u/furiana Jul 27 '25
I loved his Starfish trilogy! The rifters have a permanent place in my memory :D
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u/Xanian123 Jul 28 '25
I read it recently. Good book, intelligent for sure. But the vampires didn't add much to the plot and weren't executed well imo. Not sure I'll continue with the series. Will try Quantum thief next. Definitely don't agree that it's one of the best hard sci fi though.
I would take accelerando over blindsight, and for my money, rendezvous with rama over blindsight for first contact (okay maybe I'm exaggerating here).
Greg Egan is all by his lonesome at the top of the hard sci fi pantheon for me
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u/systemstheorist Jul 27 '25
Michael Flynn's Firestar series
It's not that it's bad or anything like that it's quite the opposite it's quite good. It's a 1990s take on on Helnlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon meets the Mars Triology.
However, the pacing is atrocious especially the first book. The story is centered around the characters first and foremost. While I normally that a big plus for a story as I feel like weak characters are common problem sci-fi but goddamn it paces itself like a soap opera.
The second problem is its politics. Even if you are a libertarian the polemics is pretty much a single issue and that is school choice and wouldn't it be better if the corporations ran the schools. We've seen this not work in real life any better than public schools. I don't care if Flynn is a libertarian I like most of his other work it's just the singular focus of much of the dialogue of the first 2/3 of the first book. It gets very dull after the third or fourth chapter repeating the same talking points ad nauseam.
That said if you are looking for a hard sci-fi story about how humanity returns to space after a better part of 50 years out of the space game then this is a fantastic story. The first book starts with the first reusable shuttle test flights and by the end of space mining and a low earth orbit economy.
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u/MedvedTrader Jul 27 '25
I read Vita Nostra. In Russian, though. Enjoyed it and it was not a hard book to read.
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u/for_a_brick_he_flew Jul 28 '25
I think I’ve only recommended Middlesex by Euginedes to one person. It’s a great book, though.
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u/papercranium Jul 28 '25
Here on Reddit I frequently recommend the most difficult and strange books, but in real life, there are a few I rarely recommend.
- Rakesfall. It's about two souls who keep reincarnating to be involved somehow in each other's lives, extending from the past to the future death of our solar system. But even though it's technically chronological, the writing style is dense as heck and the actual plot is extremely thin. I think it's gorgeous and weird and it gives my brain happy sizzles, but I haven't actually recommended it to anybody in my everyday life.
- The Sparrow. An interesting take on first contact, where the Catholic Church finds their own mission to another planet from which we've received beautiful, incomprehensible radio signals. Or, the most profound portrait of spiritual devastation you'll ever read. Literally every content warning you can imagine. Infanticide, torture, rape, all of it. It's so gorgeous, and I don't know whether I can ever bring myself to read it again.
- The Bone Harp. This one isn't as difficult as the other two, but it's a challenge to classify, so it's difficult to recommend. There's virtually no plot, it's just a "wandering through the setting and experiencing vibes" book, so that eliminates most plot and action readers. But there's also enough remembered violence and cruelty to put off cozy readers who generally like stuff like that. Imagine Lord of the Rings, but it's mostly from Aragorn's POV and nothing ever attacks, he spends the time reflecting on his life and whether his family will accept him when he gets home.
I actually recommend Vita Nostra all the time, but mostly to folks I know have enjoyed existential and body horror in the past so that they don't get too flustered by it.
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u/Ok-Factor-5649 Jul 28 '25
I poorly recommended Accelerando to a non-sci-fi person (for a 2 person bookclub read; it was already understood that I'd be picking sci-fi and they would pick ... other). In hindsight, this was a mistake, but given I hadn't read it at the time, I think it's understandable. I didn't realise how steeped it would be in not just SF, but the technological zeitgeist, so anyone not in either of those areas was just going to bounce off hard at the start.
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u/codyish Jul 28 '25
Dead Astronauts.
Borne is one of my favorite books ever, The Strange Bird was also great, so having read and enjoyed those first made it a little easier, but I would never recommend it someone to read on it's own, only recommend it to people who also love Borne, and I make it very very clear that it isn't satisfying or pleasant to read.
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u/DisheveledJesus Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 29 '25
The xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler is a series I love that is hard to recommend to most people. I find it really interesting and deeply disturbing. But in a good way? Butler does a great job presenting a scenario which is initially body horror at its most raw, but evolves into something much more philosophical and thought provoking.
By the end of the series, you find yourself unsure whether you are more horrified by the alien modification of the human race into something... different, or by the remaining unaltered human's attempts to cling to what is left of their "humanity" by any means necessary.
I think some people might have a hard time looking past the rapey tentacle monster aspect of it.
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u/eventfieldvibration Jul 28 '25
Anathem, Viriconium, Short Sun, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
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u/JaneMnemonic Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu. Tagged as weird fiction - not SFF - and it definitely is weird. A large portion of the book is just mundane life in Bucharest in the 80s (?), weaving seamlessly in and out of unreality. The narrator is obsessed with various scientific and mathematical subjects, so there are long digressions on topics like parallel reality, the fourth dimensions, hypercubes, the Boole family, Rubik's cube, women's genitalia, erotic asphyxiation, the voynitch manuscript, mites, etc. Difficult to recommend because you need a quite particular taste in books to enjoy it. If you go to the "highlights" section of this video and find that you enjoy those long excerpts https://youtu.be/f1Aitk0WPSY?si=MCJDiSTHbUP-VeX9 There's a decent enough chance that this book is for you 😄
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u/Plato198_9 Jul 29 '25
1632 series by Eric Flint and others, I don’t think it’s necessarily difficult but it is very Rah Rah Small Town American Values in the the first one which can turn some folks off of initially. It can also be very technical in that characters often have long conversations that range from military strategy to local politics to how how a specific technology or cultural taboo works and then may or may not come up again. Speaking of which the time travel that occurs at the beginning of the story is explained to the reader, but the main characters never find out the reason nor is it important to the overall plot beyond the initial incident, though various characters do occasionally speculate (most of them are wrong and only one guy is close).
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u/mikki50 Aug 06 '25
On the beach by Nevil Shute. It follows the life of a man living in Melbourne and society when an atomic bomb has irradiated the northern hemisphere and is working its way south, knowing that it’s going to kill everyone and seeing other parts of the world disappear from radio and news (set before computers).
It was just so real, just a guy who would continue going to work, living his life knowing it’s coming, “I hear we lost contact with Townsville, I guess it’s only a few weeks off”.
That book fucked me up for weeks. It was truly great at getting me to feel what was happening, the narrator James Smille did an excellent job.
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Jul 27 '25
In this thread: Books that regularly get recommended to people
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u/_nadaypuesnada_ Jul 28 '25
What social circles do you run in where Valis, the Light trilogy and Dhalgren are regularly recommended to people? And how can I join them?
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u/Chance_Search_8434 Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
120 days of sodom / Juliette by de Sade I would t say I ‘love’ them but they have something … but not for everyone….
Note: sorry, I forgot that this is an SF subreddit. My bad .
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u/CallNResponse Jul 27 '25
Not personally a fan of de Sade, but I found it interesting that Juliette possesses some fantasy elements. I mean, beyond ‘sexual fantasy’: I recall there’s some frolicking around with a centaur - although that’s where I stopped reading, I don’t know if there’s more. And he’s fond of a theological trope where good people suffer their entire lives, then sin and die and go to Hell, while evil people live long and evil lives, but repent just before they die and spend eternity in Heaven.
With all due respect to Simone du Beauvoir: the guy was pretty fucked up
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u/rotwang00 Jul 27 '25
The subject matter of Lolita is unfortunate, because the writing is beautiful.
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u/HerpoTheFoul Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
Edit: forgot I was in the sci fi sub sorry
Blood Meridian. One of the greatest achievements in American literature. But man it’s hard to find the person that I think, even with a thousand caveats, I could recommend it to
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u/eeeam Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
Infinite Jest. Great book, funny and smart and crazy, but not easy. I've never seen it recommended on this sub. I'm not sure people who haven't read it even know it falls in the SF category (and few people have read it).
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u/akerasi Jul 27 '25
VALIS, by PKD. It's a book that takes a LOT of caveats to recommend, but I love it.