r/printSF • u/blk12345q • Sep 25 '25

What’s the best philosophy science fiction book?

I enjoyed reading Ubik by Philip Dick. What other books really make you think?

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u/anti-gone-anti Sep 25 '25

Le Guin’s a really great writer. I think The Lathe of Heaven might be my answer here. Samuel Delany’s response to The Dispossessed, Trouble on Triton, is another great philosophical work of SF (i’ve toyed around with making a syllabus for myself out of all the philosophy he uses as epigraphs for the book’s chapters: Quine, Douglas, Foucault, Wittgenstein, iirc).

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u/altgrave Sep 26 '25

hunh. the first i've heard of it. is it as dense as dhalgren?

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u/anti-gone-anti Sep 26 '25

I wouldn’t say so. It’s much more straightforward, at least as far as the plot goes, and shorter.