Can you recommend a sci-fi book I'll actually enjoy?

September 22, 2015 7:57 AM

I was more in to sci fi as a kid, and now every time I try to get in to a book, I find it unbearable. I'd like some recommendations for books that are more like The Road and less like, say, Wool. Can you recommend books to me?

I like reading about the future, with humans from Earth. I don't mind if they're not on Earth, but I have very little patience for the Seven Hundredth Year of the glorious battle against the Qa'guons in the furthest reaches of Zeta Quadrant (no Dune!).

The future doesn't have to be fancy or optimistic; I'd rather read about a likely tomorrow than a fanciful century from now.

I have no interest in magic, telekinesis, the supernatural, or schmoopy. I did like The City and the City (until it went a bit off the rails towards the end)--that's about as fanciful as I think I can tolerate. (I do like Lovecraft, though.)

I tried William Gibson last year (Neuromancer, maybe?) but got so frustrated with both how dated it felt and how edgy he was trying to be, and gave it away. I had a similar reaction to Ellison, and I've ended up pretty bored with some of the classics (Foundation books especially).

I've enjoyed Philip K. Dick, and as I said, I liked The Road. I liked the idea of Wool much more than actually reading Wool, which I think was pretty badly executed in every way conceivable. I am much more of an Alien person than a Star Wars person; more of a Blake's 7 person than a Star Trek person.

Thanks! I'm not even sure the right terms or genres I should be looking at.

posted by Admiral Haddock to Media & Arts (66 answers total)

You've read Ender's Game, right?
posted by SLC Mom at 8:03 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Sounds like you may like the "Old Man's War series" by John Scalzi
posted by Captain_Science at 8:03 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

You might like Paolo Bacigalupi. It's an all too likely look at where climate change is going to take us.
posted by athenasbanquet at 8:04 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Maybe try some of Gibson's more recent work like Pattern Recognition or Spook Country, which is more like "near future" and less cyberpunk. Remember that Neuromancer came out in 1984, when it WAS edgy, and it's dated because over the next 30 years everyone and his dog imitated it.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 8:04 AM on September 22, 2015 [8 favorites]

Have you read The Martian yet? I think it fits all your criteria, although I'm far from an expert on sci-fi.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:08 AM on September 22, 2015 [14 favorites]

I liked Neil Stephenson's Seveneves, which I recently listened to on audio. It is post apocalyptic, like The Road, and seems very near-future and realistic with the science. I especially liked having rounded female characters getting things done and being friends in space. The book seemed to be aimed at people who want to read about space. People who disliked the books didn't like the info dumps about the tech, but I found them interesting.

Jack McDevitt has written some easy to read stories that feature searching through space for artifacts, and in the one I read, intriguing astronomical features. (Seeker was the title.)

Lock-in is a cool, future tech thriller/mystery.

I also enjoyed Station Eleven, which is post-apocalyptic and literary but not long-winded. But I tend to recommended it to people who "aren't into SciFi", so maybe it's not the best rec for your interests.

I keep meaning to try Alistair Reynolds, a British writer who doesn't get a lot of press notice in the US. The books sound cool from the blurbs.
posted by puddledork at 8:08 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic.
Ben H. Winters, The Last Policeman series.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:09 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

Starting from The Road, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower (followed by The Parable of the Talents) would probably be up your alley (I've heard the argument that The Road is a poor copy of The Parable of the Sower - I don't quite buy it but there's enough truth there to suggest that you'll like the Parable books). If you enjoy those, Kindred is great but in a totally different vein, and her Xenogensis trilogy is a great treatment of aliens interacting with humans.

Staying on the Dystopian future earth theme, Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood, plus the rest of that trilogy), The Book of Dave (Will Self) and Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban) all might be appealing.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is also fantastic if you're up for giving cyberpunk another try (I hate Gibson and like Stephenson quite a bit, for what that's worth). Seveneves is his newest book and also quite good.

I'll second the Martian, but you might find it a little fluffy (it is fluffy but super enjoyable).
posted by snaw at 8:10 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

Any and all of Alastair Reynolds, maybe specifically Pushing Ice and Century Rain.
The Revelation Space series is amazing but while it features humans, has fewer ties to "Earth".
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:12 AM on September 22, 2015

You might like the Expanse series, by James S.A. Corey (which is two people who have an interesting writing collaboration). The first book, Leviathan Wakes, is great and is stand alone if you don't want to read the rest of the series. It really feels to me like everything that happens in the series could happen tomorrow -- humans have populated our solar system, and there are believable politics and action and really great characters, including strong female characters. There are technical aspects to the book, for example, the propulsion system that's used puts certain limits on how they travel. But the technical aspects are believable, easy to understand, and employed in consistent ways.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:13 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seconding the Old Man's War series. Also The Martian. And James A. Corey's The Expanse books.

Heinlein: Starship Troopers.

You might also like José Saramago's Blindness and it's sequel, Seeing. A little different from McCarthy in execution, but like him in that Saramago is known for his unique writing style. He writes run-on sentences and dialog is not set with quotation marks.
posted by zarq at 8:14 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music is a really cool hardboiled detective story set in the future. His Amnesia Moon is also great!
posted by snaw at 8:20 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

Have you read The Earth Abides? It is a post-apocalyptic future novel. It is so, so, so excellent.
posted by jnnla at 8:20 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I loved Station Eleven, which imagines a world depopulated by the flu (but no zombies or vampires).

And I will nth the Last Policeman series, which I recommend to about everyone. It's just great.
posted by brookeb at 8:21 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

How about Red Mars and its sequels (Kim Stanley Robinson)
posted by xris at 8:23 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Have you read Peter Watts? Hard SF - he's a marine biologist and his science is pretty much bulletproof. A pretty bleak vision of the future, but I take that you're not discouraged by gloom. There's plenty of short stories so you can check out if you like his writing.
posted by hat_eater at 8:26 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

I suspect you would find the Mars series tedious, OP.

Definitely think you'd like The Martian, and also The Dispossessed, which achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction works due to its exploration of many ideas and themes, including anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:32 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also with the post-apocalyptic, A Canticle for Leibowitz is great.
posted by terretu at 8:34 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

I picked up a copy of Harry Turtledove's The Valley-Westside War at an airport and liked it, even though I haven't read anything preceding it in the series. A post-apocalyptic novel with a little twist: researchers from our future are visiting North America on a parallel Earth in which a disaster at some point in the 20th century destroyed civilization, and are trying to reconstruct what happened.
posted by XMLicious at 8:39 AM on September 22, 2015

Future earth; no magic. Hard boiled detective sci-fi. Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series. - start with Altered Carbon.

It's not on earth, but I love Karl Schroeder's Virga series: start with Sun of Suns. The setting can be loosely described as free-floating (and warring) cities in a giant ball of air floating through space. The cities have names, but it doesn't hit my "Qa'guons" fantasy trigger. Actually, I love all of Schroeder's work that I've read, but Ventus and Lady of Mazes might be a too fantasy-y for you. Permanence might work well.
posted by nobeagle at 8:40 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Paolo Bacigalupi seems to be very fond of his 'lets rape the sex bot again' plot which made me throw the last book of his I read against the wall.

Have you tried Charlie Stross' near or far future fiction?
posted by pharm at 8:43 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga
posted by Kriesa at 8:43 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Read some more recent Gibson, his latest book The Peripheral is great. Not trying to be edgy, not dated, and interestingly plausible.
posted by Joh at 8:44 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also California by Edan Lepucki - not so much sci-fi but very dystopian.
Lexicon by Max Barry.
posted by brookeb at 8:45 AM on September 22, 2015

Perhaps some old school Robert Heinlein - - you may enjoy the straightforward survival theme of Tunnel In The Sky.
posted by fairmettle at 8:47 AM on September 22, 2015

How about The Girl In The Road by Monica Byrne?

Strange Horizons (from whence the linked review) seems to review a lot of near-future Earth vaguely dystopian struggle books, IME.
posted by Frowner at 8:51 AM on September 22, 2015

Seconding Seveneves, Pattern Recognition, and The Dispossessed.

I'd also add Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, and Charlie Stross' Accelerando. (I've linked the book's ManyBooks page but it can also be purchased and I'm sure he'd appreciate it.)
posted by qbject at 8:52 AM on September 22, 2015

Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant series. Starts off about space refugees, follows the main character's ascent to become the Space Tyrant. Gritty, funny, definitely for adults.
posted by lizbunny at 8:56 AM on September 22, 2015

As near as I can tell, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell fits all your criteria and it's a fantastic book. If you like The Sparrow, the sequel Children of God is worthwhile but not as good.
posted by hootenatty at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

yeah, The Sparrow is the perennial recommendation for contemporary *literary* sci-fi. It is really quite an achievemment.

handmaid's tale?

The recent Station Eleven might be worth the jaunt, though not exactly my cup of tea. Terrific prose, some nice narrative twists, some tired post-apocalyptic tropes. I enjoyed it on a lot of levels.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:09 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Sparrow did suffer from an excess of "spending 200+ pages pointedly not telling you about the ~mysterious missing turning point in the narrative~, ooo don't you just wonder what it was" to the point where I felt it did not pay off.

Also, of course, it has aliens - which, hey OP, are aliens ok if there are also humans, or do you prefer just humans?
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:43 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you’ve enjoyed PKD, I definitely recommend the Lethem books above, along with Daryl Gregory’s Pandemonium (Archetypes, in the form of comic book characters, manifest in the real world.) Ted Chiang’s stories might appeal to you too. Very thoughtful visions of the future, and about as far from schmoopy as you can get.
posted by miles per flower at 9:45 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dream Park by Niven and Barnes.

The eponymous Dream Park is Disney World with all the high tech you could possibly want, including projectible holograms that look absolutely real. In addition to various rides, the real attraction is LARP, supported by all that kind of technology. New games are unveiled every few months, and players compete to be in the first party to run through a new game, because they don't know what's coming.

The book is about the unveiling of a new game, "The South Seas Treasure Game", and the party that runs it, but mixed in is a bit of industrial espionage and a murder. The main character is Alex Griffin, head of Dream Park Security.

When I read it the first time, I instantly turned back to the first page and read it again.

There were a few sequels to it, and none of them measured up IMHO, but the first book in the series is golden.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:57 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Stephenson's Seveneves is worth a look. It's not his best, but it's a good read, one of the best hard SF books to come out last year. The first 3/4 is really well done (and self-contained), while the last seems rather tacked on and probably should have been left to a sequel. Oh well---it's very Stephenson. I would say that his earlier Anathem is probably stronger (and tighter) and a more satisfying read.

If you liked City and the City, I'd try Embassytown by the same author. If that works for you that I'd further recommend both Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice and sequel Ancillary Sword books. She's one of the best authors to emerge in recent years. Both are excellent books.

A little further afield, you may like Michael Chabon's, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. It's a hard-boiled detective novel in a Jewish refugee settlement in Alaska, where Israel fell in 1948.
posted by bonehead at 10:02 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

David Brin's recent "Existence." Speculative near-future (to start with) SF about a kind of "messages from the stars" first contact scenario (I don't wnat to be more specific), and where that leads, while also speculating on a number of current techno-social issues.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:05 AM on September 22, 2015

I second Harry Turtledove and his alternate history novels, but some of them end up in a setting closer to Ancient Times than the future. Read the synopsis carefully before picking one to start. I enjoyed Pierce Brown's Red Rising (which takes place on Mars) despite the violence and war-like parts. There is lots of politics, intrigue and future tech to distract from the war games. It is a trilogy.
posted by soelo at 10:19 AM on September 22, 2015

Ken MacLeod also does near future, "hard" SF quite well. I'd start with the Fall Revolution books: The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, and The Sky Road.
posted by bonehead at 10:23 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

My tastes are very much like yours and I think you would enjoy Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (I agree with a previous commenter that you might find the Mars series tedious), Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer (esp. the second book, but you kind of have to read them all), and the Oryx and Crake trilogy by Margaret Atwood
posted by raisindebt at 10:25 AM on September 22, 2015

The Book of Strange New Things might fit the bill. It is one of those novels that bridges the gap between sci fi and literary fiction. It involves a near future mission by a preacher to bring the Bible to an alien race and his relationship with his wife who was left on an increasingly deteriorating Earth, although that description does not do it justice at all.
posted by Falconetti at 10:27 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I recently read Ready Player One - and it was by far the best SciFi book I have read in years. If you have any knowledge of 80s pop culture, than this book will be extra good.
posted by Flood at 10:29 AM on September 22, 2015

You may enjoy Nexus (and its sequels, Crux and Apex), a near-future techno/political sf tale which takes some Singularity-like ideas in a fun new direction.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:35 AM on September 22, 2015

Maybe George Saunders? You could start with the Tenth of December collection (his work is all short fiction), and if you like that, then go back to the older collections.

Other ideas:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) and A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) have portions that are set in the future. Cloud Atlas, more so.
Also, there's always Delillo & Vonnegut.
Maybe some Murakami, like Wind-Up Bird Chronicles?

All this is probably more in the realm of speculative literary fiction by non-scifi writers than scifi (though in the way The Road is), and scifi fans may find them unsatisfying in that they are not really world building.
posted by vunder at 10:51 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I agree with the above suggestion of the Oryx & Crake trilogy by Margaret Atwood, and would also suggest The Haidmaid's Tale. Both fall chillingly into the "likely tomorrow" category. Atwood prefers to call her work speculative fiction as opposed to sci-fi, but she did win the Arthur C. Clarke award for The Handmaid's Tale.
posted by treachery, faith, and the great river at 10:55 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos got me back into science fiction with a bang after a couple decades away. I like my sci-fi heavier on the sci, and this series delivers, which an entirely plausible future and technologies and a great overarching narrative arc. Plus Simmons is a gifted writer when he's on--although he's unleashed a few duds too, especially when he veers into conventional fiction.
posted by bassomatic at 11:13 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Tad Williams Otherland series!

I loved this series SO MUCH. Futuristic sci fi lite. Much more accessible than William Gibson with a similar idea.
posted by christiehawk at 11:19 AM on September 22, 2015

Read some more recent Gibson, his latest book The Peripheral is great. Not trying to be edgy, not dated, and interestingly plausible.

I think the Peripheral is his best book since Neuromancer (which, in its day was a tour de force).
posted by Nevin at 11:22 AM on September 22, 2015

You might like Slow River by Nicola Griffith. It falls firmly into the category I call speculative fiction.
posted by spindrifter at 12:30 PM on September 22, 2015

Maybe try some old-school Golden and Silver Age sci-fi authors like Issac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Cordwainer Smith and the like. Compilations abound.

Maybe Julian Mays multi-novel series The Saga of Pliocene Exile, Intervention etc. Hard core sci-fi but it does have an almost fantasy bent to it so maybe not exactly up your alley.
posted by elendil71 at 12:45 PM on September 22, 2015

If you like Chinatown and Blade Runner, maybe you'd like Gun With Occasional Music.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:16 PM on September 22, 2015

They may be dated, but perhaps read them as contemporary on an alternate timeline? John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (Metafilter post), The Sheep Look Up and Shockwave Rider?

Others have mentioned Neil Stephenson, maybe The Diamond Age, with Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire as a compliment?

Very much agree with the Cordwainer Smith suggestion. Project Gutenberg has one of his short stories, The Game of Rat and Dragon.
posted by a person of few words at 1:31 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

nthing "Station Eleven."

Also "Spin" (a trilogy with"Axis" and "Vortex") but really any of Robert Charles Wilson's work. My very very favorite is "Bridge of Years." ...and be sure to look for Robert Charles, there's another Robert Wilson out there.

The author I think would really ring your bell is the sadly underestimated -- he's admired, but he should be wildly celebrated -- Joe Haldeman.

Interesting question, some interesting answers.
posted by kestralwing at 1:38 PM on September 22, 2015

+1 for The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. I don't like reading fiction at all, but The Diamond Age and The Hitchhiker's Guide I actually enjoyed.
posted by hz37 at 1:44 PM on September 22, 2015

F.M. Busby, mostly the Bran Tregare books (up until they start being about his kid, those were less interesting). Since you didn't actually say anything about post-apocalyptic settings, actually, let me revise that: all his works are good. But the Bran Tregare stuff is my favourite.

C.L. Moore also did some sci-fi with her usual skill and panache. Recommended.
posted by Nyx at 1:45 PM on September 22, 2015

We're pretty similar in our sci-fi tastes, I think. I enjoyed Gateway by Frederick Pohl. Its pacing is pretty slow, but I found it kind of unsettling in an interesting way. It takes place in space but it's more about human relationships and psychology, and pretty dire situations in the future.
posted by thebots at 2:25 PM on September 22, 2015

Perhaps Cory Doctorow? In the 'speculative fiction' vein of sci fi, near-future, themes around new and digital technologies, alternative economics. I liked Makers, and For the Win. They're free to download from his website.
posted by yesbut at 5:49 PM on September 22, 2015

I am not a sci fi fan at all, but I found these books to be excellent...The Retrieval Artist novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
This series, which started with the short story "The Retrieval Artist," takes place in the future, when the Moon has been colonized for centuries and humans are in contact with lots of alien races. And when humans inadvertently break the laws of alien cultures, they have to face those aliens' punishments — no matter how bizarre or severe. And people sometimes try to disappear, or change their identities, to avoid this harsh alien justice. Detective Miles Flint and his partner Noelle DeRicci wind up solving murders whose solution is often startling — like the cleaning robots were reprogrammed to rearrange the crime scene, or the murder wasn't what it first appears — and at the same time, avoid offending the strange customs of the alien races living amongst us.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:09 PM on September 22, 2015

I just finished "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis. I just randomly picked it off the shelf at the library because it had the word "dog" on the cover and it was great. A nice change of pace and a rare well written scifi comedy that isn't HHGTTG.
posted by Poldo at 7:47 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Lots of recommendations in this thread, and they're all over the road. I've read your criteria carefully, and asking for books like The Road makes me think that you are not afraid to explore the darker side of human nature. So here are a few things you might find rewarding:

Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes

When Heaven Fell by William Barton

Dark Sky Legion by William Barton

Their Masters War by Mick Farren

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi

Also, I'll Nth the recommendations for Ben Winter's The Last Policeman series, Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and other Takeshi Kovacs novels, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake.

I think that in recent years there is rather less new novel-length SF that explores darker themes in a realistic (versus "optimistic") manner. It's still around in various short stories and novelettes, though (Ted Chiang's "Hell Is The Absence Of God", Walter Jon Williams' "Dinosaurs", John Scalzi's "The God Engines", for example).
posted by doctor tough love at 10:05 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gene Wolfe's "Sun" books. Not an easy ready, but worth it. More about Wolfe:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius
posted by longdaysjourney at 7:10 AM on September 23, 2015

I'm liking Windswept by MeFi's own Adam Rakinis a lot at the moment.
posted by Artw at 9:49 AM on September 23, 2015

I would like to second Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, which begins with Annihilation. A government agency is tasked with investigating a geographic anomaly somewhere in the United States. It gets bleak. It does run afoul of your requirement re: no supernatural (it's not clear until the last book what may be happening and it very much skirts the line between Southern Gothic and sci-fi), but it's definitely more of a Lovecraftian bent, so you might like it.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 10:08 AM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

This thread may be helpful, though a lot of the better stuff there leans a little more SF/F than SF, which I'm sensing is not entirely what you are looking for.
posted by Artw at 10:13 AM on September 23, 2015

n-thing Cordwainer Smith: Norstrilia, THe Ballad of Lost C'Mell, The Dead Lady of Clown Town, When the People Fell. Just buy a short story omnibus (there are three great ones, two by Baen and one called The Rediscovery of Man.) All good, all weird, sad, beautiful. Can't recommend highly enough.

Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination"

A.E. van Vogt's "Slan"

Phillip K. Dick "Ubik" as concise as Animal Farm in its critique of Late-Capitalism; seriously! (kind of).
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:19 PM on September 23, 2015

One by Conrad Williams
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:45 PM on September 24, 2015

Just finished John Scalzi's Lock In, which was fantastic and his book Redshirts is a fun read also
posted by drinkmaildave at 7:26 PM on September 28, 2015

I finished Echopraxia by Peter Watts two weeks ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. I am determined not to spoil it. Suffice to say that it has one of the most original takes on a well-worn sci-fi trope that I've ever read. Likewise, the main character is one of my favourites in many, many years. I can't recommend this more highly.
posted by shimmerbug at 6:23 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]