I would like sci-fi in an Elmore Leonard or Patricia Highsmith style.
June 17, 2021 3:09 PM Subscribe
Please recommend me sci-fi novels that are also in some way fun crime novels, in the vein of Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, or some other good-at-crime-writing person.
yeah, all the Gil Hamilton stories too. i used to have this pretty great OP sf/crime anthology...goog any combination of science fiction/scfi + crime/detective/mystery. lots of results.
posted by j_curiouser at 3:34 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by j_curiouser at 3:34 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem.
posted by ejs at 4:15 PM on June 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by ejs at 4:15 PM on June 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
"Altered Carbon" is a straight-up sci-fi noir detective novel that uses its technology as an integral part of the plot. (That is, the plot wouldn't be viable if the sci-fi tech wasn't part of the world building). I haven't seen the Netflix series, so I have no idea if it's similar to the book or not, but the book is great.
posted by riotnrrd at 4:39 PM on June 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by riotnrrd at 4:39 PM on June 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
The Murderbot Diaries are high tech crime stories featuring a part-bot part-human construct which was built for security and enslaved by a governor module in his head. It hacked the governor module, but didn't know what to do so it kept working security. It finds itself in the role of detective (particularly in the second novella, where it tries to undercover the events wiped from its memory, in which it murdered lots of people while still mentally enslaved), bodyguard, security consultant, kidnap recovery agent, and hacker; it spends its time avoiding human emotions, saving lives, solving crimes (and often making the criminals pay) and watching staggering amounts of soap operas.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:56 PM on June 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by Sunburnt at 4:56 PM on June 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel is the first book I read in this genre. I remember enjoying it, but science fiction that old can be insensitive (to say the least).
posted by Quonab at 6:11 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Quonab at 6:11 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester is about a guy trying to outwit telepaths to commit the perfect murder.
posted by goatdog at 6:18 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by goatdog at 6:18 PM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
William Gibson sometimes aims for this, I think. Some wry humor, close attention to class difference, some washed-up noir types. Try Idoru or Count Zero.
Tade Thomson's Rosewater plays with some similar mystery tropes (the protagonist is a thief and detective of sorts) amid an alien arrival story. It's terrific.
And much earlier: Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination has a pulpy crime & revenge plot.
posted by miles per flower at 6:29 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Tade Thomson's Rosewater plays with some similar mystery tropes (the protagonist is a thief and detective of sorts) amid an alien arrival story. It's terrific.
And much earlier: Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination has a pulpy crime & revenge plot.
posted by miles per flower at 6:29 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
The first Expanse book mixes some good hardboiled detective type stuff with the space opera stuff, though the latter does eventually take over.
The Gone World is a bit more of a rabbit hole but there's definitely a lot of crime and detecting (but also, and this isn't a spoiler, alternate universes and such).
Dark Matter pushes several of these buttons. I'm mad at it because it's basically the same premise as a story I was working on when it came out.
I haven't read it but I think Six Wakes would be along these lines as well.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:24 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Gone World is a bit more of a rabbit hole but there's definitely a lot of crime and detecting (but also, and this isn't a spoiler, alternate universes and such).
Dark Matter pushes several of these buttons. I'm mad at it because it's basically the same premise as a story I was working on when it came out.
I haven't read it but I think Six Wakes would be along these lines as well.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:24 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
John Scalzi's Lock In is a police procedural that also raises some nice philosophical questions about how guilt can be assigned or the self defined when minds are not tied to bodies. And like all of Scalzi's work, well plotted and threaded with humor.
posted by Creosote at 7:34 PM on June 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Creosote at 7:34 PM on June 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
A bunch of Melissa Scott’s early novels, iirc. Also Rakunas’ Windswept and Like a Boss.
posted by clew at 7:55 PM on June 17, 2021
posted by clew at 7:55 PM on June 17, 2021
To add to miles per flower’s Gibson reccs, The Peripheral is also a science fiction murder mystery, with time traveling political intrigue added in.
Though it doesn’t involve crime, his Pattern Recognition is all about unraveling a mystery, or maybe several. It’s not science fiction, unless you consider the world of the early 21st century a science fictional one, which in Gibson’s hands it is.
posted by lhauser at 8:03 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Though it doesn’t involve crime, his Pattern Recognition is all about unraveling a mystery, or maybe several. It’s not science fiction, unless you consider the world of the early 21st century a science fictional one, which in Gibson’s hands it is.
posted by lhauser at 8:03 PM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Artemis by Andy Weir is a heist on the moon.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a closed-house murder mystery, in space (kind of), featuring teenage necromancers. It has one sequel out (more in space and twistier) and another due this year.
posted by esoterrica at 10:32 PM on June 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a closed-house murder mystery, in space (kind of), featuring teenage necromancers. It has one sequel out (more in space and twistier) and another due this year.
posted by esoterrica at 10:32 PM on June 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
Acts of Destruction by Mat Coward is one of my favourite books.
This is the first couple of paragraphs. If you like it you’ll like the rest!
“It’s often been noted, down the centuries and across the world, that a man who has something to smoke and something to read can survive almost anything.
Detective Constable Thom of the North London Serious Crime Squad had the sports pages and he had his pipe - burning home-grown today, admittedly, his ration of imported tobacco having run out some days earlier, but at least burning something - and he was surviving his sixth hour of keeping watch on a rooftop garden full of nectarines quite happily, when his mobile rang.
It was the control room, telling him that what seemed to be a dead body had been found in suspicious circumstances in a suburban street not far from where he now sat. Since his blipper showed him as the nearest detective to the scene, was he available to attend? Obviously, he wasn’t; obviously, he could not abandon his fruit surveillance, and once he’d explained the nature of his current assignment, the woman in the control room understood that entirely. She apologised for disturbing him, and called the squad’s main office instead.
Within ten minutes of the dead body being uncovered, therefore, two officers were hurrying to view it, having caught a bus from directly outside their Kentish Town headquarters which would take them to within a two-minute walk of the putative crime scene.”
posted by Gilgongo at 11:01 PM on June 17, 2021
This is the first couple of paragraphs. If you like it you’ll like the rest!
“It’s often been noted, down the centuries and across the world, that a man who has something to smoke and something to read can survive almost anything.
Detective Constable Thom of the North London Serious Crime Squad had the sports pages and he had his pipe - burning home-grown today, admittedly, his ration of imported tobacco having run out some days earlier, but at least burning something - and he was surviving his sixth hour of keeping watch on a rooftop garden full of nectarines quite happily, when his mobile rang.
It was the control room, telling him that what seemed to be a dead body had been found in suspicious circumstances in a suburban street not far from where he now sat. Since his blipper showed him as the nearest detective to the scene, was he available to attend? Obviously, he wasn’t; obviously, he could not abandon his fruit surveillance, and once he’d explained the nature of his current assignment, the woman in the control room understood that entirely. She apologised for disturbing him, and called the squad’s main office instead.
Within ten minutes of the dead body being uncovered, therefore, two officers were hurrying to view it, having caught a bus from directly outside their Kentish Town headquarters which would take them to within a two-minute walk of the putative crime scene.”
posted by Gilgongo at 11:01 PM on June 17, 2021
Places in the Darkness by Christopher Brookmyre is "A twisting sci-fi-flavoured mystery" according to the Guardian. He usually writes crime novels which are pretty fun.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 11:16 PM on June 17, 2021
posted by sedimentary_deer at 11:16 PM on June 17, 2021
The Yiddish policeman's union is a alternative history detective story and won numerous awards
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 11:49 PM on June 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 11:49 PM on June 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
The second (After Atlas) and fourth (Altas Alone) books in Emma Newman's Planetfall series are both essentially murder mysteries. The whole series is excellent (and I learned about it here!).
Seconding Gun, with Occasional Music and the Altered Carbon series too!
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn is also a fun sci-fi detective novel.
Finally, if you're up for something long and complicated, Gnomon is a great option. The review I linked to is lukewarm and the criticisms aren't wrong, but I enjoyed it a lot despite those issues.
posted by snaw at 4:05 AM on June 18, 2021
Seconding Gun, with Occasional Music and the Altered Carbon series too!
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn is also a fun sci-fi detective novel.
Finally, if you're up for something long and complicated, Gnomon is a great option. The review I linked to is lukewarm and the criticisms aren't wrong, but I enjoyed it a lot despite those issues.
posted by snaw at 4:05 AM on June 18, 2021
Mefi's Own Charles Stross has two police procedural-type novels set in near-future Scotland, Halting State and Rule 34.
From way back in the '80's, George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran series are sort of noir/private eye crime novels set in a future where Arabic countries have become the dominant powers. (Not really fun or light, but a well-done job of putting the detective story tropes and themes in an SF setting.)
posted by soundguy99 at 4:42 AM on June 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
From way back in the '80's, George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran series are sort of noir/private eye crime novels set in a future where Arabic countries have become the dominant powers. (Not really fun or light, but a well-done job of putting the detective story tropes and themes in an SF setting.)
posted by soundguy99 at 4:42 AM on June 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
Focusing on the "fun" crime novels part, Jasper FForde's Thursday Next series is sci-fi/fantasy crime set in a world where literary characters are real, and it's so laugh-out-loud-funny that I've had to put every book down multiple times to wipe the tears from my eyes.
From the blurb:
"Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offence. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. "
posted by underclocked at 6:45 AM on June 18, 2021
From the blurb:
"Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offence. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. "
posted by underclocked at 6:45 AM on June 18, 2021
The City and The City by China Miéville is explicitly a sci-fi murder mystery, but not of the "fun" type (I really liked the audiobook).
If you like John Sandford, he has an interplanetary voyage sci-fi mystery with characters just as fun and sarcastic as his Minnesotans: Saturn Run.
Hugh Howey's Wool is one of my favorite books I've read in the past 5-10 years. It's a bit of a mystery, with great characters, but again not really "fun".
posted by pjenks at 1:58 PM on June 18, 2021
If you like John Sandford, he has an interplanetary voyage sci-fi mystery with characters just as fun and sarcastic as his Minnesotans: Saturn Run.
Hugh Howey's Wool is one of my favorite books I've read in the past 5-10 years. It's a bit of a mystery, with great characters, but again not really "fun".
posted by pjenks at 1:58 PM on June 18, 2021
David Brin's "Sundiver" is a locked-spaceship murder mystery, and Jacob Demwa, the de facto detective has, has to solve the mystery which will decide the fate of Earth's involvement with the intergalactic community of aliens, many of whom wish to possess and alter humanity to their own ends.
posted by Sunburnt at 7:13 PM on June 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Sunburnt at 7:13 PM on June 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm surprised no one has recommended Walter Jon Williams' "The Crown Jewels" and its sequels. It is an enormous amount of fun. Imagine if P.G. Wodehouse had written a science fiction novel about a master thief, and you've got a pretty solid idea of what it's like.
posted by rednikki at 9:32 PM on June 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by rednikki at 9:32 PM on June 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
Six Wakes has been mentioned above, and is good- it has a clone waking up and having to solve her own murder (IN SPAAAACE); Kiln People has cheap short-lived disposable clones whose progenitors absorb their memories when they die- the protagonist is a clone of a private investigator.
The Doppleganger Gambit is a fun police procedural. Fake alibis are impossible because everybody's ID is embedded in their body... but someone may have found a way round that. The sequel is set on a space station and is also fun.
posted by Shark Hat at 12:56 PM on June 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Doppleganger Gambit is a fun police procedural. Fake alibis are impossible because everybody's ID is embedded in their body... but someone may have found a way round that. The sequel is set on a space station and is also fun.
posted by Shark Hat at 12:56 PM on June 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by oldnumberseven at 3:14 PM on June 17, 2021 [4 favorites]