







Samwiz1's Literature
Recommendations!!! :D
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​​​​The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is fairly unique among the
old guard of good Science Fiction in that it doesn't take itself
seriously. Like, to any degree. It's a very fun series because it
knows what it's espousing is nonsense and that is what gives it
its character. The series starts with the Earth being blown up and
whiplashes you around the galaxy to every little nook and cranny
of imaginative soft SciFi storytelling you would never have
thought to ask for on your own. If you're in the mood for a fairly
lightehearted adventure, give this one a try, and whatever you
do, don't leave home without your towel.
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Watership Down
Richard Adams
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I originally read Watership Down as a part of a "Film and Story"
class in my 3rd year of college. It's a book about Rabbits.
Specifically, it's a book about a small troop of rabbits, who are
friends. One of these rabbits has a vision that the end of the
world (that being the rabbit's burrow) is coming and they all
have to flee if they want to live. It's a surprisingly touching story
told from the perspective of rabbits crossing the British countryside,
just trying to make sense of the world of humans they don't
understand and trying to survive in a world where they alone
are prey. Even in the eyes of other, stronger rabbits. If they catch
you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you.
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The Robot series
Isaac Asimov
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Isaac Asimov is one of the founding fathers of modern
Science Fiction, and his three loosely-linked main SciFi
settings--the Robot series, the Empire series, and the
Foundation series--are an example of some of the most
satisfying and genre-defining books that have been written
for SciFi at large. The first of these is the Robot series, which
follows a detective and his assigned Robotic partner, R. Daneel
Olivaw. Over the course of the series, the pair have to solve
a steadily cascading string of murders and mishaps to
explain the direction Humanity has inadvertently set itself on.
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Empire series
Isaac Asimov
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The second part of Asimov's three-era SciFi setting, the Empire
series is composed of three separate books exploring the
nuances of galactic life as a human galaxy slowly centralized
itself towards the inevitable end of Galactic Empire. While
none of the books in this trilogy are my particular favorite, they are
solid stories on their own and they have fun playing with ideas of
political necessity and methods of governance.
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The Foundation series
Isaac Asimov​
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The final of Asimov's three connected SciFi settings, the
Foundation series explores the eventual inevitability of
Imperial decline and fall. Putting a SciFi spin on the Fall of Rome,
mathematician Hari Seldon develops the science of​​
"Psychohistory," a method of predicting the likely course of future
history based on scientific analysis of the average trends of entire
human populations. And while the science can't account for the
possibility of radically off-center individuals, there is always a backup
plan should the Foundation meant to survive the coming Dark Age
falter in its course. This series was my first introduction to truly
long-winded SciFi dramas, and it will always hold a special place in
heart as the series that made me curious about the stars.
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The Sundiver series
David Brin
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Sundiver is one of those series that starts pretty chill and on-par
with what you'd expect of its genre and then gets more and more
out of control the longer you stick with it. The first in a six-book
series, the first book is a fairly tame and average story about a
newly-emerging Earth trying to find its place in a galactic civilization
that has existed since long before humans spoke their first words,
but over the course of the series the monumental worldbuilding and
incredible character development of humans, uplifted dolphins and
chimpanzees, and aliens alike has made this one of those series
I'll never be able to forget. I don't think the Sundiver series is the
best series in this list, but it's in close contention for my personal
favorite on the grounds of its worldbuilding alone. If you give it a shot,
stick with it past the first book. If you can keep up, it won't disappoint.
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The Red Rising series
Pierce Brown
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This one... This is a weird one. The Red Rising series is a
very, very well-written long-form SciFi political drama set in
a solar system populated by a humanity split into colored
castes. The first three books follow the exclusive perspective
of Darrow of Lykos, a former red slave turned painstakingly
into the peak of human civilization's physical and mental
prowess--a Gold. The reason I'm a bit hesitant to recommend
this series is it is PAINFUL to go through if you're the type of
person to personalize and internalize the stories you go through.
That said, the worldbuilding behind these stories is incredibly
complex and satisfying, the first book on its own is a wonderful
young adult Hunger Games-like survival story, and the deep
personality of the perspective characters is the best first-person
writing I've ever had the misfortune to go through. These books
are wonderful and they will break your heart. Over and over again.
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Ender's Game series
Orson Scott Card
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The book Ender's Game has garnered a strong legacy on its own
as a good depiction of the military realities of command in space.
But that's not why it's on this list. Ender's Game itself may be a
great story, but the thing that I loved about it was actually the latter
books in the series that nobody ever talks about. The latter books
follow a significantly older Ender as he tries to reckon with the lifelong
guilt of having committed a xenocide, and the story works heavily with
themes of culture and faith in the far reaches of human space. The thing
that makes me love this story is that it puts a Catholic colony on an alien
world and asks "how would missionaries preaching to a pre-technological
alien race convince them that they too are created and love by God?" It's
a fascinating question mixing old world faith with new world realities in a
way I haven't seen any other SciFi attempt, and that's why I think the
extended series past the one-hit wonder is just as worth your time.
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Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
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While Ready Player One the movie is very explicitly shallow
fan-fiction, the book offers significantly more complexity and
depth in a fascinating dystopian future. In a world where
EVERYONE plays the same all-encompassing VR game
and entire economies revolve around the resources and
stocks surrounding the game, suddenly the entire world is
set on fire when the sole owner of the platform dies and
leaves the ownership of his gaming empire to whoever can
solve a series of in-game puzzles first. And where the movie
based on the book is a feel-good story about saving the world
and getting the girl, the book holds no punches about the brutal
reality such a challenge would invite for all who have the
misfortune to cross the corporate powers who want it all.
Ready Player Two is really mid tho...
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The Expanse series
James S. A. Corey
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The Expanse series, starting with Leviathan Wakes, is a truly epic
SciFi setting whose twists and turns left an aftertaste of fine wine
for me. Set in a near-future solar system where the colonization
period has already concluded, the careful balance of power between
Earth, Mars, and the various settlements of the Belt is suddenly
shattered when an alien artifact is discovered to have been sitting
dormant at the edge of the solar system since before the dawn of
human life, and humanity's ensuing power struggle over trying
to destroy or control the technology leaves no corner of civilization
unaffected. I love this series because it is Hard SciFi with regards
to humanity and it takes fascinating liberties when it comes to the
alien artifacts humanity stumbles upon, and it just does that balance
of realism and creativity so very, very well.
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House of the Scorpion
Nancy Farmer
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I initially read The House of the Scorpion back in 8th grade,
and it was the first recent Science Fiction book I'd gone
through. During a time in my life when most of the
school-assigned books we read were either incredibly boring
or obviously preachy, this book stroked my brain in a very
specific and strange way in that it was just a normal book.
It follows a drug lord's clone in a near-future dystopia, where
the reason the clone exists is to have compatible organs to
transplant into the drug lord if they're ever needed. So, what
happens if something happens to the drug lord and suddenly
the clone child's time for harvest comes up? It's a fascinating
premise and it's interestingly executed. Not the best book or
series on this list, but one that I have fond memories for and I
would be remiss to not include it as a recommendation.
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The Dune series
Frank Herbert
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Up there with Asimov's Foundation for being the founding fathers of
modern Science Fiction is Dune. Having recently been made into a
surprisingly-faithful movie adaptation, I went through the original six-book
series a while back and loved every second of it. Soft SciFi to its core,
Dune and its sequels follows questions of human divergent evolution.
Say over a span of many millennia you could track the genetic path of
a single bloodline down towards the eventual goal of creating someone
with genetic powers sufficient to bring a permanent and lasting order
to the human race. Say you find out you are that child, and that you
weren't supposed to be. Now you have a price on your head and the
entire galactic Empire is out to get you. It's one of those political adventure
dramas that has stood the test of time and established a legacy all to its
own, and I can't recommend it enough.
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert A. Heinlein
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Let me preface this one by saying Robert A. Heinlein, while an
amazing author, was a little crazy. That said, having a bit of crazy
in the equation can lead to some really fascinating questions
getting asked. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a one-off novel
depicting the moon as a colony of Earth having grown tired of the
mother planet's oppressive boot. The situation on Luna is a
strange case, with a massive sex imbalance in favor of men due
to the original penal colony nature of the settlements there, and
any hope the moon has for a revolution is tricky given the monopoly
on information exchange the local government has. It's one of those
stories that I'd highly recommend if you want to get an introductory
feel for what the SciFi I like going through is like without committing
to a longer series, and it's a very nicely told story besides.
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Starship Troopers
Robert A. Heinlein
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Another Heinlein story, Starship Troopers has gained a cultural
reputation online for being a shallow, militarist story about killing
bugs and promoting rampant xenophobia. But while there is definitely
a lot of bug-squishing and alien-fearing, the book is so much deeper
and more interesting than the parody-based movies and games it has
since inspired. The story follows the growth of a young man who is
convinced by his civics teacher to sign up for the military and who very
quickly learns both the harsh nature of a universe that would tear the
human race apart if it got the chance and the reasons why a harsh
human government is necessary to survive in such a universe. This is
one of those stories that you won't agree with entirely, and I don't think
anyone should agree with it entirely. But like with most of Heinlein's
works, it's meant to make you think, because even if the main characters
are wrong, they have some fair points. If those points aren't enough to
win you over, it's up to you to make sure you know why that is.
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Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
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A bit of a wildcard on this list, Mere Christianity is a
compilation of the philosophical, theological, and ethical
musings of Narnia author C.S. Lewis as he wrestles with the
question of what it means to be "Christian." In a day and age
where what the Christian faith means to any single person is
often radically different from another person, this book helped
me at a time when I needed it to remind me what goodness is,
why we should always seek joy over pleasure, and why no
matter how bad the world gets there will always still be hope.
If you're going through a rough time, I'd recommend this book
for the simple reason that it helps restore a bit of hope you need.
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Ringworld
Larry Niven
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Before you proceed, minor spoiler warning for a pretty key concept
in the book. Got it? Alright. Ringworld, as far as SciFi stories go, wasn't
the best book I've ever read or listened to. But it did have one very
unique question that I haven't been able to get out of my head since
going through it. It's a story about humanity discovering a "Ringworld"--a
massive construct built around a star designed to replicate the feel and
purpose of a planet's surface but at a mind-boggling scale with millions
of worlds' worth of land on it--but that wasn't the thing that did it for me.
The fascinating part of Ringworld was the idea of Luck as a genetic trait.
In the setting, to fight overpopulation any children past a legal limit have
to be granted by lottery. What this means is if "Luck" is to any degree a
genetic trait, you'll eventually discover it by finding who has parents who
won consecutive lotteries going generations up. I won't get into the details
of why that detail was important for the story, but among all the other usual
soft SciFi shenanigans this book has, the idea of investigating what might
happen if lucky people could be born even luckier lives rent free in my head.
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Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
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Alright, before you say anything, I know this one has one heck
of a reputation. Atlas Shrugged is an incredibly long fiction
novel by famous author and Anarcho-Capitalist philosopher
Ayn Rand. It tells the long and winding tale of a society in decline
because the governments of the world have been leeches of a
formerly-prosperous private sector and have cut down every
aspect of free market competition in the name of "Fairness."
One of many lessons the book espouses is that if you try at
all times to encourage fairness in society, more often than not
you'll make things "fair" at the lowest common denominator,
and a society obsessed with "fairness" will drag itself into a​
new dark age for lack of innovation. I don't agree with everything
this book posits, but all the same it is a FASCINATING read.
Not something I'd recommend to just anyone, but if you have my
unique flavor of Politics and Literary interest combined? You'll
be hard-pressed to find a story that will make you think about
why you believe what you believe as much as this one. Just...
Don't go telling people it's your favorite book, probably. :)
Mortal Engines series
Philip Reeve
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Mortal Engines is one book in a fairly large series depicting the
post-apocalypse of a world where a significant majority of the world's
land was flattened into a single landmass. In the wake of that end of
the world, humanity built massive cities on treads and wheels and
learned to live mobile lives in an unsustainable ecosystem of tread
cities preying on smaller ones. It's a fascinating and truly unique
setting and I fell in love with its twists and turns in late High School.
It does a very nice job of mixing elements of classic SciFi with an
unprecedented degree of steampunk Victorianism, all with a cast
of fairly likeable characters in an ever-changing world. And while
some people still dream of empire and domination, most folks just
want to find a way to love, be loved, and be happy in their safety.
Disclaimer: The movie they made based on this book was waaaay
too watered-down and kid friendly. It's a beautiful take on the
aesthetics of the universe but the story isn't anywhere near as good.
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The Red Mars trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson
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The Red Mars trilogy is the best Science Fiction I have ever
read. Period. That said, it's also very complex and scientific
in a way that every now and then managed to lose me. The
trilogy follows the perspectives of some of the original hundred
scientists, engineers, and explorers sent on a bi-national
expedition to form a permanent colony on the surface of Mars.
It is true Hard SciFi, adhering to everything we understand
about the possible and the likely with regards to a modern view
of science. It's a tale of survival, then of development, then of
politics, then of life itself, and if you wanted me to narrow down
this entire recommendation list to a single item, it would be
between the Sundiver series and the Red Mars trilogy. That's
it. The three books in this series have had an enormous impact
on how I view SciFi as a genre and I think they more than
anything else will impact how I write my own SciFi content
in my own life. Proceed with caution and respect in equal measure.
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The Old Man's War series
John Scalzi
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The Old Man's War series is a shorter dive than some of the other​
SciFi recommendations on this list, but it's a fun and engaging
setting for a more casual reading that follows multiple character
perspectives over the course of the series. The basic premise is that
Earth has been kept in the dark about the nature of the galaxy's politics
by their own Colonial Union, and the Union's military recruits old men
and women from Earth to give them new bodies and fight for whatever
the Union decides is necessary. The overarching problem the series
addresses is that in the name of expansion, humanity's political systems
have generally just grown too trigger-happy and the other races they've
been fighting are slowly putting aside their differences in the interest
of containing humanity, but it's notably more complicated than a single
soldier could solve. But what about... Multiple soldiers?
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Snowcrash
Neal Stephenson
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Snowcrash is the only entry on this last (bar maaaaaybe debatably​
Ready Player One) to take place in the "Cyberpunk Dystopia" genre.
It follows two characters trying to survive in a fascinating post-America
world that bleeds neon at the edges. A courier and a hacker work
together to understand an ongoing scheme revolving around the
new cybernetic drug "Snowcrash" and what it means for the people
producing the highly-dangerous substance. It's a very unique book in
its scope and it's on this list because it touched on so many individual
little things. A collapsed federal government that left the US in a
defacto federation of city-states with the government only existing to
collect taxes used to fund itself, a mix of modern and ancient cultures
blending to form something new and terrible, excellent action scenes
with detailed descriptions of exactly how every move of a fight goes
down, savvy dialogue and cool digital elements... There's so much to
be had in this one, and if you like a good sword-wielding cyber-ninja,
Snowcrash is probably right up your alley.
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The Bobiverse series
Dennis E. Taylor
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The "Bobiverse" series (starting with We Are Legion (We Are Bob)) is
a fairly self-aware first-person SciFi series about a man who gets
his extracted brain scan turned into the mind for a space probe hundreds
of years after he breathed his last breath. It made the list because it's just
an enjoyable story with a fun set of narrators, with the camera following
the perspective of "Bob" and the copies of himself he eventually learns to
make and spread. In humanity's most dire hour, the overwatch they find
themselves receiving from the heavens on high are an unknown swarm
of the same geeky coder from the 21st century, who despite all the
danger and tragedy of the universe doesn't know how to stop making
cheesily relatable SciFi quips. It's charming in its own way and is just
a good time, even if it's not the deepest SciFi out there.
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The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
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So I know most of the entries on this list have been Science Fiction
because I just can't stop chewing down on SciFi like I'm an addict,
but any literary list wouldn't be complete without the single most
genre-defining work of fantasy literature ever made. The Hobbit is
a fairly standard adventure story about the unassuming Hobbit
Bilbo and his quest to get everyone to stop bothering him so he
can go home and live his life in peace, and The Lord of the Rings
is the most iconic fiction trilogy of the modern age with a wonderful
film adaptation to boot. If you haven't gone through the Lord of the
Rings at some point in your life--film or book, it doesn't matter--stop
whatever it is you're doing and read or watch it. It's just the best.
And trust me, you'll understand so much more internet culture for
having seen it. More than anything else on this list, if you haven't
gone through this entry, you really are missing out.
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A Fire Upon the Deep
Vernor Vinge
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A Fire Upon the Deep takes a neat species premise and sets up a
unique world for its characters within it. Early in the book, a human
evacuation off a science world gone wrong crash-lands on an unknown
world. Only two adult humans survived, due in part to the only surviving
ship having the entire youth of the evacuation in stasis on board. The two
adults are shortly disposed of by the locals, leaving just children to explore
a strange new world. The local inhabitants are a pack species of wolf-like
creatures whose consciousness and intelligence comes from proximity
distance with other members of their species. A single "tine" is composed
of half a dozen members, with their consciousness continuing as long as
a pack can maintain enough members to keep its intelligence intact.
It's a fascinating premise and the overarching doom facing the Zones of
Thought that define the setting (the further you are from the core of the
galaxy the more SciFi tech is allowed) is a fun take on a few different
premises, and even if it doesn't top the list, it's definitely an honorable
mention for creative species-building.
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The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
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And funnily enough, the final entry on this list ends up being
the oldest entry as well. The War of the Worlds tells the tale of
a late 19th-century Britain reckoning with an alien invasion.
Having shot themselves out of giant cannons on neighboring
Mars, the aliens have come to Earth for its resources, its living
space, and its atmosphere. Humanity, though able to resist with
sufficient artillery and naval power, is still hopelessly outmatched.
The narrative itself follows one man unfortunate enough to get
caught up in what he thinks is the end of the world, and what he
sees and learns in the process of the invasion was a surprisingly
ahead-of-its-time interpretation on how an interplanetary war could
start and end. A true classic, and one that stood the test of time.
Oh, and if you liked this, go check out Frankenstein as well.
That book kinda accidentally gave birth to science fiction as
a concept, and it's a good story of morals and humanity besides.
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And that's all I've got to recommend for now!
I know my taste is pretty tunnel-visioned in on Science Fiction as a genre, but all
the same, I hope the recommendations I've put forth here have been of some
use to you, whether you're looking for writing inspiration of your own or you
just want a good story to munch on for a few days, weeks, or months.
There's a lot of good stuff out there, and I'll try to add more interesting picks
to this list as I keep expanding my own roster of stories to pick from.
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Thanks for giving this list a read, and have a great rest of your day! :D
Hey there!
If you're here it's because you're at least remotely interested in seeing what I'd recommend you go through if you want some cool things to read on your own time.
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As a disclaimer, the vast majority of the entries here I originally went through via their audiobook forms on Audible. My Audible library is massive and I cannot highly enough recommend trying out audiobooks. Yippee.
And no, before you ask, that's not sponsored. Though I wouldn't mind if it was. :)
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So, from the top, I'm going to organize this by author's last name, just because that's the way most book lists end up being formatted and I want this page to feel just professional enough to be respectful, because I have a lot of respect for the items I've elected to put on this list. As one final disclaimer, yeah, a LOT of this list is SciFi. I love my SciFi and chew it down like it's bread and I've been starving my entire life. I hope you find something of use from my own explorations, and enjoy!
Uplift Universe my beloved (we love talking monkeys engaging in interstellar politics)
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