Science Fiction

13659 readers

11 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow

132

Sci-fi books which don't involve too much space travels and massive world builds? (self.sciencefiction)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by giriinthejungle to c/sciencefiction

118 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Don't really know how to explain this. I like sci fi and would love to dig deeper into it. Am avid reader and enjoyed Project Hail Mary (though set in space, this book is just amazing), Dune, short stories by Ray Bradbury and TV shows like Raised by the Wolves, Westworld, From (love From!). But e.g. Foundation I really disliked. Wheel of time is massive and I lost interest. Even the guide through galaxy I appreciated but was not really into it. Somehow, all those lots of traveling, lots of worlds, lots of many novel/invented names and terms render reading laborious for me.

Can you help me pin what is that I like and perhaps offer me a suggestion where to start? Thanks!

EDIT: thanks everyone for your excellent suggestions! So happy to be a part of lemmy community. I might make a follow up thread in couple of months so we can discuss some of the works. And lastly, if you been reading this far: have a good weekend.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ann Lecke’s “Imperial Radch” does happen in multiple locations, but revolves primarily around people relationships and de-genders English language for a delightful effect.

Peter Watts will make you learn a lot of words and concepts, will have you read author notes at the end of his books, and will have you take a look at the list of scientific literature used in writing said books. Main overarching topic - consciousness might not be as central to intelligence as we default to thinking it to be.

Charles Stross’ books can take you into space, but are hardly about space or new worlds. Hell, the most space travel heavy book of his I read - Neptune's Brood - explores the ideas of money and debt.

Greg Egan’s everything, but there are two that I immediately remember when I think about his bibliography. “Diaspora” explores weird space times, consciousness bootstrapping, and problems of communication. “Orthogonal” trilogy is “math of spacetime: what could be” as a novel.

Cory Doctorow explores problems of identity and privacy. Start with “Little brother” (yes, it is a 1984 reference) and “Down and out in the Magic kingdom” and expand further.

John Meaney’s “Nulapeiron sequence” is an easy read that builds its world alongside shedding its main character ignorance.