The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is an absolute masterpiece, i would highly reccomend it. And if you haven't already read Frank Herbert's Dune or the sequels its probably up your alley.
Ditto for A Wizard of Earthsea and it's sequels, and The Word for World is Forest.
Foundation is really good, especially for world building, the characters are alright (one is great in particular but Asimov isn't the best at character development). Also a central plot device is the science of psychohistory which is basically historical materialism.
If you like H2G2, try Robert Sheckley. Very funny, very based. His book "Dimension of Miracles" is very close to H2G2 but Douglas Adams said that he didn't read it until after writing H2G2.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is also a fun absurdist romp.
Mars Trilogy. Written in the 90's and a fantastic saga of building a socialist utopia on Mars. By extent, anything by the author Kim Stanley Robinson.
The Culture series by Iain Banks, I recommend starting with The Player of Games
I'm currently up to Matter; thoroughly enjoying myself. Inversions was a bit of a red herring though but I get how it fits into the canon
You can mostly read them in any order, but read Use of Weapons before Surface Detail
The Culture is lib shit in the best way and many of the books challenge, deconstruct, and reconstruct the limitations and mores of Liberalism.
It does have some good parts:
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need (Acts 2:43-45)
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. (James 5:1-6)
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (Ezekiel 23:20)
FUCK YOU i was halfway through typing that until i looked down and saw this
" Faith can move mountains, but it can't beat a man with a quicker draw."
The Sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0I4mTEdAf8 - For the Zoomers who have never seen it
Anything by China Mieville. His Bas Lag series (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council) definitely fit the bill of sci-fi (or fantasy steampunk, at any rate) with solid world-building.
Very dark books, but very well constructed. Plus the heroes, or at least anti-heroes, are all dirt bag anarchists and China is a comrade. Ruthlessly anti-authoritarian books.
Thanks! I was just thinking about editing to add basically all of this.
Neil Stephenson's System of the World is like 2,000 pages of "SCIENTISTS, FUCK YEAH!" about 17thand 18th century science, mathematics, economics, war, and culture. They're huge, sprawling novels that will teach you all kinds of weird esoteric shit about the history of science and maths while being viscerally exciting.
Cryptomonicon is an earlier novel that fits in the same world and is basically "CRYPTOGRAPHY FUCK YEAH", A great if slightly out of date way to learn some basic concepts about crypto and espionage without having to understand math at all.
The Ancillary Saga is just fucking cool, A sci-fi adventure about identity, family, belonging, authoritarianism, war, and what really matters when the chips are down. Also enthusiastically queers the concept of gender and builds vivid, interesting new cultures.
The whole Mockingjay/Hunger Games series is really good and compelling. Brutal take down of Liberalism, capitalism, media culture, and sports of all things. i read all three books in 36 hours.
The Laundry series by Charles Stross are a series of mock-spy lovecraftian cosmic horror novels. They're alternately deadly serious and affectionate parodies, and feature exiting adventures like fighting zombie nazis on the moon.
Anything by Terry Prachett is very good and readable. Discworld is a constant favorite of many fantasy fans. Try Guards, Guards for a good start. It's where the series really gets it's legs. Its about cops, though. They're lovable, fantasy cops, so basically nothing like the real thing.
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers was the loose inspiration for Pirates of the Carribean and features the last conflict between magic and ironworking set in the high seas of the Carribean. Includes cool shit like undead Blackbeard and the doing magic with blood.
Red Shirts by John Scalzi is an affectionate parody of Star Trek. Scalzi also notably was one of the first people to endorse anti-harassement codes of conduct as Sci Fi conventions
The Time Machine and War of the Worlds by HG Wells are both great classic romps
Tarzan and John Connor of Mars are very readable adventures with very bad politics - Connor for isntance is a "Southern Gentleman"
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is still the ur-Science Fiction novel and one of hte best works in the genre
Dracula is also a great read.
If you're in to JESUIIIIIIITS IN SPACE then Mary Doria's The Sparrow is a harrowing sci-fi adventure about anthropology, culture, grace, and suffering.
Starship Troopers is a very fashy sci-fi classic and a great companion to the Starship Troopers movie that parodys it.
John Steakley's ARMOR is a good follow-up to Starship Troopers that ruthlessly deconstructs it.
John Steakley's Vampire$ is a hilarious vampire adventure novel that was made in to a ridiculus John Carpenter movie that is some excellent trash filmmaking
Red Cavalry by Issac Babel is a classic fictionalize first hand account of the Red Cossacks during the Russian Civil War/Revolution
1984 by my boy Orwell is a damning take down of Stalinism written by a man traumatized and embittered by Stalins betrayal of the Spanish Revolution
Any of Lovecraft's stuff is classic pulp horror that also gives a great insight in to the mind of a vicious racist.
the Conan books are fun adventure classics with a surprisingly nuanced main character. Not for everyone because it's very much an ubermensch fantasy, but there's a lot going on that it doesn't always get credit for.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor is a very well reccomended sci-fi adventure about a young Himba woman's adventures in space, but I haven't had the chance to finish it yet.
Oh, and don't forget The Lord of the Rings. It's not for everyone but it's a classic for a reason.
A Long War To A Small Angry Planet can be a bit hard to find but it's a very charming slice of life novel about the crew of a long haul space ship, their relationships, their hardships.
I'll second anything by Stross or Pratchett (although IIRC the zombie Nazis were on an alternate Earth devoid of atmosphere). I've also read and enjoyed Armor, Starship Troopers, and most of Lovecraft. I'll have to check out your other recommendations.
I gave up on Dracula about halfway through because it was too melodramatic for me. Maybe it was an artifact of it being serialized and every chapter ending in a cliffhanger. Maybe I'll pick it up again someday.
Vampire$ sounds cool, I'll have to check out the John Carpenter movie at least. It sounds kinda like the manga/anime/OVA Hellsing, which is really fucking cool if you can put yourself in the mindset of a goth 14 year old and don't mind violence and gore. At one point Dracula crashes an SR-71 into an aircraft carrier full of Nazi ghouls and crucifies them on the wreckage. There's also the Hellsing Abridged series if you're into the whole brevity thing.
Vampires is... It's got wayyyy to many dick jokes, I'm pretty sure there's a scene where vampire strippers eat everyone, and there's just shedloads of blood. It's not mature. it's not highbrow. it probably has some problematic shit I am forgetting. But if htere was a dirtbag vampire movie it is this.
I just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts, and I really enjoyed it. It has a lot of cool worldbuilding in the background, even though the main plot centers on a small crew on a spaceship. If you're into the more small scale hard scifi of a crew dealing with alien circumstances, you should give it a go.
On the less hard scifi and more space opera side of things I recommend both the Foundation series by Asimov for a large scale story about the rise and fall of space empires, and Ancillary Justice (and its sequels) by Ann Leckie for a smaller scale story about AI and revenge. That one also has incredibly strong world building.
I had a three day existential crisis after reading Blindsight and I reccomend following it up with David Graeber's What's the Point if we Cant' Have Fun? as a palate cleanser so you don't blackpill.
https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm - Blindsight is a quick read and it's available in it's entirety here.
CW: sexual violence, cannibalism, cosmic horror, cosmic horror, and cosmic horror.
Everyone is telling me to read Blindsight but having a vampire as the captain of a starship sounds really dumb. Maybe I just don't like mixing fantasy and sci-fi, maybe I need to get over it and read the damn book.
Fire On The Mountain : an alternate history sci-fi book where John Brown succeeds at Harper's Ferry and the South becomes a socialist nation that sends black astronauts to Mars in the 1950s
Glasshouse: a post-singularity novel about an amnesiac war criminal who signs up for an experimental recreation of a 20th-century American town. Edit: there's also gender-bending and mind viruses. Warning: besides the warcrimes, there's also domestic violence and rape.
Walkaway: Semi-Automated Luxury Pansexual Terrestrial Anarcho-Communism
Edit: also check out The Rapture of the Nerds which is a silly fun novel about a luddite living after the Singularity. Link is to a free ebook version
If no one has suggested The Three-Body Problem (by Liu Cixin), I would like to highlight it. It's hard sci-fi, but sacrifices nothing in terms of story or character development. It's a great book that doesn't take the reader for granted., but allows them to ride the momentum of the narrative. Awesome story, awesome concept, awesome book, 10/10.
It was interesting but I didn't really enjoy it much. Maybe something got lost in the translation but I couldn't stay engaged. It did make me want to learn more about Mao and the Cultural Revolution, though
I'll shill for Hyperion. First story in the book really grabbed me. Also Dune, if you havent already, although that's on the longer side.
