More like Ilium
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- Ilium
series2 books2003
completed
similar bychallengingfar futuregodswarscience fictionmultiple povspace operaartificial intelligence+3 more
Ilium/Olympos is a series of two science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. The events are set in motion by beings who appear to be ancient Greek gods. Like Simmons' earlier series, the Hyperion Cantos, it is a form of "literary science fiction"; it relies heavily on intertextuality, in this case with Homer and Shakespeare as well as references to Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu and Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
- The Light Brigade
Kameron Hurleystandalone novel2019
similar bychallengingfar futurewarscience fictiontime travel+2 more
The Light Brigade is a 2019 science fiction novel by Kameron Hurley, in which brutal descriptions of war and economic exploitation in a dystopian future are used to provide strongly critical commentary on the nature of warfare and capitalism. It was nominated for both Hugo and Locus awards for 2020.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
similar byfar futurescience fictionspace opera+1 more
Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles opens with 1965's Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis where House Atreides takes control of the only source of the vital spice melange and young Paul Atreides is pulled into a struggle over its politics and religion. Herbert carried the story forward across five further novels — Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune — following Paul's line over the following millennia, before Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson later extended the saga. Many other editions of these six novels are omnibus and box-set repackagings rather than separate stories.
- Jean le Flambeur
series3 books2010
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionspace operaartificial intelligence
Jean le Flambeur is a master thief broken out of a virtual prison to pull off one more impossible heist, in a solar system reshaped by uploaded minds, post-human factions, and economies built on memory and privacy themselves. Hannu Rajaniemi's trilogy - The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, The Causal Angel - is dense, idea-heavy hard SF that trusts readers to piece its future together from context rather than exposition.
- Singularity Sky
series2 books2003
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionspace operaartificial intelligence
Singularity Sky and its sequel Iron Sunrise are collectively known as the Eschaton novels, after the godlike posthuman intelligence that seeded human colonies across space on the condition they never attempt time travel or threaten causality - rules tested when a low-tech colony world is destabilized by a group calling itself the Festival. Charles Stross uses the setup for a mix of space opera, economics, and diplomatic intrigue.
- Helliconia
series4 books1982
completed
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionmultiple pov+1 more
The Helliconia trilogy is a series of science fiction books by British writer Brian W. Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilisation over thousands of years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for centuries.
- Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy
series3 books2002
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionspace opera+1 more
M. John Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract trilogy circles a strange, physics-breaking anomaly in deep space that draws scientists, smugglers, and drifters into its pull across different eras. Light moves between a near-future timeline and a far-future one drawn to the Tract itself; its sequel Nova Swing stays within one future period, where a fragment of the anomaly's altered space bleeds into the run-down port city of Saudade, giving the book a noir, Roadside-Picnic-like atmosphere; Empty Space concludes the sequence. The three novels share a setting and mood more than a continuous plot or cast.
- Aurora
Kim Stanley Robinsonstandalone novel2015
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionartificial intelligence+1 more
Aurora is a 2015 novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel concerns a generation ship built in the style of a Stanford torus, traveling to Tau Ceti to start a human colony. The novel's primary narrative voice is that of the starship's artificial intelligence. Aurora was well received by critics.
- Starship Troopers
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1959
similar byfar futurewarscience fiction+2 more
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on November 5, 1959.
- The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1959
similar bymarsfar futurescience fictionspace opera+1 more
The Sirens of Titan is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.
- Radix Tetrad
series4 books1981
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fiction+2 more
The Radix Tetrad is a group of four science fiction books by A. A. Attanasio. The first novel, the Nebula Award-nominated Radix, was published in 1981, and the last novel, The Last Legends of Earth, was published in 1989.
- The Gods Themselves
Isaac Asimovstandalone novel1972
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fiction
The Gods Themselves is a 1972 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov, and his first original novel in fifteen years. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.
- Implied Spaces
Walter Jon Williamsstandalone novel2008
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionspace operaartificial intelligence
Implied Spaces is a 2008 space opera novel by American author Walter Jon Williams. It explores themes of transhumanism, artificial intelligence and ontology.
- Triton
Samuel R. Delanystandalone novel1976
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fiction+1 more
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for a retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1995. It was originally published under the shorter title Triton.
- City at the End of Time
Greg Bearstandalone novel2008
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionmultiple povtime travel
City at the End of Time is a 2008 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. It was published in August 2008 by Del Rey in the United States, and Gollancz in the United Kingdom. The story follows three drifters in present-day Seattle who are tormented by strange dreams of the Kalpa, a city one hundred trillion years in the future. The Kalpa is attempting to ward off the Typhon, an inexplicable entity that has consumed the rest of the ancient universe and broken down the laws of physics.
- Culture
series15 books1987
completed
part of The Culture
similar byfar futurescience fictionspace operaartificial intelligence+2 more
The Culture series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks and released from 1987 until 2012. The stories centre on The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main themes of the series are the dilemmas that an idealistic, more-advanced civilization faces in dealing with smaller, less-advanced civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds barbaric. In some of the stories, action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of the Culture in its plans to civilize the galaxy. Each novel is a self-contained story with new characters, although reference is occasionally made to the events of previous novels.
- Star Maker
series9 books1937
completed
part of Last Men Universe
similar byfar futurescience fiction+3 more
Star Maker (1937) is Olaf Stapledon's cosmic philosophical novel, tracing the rise and fall of civilizations across the universe as it builds toward questions about creation, unity, and the nature of the Star Maker behind it all, expanding the scope of his earlier Last and First Men. It is paired here with Nebula Maker, a related manuscript Stapledon wrote in the 1930s between those two novels but which went unpublished until its rediscovery in 1976, alongside a handful of shorter pieces. Together they sit within Stapledon's last-men-universe of linked visionary future histories.
- Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchonstandalone novel1973
similar bychallengingwarliterary & generalmultiple pov+1 more
Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 postmodern novel by Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device, the Schwarzgerät, which is slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000".
- Building Harlequin's Moon
Larry Niven & Brenda Cooperstandalone novel2005
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fiction+2 more
The first interstellar starship, John Glenn, fled a Solar System populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology and rife with political dangers. The John Glenn’s crew intended to terraform the nearly pristine planet Ymir, in hopes of creating a utopian society that will limit intelligent technology. But by some miscalculation they have landed in another solar system, and extremely low on the antimatter needed to continue to Ymir, they must shape the nearby planet Harlequin’s moon, Selene, into a new, temporary home. Their only hope of ever reaching Ymir is to rebuild their store of antimatter through decades of terraforming the moon. Gabriel, the head terraformer, must lead this nearly impossible task, with all the wrong materials. His primary tools are the uneducated and nearly illiterate children of the original colonists, born and bred to build Harlequin’s moon into a virtual antimatter factory. With no concept of the future and with life defined as duty, one girl, Rachel Vanowen, begins to ask herself the question: what will become of the children of Selene once the terraforming is complete.
- Diaspora
Greg Eganstandalone novel1997
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionartificial intelligence
Diaspora is a hard science fiction novel by the Australian writer Greg Egan which first appeared in print in 1997. It originated as the short story "Wang's Carpets" which originally appeared in the Greg Bear-edited anthology New Legends. The story appears as a chapter of the novel.
- Dune Universe
universe78 books1963
Start hereDune · Start here
similar byfar futurescience fictionspace opera
Arrakis. Dune. The desert planet, where empire runs on a single substance: the spice melange, which folds space, prolongs life, and unlocks prescience, and which exists nowhere else in the known universe. Frank Herbert's saga is a meditation dressed as an adventure — feudal houses and a secret sisterhood, engineered messiahs and the patient ecology of a world without water, all turning on the terrible gravity of who commands the spice. It reads like scripture and schemes like a war room, ten thousand years hence, among people who have outlawed the thinking machine and made instruments of themselves instead. At its heart stand Herbert's original six — Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune — a single deepening arc across millennia, arguing the whole way between prophecy and free will. Around that spine his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have raised a vast prequel architecture: Prelude to Dune, tracing the great houses a generation before Paul; Legends of Dune, reaching back to the crusade that broke the machines; the Schools of Dune cycle on the founding of Bene Gesserit, Mentat, and Navigator; the Caladan Trilogy and Heroes of Dune filling years the originals left in shadow. Many hands, dozens of volumes, one desert. What sets Dune apart is its refusal of the simple: religion is manufactured, heroes are hazards, and the sand itself — worm, water, ecology — acts as a political power. Begin where the universe did, with Frank Herbert's Dune (1965), and read the original six in order; you need nothing else to feel the full weight. The prequels are a country to explore afterward, taken by era. Beginnings are delicate times.
- The Golden Oecumene
series3 books2002
similar bychallengingfar futurescience fictionspace operaartificial intelligence
The Golden Oecumene is a science fiction trilogy by the American writer John C. Wright. It consists of three books, The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant and The Golden Transcendence.
- Cloud Atlas
David Mitchellstandalone novel2004
similar bychallengingmultiple povscience fictionliterary & general+1 more
Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories in different writing styles that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawaii in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title references a piece of music by Toshi Ichiyanagi.
