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my comment: Wonderful scifi, highly recommended, short and sweet. The story which the Matt Damon movie Adjustment Bureau was based upon. This story is shorter than the movie plot tho. Theres a wonderful audiobook tape recording of this book as well.
Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers
Cyteen by CH Cherryh
Not quite science fiction, but it's an alternative history that teaches a lot about infrastructure and science along the way.
Lots of good recs about, throwing in a couple more mentions. Just finished Red Rising , which I could not put down. Kept feeling like it was on a good arch, then exceeding expectations. Looking forward to more. Not enough Heinlein on the lost here. I'm not sure what specifically I'd recommend though. Quantum Thief is probably some of the most imaginative & epic Sci fi I've read, engrossing world.
And I keep find myself recommending Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. Amabassador from the independent sparse asteroid mining frontier sent in to the great core of expanding empire. Intrigue & outsiderdom & culture.
I particularly recommend the Xeelee Sequence (a series of novels) by Stephen Baxter if you like mind bending sci fi over cosmological time).
More classically, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a great (and shorter) read.
First contact novels can also be interesting (meeting aliens for the first time). Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke is great. Also, Blindsight by Peter Watts.
So many others!
Two favorite books of mine I've seldom seen mentioned but I think are gems: The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Time out of joint , both by Philip K. Dick. The first plays with several layers of reality along the book. One time I found myself re-reading some passages because there were so many layers it was hard to follow, but it's worth it. The second is (if I recall correctly) the inspiration for a 90s pop mo…
It is truly a masterpiece!
We ended up using Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, since that was an existing adaption by a friend of Philip K. Dick's that they had no control over.
The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge, and A Deepness in the Sky in particular. If you check the series out, and I highly recommend you do, read it in order. Which would mean starting with A Fire Upon the Deep, which is excellent.
Thanks for the rec, put it on my tbr. I have only read True Names by VV.
"Mockingbird", by Walter Tevis. 40 years old but startlingly timely: centuries after humanity ceded all authority and responsibility to AI, the last superintelligent robot is ready to die of boredom – and one human has learned to read. "Elder Race", by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This short novel is a bit reminiscent of Iain Bank's "Inversions" in that it combines sci-fi and fantasy through the perspectives of an anthropolog…
It can be a little hard to get into initially, first few chapters are necessary set up, but once the ball starts rolling its a real page turner. There are a lot of entangled plot lines that almost all add major substance to the larger plot. I'm actually re-reading it again just because I remember it so fondly. With all the superhero/game-lore shows and movies out now, it would be a fan dream to see the Worm-verse come to life as a live-action or anime series. The serial nature of it would adapt naturally I'd imagine.
There are many different genres of sci fi. Seveneves is pretty much hard science fiction, in that it deals with plausible physics, which is also one of my favourite genres. I particularly recommend the Xeelee Sequence (a series of novels) by Stephen Baxter if you like mind bending sci fi over cosmological time). More classically, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a great (and shorter) read. First contact novel…
The Mote in God's Eye (Niven/Pournelle)
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks ,starting with Consider Phlebas.
Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds.