So, you’ve decided to sit down and get into readingsci-fibooks. Maybe you’re tired of friends pestering you to pick upLeviathan Wakesevery time they complain aboutThe Expansenot getting a seventh season, or you’re ready to take a break from reading light, fluffy romantasy and want something that’s got more going on than sexy fae drama.
The wild world ofsci-fi literature is full of fantastic booksand incredible storytelling, but like any canon that’s been evolving for over a century, it also has some incredibly inaccessible and difficult books. While many of them are also some of the greatest works in the genre, they’re also frequentlyheavy on the technobabble– or worse, real science – and often stray into some very experimental and existentially challenging forms of storytelling. So, while these books are all (or at least mostly) excellent,beginners should be cautious about jumping straight into the deep end of this particular pool.
10Dune Messiah
By Frank Herbert (1969)
Frank Herbert’sDunewas a novel that was at least as influential on the genre of science fiction as Tolkien’sLord of the Ringswas for fantasy; it enshrined tropes and terminology that are still in common use by hundreds of authors today, and has inspired some genuinely incredible film adaptations. The samecan’t really be said for its immediate sequel,Dune Messiah.
WhileMessiahis a fantastic second chapter in the Atreides saga,it is a genuinely depressing book, as most of it concerns Paul Atreides and the tragedies he endures while consolidating the Empire he never wanted. By the end, Paul loses almost everything he cares about, and exiles himself into the desert rather than continue down the path of violence that’s been blazed in his name. It’s a beautiful and poignant moment, but for someone just getting into the genre, it may be a little bleak – and of course,the subsequentDunebooksgo even farther off the philosophical rails.
9Anathem
By Neal Stephenson (2008)
Neal Stephenson is a brilliant but often painfully verbose writer. Some of his other books, likeSnow CrashorThe Diamond Age, make for decent enough entry points into science fiction as a whole, although they, like the rest of Stephenson’s work, rely heavily on metatextual references to make their points;Snow Crashin particular reads very differently depending on whether you’ve read any of William Gibson’s early works.Anathemtakes that metatextuality a few light-years further.
Anathemis a deep, philosophical analysis of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which isthe sort of thought experiment known to drive physics grad students to heavy drinking. Stephenson further complicates this by using a framework known as Directed Acyclic Graphs, which are a form of topologically ordered flowchart used by biologists, information scientists, as part of the way he frames the exploration of overlapping quantum realities. It’s a brilliant exploration of quantum philosophy – and at almost 1000 pages, its better suited as a doorstop than an entry point into science fiction.
8Dhalgren
By Samuel Delaney (1975)
Samuel Delaney is a genuine master of the American science fiction scene, andDhalgrenis one of his best-selling and most polarizing books. It sold half a million copies in its first year, andDelaney’s fellow sci-fi authors have both praised it and damned it, calling it everything from “the very best ever to come out of the science fiction field” (Galaxymagazine, March 1975) to “the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction” (Outworldsmagazine, January 1976).
Dhalgren’s incoherent narrative tells the story of the Kid, an amnesiac and possibly schizophrenic drifter who embodies the concept of an “unreliable narrator” so much that the book reads about as easily as James Joyce’s notoriously brain-twisting novelFinnegan’s Wake.Dhalgreneven uses a similar structural conceit toFinnegan’s Wake, finishing on an incomplete sentence that connects to its opening line, creatinga circular story that further reinforces the Kid’s unreliable narration– and further reinforcing the fact thatDhalgrenis a book not for the literary faint of heart.
7Gravity’s Rainbow
By Thomas Pynchon (1973)
Thomas Pynchon is widely regarded as one of the Great American Novelists, andGravity’s Rainbowis the book that helped him earn that appellation; on its release it won the US National Book Award for Fiction, and it was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nebula Award. TheNew York Times’review of the book had the headline"One of the Longest, Most Difficult, Most Ambitious Novels in Years."
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All of that is to say thatGravity’s Rainbow’s brilliance is only eclipsed by its complexity. The book features over 400 characters, and many of them narrate in widely contrasting styles and even formats, resulting in changes between chapters from movie script format to stream-of-consciousness narration to fourth-wall-breaking dialogue. It’s a phenomenal exploration of military-industrial development and a conversation on free will all at the same time, but it’s also potentially incomprehensible to any reader who isn’t used to such unconventional stylistic freewheeling.
6The Andromeda Strain
By Michael Crichton (1969)
While Michael Crichton’s greatest legacy is unquestionablythe novelJurassic Parkand the film franchiseit spawned,The Andromeda Strainisthe novel that put him on the map as the king of 20th-century techno-thrillers. The titular Andromeda Strain is a deadly microorganism that arrived on Earth aboard a military satellite, and the novel’s characters – a group of doctors recruited by the U.S. military – must work to understand it before it breaks containment and threatens the globe with a pandemic of unknowable proportions.
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The Andromeda Strainwas a phenomenal success for Crichton as a novelist, yet the interceding 50 years since its publication have resulted in a novel that hasn’t aged particularly well. There’s a good amount of implicit misogyny in the book’s very bones, which was certainly common in the military and scientific communities at the time but reads poorly today.The Andromeda Strainalsodoesn’t quite have the balance between plot and technobabble that Crichton’s later books handled better, making the frequent forays into dense discussions of Andromeda’s biology an exercise in patience for readers without a postdoctorate fellowship in virology.
5Starship Troopers
By Robert Heinlein (1959)
Heinlein’sStarship Troopersis theLord of the Ringsof military science fiction; intentionally or not, everything in the genre that has come since has been influenced by it. Whether it’s other novels like John Steakley’sArmorand Joe Haldeman’sThe Forever War, or the entire concept of armored super-soldiers seen in gaming franchises likeWarhammer 40,000,Halo, orDoom,they all lead back to Heinlein’s Hugo Award-winning book.
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Yet, for all its praise and contributions to the genre,Starship Troopersis also a seriously polarizing book. Even to this day,scholars can’t agree on whether the novel is a celebration of a militarized, fascist, human-supremacist society, or a satire of one, although it’s the latter interpretation that fueled Paul Verhoeven and his brilliant 1997 film adaptation.
The book is also crammed with heavy philosophical and civic-minded infodumps that occasionally read more like a textbook than a novel, as well as some painfully hyper-masculine chauvinism. As a result, while certainly an influential and occasionally thrilling read,it’s best for a sci-fi neophyte to just watch the film first and slog through the novel later.
4Ringworld
By Larry Niven (1970)
Ringworldwas the first novel Larry Niven wrote in hisKnown Spaceuniverse, which he had spent the 1960s exploring via short stories. The change to novel format resulted in Niven making an impact on science fiction approximately as large as the titular Ringworld – a massive construct encircling a star that provides enough surface area to fit several million Earths, packed with odd and often primitive inhabitants.Ringworld’s influence can still be seen today, most notably inHalo, but similar megastructures have also appeared recently in bothStar WarsandStar Trek.
For all its influence, however, Niven’sRingworldhas aged extremely poorly. If Heinlein’sStarship Troopersis chauvinistic, thenRingworldand its depictions of gender are downright misogynistic, with protagonist Louis Wu developing an almost pro forma sexual relationship with walking plot device Teela, who herself is a descendant of one of Louis' former lovers.Ringworld’s overall story is a good one, but first-time readers are heavily advised to check their modern sensibilities at the door.
3Red Mars
By Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)
Kim Stanley Robinson’sMarstrilogy, of whichRed Marsis the first book, may beone of the most heavily-detailed essays on terraforming and interplanetary colonization ever written. The series spans the years from 2026 to 2212 and follows several generations of colonists as they work to transform Mars from an inhabitable desert to a utopian paradise and, along the way, find ways to genetically engineer themselves to better fit the biospheres of new worlds.
However appealing they are as a potential future, though, Robinson’s books are a little heavy on the ecology and a little light on the plot to be a good entry point into reading science fiction.
Red Marsand the rest of the trilogy are brilliant books, fascinatingly and accurately positing a future where such interstellar colonization efforts would require the backing of not just national governments, but also transnational corporations that are actually competent and helpful contributors to the colonization efforts rather than the vainglorious bumbling of an egomaniacal oligarch. However appealing they are as a potential future, though,Robinson’s books are a little heavy on the ecology and a little light on the plotto be a good entry point into reading science fiction.
2Slaughterhouse-Five
By Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Kurt Vonnegut, another one of America’s greatest authors,clearly drew on his experiences as a German prisoner of war in Dresden during the Second World Warwhen writingSlaughterhouse-Five, given that the book’s protagonist Billy Pilgrim endures a similarly harrowing experience. Unlike Vonnegut, though, Billy is abducted after the war by the alien Tralfamadorians, who place him in a zoo with a porn star for a mate and send him flashing back and forth through time.
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Everything aboutSlaughterhouse-Five, from its brilliant nonlinear structure to its powerful anti-war message, makes it clear that the book has deserved every iota of praise it has received over the years. Yet that same nonlinear structure, and the raw power of how it explores Billy’s (and by extension, Vonnegut’s) traumatic experiences in the war, make ithard to recommend as anyone’s starting point.
1The Quantum Thief
By Hannu Rajaneimi (2010)
Finnish-American author Hannu Rajaneimi’s debut novel was well-received on its release, andpraised for its engaging characters and thrilling plot– an interplanetary heist patterned after the stories of French author Maurice Leblanc and his famous protagonist, Arsène Lupin. It was nominated for a Locus Award and the Campbell Memorial Award, and although it failed to win either, Rajaneimi went on to write two sequels,The Fractal PrinceandThe Causal Angel.
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Yet for allThe Quantum Thief’s clever writing, Rajaneimi pulls few punches as an author and comes down heavily on the “show, don’t tell” side of the science-fiction style guide. While other authors' work makes for a difficult entry point into the genre because of their heavy use of exposition or worldbuilding, Rajaneimi’s approach is the opposite,with explanatory narration kept to a bare minimum that left critics wishing the book had an index or glossary. It’s definitely a novel to come back to after some exposure to other, less sparse styles of science fiction.
