I have never really ventured into scifi and fantasy literature, but I was watching Dune and realized that may want to try to branch out. I primarily read post modernist fiction and lean more towards maximalism, where there is often a huge web of characters and plot points converging in a non-linear fashion. My all time favourite books are The Sot-Weed Factor, Gravity's Rainbow, and Catch 22. These books all satirize governments and politics in someway, which is not mandatory, but something I like.
Writing style is usually what is most important for me in a book. I really struggle to get through something with an amazing engrossing plot but poor writing. Typically I like flowery prose that meanders quite a bit (you may be able to tell that I am not a big Hemingway fan).
I don't want a series that has 20+ books but a short series is fine. A stand a lone book would also work but it would have to be long enough to bring in a huge cast and converging storylines.
What would be the best book/series that would help me branch out of my normal reading preferences, while not losing what I love about my typical books?
by JackTheFatErgoRipper
1 Comment
_A Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge has a huge web of characters and some off-the-wall weirdness. It’s sci-fi as a whole, but sort of swaps between genres as it follows characters on different planets who are in radically different situations. It is part of the “Zones of Thought” series, but I think it works best as a standalone — the only thing you need to know going in is that there are various “zones” of the universe where different technologies are possible, from a “Slow Zone” that accommodates technology only a bit more advanced than the modern day to “the beyond” where you can exceed the speed of light and build godlike machines. I think this is one of the best sci-fi novels ever written — it’s very much a rollicking space adventure, but it has literary depth and some big, wild ideas.
_The Man in the High Castle_ by Philip K. Dick might also be a good fit — PKD in general seems like a good author for you. _High Castle_ is an alternate history novel about a world where the Allies lost WWII, and about the alternate universe novel written in _that_ universe which imagines what an allied victory would be like. It feels a lot like Pynchon to me. You might also like _A Scanner Darkly_, about the future drug “Substance D”.