Looking for great sci-fi books like Dune or Foundation

I’d recommend the Hyperion Cantos. I just finished book 2 of 4 but they were fantastic.

The Expanse series.

I’m always on a quest for Dune-like books! Here’s my list. These all have at least some overlap in themes to the Dune series, but not all in the same ways:

* **The Snow Queen** by Joan D. Vinge. This is a trilogy. Highly recommend. You can tell it’s very strongly inspired by Dune but there’s still fresh ideas even though the first book is also heavily based on the Snow Queen fairy tale.

* **The Left Hand of Darkness** by Ursula K. Le Guin. Similar themes and plot elements to Dune but saying pretty much the exact opposite things. A great classic in its own right.

* **Courtship Rite** by Donald Kingsbury. Incredibly rich worldbuilding and complicated politics in a brutal society.

* **Empire of Silence** by Christopher Ruocchio. The farther I get into this series the less I like it, but the first book and The Lesser Devils novella are both great. Similar to the Dune series, I feel it starts out with a clear goal in mind, but a couple books in loses focus on that and changes to have a totally different message. In the case of the Empire of Silence series, it starts out seeming to be a story about the protagonist’s transformation into an evil conqueror, but that plot thread gets completely lost. I quit at book 2 so I don’t know if it ever gets picked back up, but I assume it must at some point.

* **Grass** by Sheri S. Tepper. The “science” is pretty weak, but I think the characters and social dynamics are all written well.

* **The Broken Earth trilogy** by N. K Jemisin. The depiction of eugenics in this series is way more realistic than in Dune and shows how dehumanizing and unpleasant it would be to be a part of. Relatively little focus on religion compared to most other things on this list, but this book is all about oppression, power, and a long history of colonialism, migration, and disasters.

* **Babel-17** by Samuel R. Delany. About a one of a kind woman with Bene Gesserit-like powers. It’s more of a fun pulp sci fi adventure than a serious epic like Dune. At the very least, it’s short!

* **Book of the New Sun** by Gene Wolfe. Published as either one big volume or four shorter volumes, and everything in between.

* **Redsight** by Meredith Mooring. Not at all the same writing style, but there’s some worldbuilding similarities such as certain people with powers to move spaceships faster than light. Besides that the Redseers are not in the slightest like guild navigators, but I still enjoyed this book. The gods here are literally real, so it’s not like Dune in that regard, but the red goddess’s church is a very controlled, authoritarian environment.

* I have *not* read either of these, but encountered them in other recommendation threads. **Norstrilia** by Cordwainer Smith and **The Faded Sun** trilogy by C. J. Cherryh

Have you considered Warhammer books? There are a lot of Dune parallels, I’m told, and almost all of my favourite authors are among those who write for Black Library. The Ciaphas Cain series is hilarious, and a very good starting point for the setting.

My interest in tanks and gargantuan mech suits can be generously described as “minimal”. Guy Haley made me care about both, in *Baneblade* and *Titandeath* respectively. I wept actual tears at the end of *The Devastation of Baal,* **both** times I’ve read it.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the most technically skilled writer I have ever read, bar none. His books aren’t always to my personal taste, and they are certainly not “easy reads”, but that’s hardly going to be an issue for you.

Chris Wraight’s *Vaults of Terra* series is one of my favourites, and it has the best depictions of Space Marines and the Custodes from a baseline human perspective I’ve found. His White Scars novels in the Horus Heresy time period are phenomenal. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when *Blood of Asaheim* didn’t give me standard space viking superwarriors.

Steve Parker’s *Deathwatch* series is probably my absolute favourite. It’s very dark in tone, but I love the characters. Might need a bit more knowledge of the setting, but absolutely worthwhile.

Steelheart and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson are both great series. Not necessarily along lines of Dune.