I am absolutely in love with the sci-fi genre, especially when it speaks to more thoughtful or philosophical questions, but I often hate jargon bc it makes the prose feel unnecessarily dense. I’m looking for sci-fi books that speak more to the human condition and ethical dilemmas—books with good dialogue about who we are and what we’re supposed to do—imagine a group of individuals sitting by a metaphorical space station bonfire, learning more about each other or debating broader implications. That’s what I’m aiming for. Asimov’s Solaris, for example, was a cool concept, but it made me feel like I should be reading a real textbook rather than a fictional one.
by BobbayP
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{{Annihilation}}
Project: Hail Mary
you should definitely try “Dune” by Frank Herbert. It’s a captivating novel that raises profound questions about ethics and destiny, all while delivering a gripping storyline that’s easy to get into.
The original Blade Runner film is based off the book *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep*, which is excellent
A lot of science fiction can get pretty technical, especially the older “classics” influenced by folks like Asimov. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, a lot of the field of science fiction was written by mathematicians, actual science nerds, or folks in similar fields that wanted to explore odd concepts through literature.
That said, there are some great pieces of literature that explore huge ideas that are worth the effort.
For starters, Becky Chambers has some spectacular fiction that is both highly entertaining and relatably modern. She has a few excellent space operas, but I honestly would start with *A Psalm for the Wild-Built*, which is literally just a man and a robot talking to each other about their philosophies of life. It is as close to the literal book you’re looking for as I know exists.
That said, I also highly recommend the *Noumenon* series by Marina J. Lostetter. In a lot of ways, the series feels like a love letter to figures like Asimov or Clarke, but thoroughly modernized in an episodic storytelling that tackles different philosophical ideas in science fiction. It’s thoroughly excellent. She also wrote *Activation Degridation*, which is another of my favorites, full of some action but also that huge question about what it means to be human.
Finally, I would suggest a couple of older writers whose works still manage to hold up, even if they lack some of the “modern” charm of contemporary voice. *The Forever War* by Joe Haldeman takes a fascinating mathematical concept and explores its impact on human civilization and meaning making. *The Dispossessed* by Ursula K. Le Guin is perhaps one of the greatest novels attempting to depict whether a utopia can actually exist with capitalistic society (a fabulously nuanced novel also tackling the limitations of socialism/communism in opposition to capitalism).
Anyway, if you haven’t read any of these, I hope it provides you a starting point!
*Inverted World* by Christopher Priest. Or, *A Dream of Wessex*, or *The Affirmation* (especially loved this one and maybe would be most like what you are looking for) or a lot of his other ones. He wrote the book that the film *The Prestige* was based on.
His stuff tends to either be more solidly rooted in sci-fi (mostly his earlier works) and later stuff kind of rides the line along being sci-fi or magical realism, but not quite. It’s hard to explain! But the more of his stuff I read, the more I’m seeing it as not entirely realistic, but not entirely science fiction either and I’m not quite sure what to call it. They’re easy (as far as language goes, no hard sci-fi jargon) but elegantly written reads that tend to be pretty mind bending. You’re not really sure what’s real and it brings up a lot of questions and thoughts. They don’t spell anything at all out for you and definitely give you a lot to think about.
Arrival is based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang – he’s got some fantastic ones in that book and in his other short story collections.