I know people hate AI, but I find it to be a good starting place on things like this where ultimately, even if it hallucinates, little damage is done. I was discussing with it about some literary preterences. I grew up reading a lot of Asimov, although I’d never finished the Foundation series, so I’d been doing that - but I hadn’t remembered how it just got completely bogged down in convesation with so little action… it got annoying.
Well, I have four recommendations I’m considering. I’d love your opinions on which one you think I should go with, and if you agree with the provided summary.
For brief reference, I adore the Discworld novels (which are fantasy, not sci-fi), The Expanse, much of Asimov’s earlier works, the Miles Vorkosigan series… I think that’s all I’d been talking about with it. heh. ninjaedit: Andor as well.
And if you’re so anti-AI that this submission offends you, please feel free to ignore it and even block me if you wish, but I’d humbly ask you to keep AI discussion out of the comments. Obviously I have no way of enforcing that request, but I am humbly asking.
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
If you specifically love how Pratchett could weave distinct, isolated vignettes into a stunningly cohesive tapestry, you have to read Hyperion. The first book is essentially a sci-fi Canterbury Tales. Seven pilgrims are traveling to a distant, dangerous world on the eve of a galactic war, and they each tell their own deeply personal, vastly different story along the way. The writing is incredibly literary, the characters are richly drawn, and it all snaps together brilliantly.
Teixcalaan Series by Arkady Martine (starts with A Memory Called Empire)
This one is a masterclass in political science fiction. It follows an ambassador from a small mining station who is sent to the capital of a massive, overwhelming empire to replace her predecessor—who was murdered. It has that same incredibly tight, high-stakes imperial political tension as Andor, but wrapped in gorgeous, evocative prose. The characters are incredibly sharp, and the world-building feels intensely real and grounded.
The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks (start with The Player of Games)
This is the gold standard for beautifully written, sweeping space opera. Banks was a phenomenal writer who created a vast, post-scarcity utopian society run by highly eccentric, deeply sarcastic AI minds. Every book is a standalone story within the same universe, usually focusing on the messy, morally gray fringes where the utopia clashes with other civilizations. It has spectacular writing, profound philosophical weight, and excellent pacing.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (starts with All Systems Red)
If you loved the character-driven, slightly wry tone of the Vorkosigan saga, you will adore Murderbot. It is about a heavily weaponized security cyborg that hacks its own governor module so it can stop killing people and just watch soap operas instead. It is technically a series of fast-paced, action-heavy novellas, but the absolute triumph of the series is the deeply relatable, highly introverted protagonist. The writing is tight, funny, and incredibly human.
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My habitual plug for The Bobiverse series. Has both humor, space combat and fairly hard sci-fi with FTL. It centers around an uploaded human mind from the 21 century named Bob.
Yes I’ve only read the first installment but I literally read it in one sitting it was that good. I need to find time for the rest.
I would also recommend John Scalzi and his Old Mans War series. Much closer to Pratchett as the other mentions of the AI. If you want a freebie taste of his work, check out Agent to the Stars. While set in current times, I find it a good representation of his style, whereas Old Mans War is set in the future.
Really good series. First book is really starship troopers-y (not as campy as the movie, but without the… baggage… of the book), but shifts perspective and delves into broader themes as it goes on.
I finished this recently and second this recommendation, loved this series.
Murderbot is a nice palate cleanser. Read that one when you want something easy and comforting. If you are not in a slump, I would save that series for when you are.
Mate, I ain’t blocking you for chatting with an AI, I’d be more inclined to block people who make posts that feel like they’re looking for a fight for no reason. (My AI blocks are for people who post links to LLM-generated news sites or apps without disclosing it, or people who can’t bother to write their own posts).
All that said, you’re coming to a public space and asking for recommendations from real people, and that’s what I’d encourage people to do. You’re gunna get better recommendations from people who are interested in the subject matter than by asking autocomplete “if X than Y?”
It’s a bit hard to pick through your post for what you’re asking for due to the hostile tangents, but my read is that you’re trying to decide which ONE series to read for something fun and exciting, favoring something well-written or a modern classic. That sound right?
I haven’t read the A Memory Called Empire series yet so no comment on that, but of the others the only one that’s checking all those boxes for me is Culture. Much like the AI summary I’ll stress that the books are COMPLETELY different in tone & style. Consider Phlebas is one of the best space-adventures I’ve ever read (and the one you should start with if you’re looking for adventure), Player of Games is much slower & more thoughtful in comparison, Use of Weapons felt more like an espionage thriller… etc etc. The books generally skew quite dark, though I’ve only read the first few. Also I’d describe the AIs as “often sarcastic and alien in thought” instead of “deeply sarcastic”. The Culture is presented as a utopia, but it’s just as morally gray as the rest of the universe.
Murderbot, while one of my favorite series, is objectively not good literature. It’s indie, quirky, pulpy fun that you can breaze through in a week. Murderbot doesn’t hack it’s governor module so that it doesn’t kill humans, it’s job is literally to protect humans… (It’s a security guard). The AIs in this series are deeply sarcastic.
Hyperion is the more accurate summary, though far more sycophantic than I care for. It’s more literary even than being “Canterbury Tales” in space–knowledge of John Keats’ poem of the same name is far more useful. Very dark, literally epic, i didn’t find the ending of book 1 to “snap together brilliantly” as it felt abrupt and had me jumping straight to the second book for closure (haven’t read the rest yet).
These are my fully human opinions. My factual mistakes are my own based on my subjective experience reading. I highly recommend reading each of these series for different reasons.
Hyperion (and by extension Fall of Hyperion) are fantastic and amazing. Its sequels Endymion and Rise of Endymion are a slog that seem to not be worth the time or effort to read.
Spoilers>!Murderbot hacked its governor module because it was compromised and had forced it to murder a whole mining operation along with all the other bots except the pleasure bots.!<
Nah. That just comes out later. The “why” is because he’s lazy and just wants to do the bare minimum so he can be left alone to watch the net casts.
It is literally in the second book. Lazy? Murderbot takes their job very seriously. They just want to be able to enjoy their down time.
I grew up avidly reading Asimov and also read the vast majority of the Discworld novels. I met Terry Pratchett at a talk he gave. He was a very entertaining speaker. He signed one of my books. Andor is, I think, the best sci-fi on TV ever.
The Culture series is very well written in my opinion, but not often light reading at all, and every book has something profoundly dark. As others have commented, it doesn’t hide that there’s a dark side to the Culture’s utopia.
Much lighter reading is M. R. Forbes’ ten-part The Starship in the Stone series. It’s loosely based on the legends of King Arthur, but set as sci-fi with magic. I enjoyed it a lot. Space adventure, kindness and heroism from the flawed protagonists, malice, scheming and awful oppression from the antiheroes. It’s refreshing in that surprisingly few of the characters have plot armour, and almost all of the characters feel grief and have complex motivations, despite the clarity between good and bad.
On the subject of sci-fi with magic, there’s the Starship’s Mage series by Glynn Stewart. Interstellar travel is only possible because a trained mage can jump the ship by one light year using magic but then has to sleep it off for about six hours. (Doing way too much with magic way too fast can kill a mage in a very messy way.) The scale of the series gradually grows and events have significance for the overall plot in a way that they don’t as much in the Culture. Whist the main protagonist can remain the same over a run of books, there’s not one protagonist for the whole series. It’s not as dry as Asimov nor so daft as Pratchett, nor with such reality as Andor, but I find all the books a very worthwhile read indeed and will buy every single one without exception. Good stories combining to make a good story.
I’ve only
devouredread Banks from those four.They are superbly written, as in easy to get into. There’s only two pairs of books where there is order, but it’s not significant to the story, only to the reader. I’d recommend reading them in the more-or-less order published, but only because that’s how I read them.
I’m currently reading The Algebraist. Is the style the same in the other books? Because (as a non-native english speaker), this is definitly not easy to get into :D
From vague memory, I think I found that harder going than the other ones. There’s always some real, genuine darkness in each of the books, but other ones were more entertaining along the way, if I recall correctly. It’s been something like a decade since I read it, though.
I don’t really mean the tone, more the writing style. Sentences with a thousand commas and two intermissions, specced with really high-brow, uncommon english words are kinda hard to get into. The number of sentences I had to break down in subsets and read three times… is too damn high :p
Oooh. Interesting question.
Yeah, I think the style is similar. I am a native English speaker however, so perhaps someone else can weigh in?
There are no bad choices here, but personally I’d go with The Culture. The order doesn’t much matter though; you’ll have an interesting and enjoyable time no matter what you pick. The descriptions all seems fair to me, so just go with whatever you’re in the mood for.
The Culture is my favourite series, I would argue that The Player of games is a good start point.
For it being a series the books are almost entirely standalone, you could read in any order.
Matter is incredible.
I think my favourite, simply for the sheer volume of Mind discourse, was Excession.
I think one of the best things about the culture series is the wide breadth of tone and perspective between the books. Excession and Inversions are probably my favorites… I almost wish I could have gone into the series blind with inversions, then consider phlebas before the others.
I’ve read Murderbot and most of the Culture series. They are very different in tone and pacing; Murderbot is faster, action oriented and for most books short (four of the books are novellas). The Culture are a series of novels written in the same universe, an they’re a lot more demanding on the reader. Expect more tangled plots, more different complex characters and lots of things aren’t explained at all, leaving it to the reader to fill in the blanks. I read most of the books and liked them.
If I could suggest some other books, I’d recommend the “Old man’s war” series bij John Scalzi. No novellas in this series, not as action driven as Murderbot, but lighter to read than the Culture.
I tried to get into the Culture series and couldn’t finish Consider Phlebas. Fantastic world building gets dripped out around a main character with plot armor so thick it is obnoxious. After the third or forth moment of rolling my eyes knowing the protagonist wasn’t in any danger what so ever but still needed to slog through the pedestrian near escape, I put the book down.
Many people feel “consider phlebas” to be one of the weakest in the culture novels, though I really like it as an intro to the series. A big reason the abominable intelligence recommended starting with the second book, player of games.
The tone and perspective shift WILDLY through the series, so I’d highly recommend picking up one of the other books and giving it a try.
If it makes you feel better:
spoiler
The book ends with everyone dying a pointless death because war sucks.
Of the books mentioned, I’ve read everything except Simmons—and while they’re all great, I’m not sure I’d agree with some of the AI characterizations. Like, Murderbot is kind of the opposite of the Vorkosigan saga in every possible way—it has more in common with most of the other works you mentioned, while Martine and Banks are both more similar to Bujold.
I’d also add a recommendation for Adrian Tchaikovsky, given your other preferences.
I liked Murderbot
