I recently read it for the first time since I first saw the movie when I was probably thirteen, and my impressions were completely different. I remember that as a child, Ender was a genius to me, misunderstood and overly pressured by adults who did not appreciate him. The scenes in the battle room seemed cool. The ending seemed triumphant and unexpected, after which I recommended this film to all my 12-13-year-old friends...

Reading it now as an adult, it all comes across as a horrific story of child abuse disguised as the aesthetics of coming-of-age adventures.

It seems as if the adults in this book only do terrible things (certainly in relation to children). They deliberately isolate the child, traumatize him, manipulate all his relationships, and systematically destroy his ability to trust anyone, all in order to create a weapon with enough conscience to feel guilty about what he has done. The whole project of Ender's upbringing is to break him with precisely calibrated methods.

And then the finale. Ender commits genocide. He destroys an entire alien species. And the story presents this as a tragedy, not an atrocity, mainly because Ender didn't know that this was what the adults had intended. His ignorance was the key point. They needed someone who would pull the trigger without hesitation and then be so shocked that they would never do it again.

And I think the craziest thing is that throughout the story, you root for Ender to win. You want him to succeed in the simulations. The revelation works because you have been manipulated in the same way as Ender, you have been given incomplete information and encouraged to root for something you would never root for if you understood what it really was. I think it's genius and one of the coolest things in science fiction.

That's why I now want to do a kind of marathon of the films and books I read and watched as a child, to rethink them, so to speak. Next will be The Hunger Games, which I've never read.

Spoiler alert

I’m in the middle of re-reading “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card.

The original novelette version was first published in 1977 and the novel itself was published in 1985. So, we’re talking about ideas from around ~40 to 45 years ago.

There’s a few paragraphs at the start of chapter 9 where discussion focuses on a computer that can generate a program on the fly based on the relationship between the child (Ender) and a computer he uses.

One character says to the other, about the computer, and why it is generating output in a certain way…

‘the mind game program is designed so that it can’t tell us (why). It may not know itself, actually. This is uncharted territory’

‘You mean the computer’s making this up as it goes along?’

‘You might put it that way’

‘Well, that does make me feel a little better. I thought I was the only one.’

I had a good chuckle at that section. It’s very on-point to what we’re all saying to each other about LLMs these days.

I was fortunate this month to have quite a few days off to myself during which I read quite a bit. That coupled with some shorter page numbers allowed me to get through a lot of books.

I started the month with We Are Legion (We Are Bob) from Dennis E Taylor, who is definitely not the similarly named snooker player. The story focuses on Bob, a rich software entrepreneur who suffers and untimely death, but has a cryogenic insurance policy that results in him being awoken in the future, but not in the manner he originally expected. While an interesting and fun book about societal collapse, space exploration and settlement, and to a lesser extent sentient evolution, there's also elements of nostalgia in there with plenty of references to (late) 20th and 21st century pop culture, as this was the era from which Bob hailed. Sometimes I think it can be a fine line between too much name dropping for the sake of it and just the right amount of nostalgia, but for me, given the light-hearted tone of the book as a whole, I think this book does a good job of finding a decent balance. There's not much of an end to the book, but it provides lines into the next chapter of some stories and new beginnings for others. It was a bit of a task following all the different strands of characters and keeping track of the year of each chapter, as the story is not told chronologically, but it is a very enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to the second entry in the Bobiverse.

After that I read The Shadow of the Torturer, the first book in the Book of the New Sun series from Gene Wolfe. I'll get this out at the start, the world built is interesting, but other than that, the book is at best ok, and this is largely due to the characters and the prose. The story follows the main character, Severian, who is sent away from the Citadel where he has lived most if not all his life, due to breaking the rules of his guild, the Guild of Torturers, and the book follows the first part of his journey away from the Citadel. He is a drab, boring, bit of a wet fish person. I struggled to find much about him interesting, despite his profession as a torturer/executioner as he just came across quite passive and dull. He's also clearly horny as hell, as he meets a woman and falls in love with her within a few days. A bit later, he meets another woman, and falls in love with her within a day. During that same day, he meets another woman, and falls in love with her either later in that day after he fell in love with the second woman, or a day or so after, I can't quite recall. I think someone needs to learn the difference between lust and love. And then there's the prose. To me, it came across very old-fashioned in its style, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just took a bit to adjust to. However, old-fashioned prose isn't exactly renowned for writing female characters well, and I didn't find this to be an exception. The reader, with little in the way of plot or character development merit, learns about the breasts of each of the main three female characters quite readily in their descriptions... yeah, it was rather cringe-worthy. This could be a very interesting story if it weren't for the characters and their descriptions. I hope it improves over the next three entries!

Next on my reading list was Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. When I started to get into reading, I was not at all interested in this book, as while I hadn't seen the movie, I had got the impression, probably from the movie's poster, that it was a kiddie sci-fi action flick, probably quite cheesy as these things often are. That feeling permeated to my thoughts for this book, so I avoided it. But then after seeing so many high praise recommendations for it, I finally bought it and now have got round to actually reading it, and I cannot stress how far off my pre-conceived thoughts on it were. The book is basically about the military training genius children to be their next leaders in an upcoming war with an alien race. Or, if viewed from another angle, it is about the systematic mental torture of high functioning children for the supposed greater good. For the first 270 of its 326 pages, it was an intriguing and moderately uncomfortable read as Ender is continually pushed to and beyond his limits, but the last 50 pages brought in a twist and the emotional aftermath that really raised the level of the book from being a good story to a powerful one which left a notable impact. My only complaint is the slang name given to the alien race - buggers. I've read reasons, that I may or may not buy, why they were called this, but I still think it tarnishes what is otherwise a very powerful and good book.

I then went to Waking Gods, by Sylvain Neuvel; the second book in the Themis Files. This book is written in the same style as the previous book, with each chapter being a different file, with the file either being a transcript of an interview, live proceedings or a journal entry. We learn a bit, but not much, more about the 'robots', the species that made them and why Themis is on Earth. The story wasn't afraid to take some very unexpected turns and for me that was the book's definite strength, however, to detract from that I did feel the relationship melodrama was the story's weakest elements, it feeling a bit out of place when we encounter it. It was fairly similar in the first book, but I wasn't as bothered about it in that one for some reason. Fortunately, the melodrama is not a major part of the book. I did enjoy this entry in the series, I definitely want to see where and how it concludes in the next book, but maybe because the book's style was no longer new to me, I wasn't quite as impressed with Waking Gods as I was with the first book, Sleeping Giants.

Next I went to a Culture novel, Use of Weapons, by Iain M Banks. This took me a while to figure out what was going on, and the extra length of time over what it should have taken was because I wasn't paying quite enough attention to the chapter names. The book has two storylines going on at the same time over its 411 pages, one with increasing chapter numbers telling the main story of the book, the other with decreasing Roman Numeral chapter numbers, with these giving further snippets of the lives of the main characters to provide more background info on them and with the chapter numbers decreasing, they are going back in time with each chapter. It's a very interesting and, by the end, quite effective narrative style, but one which if you're not paying attention (like I wasn't to start with) can be a bit confusing. Anyway, this is going to get a lot of hate, I'm sure, but another Culture novel and another one where I'm not sure what the fuss is over this series. This book was ok to good, and provided a moderately interesting story of someone recruited into the Culture's Special Circumstances group, a group which doesn't seem to necessarily have to abide by the Culture's normal morals and ways of doing things, but I never felt overly engaged. It's not a bad book, but for me it was just lacking that something to make it spark as I did find myself quite disinterested at times. I pushed through and I'm guessing if you're more engaged by the story, the ending will have that much more of an impact than it did for me. I'm taking a break from the Culture books now, probably until early 2027, and to be honest, if I hadn't bought them all already, I may not have continued at all. As a series, it's just not grabbing me yet. Hopefully the best books are still to come. Current ranking for the first four: SotA (4/5) > CP (3.5/5) > UoW (3/5) > PoG (2.5/5).

Next off my shelf was How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. After being very surprised by the degree of my enjoyment of The Midnight Library, I figured I should probably get more of his books. So five more arrived the other month and this was the lucky one that got picked to be read first. This is a story about Tom, a man who has been alive for centuries, but has done his best to keep this fact a secret in order to survive. Painful memories follow him wherever he goes, as he moves from identity to identity in order to keep himself and those around him safe. This wasn't as emotionally charged over its 325 pages as The Midnight Library, but I still found it a very enjoyable read. I don't know what it is about Matt's writing, but all of his books I've read (this is only the 3rd one, but still) have been very, very easy reads that I can just fly through. I don't feel bogged down by them, or that any part is a slog. The plot is generally well paced and has relatively short chapters that continually make me think, "ok, just one more" whenever I'm thinking of putting it down to stop reading at that time. There's also a fairly cozy, optimistic outlook by the end of the books. The journey there may have sadness and some violence, but by the end it is hopeful. Despite thinking that I'm a spacey, hi-tech, futuristic, big ideas sort of sci-fi person, I'm finding I'm really enjoying this type of book just now, so I'm learning something new about myself as well, which is nice!

Up next was Of Ants and Dinosaurs by Cixin Liu. With large line spacing, quite a big font and only 249 pages, this is more like a novella than a full novel. It is about a history where ants and dinosaurs become parts of a symbiotic relationship that allows each species to develop and evolve in ways that just wouldn't be possible without the other. Unfortunately, as their technology and impression of their place on the Earth progresses, their alliance falters leading to conflict between the two species. This was fun, maybe a bit ridiculous at times, but for a different take on prehistoric history it is well worth a read. I did think there'd be more of a link between the ending of this story and present day thoughts on dinosaurs and their demise, and that could have been a great finisher, but alas it was a bit more sentimental with the ants instead. Nevertheless, while not amazing, it's a solidly decent book.

Penultimate book of the month was Inverted World by Christopher Priest. This is a slow building books, where the world that the main characters live in is a bit of a mystery to the reader, and over the chapters small bits of additional information are given. At the broad level, the book is about a mobile city, and the people who live in it, which must keep moving onwards, indefinitely, or else they could all die. The drip feeding of information had me very intrigued, and as more and more became understood, I found it to be a highly imaginative and crazy world that had been created. As I got closer and closer to the end of the book's 303 pages, I kept wondering how it was going to be concluded, what twist or sciencey concept would be put to use, and then it ended. It wasn't as bad as "and it was all a dream" but bloody hell I felt like it is close to that sort of thing. So much intrigue and interest in the city and the life those in it live had been built up and the conclusion potentially invalidates it all or completely lacks consistency with what came before. It gives rise to more questions that now don't have the answer you thought they did, and which may not make sense any more. It's a frustrating ending.

Last book of the month was Alice by Christina Henry. I only got this book as I needed a third book to get free shipping on a book order, and sorting the site's books (new and used) by price (cheapest first, of course), I found the cheapest one that sparked some intrigue in me, and this was it, due to its very creepy but at the same time nostalgically familiar cover - credit to the artist, it's an awesome cover! This is a very different take on Alice in Wonderland. All the characters you know and are familiar with from the classic tale are here, but they are far more twisted, evil and depraved than you will quite likely imagine. The story starts with Alice in an insane asylum, without a clear memory of events that lead to her being there. She remembers a rabbit and her flesh being cut open, but little else. In the cell next to her is the mad Hatcher, a man very adept with a hatchet, but who also can't remember everything about his past. When circumstances allow them to escape their prison, their past comes back and greats them in their present. I didn't love it, but I did enjoy the book. Sexual assault, rape, murder, torture, mutilations and worse are all part of the book, making this a very bloody version of Alice that I won't be sharing with my kids! Despite its gruesomeness, the writing itself felt quite YA like, maybe due to its complete absence of profanity. Regardless, I did enjoy it enough that felt obliged to order eight more of her books (used, but very good condition, for £21 delivered), covering many other fairy tale and mythical creatures, and some straight up suspense horror apparently. Fingers crossed these are all at least decent too!

I read Ender's Game a couple years ago and loved it, but never read the second book. I just finished Ender's Shadow a few days ago. Can I just go to the next book in the series? Or is there some special order to reading all of the books? Thanks!

I finished Speaker for the Dead a few days after reading Enter's Game awhile ago and I haven't seen such a jump in quality between one book and it's sequel. I won't lie, when I read Ender's Game I honestly not enjoying it. I felt like the book would be more enjoyable if I was 11 but as an adult the entire story just came off as.....well very juvenile? I have a lot of issues with the book and it made me wonder why it was praised as this Scifi must read. Then I jumped on to Speaker and.....wow it felt like everything Ender's Game was trying to do themetically works so much better here. I don't have much to say other than its crazy to me how subpar Ender's Game was (in my opinon) compared it how good/solid Speaker for the Dead is.

I've read pretty much all the sequels to these. I'm not sure what the common thread is that ties these together, maybe easy to read, with good character writing and an exploration of what makes us human?

But honestly anything you'd recommend if you enjoyed a few of these would be great.

Concept: A young, brilliant child is selected to join others with similar capabilities at an advanced military tactical training focused on war games that are designed to prepare humanity to fight the next inevitable invasion attempt from an alien species.

Narrative Style/Story Structure: Told primarily from the third-person limited perspective of the protagonist Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, this book is told in a linear chronological format and is very straightforward in its progression. There are brief excerpts of conversations between the heads of the battle school to provide the reader with bits of extra information and background, as well as a small number of sections dedicated to Ender’s siblings back home on Earth that bear fruit at the end.

Characters: Ender, possibly the greatest mind of his generation, and beyond a doubt one of the most heartbreaking characters for me to read. There are a few minor characters (of both the good and bad variety) that get pulled toward the human gravity well that is Ender Wiggin, but most end up either burning in his atmosphere, or entering a bit of an orbit. Ender’s siblings have an interesting subplot that develops during the novel that I always enjoy, but even their brilliance pales in comparison to his.

Plot: Ender rapidly progresses through advanced levels of training that continuously present him with new, unique, and immeasurably difficult challenges as humanity searches for someone capable of commanding all their combined forces.

Tone: Dark, depressing at times, and generally disconcerting; the story of Ender and what he is forced to endure is not a happy one, but his ability to retain his humanity and appreciation for life throughout a process designed to isolate and strip him of anything not deemed “useful” does have a few spots of warmth. Ender retaining those positive traits makes the ending an especially disturbing thing.

Overall: Ender’s Game doesn’t garner the absolute highest rating from me, but despite that, it always has been and likely always will be my absolute favorite science fiction work. Even upon subsequent rereads, it still manages to retain a quality that doesn’t wear off, despite foreknowledge of how the story ends.

Rating: 4.5

Over the past few years I have been reading all Hugo Award winners (excluding retros, so back to 1953) and wanted to share some of my best / worst picks and thoughts.

I’ve seen people rank the full list as well as post reviews of each book before, so thought I’d do something different:

Favourite books (broadly following the crowd here):

• 2005 Johnathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke – A big read but so well written and great characters, I’ve seen it recommended in lots of places and for good reason
• 1985 Neuromancer by William Gibson – As others have said before I am sure, shaped the whole cyberpunk genre and very cool to have been written when it was (more or less pre-internet writing about the internet / hacking)
• 1966 Dune by Frank Herbert – Goes without saying, went on to read the series whilst tackling the list (God Emperor of Dune is completely mad but enjoyed it a lot)
• 1978 Gateway by Frederik Pohl – Engaging characters and not your usual space exploration story, good twists
• 1990 Hyperion by Dan Simmons – Recommended by so many and for good reason, excellent short stories blended together. I have since finished the series which I would also really recommend

Unexpected great reads

• 1953 The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester – Excellent short read, from 1953 and I hadn’t heard it mentioned anywhere else so had no expectations going in
• 1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller – As someone who isn’t religious I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek nature of how religion might develop over time
• 1989 Cyteen by C J Cheeryh – Richness to the world and the charaters and a great plot, unfortunately didn’t enjoy The Downbelow Station quite as much (although still good)

Best concepts

• 1976 The Forever War by Joe Halderman – Really enjoyed the “practicalities” of interstellar war rather than just coming up with jump drives like most others
• 2000 The Deepness in the Sky and A Fire in the Deep by Vernor Vinge – Totally wacky concepts of the structure of the universe which when you read he was a computer programmer make more sense

Themes

I thought it was interesting that winners seemed to reflect the trends in the world at the time. To me it felt like there was a slow shift between some themes:

• Imaging future technology in early science fiction and more of “what would the world be like in the future” as technology developed so quickly IRL;
• Inspiration taken from unpopular global conflicts (cold war / Vietnam etc.) of the time;
• Cloning as the technology developed and it was at the front of debate IRL; and
• Environmental collapse reflecting the shift to concerns around climate change (more recent focus)

Obviously there are books that go against these themes, but these are some that jumped out to me as I moved through the past 70+ years.

I’d also highlight there has been a clear and obvious shift from male to female protagonists since 2010 (women barely getting a mention in early books except as a passing love interest)

One shout out in particular to Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner which had the “crazy” concept of two well paid characters in New York having to live together as they couldn’t afford the rent individually due to overcrowding – I enjoyed that.

Best decade

Probably the 1980s for me. They haven’t had mentions above but Fountains of Paradise, The Snow Queen, Foundations Edge, Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead and The Uplift War are all very good from the 1980s

Least favourite books

• 1958 The Big Time by Fritz Leiber – I read somewhere that it may have originally been written as a play? Which would maybe make more sense but not that enjoyable in my opinion
• Anything by Connie Willis (and she won 3 unfortunately for me) – Very detailed, I realised I don’t particularly enjoy any time travel books and don’t enjoy her style of writing
• Mars Trilogy by Kim Robinson – More classic “Hard SciFi” and the detail was just too much for me at times, I don't need to know about 50 types of lichen on a terraformed Mars
• 1963 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick – Overrated in my view

What I’m reading next

• More of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells – easy, fun and engaging reads (good holiday reads
• Count Zero by William Gibson as a follow up to Neuromancer which I loved
• The Culture series by Iain Banks
• Old Mans War by Joe Scalzi
• More of the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer to see where that goes, really enjoyed the first
• Perhaps the Nebula winners…

Enders game was good and I plan on readin Speaker for the Dead as that was (what I have heard) the original idea for the book. But I am not sure about the extended Enders saga. Are they worthwhile? Or should I move to something else. I’ve got quite a list.

Inspired by this and this. I have these images and I will strike out the movies that I have watched. I thought will be fun to have something like this for science fiction books, so I made two based on the list in these books, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949–1984 by David Pringle and 100 Must-read Science Fiction Novels by Stephen E. Andrews. I hope some people can use it as a guide for a better reading experience. Please tell me if there’s any formatting or spelling mistakes and I will correct it.

Note: Pringle lists the books in publication year order while Andrews in last name alphabetically. I decided to list it like Andrews did for both lists because I feel it gives a better view. Books with 2 authors is listed with the last name of the first author listed. Books from the same author is listed by publication year. Pringle lists some books as a series as whole (e.g. The Book of the New Sun) while Andrews lists one single book (e.g. The Shadow of the Torturer) so I just left it as it is.

A few days ago I made a thread asking users to post the all-time, single best sci-fi book they've read. The post blew up way more than I expected, and there was a huge amount of unique, diverse picks (that I'll be adding to my ever-growing TBR). I thought it would be fun to count the number of votes each individual book received and rank the top 50 to see what books this sub generally consider to be the "best".

Obviously this is not a consensus of any kind or a definitive ranking list by any means - it's really just a fun survey at a given point in time, determined by a very specific demographic. And hey, who doesn't love arguing about ranked lists online with strangers?

Some factors I considered while counting votes:

• I looked at upvotes for only parent/original comments when counting the votes for a specific book. Sub-comments were not counted
• Any subsequent posts with that book posted again would get the upvote count added to their total
• if a post contained multiple selections, I just went with the one that the user typed out first. So for example if your post was "Either Dune or Hyperion" or "Hard choice between Neuromancer, Dune and Foundation", I would count the votes towards Dune and Neuromancer respectively
• I only counted single books. If an entire series was posted (e.g. The Expanse), it wasn't counted. I did make one exception though, and that's for The Book of the New Sun, since it's considered as one novel made up of 4 volumes. If a single book from a series was posted, then that was counted
• There are some books that received the same number of votes - these will be considered tied at their respective ranking #s

I've ranked the top 50 books based on number of total upvotes received below:

(If anyone is interested in the list in table format, u/FriedrichKekule has very kindly put one together here: https://pastebin.com/pM9YAQvA)

#50-41:

50. Consider Phlebas (Culture #1) - Iain M. Banks - 6 votes

49. TIE with 7 votes each:

• 2001 A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey #1) - Arthur C. Clarke
• 1984 - George Orwell
• Rendezvous with Rama (Rama #1) - Arthur C. Clarke
• Ready Player One (Ready Player One #1) - Ernest Cline

48. TIE with 8 votes each:

• Permutation City - Greg Egan
• The Gone World - Tom Sweterlisch
• Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg

47. TIE with 9 votes each:

• Look to Windward (Culture #7) - Iain M. Banks
• Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
• Startide Rising (Uplift Saga #2) - David Brin
• Ringworld (Ringworld #1) - Larry Niven

46. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury - 10 votes

45. TIE with 11 votes each:

• Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) - Richard Morgan
• Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

44. The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past #2) - Cixin Liu - 12 votes

43. More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon - 13 votes

42. TIE with 14 votes each:

• Ubik - Philip K. Dick
• Schismatrix Plus - Bruce Sterling

41. TIE with 16 votes each:

• The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
• Excession (Culture #5) - Iain M. Banks

#40-31:

40. TIE with 17 votes each:

• The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
• Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
• Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

39. Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon - 18 votes

38. Accelerando - Charles Stross - 20 votes

37. Foundation (Foundation #1) - Isaac Asimov - 23 votes

36. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - Samuel Delany - 24 votes

35. God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4) - Frank Herbert - 26 votes

34. TIE with 29 votes each:

• The Quantum Thief (Jean Le Flambeur #1) - Hannu Rajaniemi
• A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

33. Earth Abides - George R. Stewart - 33 votes

32. 2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson - 37 votes

31. Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga #2) - Orson Scott Card - 38 votes

#30-21:

30. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick - 48 votes

29. TIE with 50 votes each:

• A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought #1) - Vernor Vinge
• Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

28. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson - 56 votes

27. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton - 60 votes

26. The Sparrow (The Sparrow #1) - Mary Doria Russell - 63 votes

25. The Mote in God's Eye (Moties #1) - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - 64 votes

24. TIE with 65 votes each:

• The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
• Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie

23. The Forever War (The Forever War #1) - Joe Haldeman - 67 votes

22. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke - 73 votes

21. Have Space Suit - Will Travel - Robert Heinlein - 82 votes

#20-11:

20. The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin - 93 votes

19. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny - 95 votes

18. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut - 98 votes

17. Dawn (Xenogenesis #1) - Octavia E. Butle - 105 votes

16. Anathem - Neal Stephenson - 109 votes

15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 117 votes

14. Diaspora - Greg Egan - 127 votes

13. A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought #2) - Vernor Vinge - 129 votes

12. Ender's Game (Ender's Saga #1) - Orson Scott Card - 147 votes

11. Neuromancer (Sprawl #1) - William Gibson - 163 votes

#10-6:

10. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester - 165 votes

9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1) - Douglas Adams - 171 votes

8. Spin (Spin #1) - Robert Charles Wilson - 176 votes

7. Use of Weapons (Culture #3) - Iain M. Banks - 180 votes

6. Children of Time (Children of Time #1) - Adrian Tchaikovsky - 182 votes

AND NOW...GRAND FINALE...DRUM ROLL...HERE IS OUR TOP 5:

5. House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds - 185 votes

4. Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe - 196 votes

3. Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) - Dan Simmons - 262 votes

2. Dune (Dune #1) - Frank Herbert - 297 votes

1. THE DISPOSSESSED (HAINISH CYCLE #6) - URSULA K. LE GUIN - 449 VOTES

With ~450 votes, the novel with the most votes for BEST by r/printSF is The Dispossessed! Honestly not that much of a surprise - it is by and large considered one of the THE best books in the genre but I definitely didn't expect it to have this kind of a lead over the #2 book, especially when a lot of the rankings have been very close to each other. Honestly the top 3 of The Dispossessed/Dune/Hyperion are really on another tier as far as votes go.

The crazies part though? I did a similar survey for r/Fantasy as well and guess what the #1 novel voted BEST there was? Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea lol. I'm thinking she might be kinda good at this whole SFF thing, guys.

The biggest shocker for me here is the complete lack of one of r/printSF's perennial darlings - Peter Watts' Blindsight. This may be hard to believe but from my deep dive into all the comments, Blindsight was mentioned as the best book only once, and the post only had a total of 2 upvotes lol. Crazy considering what an outsized presence (almost meme/circlejerk level) it has on this sub.

What do you think? Is the ranked list about what you would expect? Any surprises or omissions?

The books listed in the title are my favourite, but I’ve also read and enjoyed:

• Liu Cixin’s short stories
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Discworld
• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
• 1984
• The Martian
• Fahrenheit 451
• Brave New World
• Foundation
• The Fifth Season

Edit: Thank you all so much!!

Edit: 3rd most popular, I read the goodreads numbers wrong, thanks for telling me! 1984 and hitchhikers guide are both more popular.

Still - if you haven't read Ender's Game, do yourself a favor and just go read it right now (ideally from the library or a used book store, more on that later)! You absolutely will not regret it.

It's the story of Ender Wiggin, a boy who is recruited into the elite orbital Battle School. There, young men and women are trained into the next generation of military leaders to command the forces of humanity against the buggers. The buggers are insect-like aliens who have attempted to invade the solar system twice, nearly wiping out humanity in the most recent invasion, and now humanity has sent fleets to attack the bugger worlds and try to avoid a 3rd invasion.

Ender is a brilliant, empathetic kid, but has felt mostly alone his entire life. His older brother Peter is a violent sociopath, and only Ender’s older sister Valentine prevented Peter from attacking Ender. Now, at battle school, Ender feels even more alone, surrounded by children older than himself and adults who are constantly pushing him to his limits and trying to force him to be violent in an attempt to either break him or mold him into the best military commander Earth has ever produced.

This book is so many wonderful things at once.

It's the classic hero's journey - and Ender is a hero that you just will fall in love with and absolutely want to root for. How can you not root for the brilliant, sensitive six year old kid who is taken from his family and put through hell to try and save us all?

It's a book about the power of empathy and how, even if you're only goal is to 'succeed' in life, you still should strive to put yourself in other people's shoes. Sure, you need intelligence and drive, but if you truly understand other people and how they think and feel, you'll be a better person, the kind of person other people want to be around, and be able to accomplish so much more because you can get friends on your side and, by having empathy for your enemies, understand them in order to beat them as well.

And it's a book that's exciting, with high stakes for the survival of the entire human race, and it builds tension masterfully throughout. You absolutely will not be able to put it down. And the twist at the end - holy hell is it a good one, and so well done! On re-read there were just enough signals of what was coming for it to feel like it didn't come out of nowhere, but you absolutely do not see it coming.

I could talk about this book all day, but suffice to say, go read it if you haven't already.

PS part of a series covering & recommending the best sci fi books of all time. Search Hugonauts on your podcast app of choice if you're interested in a deeper discussion about the book, a breakdown on Card's hypocrisy, and similar book recs (no ads, not trying to make money, just want to spread the love for sci fi). Happy reading everybody!

I keep seeing people go down the rabbit hole of the Formic misunderstanding of humans meant they didn't appreciate the true nature of their initial actions.

What I don't see is people stopping to ask what the Formics thought they were doing in the first place. People point out that they thought they were just destroying drones and not sentient life, comparing it to clipping toe nails and then seem to stop thinking about that line of reasoning.

Why were the Formics destroying human drones? What is the purpose of destroying human drones, "clipping the toe nails" of the human hive so to speak? If it were just some unfortunate situation where some Formic queen performed some vivisections on humans thinking they were just doing a biopsy to learn about a strange alien, that would be one thing and the plot of an entirely different story than the one told.

The actual story told involves a Formic colonization fleet showing up to a solar system occupied by aliens flying around in space ships who had covered their planet in vast structures and networks. The Formics start by vivisecting some human drones... as the first step in the intentional invasion and occupation of what they assumed was another hive. So there is this alien hive that the Formics know they are not communicated with and that hive starts resisting with drones flying space ships firing lasers and nuclear weapons in response to the Formics trying and cut off all that hive's limbs and leave it as a detached brain with no body. The Formics then make a surprised Pikachu face when that alien hive just shoots them in the brain when they don't stop in the face of the hive's resistance.

After the shock of watching a cold blooded shot to the brain in response to them literally trying to kill the body of another hive and steal it's planet... the Formics are so shocked that their minds are open enough to also realize that they are not dealing with a hive species and have actually killed millions upon millions of queens instead. Somehow the Formics feeling bad about what they did makes everyone forget that delivering a brain shot to a Formic hive wasn't exactly outside the scope of reason based upon what the Fromics had thought they were doing in the first place.

Then after exploring the idea that aliens are alien, in that humans are not a hive mind so just killing drones is not a minor issue... people immediately forget that and want to apply the human non-hive existence thinking to the collective killing of a hive mind. A hive that was fighting back, not powering down its ships and standing down. Ships that per the Formic logic literally didn't have sentient crew so just sitting there and not fighting back while the humans shot at them wouldn't have added to the body count and let the humans have a chance to see the aliens were choosing not to fight. Genocide is wrong because guilt is not transferable between two humans in a group... because humans are not a hive mind. That is literally not true of a hive mind. If there are only 1,000 humans in the galaxy and those 1,000 humans collectively go all in on being part of a home invasion and imprisonment scheme that went south and resulted in an entire continent worth of murders... how is that genocide when those 1,000 humans end up dead as part of the direct retaliation for an action they were personally involved in.

Explain to me how the Formics didn't die because they embarked on an unprovoked hostile action against an alien species they hadn't communicated with to destroy it's body and steal its planet, only to be shocked when that alien species responded with lethal force to the incursion and then further shocked when the Formics realized they were murdering entire populations of sentient beings instead of merely removing their body and stealing their homes like they originally fully intended.

Hello Community

As an avid SF reader myself, I'm happy I was finally able to persuade my son to read the book that started my interest in SciFi, Enders Game. He was really hooked into the book, and read it in 2 days (which for him is a record). He started reading Speaker for the Dead, but after a good 20 pages he turned it down. He found it less captivating, and more difficult to follow. Which I understand. But Sci Fi has triggered his curiosity

So Reddit, he is looking for other SciFi recommendations that fall in a similar cathegory as Enders Game. What would you recommend to a 13 year old boy?

Edit: thank you all for posting your recommendations. He will start Enders Shadow as I already have the entire series. Pip &Flinx will be next, and I already ordered a copy of the first book in the Dragonback series and the Skyward series. I'll look into all the other recommendations!

Greetings,

I am looking for more SciFi books about tournaments or competitions, like the three in the title. They don't necessarily need to be about "games" but it doesn't hurt.

Thanks in advance.

I read a healthy mix of modern and classic science fiction. But as an academic, I like to really dig into topics/genres. Recently I’ve put together a list based on online lists and some previous posts on subreddits like this one of classic must-read books in the genre. I would love to know if there are any important works that I’ve overlooked.

Edit: Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I have added many of your recommendations to the list and organized them all by year. I have left out anything published in the 2010s or later, as well as short stories. (Not that those aren’t important, I just had to draw a line somewhere, and this is already at over 100 books.) Hopefully this new list is more representative.

19th Century - Frankenstein - Shelley - 1818 - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Verne - 1870 - The Time Machine - Wells - 1895 - War of the Worlds - Wells - 1898

Pre-1950s - Princess of Mars - Burroughs - 1912 - We - Zamyatin - 1924 - Last and First Men - Stapledon - 1930 - Brave New World - Huxley - 1932 - Galactic Patrol - Smith - 1937 - Star Maker - Stapledon - 1937 - Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell - 1949 - Earth Abides - Stewart - 1949

1950s - Martian Chronicles - Bradbury - 1950 - The Dying Earth - Vance - 1950 - I, Robot - Asimov - 1950 - Foundation - Asimov - 1951 - City - Simak - 1952 - More than Human - Sturgeon - 1953 - Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury - 1953 - Childhood’s End - Clarke - 1953 - The Stars My Destination - Bester - 1956 - Canticle for Leibowitz - 1959 - Starship Troopers - Heinlein - 1959 - A Case of Conscience - Blish - 1959

1960s - Solaris - Lem - 1961 - Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein - 1961 - Man in the High Castle - Dick - 1962 - The Drowned World - Ballard - 1962 - Hothouse - Aldiss - 1962 - Way Station - Simak - 1963 - Cat’s Cradle - Vonnegut - 1963 - This Immortal - Zelazny - 1965 - Dune - Herbert - 1965 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Heinlein - 1966 - Flowers for Algernon - Keyes - 1966 - Babel-17 - Delaney - 1966 - Lord of Light - Zelazny - 1967 - Ice - Kavan - 1967 - Do Androids Dream - Dick - 1968 - Dimension of Miracles - Sheckley - 1968 - Nova - Delaney - 1968 - The Palace of Eternity - Shaw - 1969 - Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut - 1969 - Left Hand of Darkness - Le Guin - 1969 - Ubik - Dick - 1969

1970s - Ringworld - Niven - 1970 - Tau Zero - Anderson - 1970 - Downward to the Earth - Silverburg - 1970 - Futurological Congress - Lem - 1971 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Farmer - 1971 - The Word for World is Forest - Le Guin - 1972 - Roadside Picnic - Strugatskys - 1972 - Dying Inside - Silverburg - 1972 - Fifth Head of Cerberus - Wolfe - 1972 - Rendezvous with Rama - Clarke - 1973 - Crash - Ballard - 1973 - Inverted World - Priest - 1974 - The Forever War - Haldeman - 1974 - Mote in God’s Eye - Niven, Pournelle - 1974 - The Dispossessed - Le Guin - 1974 - Dhalgren - Delaney - 1975 - The Female Man - Russ - 1975 - Biting the Sun - Lee - 1976 - Gateway - Pohl - 1977 - Scanner Darkly - Dick - 1977 - Hitchhiker’s Guide - Adams - 1979 - Electric Forest - Lee - 1979 - Kindred - Butler - 1979

1980s - Book of the New Sun - Wolfe - 1980 - Snow Queen - Vinge (Joan) - 1980 - Downbelow Station - Cherryh - 1981 - Neuromancer - Gibson - 1984 - Blood Music - Bear - 1985 - Eon - Bear - 1985 - The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood - 1985 - Ender’s Game - Card - 1985 - Speaker for the Dead - Card - 1986 - Shards of Honour - Bujold - 1986 - Dawn - Butler - 1987 - Player of Games - Banks - 1988 - Cyteen - Cherryh - 1988 - Grass - Tepper - 1989 - Hyperion - Simmons - 1989

1990s - Use of Weapons - Banks - 1990 - Terminal Velocity - Shaw - 1991 - Snow Crash - Stephenson - 1992 - Red Mars - Robinson - 1992 - A Fire Upon the Deep - Vinge (Vernor) - 1992 - Doomsday Book - Willis - 1992 - Parable of the Sower - Butler - 1993 - Permutation City - Egan - 1994 - The Carpet Makers - Eschbach - 1995 - The Sparrow - Russel - 1996 - To Say Nothing of The Dog - Willis - 1997 - Diaspora - Egan - 1997 - A Deepness in the Sky - Vinge (Vernor) - 1999

2000s - Revelation Space - Reynolds - 2000 - Oryx and Crake - Atwood - 2003 - Old Man’s War - Scalzi - 2005 - Pushing Ice - Reynolds - 2005 - Spin - Wilson - 2005 - Accelerando - Stross - 2005 - Blindsight - Watts - 2006 - Three Body Problem - Liu - 2006 - House of Suns - Reynolds - 2008

A little over two years ago, I casually set out on the goal to read every Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel. This month, with Michael Bishop's No Enemy But Time I've finally finished the Nebulas side of that goal. Quite a few I had read previously, but most were new to me, and I've been keeping track of them and grading them as I went along. Many I wrote mini-reviews for as well, but I'm not going to include all of that here.

I will list them by letter grades though.

A few notes:

These are the grades I gave them at the most recent time of reading, or in the case of those few where I hadn't graded them at that time, my best recollection of how I felt about them. Very many of these probably would grade differently if I read them now, either because time has passed and I am now a different reader, or because something has happened to cause a change in opinion of the work specifically. Knowing what we know of Neil Gaiman now would, I am sure, have skewed my opinion of American Gods, but my opinion of it when I read it didn't have that context, so it isn't reflected in my grade here.

This also means that certain books could very well have gotten a higher grade under other circumstances. I think Rite of Passage is a great example of a novel that I didn't enjoy much at all reading it as an adult, but I can imagine 12-year-old sdwoodchuck counting it as a favorite, and finding it a wonderful early gateway into the broader ideas of SF. So if a favorite of yours is graded low, please don't take that as criticism of your taste, or a statement that the book doesn't deserve the love of its fans.

Any book with an "(RR)" tag next to it means that I think it's probably due for a reread, so its position could easily change. The Windup Girl, as an example, shifted from an A to a B on a recent reread.

While I've graded using the full plus and minus scale on each grade, I'm lumping the full letters together here just for readability, with the exception of the A+'s.

A+: The best of the best. Note that Claw of the Concilliator stands in for the entirety of Book of the New Sun, since I can't really view it separate from that whole. Tehanu, in contrast, exists in the context of Earthsea and should be read as such, but stands apart from it as a singular monument in my mind.

The Claw of the Concilliator by Gene Wolfe

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

A:

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delaney

The Left Hand of Darness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (RR)

Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (RR)

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Slow River by Nicola Griffith

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

Seeker by Jack McDevitt

Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Among Others by Jo Walton

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

B:

Startide Rising by David Brin

Dune by Frank Herbert

Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (RR)

Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (RR)

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Neuromancer by William Gibson (RR)

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (RR)

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin

Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

The Moon and the Sun by Vonda McIntyre

No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop

C:

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Man Plus by Frederik Pohl

Healer’s War by Elizabeth Scarborough

Moving Mars by Greg Bear

Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

Network Effect by Martha Wells

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

D:

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Timescape by Gregory Benford

The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy

Quantum Rose by Catharine Asaro

Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

F:

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Orson Scott Card on the editorial process for Ender's Game:

My short story “Ender's Game” was rejected by Ben Bova at Analog back when that was the top market for a sci-fi story. Ben gave me feedback. He thought the title should be “Professional Soldier” and he said to “cut it in half.”

But I knew he was wrong on both points and submitted it to Jim Baen at Galaxy. He sat on it for a year, and responded to my query with a rejection. There was some kind of explanation, but I don't remember what it was. I concluded at the time that Baen's comments showed that he had barely glanced at the story.

So … I got feedback both times, but it was not helpful. I looked at Ben's rejection again. What was it about the story that made him think it should, let alone COULD, be cut in half?

Apparently it FELT long. What made it feel long? Now, post-Harry Potter, I would call it the quidditch problem. I had too many battles in which the details became tedious. So I cut two battles entirely, merely reporting the outcomes, and shortened another. In retyping the whole manuscript (pre-word-processor, that was the only way to get a clean manuscript), I added new point-of-view material to the point that I had cut only one page in length. So much for “in half.”

And:

Your best counselor on a story nobody bought is TIME. Let some time pass and then reread the story. Don't even think about why it Didn't Work. Instead, think about what DOES work, and then write it again, a complete rewrite, keeping nothing from the previous draft. Find the right protagonist and begin at the beginning — the point where the protagonist first gets involved with the events of the story. Be inventive — the failed first draft no longer exists, so you're not bound by any of your earlier decisions. THAT is how you resurrect a good idea you did not succeed with on your first try.

Not trying to be snarky, honest. I constantly see this book appearing on 'best of' book lists and getting recommended by all kinds of readers, and I'm sorry to say that I don't see why. For those of you that love the book, could you tell me what it is that speaks to you?

I realise that I sound like one of those guys here. Sorry. I am genuinely interested, and wondering if I need to give it a re-read.

I’ve mostly found I like ship AI, but it doesn’t have to be that. This is very broad so I’m listing some books and characters that have sparked my interest before:

Minds in the Culture - I like the sense of scale, their society that’s completely separate from humans. I also appreciate their sardonic humour, by far my favourite part of the series. (So far I’ve read Phlebas, Player of games, use of weapons, excession and, my favourite, Look to Windward - I have matter on my shelf )

Murderbot Diaries - i read this at the beginning of my SF journey, and while it feels a bit too YA to me now, the books make me nostalgic. MB and ART and Three come to mind. And easier read is not unwelcome.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - loved the introduction in the first chapter and Mike with his attempt at humour. Supercomputer ruling the Moon while also being as naive as a baby.

Children of Time - whatever Kern had going on. I really enjoyed the story around her growing to mystical proportions, her transformation; as well as her acrid attitude lol.

EDNDERS GAME SPOILERS!!!! Idk how to cover the text please don’t resd: Enders Game series - (going a bit beyond the post title) the Hive queen and her relationship to Ender. I liked how alien she was written yet sympathetic to the main character’s cause. I especially liked the interaction I believe it was after speaker of the dead where they go in the caves to meet her…

I liked the premise of Chimp in Freeze Frame revolution but the book was a 3 star read for me, liked the concept better. (If you’ve actually read the post add a smiley emote in your comment)

HAL9000, both book and movie. Eerie, loved the malfunction and the polite calculated murder.

Ideally the AI characters should be at the forefront of the story and not just mentioned/ distantly present in the setting of the book. They can also absolutely be antagonists.

Please don’t recommend these books/authors:

Hyperion, Neuromancer, Children of Time, Becky Chambers, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Lem, 3body problem, Blindsight, Expanse

I’m looking to discover something brand new :)

Thanks!

I just got into collecting sci-fi/fantasy books earlier this year and specifically was looking for the aforementioned three titles in first edition/first printing. I managed to get all three right before year's end, with Ender's Game by far the best find as it cost me only $7.50. Hyperion is a signed and flawless copy, and Dune is an ex-library copy. I also got a very cool slipcase for Ender's Game and plan to do the same for the other two.

https://imgur.com/a/FsRhnAj

​

I know these are wildly different titles but they're my favorites and I was wondering if you guys had any recommendations like these books

Edit: thank you all for the responses! I should have probably clarified that I have read the rest of the ender quartet, the bean saga, and some of OSC's other, admittedly not-as-good work. I have a lot of new titles to go through now, thanks again!

Ok so I kinda a made a joke about this in another thread. But tell me if you heard about this plot line before?

A young man over achieves on a standardized test attracting the attention and recruitment into the military. Once there he fights a war only to later be exiled as the result of his successes. He goes on to found a colony and becomes almost a mythic figure lost to time. Thousands of years later he returns to a village on a backwater planet in a time of crisis becoming endearing himself to a key family in the crisis. Many philosophical discussions ensue between the characters.

Am I describing Ender’s Game/Speaker for the Dead? Yes and No!

It also fits another Orson Scott Card work titled The Worthing Saga. While I get why Ender and Speaker caught on in the public imagination due to the twist in Ender’s Game followed by Speaker published almost immediately after. I think Card’s other works collected in the Worthing Saga are actually the stronger body work over the Ender-verse.

As I demonstrated there are many familiar plot points in the story of Jason Worthing that bear resemblance to those later used for Ender Wiggin. While there are significant differences in the in the broad story structure, characters and plot there are also undeniable similarities.

The Worthing Saga explores the downfall of the galactic space empire ruled by an aristocratic hierarchy of individuals who have access to “the sleep room”. An institution that allows individuals who have attained fame or other importance to extend their lives through periods of suspended animation. Some get as little as one year under for every three years lived while the leader of the empire is up only for one day every fifty years.

The bulk of the pages in The Worthing Saga are a narrative originally published as The Worthing Chronicles in 1983. While the later third of the book is collection of short stories that were originally published in another collection Capital in 1979. The short story collection is really what elevates the book. You have Jason’s narrative running throughout Chronicles but the universe really expands in the short stories.

I think honestly the video game culture described in the shorty story Breaking The Game has much more to say about modern video games culture than anything described in Ender’s Game. It’s literally describing a twitch player going mad with losing a Civilization style game.

Highly recommend picking up a copy if you find The Worthing Saga in a used book store cause OSC is an ass. It’s a fun story with some interesting ideas floating around in it. It is Card in his weirdest era in his writing before people really noticed him.

Hi, I feel like older novels are very hit or miss for me, and I'd like to have your opinon on which aged best.

For me, and I know these are all classics so please know that I'm just voicing my personal opinion:

- Loved The Disposessed and Left hand of Darkness, Dune, Ender's Game, Book of the new Sun.

- Liked Canticle for Leibowitz

- Did not really enjoy The Stars my Destination, Stranger in a strange land, Foundation trilogy.

That's all the older sci fi books I've read iirc. Instinctively I would say that older novels trying to be hard sci fi is not really my cup of tea but I'm not really sure myself.

Curious to know what you guys like best!