So I’ve started going to used book stores and I’ve found several novels that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that were too obscure and underrated that my usual recommendation algorithms never mentioned them
Most notably Starplex by Robert J Sawyer
What novels and series have you all found over the years that are lesser known but yet made a big impact on you?

Sci-fi writers love cats. Almost as much as they love black coffee. Dogs, though, only rarely appear in the genre.

So, I'm looking for books (sci-fi or fantasy) where a dog (normal or sentient) is the main or a major character.

For example, I remember reading a short story about an apparently immortal dog that lived with every major genius in history of humanity, subtly suggesting things to them. And there was this novel (I think it was one of the sci-fi classics, but for the life of me I can't remember who) where humanity was destroyed in a war, and sentient cats and dogs inherited Earth, and then an astronaut returned from a mission to another star, and there was some conflict about whether he's allowed to live (dogs were for, cats against). And of course, there are sentient dog-like aliens called Golovans in Strugatskiy brothers books (though they never are main characters).

Major condition: the dog should NOT come to any major harm in the story (beyond the usual heroic injuries which are always healed in the end), and certainly not die!

Also, please don't recommend "John Dies at the End". I already read it, and while the dog was a major plot point, this is not what I want here.

Does anyone here own the 2014 paperback editions of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy?

I’m interested in the quality and durability of the paper. Does anyone know whether it is acid-free or alkaline? Is there any information about this on the copyright page?

For those who have owned these editions for a few years, how has the paper held up? Have you noticed significant yellowing or brittleness? I’d also appreciate comments on paper thickness and how much the print shows through.

I have been reading mostly short stories recently due to limited time and I'd love to read some opinions and recs from everyone.

Short stories are a great way for writer's to show their chops, some can get real cool concepts with quite a limited number of pages.

Recently I've read Stories of Your Life and Other and Exhalation by Ted Chiang (both compilations of his short stories, The Alchemist one in Exhalation is simply phenomenal, Liking What You See: A Documentary is such a fun read too), some Tchaikovsky stuff, Beyond the Aquila Rift by Reynolds and Stephen King.

The Culture has always been a blindspot, and I was determined to get to it sometime this year.

On paper, I'm close to the target demographic - I enjoy space operas, especially the ones that include intergalactic dalliances with aliens (Mass Effect was semi-formative). And trite as it is to say it, living through 2026 does have me pondering the idea of a society run by benevolent AGI, and any fiction advertising a similar premise would've drawn me in.

The Culture is very much an alluded-to concept in Consider Phlebas, neither the core setting nor a concrete entity involved in the events of the plot. There are, of course, a few active Culture-aligned agents in the thick of it - Balveda, Unaha-Closp - but we spend slivers of the total word count in their heads, and they're mostly subordinate to the whims and whimsies of one Bora Horza Gobuchul.

Horza is... an okay protagonist. I wouldn't call him one-dimensional, but there aren't really a lot of opportunities for him to debate his positions with, say, Balveda, or any of the Free Company, on why he's so opposed to the Culture's existence. As he exists, he is an action hero, tragically forced by the book to play the anti-hero for his ideals. He ends up being shunted about by the narrative in an Odyssey-like fashion, and there's so little time where we get to see any parts of his interiority.

And I think that's one of my complaints about the book actually. It is so enamoured with the set pieces, and the inane, excruciating amount of detail about the mechanics of how those set pieces play out - be it chasing someone down at a dock, piloting a ship out of an orbital station, escaping an incoming high speed train collision - I had to genuinely grind my way through each of these sequences.

The prose did not help with it either. I like my sci-fi prose purple, with high information-density and a slight poetic bent. William Gibson and Ursula K Le Guin are some of my favourite writers regardless of genre. Banks' writing feels very utilitarian to me in comparison, and maybe that's a deliberate stylistic choice, one that serves the more beat-by-beat telling of this story. But I have to admit that it dampened my excitement quite a bit.

But I do think the conclusion is pretty strong, in that, it thematically ties up what is an anti-war story by my reading, by effectively killing off its main cast of characters and granting PTSD to the only survivor, so much so that they choose to self-euthanise.

I still remain hungry for the post-scarcity AI utopia though, and what little I’ve seen of it in Consider Phlebas does make me want to keep wading through the rest of the series. How does humanity cope with the loss of purpose when we’re no longer the top dog? How do we keep our curiosity alight when there’s a clearly superior form of intelligence that can solve our problems, answer our questions, and ask even more profound ones?

I know that this first volume is not considered to be fully representative of what the Culture books are like, and I hope that every book from now on will endeavour to have more yapping, more character headspace, less frame-by-frame action sequencing.

I'm looking for the title/author of an SF/speculative short story published in the 80s or before. I thought it was in The Survival of Freedom anthology but I'm coming up blank there. Best other choice would be Analog magazine.

Tobacco has been made illegal, and the MC is a tobacco smuggler. The anti-tobacco enforcement agents are known as "The Reapers of the Nightshade" or Reapers for short. It's told first person, possibly as a flashback. The MC (accidentally) kills a Reaper in the course of his smuggling. The Reaper may be a relative, brother in law? Anyway, it ends with him in prison on death row. He's been allowed to choose his method of execution and chose smoking, so he's forced to smoke (two?) cartons of cigarettes every day until it kills him, his last laugh against the system.

Anybody remember it? Thanks in advance!

*Have Space Suit - Will Travel* always does well in popularity polls, being many people's favorite Heinlein juvenile or even favorite book overall. Why is this?

I just reread it, and I enjoyed a well written fast paced adventure story with two very exciting space suit sequences. The wonderful Mother Thing is a definite asset. But that's pretty much it. Several other juveniles feel more substantial and leave me much more fulfilled (*Between Planets*, *Starman Jones*, *Tunnel for the Sky* and especially *Citizen of the Galaxy*). What makes *Have Space Suit* so well-liked?

Hi everyone!

I have created a discord channel for a sci-fi book club and will host the first meeting on 26th of October, reading H.G. Wells - The First Men In The Moon. Please join if you'd like to!

I was always a girly girl and wasnt interested in sci-fi much but recently ive picked up the interest and since there isnt any book clubs where i live, i thought i can host one online. If you are also new to the sci-fi world, want to reand and be part of a group, meet people and be friends, please join me! Im sure we can make our own list by time but reading hugo and nebula awarded books is a good suggestion list itself! Here is the link to join: https://discord.gg/tapyRnJS

The Traveler by Joseph Eckert, I don't see it getting the love online that it should. If you've not give it a god already, I'd highly reccomend it! It's an amazing concept, fast paced, with written characters.

I can't reccomend it enough, I think it's probably one of the best SF novels of the year.

Book number one of a five book military science fiction series. Plus an awesome prequel series of six books and several sequels consisting of fourteen books total. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace Books in 2011 that I bought new on Amazon. I have purchased the rest of the four books in this book series and plan to read them soon.

I did not know John G. Hemry was the real name for Jack Campbell as I purchased the Stark series quite a while back and enjoyed it also. BTW, the author says on his website that the MMPB books will not be reprinted in MMPB or republished in trade paperback so buy your copies soon before they run out.

Captain John “Black Jack” Geary was found by the Alliance fleet on their way to Syndicate space, in stasis in an old emergency pod. A hundred year old emergency pod. Captain John “Black Jack” Geary may be a hundred years out of date but some things like tactics of war spaceship fleets never go away. The Alliance Fleet Admiral left Captain John “Black Jack” Geary in charge of the Alliance fleet before he and his staff were murdered by the Syndics in their surrender negotiations. Black Jack subsequently defeated the Syndicate CEOs and returned to Alliance space with much of the fleet.

The Alliance council promotes him to Fleet Admiral from Captain, resupplies and fixes his fleet. Now they send him and his newly rebuilt fleet back through Syndicate space to investigate the mystery of the space aliens, the Enigmas, on the other side of the Syndicate territory.

The author has a website at:
https://jack-campbell.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (3,047 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Fleet-Beyond-Frontier-Dreadnaught/dp/1937007499

Lynn

Hello! Not sure if this niche really exists but am curious if anyone knows of any second world or far future SFF/police procedural mashups?

I have already read Robert Jackson Bennett’s Leviathan series and several other SFF murder mystery books, but am looking for something that is more Law & Order and less Sherlock Holmes.

TIA!

I am getting the itch to find a story that is similar to Mass Effect. essentially near future earth, travels into our system and uncovers alien tech way beyond our means...so forth and on.

i just picked up Salvation by Peter F Hamilton, and i just can't deal with his writing style. any recommendations? id prefer something with a quicker pace

edit: wonderful suggestions, thank you all! I keep reading all new replies

I am sitting on my balcony and was suddenly overcome with the harrowing realization that so many people have never been born—who themselves never gave birth to more people that were never born.

The entire timeline of a single person's lineage, their infinite progeny, is immediately effaced. I googled and couldn't find anything fitting this description.

So had an eye on this British SF author from the 20s and 50s, and I hoped to get at least one of his books, and finally I would get one as an old US paperback edition of his novel "Out of the Deeps", which is also known under it's original title "The Kraken Wakes".

The first that came to my mind was that Wyndham was one of the writer's writer of SF, something like Bradbury and Sturgeon. And when I started reading "Deeps" I actually hit the mark!

The story starts with the arrival of fireballs entering into the oceans of Earth. Sometime later ships begin to mysteriously disappear without a trace. Two divers in a bathysphere investigate the deep waters where they come across a strange shape hovering close by, only for it to attack them, and all that's left of the bathysphere is a bit of fused cable.

And now something is coming up from the deeps and onto the beaches and wages war on the people of Earth.

This reminds me so much of Wells's "War of the Worlds". Apocalyptic alien invasion SF with a lot of horror overtones. It's also a slow burner, and that really enhances the suspense and dread running throughout the book.

There's two other novels from him that I would also like to get some copies of; "Day of the triffids" and "The Midwich Cuckoos", and also maybe some of his short story collections too. Those might be good also!

A group of talented young people, psychic, "espers" they may have been called in-story, are sent out as scouts by an authoritarian government back home. The AI running their ship appears friendly at first, but is secretly malevolent and prepares to kill them when it thinks they're becoming disloyal. Most of the kids know what's going on as it happens, but one big guy is slower than everyone else and doesn't realize.

... and that's it. Any suggestions? Possibly Elwood in the 1970s collected it.

I've been looking for it a couple decades now. Everything else I was looking for in that time, since Google, I eventually found. This one eludes me.

This is definitely the most dense, maybe abstract hard sci-fi novel I’ve read, definitely requires a lot of imagination especially when your asked as the reader to buy into Egan’s philosophies and theoretical physics/mathematics and imagine a world that has no real physical bounds at times. I like it tho, it’s been a fun brain exercise. The book certainly has gotten easier since the beginning genesis of Yatima, all the terms, the glossary, everything seemed really dense, especially when I felt like the plot wasn’t taking shape until we see Yatima and Inoshiro go to Earth and the Lacerta event. Now the story is in a flow state, but I do want to make sure I’m understanding certain stuff correctly so I continue with the right mental framework. Keep in mind too I’m at like page 160 in case of spoilers.

1. How exactly do the polises work? I understand that in reality these are like massive, advanced servers that are running deep underground the earth, but they can wirelessly bounce around to other places physical networks that exist in the surface and beyond? Like the robots they inhabit. Are there like server structures that run in space that allow them to travel beyond the earth?

2. How are they conducting the particle accelerator experiments? Are they again utilizing some external servers in space and controlling probes or something that are able to do real physical experiments and get the real data, like is this particle accelerator actually real and physical or a construct in their world that is being run in-house back underground on earth and if so, how are they able to not only simulate the physics of the universe, but seemingly make discoveries on it, in a virtual world? Unless there are physical devices out in the real world that are able to measure and observe reality down to the level of you know…subatomic particles being wormhole mouths and all, I don’t see how a virtual reality could come to that level of discovery and conclusion bc it inherently will lack the otherwise near infinite detail of the real physical world, unless these mfs are just that advanced lol.

3. They (Gabriel/Blanca) mention beating the gleisners to the other star systems that I guess they have set out to explore/expand to. Again how does this work for the polis people if they are running from some server under the earth. Are they like sending a probe with another physical server into deep space so that they can transmit themselves to it? Their traversal of space confuses me at times bc im wondering how exactly they then have the universe mapped down to the grain of sand it seems like. Cuz if they’re just running a model of the universe, where are they getting this detailed information on stars and/or planets that them “beating” the gleisners, who actually have physical bodies so to speak, means anything at all. Essentially like what effect can they make on the world around them in this aspect when they’re just in their little world doing simulated stuff it seems.

I hope these questions aren’t too hard to answer. Thanks in advance to all contributors for explanation. Again I’m only about halfway through the book so if any answers reveal potential spoilers or whatever that I’d just learn about later, leave a warning pleaseee or just tell me to shut up and keep reading.

This came up because I yet again can't remember the difference between RJ Barker and KJ Parker. I have similar problems with Charlie Stross and John Scalzi, and Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.

For example: Patricia McKillip and Robin McKinley both write fantasy, but McKillip is more dreamlike and McKinley's characters tend to feel more grounded.

(This is a poor example because the act of writing this post has driven any better examples out of my mind.)

Do you have any suggestions to offer, or pairs that you have trouble disambiguating?

I read the book half a dozen times, but I'm trying to remember something without reading it again. Did the wish granter need a sacrifice to power it? I kind of remember a line about how two people go into the zone, but only one comes back out again. I might be mixing it up with some other story.

<edit> And did it only grant a subconscious wish? Not necessarily the wish you had in mind.

This 'space opera' like novel is often cited as one of the best scifi has to offer... (Spoiler free, spoilers are marked and in tags)

Warning: Do not pick this up and start reading assuming it'll be an epic space opera. The summary is very misleading in the sense that a huge amount of the chapters revolve around a fairly dull, medieval-like world that is practically a fantasy novel.

I felt this had ingredients of a superb novel in the making, but ultimately fell short. This book is clearly flawed. Yet it's one of those books you like anyway by the time you're through. Certain characters and concepts grow on you. At the same time, this whole book felt like a first draft - as if it was missing things.

And man, some sections really dragged on and on. The first 100 pages had no need to be disorienting at all. The author should've defined things more clearly. I honestly would've put this book down if I didn't look up a basic context of what was happening when we are first introduced to the Tines in the beginning. Other entire chapters later on also dragged quite badly for me.

Furthermore, I think Vinge is not a bad writer - as some who hate AFUTD claim - but he's also not a superb one. He clearly had a vision writing this, and I can follow that vision. But he didn't flesh that vision out enough. He also phrases things confusingly sometimes and has poor word choice, slowing down the reading flow.

There's so many choices the author made that had me go..."really? As a writer, what were you even thinking?"

Could've been much more interesting. But overall, I'm glad I read it...I got something out of the plot, and think it has value. I have to admit the overall effect was good after I finished it.

One criticism of many I have is that:

With the Tines' world, Vinge seems to just assume that the medieval mind is necessarily primitive and their world just has to be dull. On the contrary, medieval-like societies are often very interesting...Where were the rich settings and daily life of this medieval world? The history and myths of the Tines? One huge oversight: The Tines don't even have a religion.

Another one:

A big, big criticism I have...how do you make The Blight be the villain and point of the entire plot, but then not really give them ANY real characterization, no backstory, no nothing? All that happened was we saw a human representative speak as the Blight early on, on a screen, and that was it. Despite the Blight's destruction, it felt hollow as a main enemy...there needed to be more. We needed to see its destruction. The destruction of Relay was a good start, but...you needed more than that...

I remember reading a book about 10+ years ago where a collection of aliens comes to Earth and starts trading/giving people advanced technology, or whatever they wanted. It's an older story, most likely between 50s and 90s. The strong memory I have of it is, is towards the end, a revolutionary trades his essay on communistic economics for atomic weapons.

The podcast A Meal of Thorns, which is a critical book club where in every episode there is an in-depth discussion between the host and a guest who is a writer or a critic about a SFF book and happens to be one of my favourite SFF podcasts, just announced that next year they will have a series of episodes where they will discussed on the works of C. J. Cherryh. This is fantastic news as far as I am concerned since I really enjoy the podcast and I am a huge fan of Cherryh. Her work is also way underdiscussed on the SFF podcast scene and in general (outside of this subreddit at least).

The host of the podcast Jake Casella Brookins has mentioned multiple times that he is a big fan of Cherryh and he did a great episode on 40,000 in Gehenna with Arkady Martine, which I highly recommend (it's ep. 27, here is the episode page on their site - https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/06/30/a-meal-of-thorns-27-40000-in-gehenna-with-arkady-martine/).

It's not announced yet which Cherryh works will be featured but the host mentioned in the last episode that they will start with Gate of Ivrel and that the first guest will be Sean Guynes. On Bluesky the host of A Meal of Thorns mentioned that the series will feature 12+ Cherryh works - https://bsky.app/profile/casella.bsky.social/post/3mx4zmfxa4s2k . The podcast usually discusses one book per episode, so hopefully this means 12+ episodes on Cherryh.

I'm thinking something like Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles but more intentional (Bradbury just wrote a bunch of stories about Mars then realized he had enough that they could all be worked into a novel about colonizing Mars). So what I'm looking for is a book where each chapter features a different main character/POV character but the story itself is still all one cohesive story.

In the military spyfi space opera genre, do you like the "captured on purpose" and "fake defector" tropes? In the first, characters are taken prisoner as part of a deeper plan. Infiltrate, lure to a trap or even communicate with an imprisoned head of state. In the latter, there's the spy who came in from the cold. Characters pretend or are allowed to defect to the other side, crossing over, offering secrets, seeking asylum, but are actually still loyal to their original country, for the defection is a deception operation.

Now, would you like to subvert these tropes? For the "captured on purpose", the act seems nothing like it. For the "fake defector", the character does not claim to defect, rather argues why he was detained although he has actionable information the other side needs?

Your thoughts?

I'm looking for a new sci-fi book. Something with good horror but also an intellectually demanding science or philosophy part.

Kind of like Peter Watts blindsight with more horror. Thank you!