i’ve been reading sci-fi since i was a teenager, and have been recently inspired to put together a list of my favorites and anti-favorites after seeing noah smith’s and andrej karpathy’s lists. some caveats / rules:

  1. i’ve limited myself to a single book per author on this list (or a single series), in the interest of brevity
  2. this list includes books that i read quite a while ago, and it’s entirely possible that if i re-read them now, my opinion would be different
  3. i’ve focused this list of books that i either really liked, and ones i really disliked despite their popularity. i.e. you won’t see too many 3/5s on this list because they’re just meh and not worth mentioning.
  4. no (or at least minimal) spoilers (which also means i have to be a bit vague in the descriptions)

forever war by joe haldeman [5/5]

a brilliant allegory for the vietman war (author is a vet), but even if you ignore that, just an awesome sci fi story. the best use of special relativity as a literary device that i’ve seen yet.

deepness in the sky by verner vinge [5/5]

easily in my top 3. what a god damned book. it’s like 3 stories that are perfectly intertwined, and all of them are compelling. enjoyed it more than fire upon the deep, though that one is quite good as well.

permutation city by greg egan [5/5]

five pages in, my mind was already blown. not a particularly huge fan of the characters, but the ideas in this book are truly thought provoking.

contact by carl sagan [5/5]

watched the movie when i was 13 and was disappointed that it wasn’t like star wars. read the book a few years later and it blew my mind. watched move again afterwards, and loved it as well.

ubik by phillip k. dick [5/5]

who doesn’t love dick? hard to pick a favorite, but i’ll go with ubik just because i haven’t seen this particular flavor of sci fi explored as much. honorable mentions: a scanner darkly, do androids dream of electric sheep. honorable mentions of dick books i disliked: flow my tears the policeman said, man in the high castle.

ender’s game by orson scott card [5/5]

can’t go wrong with this one. trigger warning: the story in volves a mix of children and violence, which can be a bit uncomfortable. do NOT google anything about this book, or you’ll easily have it spoiled. the sequel, speaker for the dead, is almost equally praised, but i hated it.

project hail mary by andy weir [5/5]

really hard not to spoil this one, but i was absolutely giddy reading it. every time i started thinking “oooh, but what about XYZ, isn’t that a plot hole”, the plot would address XYZ. it’s similar in style to the martian, but more in the speculative sci fi vein, which i’m personally more into. the writing is a bit corny at times, but no one’s perfect.

the expanse books {7,8,9} by james s. a. corey [{4,5,5}/5]

watched the show (took a couple of restarts to get into it, but once into it, easily favorite sci fi show of all time). the show stopped at book 6 (not ideal obviously, but there’s a 30 year gap between books 6 and 7, so it was an “OK” stopping point). i didn’t have the patience to read all 6 books, and wanted to know how it all ends, so i just read some summaries (which sounded pretty darn close to the show), and dove into book 7. book 7 was a bit underwhelming, though i enjoyed revisiting the characters. book 8 is fucking bananas, in a good way. book 9 is excellent as well, and wraps things up nicely. still think about the ending every now and then. some people consider this series “pulp”, and i honestly don’t get why.

spin [4/5]

the first book in the series is really enjoyable. the two sequels are a bit meh.

children of time by adrian tchaikovsky [4/5]

this is a darling of r/printSF, and while i generally enjoyed it, i thought one of the plot lines (the one with the humans) was a bit weak… the characters were underdeveloped. it’s possible that i was too harsh on this book because i read it shortly after reading deepness in the sky, which i adored and on the surface level has some similarities, so it put this book in its shadow. i haven’t read the sequels yet, but very well might.

blindsight by peter watts [2/5]

this is also a darling of r/printSF. i hated it. forced myself to get to the end. there are some interesting ideas in there, but it’s just incredibly poorly written in my opnion – plot holes, characters with nonsensical motivation, deus ex machina twists at the very end, and a lot of nihilism.

three body problem by liu cixin [2/5]

yet another darling of r/printSF, and is generally super popular. perhaps it’s because there’s something lost in translation, or because the book was just incredibly overhyped, i was extremely disappointed. as with blindsight, clearly some interesting ideas (though, honeslty, i had seen many of them before in various other books), a provacotive set up, but overall extremely nihilistic and a joyless affair.

neuromancer by william gibson [1/5]

i have no idea why people like this book. it may very well have been revolutionary when it was written, but it’s so dated now, it made barely any sense.