most mind blowing/mind bending books?

[joe0101]

Hey all! I'm pretty new to reading fantasy/sci-fi, and I am looking for some help with a recommendation. I was wondering what is the most mind blowing/mind bending book that you have ever read? Clarification: not a book that is complicated or hard to follow, but rather a book that is 1) extremely creative and 2) opens up new concepts and ideas to you and expands your mind and makes you think in ways that you did not think were possible. Thanks for your help!

 

[Bick]

I would suggest you pick up anything by Philip K. Dick. As a mind-bender that had me questioning my own sanity briefly, Martian Time Slip would be a good example. For out-right weirdness of ideas, you also can't go wrong with Cordwainer Smith.

 

[zaltys13]

White Light by Rudy Rucker springs to mind, as does anything by Michael Marshall Smith, but especially Only Forward and Spares. His short fiction is also incredibly creative, try the collections What You Make It, and Everything You Need. One more example of very creative science fiction I would give is Hyperion and its sequels by Dan Simmons.

 

[Vince W]

All a bit dated now, but Neuromancer by William Gibson was a sharp kick to science fiction when it arrived.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

It's only barely science fiction (and I don't think it's actually shelved as such), but the book that absolutely blew my mind this past year is The Circle by Dave Eggers. It is about a fictional internet-tech company that bears a resemblance to Apple and Google and Microsoft all rolled into one, and their new technology and the social experimentation that follows it. It will definitely make you think about the world in a different way.

Oh, and I should add my old favorites as well -- Maze, by Larry Collins, which is also not technically science fiction (actually a Cold War thriller) but revolves around a bit of brain science that is science fiction. (And back when the Library of Congress used 1TB of storage, so the tech will blow you away in a different way.) And something that I was going to add but it slipped my mind, so I'll come back and add it later. Grr.

 

[hitmouse]

As with Neuromancer, a bit (variably) dated, but fit the bill for me at the time:
The Time Machine HG Wells
Tiger Tiger Alfred Bester
The Silver Locusts Ray Bradbury
The City and the Stars Arthur C Clarke
Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein
The Shadow of the Torturer Gene Wolfe
An Alien Heat, and The Final Programme Michael Moorcock
The Drowned World JG Ballard

 

[J-Sun]

The usual "go to" title would be AE van Vogt's The Weapon Makers (and much else of van Vogt besides). Probably because I actually read it first, I was even more blown away by Charles L. Harness' The Paradox Men (also known as Flight into Yesterday). On re-reading many years later that extremely powerful mind-blowingness didn't work as well but it was still a lot of fun.

Those are temporal/causal sorts of mind blowing which isn't entirely different from the kind of "high concept/metaphysical" mind-blowing Bick's talking about with PKD (adding The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik (etc) to Martian Time-Slip) -- Ursula K. Le Guin's foray into PKDWorld, The Lathe of Heaven, would also be worth a mention in this context -- and zaltys13 is talking about with Rucker (adding Space-Time Donuts (etc) to White Light. Rucker's has added sinews of mathematics in his metaphysics. A work that is kind of related though on a completely different level and so not usually mentioned is Keith Laumer's Knight of Delusions (aka Night of Delusions). On a re-read it seemed overly repetitive and, as I say, comparatively shallow, but was still neat and the first read was mind-blowing. So it might not suit a jaded reader but a fresh reader might get a real kick out of it.

Speaking of, most any decent SF a new reader reads is likely to be pretty mind-bending at the least. Stuff like Heinlein's Starman Jones and Spinrad's Last Hurrah collection did it for me though, while I still like them a lot and they have survived re-reads with flying colors, they don't leap to mind as "mind-blowing" in retrospect. But they are, really. One that works both ways is Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy.

But when I think "mind-blowing" I tend to go panning in the hard SF beds where I find the most mind-blowing gold. "Cosmology operas", so to speak, are the things that light me up the most. Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and Charles Sheffield's Between the Strokes of Night, especially. Extreme physics like Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, Joe Haldeman's The Forever War (which is also mind-blowing in subtler sociological ways), Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg - disc-shaped planets with ultra-high gravity regions, time-dilation star wars, beings living at super-speeds on neutron stars! But things much more modest and closer to home can also be captivating and mind-blowing in their ways. I don't know how well it holds up but I was blown away by Frederik Pohl's Man Plus in which, rather than turning Mars into Earth for colonization, the protagonist human is turned into a Martian.

And I would always recommend the complete works of Greg Egan (especialy Diaspora) for the best in mind-bending and mind-blowing SF.

And I wouldn't neglect short fiction. Every one mentioned has written excellent short fiction and the entire short works of John Varley (as well as his first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline) are well worth exploring for mind-bending, along with thousands of other short works by hundreds of authors.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

In a different way, I think I had my mind expanded by The Circus of Dr. Lao[/b] (1935)by Charles G. Finney, with its endless collection of wonders, all presented in a very matter-of-fact way.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Star Rover a fantasy novel by Jack London. This book is largely unknown and unlike all his other books. It is the story of a strait jacketed death row inmate by the name of Darrell Standing who starts practicing transcendental meditation to lesson the discomfort of being tied up in the jacket. He very quickly discovers that not only can leave his physical body, he astral project himself into his past lives at will. The book is epic in scope and scale a journey across time , space and history . It is a ponderous read. The entire novel can be found online in its entirety.

City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith one of the greatest fantasy short stories ever written . His prose his incredible . If you want mind-blowing he's definitely in that category. There is site called The Eldritch Dark which has all of history stories online in there entirety listed alphabetically other stoires to check out by him Double Shadow , The Vaults of Yoh Vombus.

The Essential Ellison A Fifty Year Retrospective by Harlan Ellison . He is without a doubt one of the great writers of all time. This book has many of his most memorable stories like I have no Mouth but I must Scream, The Whimpering of Whipped Dogs, Soldier , Paladin of the Lost Hour , '' Repent Harlequin " Said the Ticktockman , A Boy and His Dog and many many more . I also recommend reading his introductions and essays they are wonderful to read. He's entertains and he makes you think. He's definitely not to be missed.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

The other one that I couldn't remember earlier was Society of the Mind, by Eric L. Harry.

 

[tinkerdan]

Anything by L.P. Davies or D.G. Compton will be a bit of a mental twist on things.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss blew my mind when it came out, and still does. Sets the bar (alongside Dune) for planet-sized SF.

 

[Harpo]

When I was eighteen I first heard about Last And First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Just the description of it made me want to read it, but it took several years before I found a copy. It blew my mind, and still does now, over thirty years later. His Starmaker does the same.

 

[The Bluestocking]

I would suggest you pick up anything by Philip K. Dick. As a mind-bender that had me questioning my own sanity briefly, Martian Time Slip would be a good example.

I second the recommendation of Philip K. Dick. Reading him is like going on a real head trip!

Also recommended: any book by Jasper Fforde. Seriously. Anything.

 

[VALIS13]

I will third Martian Time-Slip. I would also add VALIS and The Divine Invasion as mind-blowing PKD works.

I second Man Plus.

Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human about gifted children hiding away is excellent.

The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus is completely "out there". I recommend downloading the first couple of chapters on a Kindle for free to try before you buy, as the kind of stuff experienced in the first couple of chapters just continues throughout the whole thing.

 

[Randy M.]

Well, there's always Lewis Carroll.

I'm not sure how current readers would react, but when I was in my teens and early twenties, H. P. Lovecraft's more science fictional works ("The Shadow Out of Time"; "At the Mountains of Madness") gave me a sense of deep time. A bit different but similarly mind-expanding was Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea was trippy, hippie-dippy fiction by guys obsessed by conspiracy theory, though who knows how much they actually believed in what they were writing.

Phillip K. Dick seems a likely writer, too. And I was reminded recently of An East Wind Rising by Arthur Byron Cover. Then there's The Public Burning by Robert Coover, of which I wonder how badly it has dated.


Randy M.

 

[G.D. Lascelle]

I second White Light by Rudi Rucker, also just about anything by John Sladek - the short story collection Keep the Giraffe Burning being one that did my dome in. The Illuminatus Trilogy as mentioned by Randy M is also funny and trippy, but even more mind-blowing is the (loosely so called) 'sequel' tby Robert Anton Wilson, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

 

[Randy M.]

I second White Light by Rudi Rucker, also just about anything by John Sladek - the short story collection Keep the Giraffe Burning being one that did my dome in. The Illuminatus Trilogy as mentioned by Randy M is also funny and trippy, but even more mind-blowing is the (loosely so called) 'sequel' tby Robert Anton Wilson, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

Sladek is a good call. I fouind The Best of John Sladek enormously entertaining and amusing.


Randy M.

 

[dask]

Not a book but a short story, and a strange one at that. "The Men Return" by Jack Vance. If it were adapted for a comic Steve Ditko at his Doctor Strange best would have to draw it.

 

[Alex The G and T]

Night of Light Philip Jose Farmer

Weird enough to be the inspiration for Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze."