Recommendations for the best Mind Blowing SFF books( i am newbie in this genre)

[ltsetskhladze]

Hello i want to start reading SFF books and i want to know with what to start and to give me best options there . i am really interested in sff and want to know recommendations of professions . One of my friends suggested dark matter is it good ?

 

[BAYLOR]

Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Sun Diver by David Brin
Star Tide Rising by David Brin
The UpLift War by David Brin
Ghost by Piers Anthony
Colony by Ben Bova
The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
Non Stop by Brian Aldiss
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick
Doomstar By Edmond Hamilton
Morlock Night By K W Jeter
Jack Faust by Michael Swanswick
Babel 17 By Samuel Delany
Nova By Samuel Delany
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Man Plus by Frederick Pohl
Way. Station By Cifford Simak
Bolo and Rogue Bolo by Keith Laumer
The Black Sun by Jack Williamson
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Donovan's Brain by Kurt Siodmak
The Veils of Azlaroc by Fred SaberHagen
Cities in Flght by James Blish
The Killing Star by Charles Pelligrino and George Zebroski
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon
Between the Stokes of Midnight by Charles Sheffield
The Nimrod Hunt by Charles Sheffield


If your just starting out in the Science fiction genre , I would recommend reading not only the newer stuff but the older classic stuff as well.

 

[Parson]

If you are truly new to this genre, Baylor's list might be overwhelming. I have often suggested that people unfamiliar with the genre read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. All of those who read it enjoyed it. Some REALLY enjoyed it.

 

[BAYLOR]

If you are truly new to this genre, Baylor's list might be overwhelming. I have often suggested that people unfamiliar with the genre read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. All of those who read it enjoyed it. Some REALLY enjoyed it.

Yes , my list is a bit huge, isn't it?

Enders Game is definitely a good starting point

 

[Vince W]

@BAYLOR's list is a very good cross-section but I always tell newcomers to start with some Robert A. Heinlein. His books are generally very accessible. Space Cadet, Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Starship Troopers, The Puppet Masters, Podkayne of Mars, and many others are a good place to start.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Yes , my list is a bit huge, isn't it?

Perhaps restrict your recommendations to no more than 5-10 next time?

i want to start reading SFF books and i want to know with what to start and to give me best options there

Plenty of discussions here about various SFF books. As SFF if quite a wide genre, it might help to narrow it down to science fiction or fantasy. However, no harm in wanting to read both.

 

[Rodders]

Stranger in a Strange Land was pretty mind blowing to me when I read it. A fair attempt at free thinking which is well worth a read, even now.

If you're new to the genre, I would suggest the short stories of Philip K. Dick (there are five volumes). It's a good introduction to some of his themes, which are varied and pretty often quite mind blowing.

 

[Danny McG]

Perhaps restrict your recommendations to no more than 5-10 next time?

It's BAYLOR, it's a big list...
That's what he does!

 

[Narkalui]

If you are truly new to this genre, Baylor's list might be overwhelming. I have often suggested that people unfamiliar with the genre read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. All of those who read it enjoyed it. Some REALLY enjoyed it.

Yeah... Not me. I did finish it but... There were ideas that I liked but ultimately I think my problem was that I felt Ender was an over the top whiner.

 

[acadena]

Hello i want to start reading SFF books and i want to know with what to start and to give me best options there . i am really interested in sff and want to know recommendations of professions . One of my friends suggested dark matter is it good ?

As a kid I loved the foundation series by ASIMOV
As an adult I think the three body problem by Cixin Liu

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

If you are a total newbie, then I would suggest some of the early classics
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
The War Of The Worlds by H. G. Wells
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

and a search for 'classic science fiction' will find many lists
Here's one such list where the authors have gone to a lot of trouble compiling it

The Classics of Science Fiction

The Classics of Science Fiction list, compiled by James Wallace Harris and Anthony Bernardo, is an attempt to create a definitive list of the best Science Fiction books.

www.worldswithoutend.com

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Ring World
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Fallen Angels (Niven: Pournelle; Flynn)
Trader to the Stars (Anderson)
The Gods Themselves (Asimov)
The Probability Broach
Little Brother by Doctorow - YAF for smart kids, but adults should enjoy it
Asimov's period anthologies like "Before the Golden Age"
The Stringers by Marttinel. He's not yet well known but he deserves to be and will be if he doesn't go into the gulag first.


That secnod F stands for fantasy, I assume:
Silverlock
Anything by L. Sprague de Camp

You might look at overlaps between recommendations.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

I really enjoyed Time Traveler's Never Die by Jack McDevitt. Madeline L'Engle's Time Quintet is an excellent series. Especially the first three books A Wrinkle in Time, Wind in the Door, and Swiftly Tilting Planet. There's also C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength). As for fantasy, I'd recommend anything by Tolkien.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Has the delete button been deleted? Oh well, I was going to edit this into my previous post, but since I can't delete this post, I'll put it back:

Yeah... Not me. I did finish it but... .

I thought about saying that & chickened out. Tell the truth & shame the devil, the world needs more frankness. Card, Frank Herbert, and James Blish are, to my taste, the most radically over-rated SF writers of all time. But Card did win a Nebula and a Hugo both for the very novel I thought the most absurdly over-adulated, so Parson is obviously in the majority. De gustibus non disputandum. OP might benefit from these kinds of opinions as well.
I started grading everything I read when I was a child in the neolithic and tabulating the grades I gave. Back in the day, there were a lot more short stories and less novels and in consequence you might go a while in between seeing stories by the same people & it could be hard to remember who was entertaining earlier. I had a hard time keeping Poul Anderson and Frederick Pohl straight for example. I discovered I liked them both. But the biggest surprise was realizing that I really didn't like James Blish at all. I had previously had the impression I did. I think just because it's a cool name. Blish. Who the heck ever knew anybody named "Blish"? But it is short, simple, easy to pronounce (even if only in the mind's ear), is in line with typical patterns of letter sequences in English words, and just odd enough to be slightly memorable. I suspect Isaac Asimov also benefited from a cool name, but he would have been famous without that edge, because he really was a titan.

 

[CTRandall]

There's lots of classics in these lists. A few more recent options are:

Madeline Miller's Circe, an awesome take on an otherwise minor character from Greek myth. Also, one of the best opening lines of any novel ever: "When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist."

Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population, a sci-fi antidote to the teen-angsty stuff that takes up a huge slice of the market

Stephen Graham Jones' Mapping the Interior, this is what would've happened had Stephen King grown up on a reservation in the Midwest

Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, a fantasy novel that's happy to mix some fun into the usual deadly deadliness

 

[Alex The G and T]

The term, "Mindblowing," brings to my mind, first, Cordwainer Smith. A collection of his shorts would be good: Mother Hittons Littul Kittens; A Planet Named Shayol; The Lady Who Sailed the Souls; Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. All seriously, delightfully Weird.

Clifford D Simak has a delicious way of sucking the reader into odd situations that become increasingly weird. Just when you think you have the situation figured out, he throws another weirdness into the works. The Big Front Yard, novelette is classic. Likewise, Way Station. In the novel Destiny Doll we meet a truly bizarre bestiary, that keep piling on; getting weirder and weirder.

And... And... I just realized that the OP never came back for three weeks.

f*ck it, I'm tired and I'm going to bed.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

Hello i want to start reading SFF books and i want to know with what to start and to give me best options there . i am really interested in sff and want to know recommendations of professions . One of my friends suggested dark matter is it good ?

Perhaps I have a narrow idea of "mindblowing", but you could try:
"Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon
"Time Ships" by Stephen Baxter
"At The Mountains Of Madness" by HP Lovecraft.
All of these deal with unthinkable gulfs of time.

 

[Rodders]

I read a couple of wonderful SF books in 2019 that i'd recommend without hesitation.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Dogs of War".
David William's "When the English Fall".

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

I can't help but feel the OP, who hasn't been back since July, was trolling in some obscure way. That said, yeah, it feels like people have different definitions of "mind-blowing." Taking it to mean more than just great, or my favorite, of the recs so far I mainly agree with @Alex The G and T 's suggestion of Cordwainer Smith.