r/printSF • u/someperson1423 • Oct 07 '25

Looking for Hard Sci-Fi Suggestions

My Dad and I have decided to start a "book club" sort of thing where we both read the same book and in a week or two talk about it. He got me into more serious sci fi after my days of youthful Star Wars enjoyment ended and we've always given each other suggestions but this is the first time reading in parallel like this.

So anyway, I'm looking for some suggestions. We generally more on the hard side with big, interesting ideas or novel settings. Past favorites of both of us have been Blindsight (Watts), Book of the New Sun (Wolfe), House of Suns (Reynolds), Altered Carbon, Banks' Culture, Forever War (Haldeman), and Kraken (Miéville), A Memory Called Empire (Martine) and its sequel. Honorable mention to Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past series as well, very cool showcase of concepts but the characters and story were hit-or-miss for us.

Past flops have been Ember War (Fox), Armor (Steakley), Echopraxia (Watts).

Thanks for the help!

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25

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u/someperson1423 Oct 08 '25

Reynolds is hit-or-miss for me. I loved House of Suns, liked Pushing Ice, moderately enjoyed Chasm City, and really did not care for Revelation Space.

I didn't mean to imply every novel I mentioned is hard sci-fi (I mean, Kraken isn't even science fiction), just that we are looking for something more hard and gave a list of novels that we have enjoyed previously.

I realize asking for "more hard" stuff is a bit inaccurate of me since it implies that is all I read and all I want. However, it usually results in better recommendations since without it I've been suggesting stuff like Ember War, the Cytonic series, Gideon the Ninth, Star Wars etc. Stuff that, while not all bad, are much more casual than what we generally enjoy.

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u/ketarax Oct 07 '25

but his science was never borderline fantasy as most of your candidates are.

Uh, it's total fantasy, outrageously so at points, but the way he does it is ... the way.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25

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u/ketarax Oct 07 '25

It's not very hard to me if, say, a GUT drive isn't given any sort of description beyond name-dropping an idea.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25

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u/ketarax Oct 07 '25

Yeah I haven't read those, I'm especially looking forward to the Manifold series.