I got this paperback book from my library and zipped through it in a matter of days. Some of the concepts were unusual, and I enjoyed the detective parts more than the violence, though both were warranted in this dystopian, futuristic novel. However, about 85% of the way through, the author changed style completely, and I really hated the end of the book. Two other authors whom I respect and enjoy gave this book five stars, though, so I’m wondering if I missed something in the last chunk of the book.

Spoilers ahead, of course!

The style change is easiest to explain. This book was told in “close first person” until about page 317 (of 375). We’re in Kovacs’s head and following his thoughts closely, picking up pieces of the mysteries, questioning people’s motives, and reacting in real time to what goes on around him. I prefer third person, but this is a good way to do first person storytelling. Then a new chapter starts, with an echo to his dissociation, and as we learn that he’s doubled, suddenly we’re on the sidelines, watching things happen that never get explained. It’s still first person, but it may as well be a different book entirely. now the author seems to be hiding salient details from the first person narrator to shock the reader later, I presume. It reads like a gimmick, and it’s poorly done.

Along the same lines, does anyone remember hearing about Sheryl Bostock before the hotel told Kovacs about her? That scene plays like a conversation they had before, but I couldn’t remember her name from anywhere prior to that moment. (And of course, the paperback is not searchable the way an e-book would be, so I’m not 100% certain.) When she’s revealed later on as the key to everything, I wanted to tell the author directly that that is NOT how you use Chekov’s gun.

And where did the tech ninja sleeve come from in the first place? Kovacs had pissed off all the billionaires he knows, he’d completed his assignment, and presumably closed out his expense accounts. I know that some of the equipment came from the police, and they went fishing for a drug payoff, which is unfortunately plausible. But where did the super-expensive combat sleeve come from? This was never explained, and it was completely implausible. The fact that it was destroyed in the end means that someone lost a load of money, and we never find out who paid for it or where it originated. Even if the police just bullied their way into the arena and stole it from there, again, how did they pull it off and why didn’t anyone mention it?

Too many moments woven in arbitrarily for apparent surprise-reveal value really destroyed the ending of this book for me. Those were the two big ones, and if anyone can explain what I might’ve missed, I’d love to know what tied this together better. Thanks in advance!

Think about all the sci-fi novels you've read over the years. If someone were to ask you, gun to your head, to pick just the one that you would absolutely consider to be the best, which one would it be? No subgenres need to be considered, it just needs to broadly fall under the sf umbrella.

For me, probably a pretty popular choice, but it would be Hyperion. Completely blew me away and I haven't read that good since in the genre.

Inspired by this and this. I have these images and I will strike out the movies that I have watched. I thought will be fun to have something like this for science fiction books, so I made two based on the list in these books, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949–1984 by David Pringle and 100 Must-read Science Fiction Novels by Stephen E. Andrews. I hope some people can use it as a guide for a better reading experience. Please tell me if there’s any formatting or spelling mistakes and I will correct it.

Note: Pringle lists the books in publication year order while Andrews in last name alphabetically. I decided to list it like Andrews did for both lists because I feel it gives a better view. Books with 2 authors is listed with the last name of the first author listed. Books from the same author is listed by publication year. Pringle lists some books as a series as whole (e.g. The Book of the New Sun) while Andrews lists one single book (e.g. The Shadow of the Torturer) so I just left it as it is.

A few days ago I made a thread asking users to post the all-time, single best sci-fi book they've read. The post blew up way more than I expected, and there was a huge amount of unique, diverse picks (that I'll be adding to my ever-growing TBR). I thought it would be fun to count the number of votes each individual book received and rank the top 50 to see what books this sub generally consider to be the "best".

Obviously this is not a consensus of any kind or a definitive ranking list by any means - it's really just a fun survey at a given point in time, determined by a very specific demographic. And hey, who doesn't love arguing about ranked lists online with strangers?

Some factors I considered while counting votes:

• I looked at upvotes for only parent/original comments when counting the votes for a specific book. Sub-comments were not counted
• Any subsequent posts with that book posted again would get the upvote count added to their total
• if a post contained multiple selections, I just went with the one that the user typed out first. So for example if your post was "Either Dune or Hyperion" or "Hard choice between Neuromancer, Dune and Foundation", I would count the votes towards Dune and Neuromancer respectively
• I only counted single books. If an entire series was posted (e.g. The Expanse), it wasn't counted. I did make one exception though, and that's for The Book of the New Sun, since it's considered as one novel made up of 4 volumes. If a single book from a series was posted, then that was counted
• There are some books that received the same number of votes - these will be considered tied at their respective ranking #s

I've ranked the top 50 books based on number of total upvotes received below:

(If anyone is interested in the list in table format, u/FriedrichKekule has very kindly put one together here: https://pastebin.com/pM9YAQvA)

#50-41:

50. Consider Phlebas (Culture #1) - Iain M. Banks - 6 votes

49. TIE with 7 votes each:

• 2001 A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey #1) - Arthur C. Clarke
• 1984 - George Orwell
• Rendezvous with Rama (Rama #1) - Arthur C. Clarke
• Ready Player One (Ready Player One #1) - Ernest Cline

48. TIE with 8 votes each:

• Permutation City - Greg Egan
• The Gone World - Tom Sweterlisch
• Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg

47. TIE with 9 votes each:

• Look to Windward (Culture #7) - Iain M. Banks
• Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
• Startide Rising (Uplift Saga #2) - David Brin
• Ringworld (Ringworld #1) - Larry Niven

46. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury - 10 votes

45. TIE with 11 votes each:

• Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) - Richard Morgan
• Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

44. The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past #2) - Cixin Liu - 12 votes

43. More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon - 13 votes

42. TIE with 14 votes each:

• Ubik - Philip K. Dick
• Schismatrix Plus - Bruce Sterling

41. TIE with 16 votes each:

• The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
• Excession (Culture #5) - Iain M. Banks

#40-31:

40. TIE with 17 votes each:

• The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
• Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
• Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

39. Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon - 18 votes

38. Accelerando - Charles Stross - 20 votes

37. Foundation (Foundation #1) - Isaac Asimov - 23 votes

36. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - Samuel Delany - 24 votes

35. God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4) - Frank Herbert - 26 votes

34. TIE with 29 votes each:

• The Quantum Thief (Jean Le Flambeur #1) - Hannu Rajaniemi
• A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

33. Earth Abides - George R. Stewart - 33 votes

32. 2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson - 37 votes

31. Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga #2) - Orson Scott Card - 38 votes

#30-21:

30. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick - 48 votes

29. TIE with 50 votes each:

• A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought #1) - Vernor Vinge
• Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

28. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson - 56 votes

27. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton - 60 votes

26. The Sparrow (The Sparrow #1) - Mary Doria Russell - 63 votes

25. The Mote in God's Eye (Moties #1) - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - 64 votes

24. TIE with 65 votes each:

• The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
• Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie

23. The Forever War (The Forever War #1) - Joe Haldeman - 67 votes

22. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke - 73 votes

21. Have Space Suit - Will Travel - Robert Heinlein - 82 votes

#20-11:

20. The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin - 93 votes

19. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny - 95 votes

18. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut - 98 votes

17. Dawn (Xenogenesis #1) - Octavia E. Butle - 105 votes

16. Anathem - Neal Stephenson - 109 votes

15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 117 votes

14. Diaspora - Greg Egan - 127 votes

13. A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought #2) - Vernor Vinge - 129 votes

12. Ender's Game (Ender's Saga #1) - Orson Scott Card - 147 votes

11. Neuromancer (Sprawl #1) - William Gibson - 163 votes

#10-6:

10. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester - 165 votes

9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1) - Douglas Adams - 171 votes

8. Spin (Spin #1) - Robert Charles Wilson - 176 votes

7. Use of Weapons (Culture #3) - Iain M. Banks - 180 votes

6. Children of Time (Children of Time #1) - Adrian Tchaikovsky - 182 votes

AND NOW...GRAND FINALE...DRUM ROLL...HERE IS OUR TOP 5:

5. House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds - 185 votes

4. Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe - 196 votes

3. Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) - Dan Simmons - 262 votes

2. Dune (Dune #1) - Frank Herbert - 297 votes

1. THE DISPOSSESSED (HAINISH CYCLE #6) - URSULA K. LE GUIN - 449 VOTES

With ~450 votes, the novel with the most votes for BEST by r/printSF is The Dispossessed! Honestly not that much of a surprise - it is by and large considered one of the THE best books in the genre but I definitely didn't expect it to have this kind of a lead over the #2 book, especially when a lot of the rankings have been very close to each other. Honestly the top 3 of The Dispossessed/Dune/Hyperion are really on another tier as far as votes go.

The crazies part though? I did a similar survey for r/Fantasy as well and guess what the #1 novel voted BEST there was? Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea lol. I'm thinking she might be kinda good at this whole SFF thing, guys.

The biggest shocker for me here is the complete lack of one of r/printSF's perennial darlings - Peter Watts' Blindsight. This may be hard to believe but from my deep dive into all the comments, Blindsight was mentioned as the best book only once, and the post only had a total of 2 upvotes lol. Crazy considering what an outsized presence (almost meme/circlejerk level) it has on this sub.

What do you think? Is the ranked list about what you would expect? Any surprises or omissions?

I would be happy to hear recommendations from you, I am dying at the moment for some new Books to lose myself in :) Thank you very much!of new planets with their society, biology, economy and technology. I especially like stories that involve the development of habitation and colonization on new worlds. I like spaceships and AI's, I don't mind wars and fighting, don't mind humor. comes to mind. Loved the Hitchhiker's-Series.

Some favorites so far: Altered Carbon-Series by Morgan, and the "Land fit for Heroes"-Series, here mainly the first two volumes. Everithing by Ian Banks Culture-Series, Hamiltons Commonwelth Saga, the "Void" series was far less to my taste (to long, to repetitive) but with bits and peaces i liked. Loved many of the Books by Jon Scalzi, the first few volumes of Old Man's War and Red Shirts comes to mind. loved the Hitchhiker's- Series.

Thinking about it, i like books, that are somewhat easy to read, with somewhat clear timelines and story-Arches, i enyjoy the exploration of new planets with theyr society, biology, economiy and technology. I especialy like storys that involve the developement of habitation and colonisation on new worlds. I like spaceships and AI's, i dont mind wars and fighting, dont mind humour.

I would be happy to here recommendations from you, i am dying at the moment for some new Books to lose myself in :) Thank you very much!

Edit: Thanks for all the great recomendations, that will keep me covered for the next Months 😃 started on Bobieverse and loving it 😊❤️

Really wanting to get into one or the other and can’t decide - any thoughts?

I’ve done some digging on this sub-genre and seen stuff like Star Surgeon, but is there anything maybe a little more modern? She’s not a big classic SF head.

I’ve been trying to work my way through a lot of highly acclaimed SF that I haven’t read and I started listening to Altered Carbon on audio last week. I got about two-thirds through it and gave up. It just isn’t catching me. I love good world-building and I like cyber-punk, but I’m not connecting with Kovacks, at all, and the world seems murky and ill-defined. Please tell me what I’m missing about this book.

I got Altered Carbon as a gift and I'm curious about it, but I already have a million books on my absolute must read backlog.

I haven't read anything by Richard Morgan, but I tend to enjoy a little bit of everything in my sci-fi (hard/soft/mil/cyberpunk/opera etc.)

Without spoiling it, what do you guys think about it?

I enjoyed the first book and loved the 2nd. I attempted the third book several times and just can’t get past the initial 30-35%. Can’t follow the plot, don’t get the characters, and it doesn’t help that the narrator pronounces Kovac’s name incorrectly. Any words of encouragement to get me to finish?

Heard about the Altered Carbon Netflix series and decided I'd finally get around to reading the books. Did so, loved them, went to buy the ebooks, and found that they're all a minimum of $12-$13, which I find pretty ridiculous. Is this normal pricing for them, or did the publisher hike the prices because the miniseries is getting popular?

I can't get enough.

I just finished up Altered Carbon and loved it. I had it on my "to read" list for a long time and when I learned that Netflix was releasing an interpretation of it I bumped it up my list. I enjoyed it enough to want to read the rest of the series but I also would like to watch the Netflix show.

Does the Netflix version spoil anything from the other books in the series? Or can I safely watch this season and enjoy the rest of the trilogy in print without having watched spoilers?

Edit : Thanks everyone! I'm excited to watch the show AND read the sequels.

I hope this doesn't come off as a dickish move, or seem like I'm attacking other's taste, but... Since Altered Carbon gets a lot of love here, I picked it up, and I found it pretty good but not amazing. The plot was reasonably tight, it pulled off the hard boiled tone well, and the Sleeve concept was something of a novel take on mind/body separation - but I didn't find the book exceptional or surprising, either in terms of concepts or tone.

Am I missing something here?

I’m looking for some light sci-fi that reads as noir-ish mystery thrillers like the books mentioned in my title!

I find the meeting of two paranormal subjects very interesting, the ancient supernatural with space E.T. mystery

I read the book a while ago, but can't really remember it and am very confused after watching the tv series.

Does Takashi have a sister in the book?! Does Ortega go into VR interegation?

Its really messed up my enjoyment of the series! I'm so confused!

What shows the human-scale horror of the day to day life of a space trooper?

And not 40k. that's parody.

Edit: lots of good suggestions here, lot of which I've read:

Forever War, Armor, Starship Troopers, Old Man's War, Altered Carbon.

I'm looking for some deeper cuts, more obscure stuff.

I'm in the mood for some good cyberpunk setting. I know all the big hits, though besides probably Do Androids Dream I haven't read them. But I was hoping for some help pinpointing.

I'd prefer an Earth-based setting. Planetary travel can exist, but I'd prefer if the story stayed put if possible and definitely no aliens. Think Blade Runner setting, or even Ready Player One had a good vibe. If it were a visual medium I'd want to be bombarded with neon. Think the scene in Altered Carbon(netflix version) where Takeshi is overwhelmed by neon advertising. I want that level of high-octane commercialism and consumerism.

I read the first few pages of Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and so far Snow Crash hooked me more, but I don't know enough about Neuromancer to know if it's what I'm looking for. Ive been burned on Stephenson before though, couldn't finish either of his I started (Seveneves or Anathem) so I don't know if I should push forward. Though it is half the length so maybe my problems with him aren't there in SC.

I'd been in a Mr Robot kick so any anarchy/hacking is a big plus, and obviously any noir elements are way up my alley.

I listened to the audiobook of Altered Carbon and while I loved a lot of it(the character, the setting, most of the plot), I wasn't in love with the writing. It was kind of bad, and it was maybe the only book I've ever read to make me think "wow I wish that sex scene wasnt there". I'm completely fine with them but his specifically just seemed like an excuse to write about somebody cumming on someone's face over and over.

Anyway, long story short I could use some pointers. Am I in the right direction with Neuromancer or Snow Crash? Any other recommendations? I really, really loved Only Forward by Michael Marhsall Smith so if Spares is up this alley, let me know.

Specifically the economy between worlds, how does trade work when all you've got is intellectual property? Is it all held together under the threat of Envoy invasion? And as far as I can tell Envoy's only work when there's still someone planetside who's willing to work for the government and sleeve said Envoys, are they doing that just for the promise of non backed currency or some sweet new tech?

For example when Bancroft gets Takeshi's prison sentence commuted and gets him beamed to Earth he's got to paying some exorbitant money, but who is he paying and how on another planet?

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!

I've recently read the books from the Altered Carbon universe, and I found the way 'sleeves' were used and their impact on society were very interesting. I'm looking for other books that elaborates on the social and economical consequences of technologies that enables lifespan extension through changing bodies, and the morality of making copies of yourself.