The ULTIMATE Sci-Fi Reading Guide (Where to Start & Find What You Like)

If you latched on to that and you went, "Ooh, I like the religious angle," then you're going to go for Canacle for Liowitz.

What Jeff Vaneir is accomplishing here is on the page monstrous, terror, environmental horror, but at the same time, existential dread.

You can go for a modern angle like Thomas Weaver's Artificial Wisdom, which I found to be a beautiful blend of like Pantheon from Kinloo meets the Millennium series by Steve Larson. I don't think it's as great as either of those, but if those stories appeal to you, this is going to be a good one.

And oh my god, this is such a great book.

This is one of the most impressive from its time executions I've come across in a long time, and it's on the list of books I actually read for this video.

I'm going to then recommend Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark. A really fantastic idea that will solidify either, oh, I like classic one-off stories.

And the sequels basically hold up to be just as great. I've read Children of Strife now. Magnificent.

It is a book that'll make you think. It is a book that is an adventure. It is a book that is a 10.

No one here is going to be a favorite character of all time, but it's a very clear example of the sum being better than the parts. Carl Sean did tell a great story with a lot of flaws.

Dune is Frank Herbert looking at how religion operates in our society, how it is co-opted by the aristocracy and how heroes are actually most often tools of destruction and making the best space Jesus story of all time.

I think I just personally have seen so many things in Ender Game done better elsewhere that by the time I read it, it was just kind of a sure I appreciate it's coming from this era, but I just don't feel the need to give this author a lot of grace and I think it's overhyped.

I think Ray Bradberry's Fahrenheit 451 might be just as good as 1984, if not better, and actually written sensationally. His pros are the best of his peers.

Which is going to lead me towards, do you want a smarter version of this? Do you like it being in space? Do you like all the great tech stuff, but you want a little more big brain? Then I'm going to give you Isaac Azimoff again.

Mary Shelley poetic ass writer just gorgeous pros at times to describe the monster and the conflict with Frankenstein. It is a amazing meditation of man versus monster, which of course is actually man versus self cuz that's what it always is.

Dan Simmons is one of my favorite I would just say authors and all I've read from him is Hyperion so far.

And I originally did not like the book Jurassic Park when I read it. As I've sat with it more, reskinnmed it through for various video research and stuff, I actually think Michael Kiteon managed to build something that is great monster horror.

I talked about Kindred in a recent video, another outstanding book from Octavia Butler, and I got crap because I only addressed like the most surface level themes of it.

Some of the best character work on this board as well. I would love to do an expanse mega summary.

I recently, I'm actually like 90% of the way through it, read Lord of Light. And this was like him doing the scene from the Born movie to me. just came out and floored me.

A sensational environmental horror in a post-apocalyptics world where there's radioactive monsters running around.

The book that people say started cyberpunk. And they're not wrong.

A possibly the best aged sci-fi story ever. It's not that old, but still it's just whoa.

Project Hail Mary is proof you can have hard sci-fi elements driving a narrative and then have fun. That's what it does. And I think that's beautiful.

The first book is just space hunger games. And there's so many similarities, but not in the negative way. A lot of people try to paint it.

Adriencha who does have plenty of awesome sci-fi what-offs. Shroud, great read.

And Kurt Vonagget gets tongue and cheek. Kurt Vonagget is funny, insightful. There's also not really a structure because this is ripped out of time narratively.

We're going to hit you to Neil Stevenson's Snow Crash, which was an incredibly rapid response to the rise of cyberpunk in terms of kind of haha. My main character's name is hero, protagonist, pizza delivery driver. There's a nuke on a motorcycle.

My line, for example, I don't recommend Stranger in a Strange Land. It's Space Jesus, sure, but what Heinland did here has been done a lot of different times by a lot of different people, and I can't get over the fact that he's like, "Oh, what was that woman wearing? She deserves it."

And the ending of the story I think is truly spectacular in how she almost digresses down to this single note of just maybe. And I don't want to spoil anything beyond that, but there isn't this, you know, us versus them war combat setup. And instead, we have a resolution that gives me so much hope in how Ursula Ka views the individual in society.

Similar to Dune, environmental catastrophe mixed with religion, using the actual framing of the narrative to supply twists and turns to you, the reader, and latching it deep into your heart immediately throughout this chaos, this need to even just find a way to drink dayto-day. A mother has to save her daughter. But it's so much more than that.

This is the first time where he's come close to writing pros-wise great. And I really am glad I got to this.

Here, this might strike too close to home to read today. I'm not sure. or it'll somehow be therapeutic to read seeing someone conceptualize it so much.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fish out of water story of your average Joe kicked off into space to experience the bureaucracy of space. And it's the funniest goddamn thing.

I read Too Young, scarred me a little bit. I'm okay now.

And this is both me saying this because I've read the first book and it's maybe one of my favorite books ever and people kind of spoiling for me what's coming in the sequels, but vaguely enough that I'm just kind of aware of where that's going to go.

I maintain the book better than the Netflix show, but the Netflix show, NOT BAD. NOT BAD. Good adaptation.

The real impressive thing here though is The Time Machine was written long, long, long time ago, and it's social commentary both holds up and has problems.

But if you want something more modern with stronger pros, that's even more going to punch you in the chest. This is how you lose the time war. Brilliant piece that went super viral here recently.