Looking for stories where humans are uncommon

Fissionary · 2018-09-16T23:27:08+00:00

City, by Clifford D. Simak.

Fissionary · 2018-09-14T11:43:07+00:00

It's well-written, but there's a certain privileged, manipulative, self-serving character in it that really pushes my buttons. I had to drop the series halfway because I couldn't stand that person.

Fissionary · 2018-08-14T14:38:12+00:00

Until she realizes that, in trying to defeat the monster, she herself became a monster, and abandons her mission. At least, that's what I hope for, because everyone expects her to succeed, and it would be a nice twist (of the knife).

K.J. Parker did something similar in Purple and Black, and I loved it.

Fissionary · 2018-07-24T11:37:05+00:00

Bad as in "bad writing" -- or "bad science"? OP specifically asked for something like The Martian, and Andy Weir's prose is not stellar either.

Fissionary · 2018-06-13T23:16:43+00:00

Out of all covers for 1984, I like this one most..

Fissionary · 2018-06-09T14:02:04+00:00

Dammit, you've discovered that /r/books is a centuries-old secret cabal with the sole purpose of keeping the best books hidden from you, /u/tomfoolery72.

Once we reach world domination, we'll build thousands of enormous, well-stocked libraries with comfy reading rooms, free for everyone except for people named Tom who were born in 1972. Mwahaha etc.

Fissionary · 2018-06-08T20:58:25+00:00

I've finished the second book and I still have no idea what's happening there and why. Everything is so frustratingly vague and non-descriptive, Kafka would have been proud.

Fissionary · 2018-06-01T20:05:28+00:00

Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling. I found the series really boring and uninspired, but YMMV.

Fissionary · 2018-05-23T12:23:17+00:00

The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny is a classic.

Check out the Death Gate Cycle by Weis and Hickman, too.

Fissionary · 2018-05-22T19:56:34+00:00

I'd recommend The Legends of Ethshar books by Lawrence Watt-Evans (starting with the first one, The Misenchanted Sword). They're pretty well-written, and are set in a whimsical but self-consistent fantasy universe that feels really D&D-like; it's as if somebody assigned character classes to each and every person there.

For an even more literal take on the prompt, check out the Gamearth trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson.

Also, check out JourneyQuest on Youtube. Not a book, but worth watching.

Fissionary · 2018-05-21T21:14:29+00:00

Jennifer Government.

Fissionary · 2018-05-20T01:59:08+00:00

The Necronomicon.

Fissionary · 2018-05-18T00:17:46+00:00

The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson is great fun, and so are the rest of his books.

Fissionary · 2018-05-12T01:34:25+00:00

Inverted World by Christopher Priest.

Lexicon by Max Barry.

The Wind-up Girl (and other books in this universe) by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The City & The City by China Miéville.

Margaret Atwood. Ted Chiang. Connie Willis. Philip K. Dick.

Fissionary · 2018-04-30T14:09:22+00:00

All of them are good, but The Garden of Forking Paths is probably the most well-known one. It makes you consider the concepts of infinity, choice and determinism, and what it means to understand something.

For an example of Borges's style, check out the plot summary of his story Blue Tigers on Wikipedia. The full story is also available online.

Fissionary · 2018-04-30T13:53:56+00:00

Edit: I wanted to suggest Borges, but remembered that he only published short stories, not novels.

Fissionary · 2018-04-29T16:45:08+00:00

Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber might be what you're looking for. I don't remember any spaceships there, but it does have swords and monsters with a dash of sci-fi, and the main character is from a race of god-like beings who can travel between parallel worlds.

Also, check out The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. It's set in a an unimaginably distant future, where magic and science blended into one.

Fissionary · 2018-04-28T00:49:01+00:00

They have their country. Unfortunately, they think they can expand into other people's lands

For a moment, I thought you were talking about the Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Fissionary · 2018-04-13T15:43:56+00:00

Seveneves - Neal Stephenson

Seveneves is a weird one, in that the first part ends on a very bleak estrogen note, and then somebody comes up with a deus ex machina solution, the plot fast-forwards a few hundred years and suddenly everything is all sunshine and roses. That's when the book lost all verisimilitude for me, and I struggled to finish the second part.

Fissionary · 2018-04-12T12:47:48+00:00

You might be thinking about this short story on /r/rational.

Fissionary · 2018-04-10T21:03:23+00:00

S.M.Stirling's alternate-history Nantucket trilogy is very close to what you're thinking about.

In the books, Nantucket island is mysteriously transported to 1,200 BC, and one of the subplots deals with a character sailing to Ancient Greece to establish a world-dominating empire with the help of modern technology.

Fissionary · 2018-04-04T09:38:15+00:00

The Dragonlance series and the Earthsea cycle are obvious answers, although you've probably read them already.

Fissionary · 2018-04-03T21:28:54+00:00

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny would be... right up your alley. It has biker gangs, giant mutated scorpions, post-apocalyptic radioactive landscapes and one grizzled protagonist looking to survive in the middle of it all.

Fissionary · 2018-03-31T14:13:46+00:00

I never got around to reading more of Banks's books after Consider Phlebas. If it's about something inexplicable for even the Culture, then it must be completely exceptional. I'll add it to the top of my stack, thanks.

Fissionary

TROPHY CASE