Recommend your social/softer science fiction books
Ok so I'm enjoying the hard SF thread but what I really enjoy about SF is the sociology, anthropology and psychology more than the tech and whether or not the wormhole is sciency enough.
Here's a wiki article on "social science fiction" for more context. There's definitely some overlap with both hard and soft SF, but I'm not looking for a rec just because it happens to be more space opera. I'm interested because of the themes of the work. Ursula Le Guin, Sherri Tepper, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood are some of the key classic authors I've read in this arena but I'm looking for who I've overlooked. Plenty of YA work fits here especially post Hunger Games but I'd mostly request adult works unless it's a very strong YA novel (Hunger Games itself holds up very well IMO actually). I'd say Becky Chambers - who's also put into the solar punk/hope punk subgenres - is a good example of more anthropological feeling modern work.
Some things don't age well - I really enjoy Tepper's Gate to Women's Country for its exploration of a post apocalyptic world where most men live outside the city in barracks, women live inside the city with the few men that choose to return to their mothers' homes, and only during festivals do the men and women get together with a chance for procreating. But it's an anti-sex worker world and one where homosexuality was "fixed" with a wave of a historical genetic hand.
I'd love to know your recs and maybe what perspectives it gave you or that it exemplifies well. If there's stuff that doesn't age well due to science changing or cultural values changing maybe just note that, sometimes they're still quite good reads with that context.
Actually I'm going to recommend an author which I also recommended on the other thread, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Children of Time is fairly hard science fiction in that the science is... well, science, not magic. But he's really investigating societies and how they develop, and is doing so in a very interesting way.
Also his Bioforms series, starting with Dogs of War, fits well into this category too.
Just for funsies, I'd also suggest Green Jay and Crow by DJ Daniels, which I struggle to put into much of a genre box but like any good story, it's ultimately about people and how they relate to each other (and sometimes those people have tentacles for faces)
In a slightly similar vein although I'm not entirely sure it fits but it's a great book nonetheless - Jeff Noon's Vurt series, which looks at a society shaped by a pervasive and highly addictive shared virtual-reality/hallucination which everyone can access and which mediates much of that society's goings on. Worth noting it was written in the late 80s. I haven't read it in the last decade so it might not hold up as well as I'm recalling.
I didn't think of Tchaikovsky's Children series when writing this but I agree! Spider society was fascinating
I'll look up the others!
One of my favourite parts of that book is
Moderately Major Spoiler for Children of Time
When the humans arrive at the end the reader (or at least this reader) ends up rooting for the spiders to win, thinking "kill the puny monkeys!" and even then the spiders still manage to find a better way. If only we could let giant spiders run the actual world...It's one of my favourite books ever. I can't recommend it to people often enough.
I'd never heard of Vurt, but it sounds awesome. Won the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award. I'm going to a huge used bookstore tomorrow, going to look for a copy - thanks for the recommendation!
I did read Consider Phlebas, besides not remembering much I didn't really like it. Is it worth me trying PoG?
I'd heard that but a) was stubborn and b) grew up with Pratchett and read those in publication order so I felt like it might be ok.
Worth giving it another shot though!
Ah it has a very similar "don't start with the first (few) book(s)" policy from the fans. Glad you were able to get into it! Kindly genius tracks.
You've convinced me to give Culture a shot again
For what it's worth, I agree. Consider Phlebas is a poor introduction to the Culture series. I didn't hate it, exactly, but I definitely never recommend it to anyone. And I love the series.
That's fair, I did come in knowing that but also being very stubborn
Anne Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy) is one of my favorites. She touches on a lot of social norms, self determination, identity, and a bit on theory of mind.
The first book is my favorite but the entire trilogy is worth finishing.
Have you read Translation State in the same world? It focuses on the Presgar Translators and is really good!
Haha, when I responded I thought I remembered you and I talking about Anne Leckie in another thread.
But no, I haven't though it is on my reading list. I read Provenance and was a bit meh on it and honestly was a little reluctant to dive back into the world.
I was also meh on Provenance but really enjoyed the new one again!
Also these sort of topics are great for recommends for everyone so even though I've read a lot I'm still getting new stuff :D
Agreed! Translation State was probably my favorite for this aspect of the cultural differences. The Presger are so alien, but even the differences in human cultures are really interesting to explore.
Yes! And seeing more of the Radch from outside helps contextualize the first trilogy IMO. Like to others they're the empire that doesn't understand pronouns, the weirdos.
I haven’t read John Brunner in a number of years but I figure his work still holds up. Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up are the two I remember the most.
Ray Bradbury is still, to me, the greatest of all science fiction writers precisely because he focused so much on the essence of being human in different conditions.
I’ve had my own intermittent Science Fiction Theatre company in San Francisco since the 90s and this is where my work exists. Realism in extraordinary circumstances. Kind of Twilight Zone or Alien the movie for the stage. If you’d ever be curious about reading scripts, let me know.
My latest project is Lisica. Four novels of researchers and grad students on an island. The story is very much focused on themes of anthropology and archaeology, medicine, and data science. It’s freely available on my website.
I found Murderbot Diaries very similar to Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series. Well worth your time, if you haven't read it yet. And the books are all short and digestible, much like Chambers' work.
My wife and I both love the Murderbot series and are currently reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and it's been a fantastic read so far (about 3/4 finished). It was going to be my suggestion for this question, the different cultures are really well done and interesting imo.
I love Becky Chambers so much. When I learned she's back writing again I got so excited.
I adore them, and the exploration of slavery and discrimination through the lens of bot/SecUnit/AI rights
Now this is absolutely fair, 6, but where I think you and I can find some common ground is in enjoying taking advantage of stupid humans who fail to follow the rules precisely.
Oh did they order a SecUnit to shut up? Too bad that you couldn't warn them when they were attacked. Did they actually give me their name? Well, their bad, really. They have to learn from their mistakes or they never will. And there's always a few more to go around.
𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊
I second murderbot diaries. I've read and re read it so many times. I didn't think I would relate to a highly dangerous robot so much.
And I just found out today that an Apple TV+ show has been in the works for a couple of years, and will likely debut this year or next!
It’s been a looooong while since I read it, but I think Connie Willis’s Bellwether fits the bill almost perfectly. The only things I remember about it are:
And since I don’t remember anything about it, maybe that means I’m due for a reread?
Oh man, I'm so glad you posted this. It's one of my favorite books. A must-read for anyone in academia or corporate research.
The audiobook is narrated by Kate Reading, who is like butter for the ears.
I think Kim Stanley Robinson's work might be of interest to you. His Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) is admittedly quite concerned with the technical side of terraforming and colonization of Mars, especially at first, but even from the beginning it also has a keen interest in how the experience of living apart from Earth changes people and creates a unique Martian culture. As the books progress, that culture and its developments become a primary focus of the writing.
His standalone book The Years of Rice and Salt is not precisely Sci Fi inasmuch as it is an alternate history, but it is likewise a very interesting exploration of what the world would have looked like if Europe had been completely taken off the board by the black death in the 1300s.
I quite liked his "Ministry for the Future" - not an easy read emotionally, but it was very interesting to have technical science fiction interleaved with social effects and political documents.
Feel free to share your thoughts when we discuss for book club at the end of January
Yes, I saw it was a book club read here! KSR is good at finding the small human moments in civilization-scale upheavals.
I enjoyed Years of Rice and Salt quite a bit! The Mars series was quite a while ago, but I don't think I finished the trilogy.
Red Moon was pretty good and anthropological, centered on Chinese society.
Ooh thanks
All the Birds In the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders - exploring the fallout of engineers vs witches.
Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft - the main character ends up in a tower and it feels like some kind of large scale psychological experiment. I did not get around to the sequels yet.
Upright Women Wanted - queer, antifascist librarians in the new Wild West.
I'd put Joe Haldeman's Forever War in this bin as well. When you go to war across time dilation, you can never go home.
It's more fantasy than science fiction, but Alex Bledsoe's Tufa books look deeply at Appalachian culture through a fantasy lens. I don't want to say more and risk spoiling the first book.
I think Nancy Kress applies here. Most of her stories deal with biological science in some way, but not in an overly technical manner. Her stories explores the impact to society. Most notable Beggars in Spain which has a simple premise of a DNA manipulation that allows people to remove the bodily need for sleeping. Nothing more than that, and she just extrapolates from there and where that will take society in the short and long term. Highly recommended.
You've already got the classic authors I would've recommended, so I'm just commenting to thank you for this post, since I will absolutely be stealing recommendations from here 😈
I love short stories.
Asimov is the best story teller.
Philip K Dick is more of a writers writer, his stories inspired more sci fi movies than anyone else.
The Twilight Zone is a TV show, but is right up there in terms of the quality of writing and story telling.
If you like Asimov, have you read Arthur C. Clarke's short stories? He also wrote a lot od them. They are very good and very much in the same vein. Plus he wrote my all time favorite work of fiction, a short story called The Nine Billion Name of God
Arthur C Clarke is a scientists writer. Most of his stuff is amazing, some of it gets a little dry.
Dick's stories inspire movies but few of them get them right. Maybe A Scanner Darkly did? But I agree, I'd put Butler's and Jemisin's short stories on the top of my list. I'll have to go back and see what I've missed from those authors
The movies do a better job of fleshing out the characters, and offering a more satisfying ending. But they gloss over the profound philosophical themes and avoid the intense ambiguity in Dicks novels. I think it is that ambiguity which makes the stories such great fodder for movies. His stories ask questions without giving clear answers, which naturally makes the reader want to fill in the gaps with their imagination, or perhaps motivates a writer to write a more complete version of the story.
Oh absolutely, they also usually take a singular piece of the concept of the story (like pre-cogs or androids) and go in a different direction with the actual plot, which changes the messaging. Thats why I think maybe A Scanner Darkly was the closest adaptation.
But I've read quite a bit of Asimov and Dick thankfully!
I've been trying to figure out the difference in my mind.
I think Asimov writes about characters that you care about. When they are thrown in a bit of a pickle, you naturally want to see what happens to them, and you usually end up with a happy twist, where the good guys win through some unexpected means.
Philip K Dick's doesn't seem to particularly like his characters. They are one dimensional. The endings are often bleak and thought provoking and not that happy for the protagonist. I think in that regards, Blade Runner probably is the closest to form.
(Sorry for hijacking your thread, it's a great question)
I felt more like Asimov tends to write thought experiments. I don't think I really care about his characters much.
Dick doesn't like himself much, IMO, much less his characters. The plot of Blade Runner doesn't match the book nearly as much. It got the aesthetic, but while it's been a while, I don't think the plot was nearly so strongly tied to the original story!
Honestly, we are living in a Philip K Dick world. A huckster TV star president leading a political movement that’s entirely divorced from reality is something straight out of one of his novels.
Weird. But not weird enough. In Dick's world, Elon would be an alien who ends up controlling Trump, or perhaps who is Trump.... or Zuckerberg would turn out to be a cyborg controlled by an alien and the entire bizarre universe a computer simulation inside Zuckerbergs mind.
Absolutely. But the state of the world in 2025 is definitely straight out of a William Gibson story.
I read the short story Profession earlier today and came to Tildes to recommend it!
Audiobook
Text
Speaking of short stories, Exhalation, by Ted Chiang, is excellent. Every story is thought provoking.
Jack White sector General series is old but kind of like star trek set in a galactic hospital. In particular, one of the books, (sorry don't remember which) features a human struggling to adapt to this multi species context as a medical professional. That particular book was excellent.
Just to ease others' hunting for this, it's James White for Sector General.
The stories are essentially standalone or little embellishments in the case of the short stories, and the novels are sort of broken up into a few different chunks of timeline. Easy to pick up wherever you set hand to first.
I'm sure it's been a while but is starting with a random book in the middle of the series doable?
Yes
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is probably my favourite book. I wrote to her when I first read it and even got a reply!
I don't want to say what it's about, but her way of writing the characters feels so natural that it didn't feel like reading, it just felt like experiencing a whole new society.
It's the first book in her Wayfarers series, and they're all great, but each can be considered a full story.
A wonderful rec, her whole catalog is! She was the first "modern" example I thought of
Though not well known to Americans, I have to recommend Ian McDonald. He does a brilliant job of seeing technology through the eyes of non-European cultures. River of Gods and Cyberabad Days are Indian continent cyberpunk, Brasyl does the same thing via Brazil, The Dervish House is a quieter near-future Turkish mystery. The Chaga trilogy features an alien invasion (?) in Africa (minor quibble that the main character is a European aid worker, but she's very well drawn).
One of his early works, The Broken Land (aka With Hearts, Hands, and Voices), is one of the most heart-wrenching stories I've ever read - The Troubles written as far-future biopunk.
McDonald's Luna series is more easily categoriziable as conventional hard science fiction, but the corporate feudalism makes it worth studying as social commentary.
In the same vein, though quite a bit darker, Paulo Bacigalupi's climate change fiction packs a punch. I don't know why it doesn't come up in hard science fiction lists other than its technoskepticism. The Wind-up Girl is a bitter post-peak everything story with an android at its heart, and yet it brings home the point that life goes on. These are stories for people angry at the essential injustices being done to less developed nations in the path of the worst climate effects.
Older material:
Joan Slonczewski's Elysium cycle is all biology all the time, raising questions of what constitutes intelligent life, what makes a just society, and whether we truly value all intelligent lives. She can be very moralistic and simplistic from a Quaker standpoint, yet I found these stories refreshing and thought-provoking.
One of the greats, Theodore Sturgeon, doesn't get enough love from either the hard or soft SF fans, probably because his best work is in a myriad of short stories. He was one of the most open-minded and humane writers I've ever encountered, exploring everything from gender to intentional societies to ecology. The World Well Lost was openly sympathetic to gayness in a time when that was utterly taboo. If there's a modern science fiction trope, chances are he was the first to write it, and write it better than any subsequent version.
Bonus points for using FantasticFiction!
Thank you! These are mostly new authors to me :)
Here are some more obscure faves:
Lavie Tidhar - Central Station and Neom are great future stories. They're almost too saturated in Middle Eastern and Diaspora cultural references to follow easily, but it's a rich and complex tapestry of a future world.
Maureen McHugh 's China Mountain Zhang (intro with minor spoilers) is another future vision that embraces complexity.
Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers is a glorious hard-ish SF romp that goes deep into the question, "if you could be anyone, who would you be?"
One of these days, I'm going to have to put together a comprehensive list...
Well, I wrote one 😊
It's definitely not hard sci-fi, but aside from technical hand-wavium I do try to remain faithful to believable principals when it comes to the tech used. Outside of that though, it's a YA space opera with adult themes and humor, that I like to think follows in the footsteps of the Goonies, if maybe Van Wilder was among them during their adventure.
Look for "The Ballad of James Layne" on Amazon books if you think you might be interested. There is a direct link on my site as well - cartelincorporated.ca
I'd like to recommend A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Its an Aztec science fiction, heavy on politics and with themes on colonialism and xenophobia. There's also a lot of discussion on their language, grammar and poetry.
I would love to give a better review, but its been a while and maybe worth a reread
This is an excellent recommendation. I love the Teixcalaan series. Hoping for more soon! She also touches on city planning, which is a rare topic for sci-fi. There's a Teixcalaan name generator which is useful if you need names for devices.
Martine's most recent book, Rose/House is also well worth a read. American Gothic Police Procedural Architectural Sci-fi is not a niche genre I knew existed.
Rose/House was just ok for me. Very much a different sort of story but I am trying to read more novellas!
I enjoyed it very much. I'm not sure if I want another direct sequel or something in another part of the empire.
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys is my favorite book in years. I posted a writeup last March, but that might have more plot details than you want; if you want to go in completely unspoiled, I'll just say that it grapples seriously with climate change while also being doggedly hopeful about—even insistent upon—our ability to overcome it. Humanity is organized less into nations and more by watersheds. It's very leftist and eco-centric while also being very tech-positive. (@sparksbet, you might like this!)
How about the one that started my Scalzi fandom: Old Man's War.
It's a world where we know aliens exist and humans interact with them, but not on earth. Everything on earth is relatively... normal. And the space military only recruits old people? Why?
I enjoyed this series! I think the societal exploration is secondary to the POV character's experiences (plot more than character or sociology) but they're really enjoyable!
Sector General
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General
Stories set in a multi species space hospital. Doctors handling medical emergencies, intergalactic politics, clashes between alien cultures and so on. There's like 12 books so it's a long series, but it stays surprisingly fresh as the protagonist takes on different responsibilities. The design of the various alien species is really well done. They've done a good job at avoiding the star trek style "aliens are just people with different crap on their heads" and the "everyone from this planet has the same personality" tropes.
Semiosis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiosis_(novel)
Humans land and begin colonizing an alien planet. The planet has an interesting ecosystem with many somewhat intelligent species, including sentient plants. The book moves rapidly through time with each part taking place one generation later. There's a focus on how the colonists' technology is largely irreplaceable and as it breaks down, they must learn to communicate and integrate with the everything else living on the planet.
Illegal Alien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Alien_(Sawyer_novel)
Aliens land on earth to fix their damaged spaceship. One of the human scientists working with them dies, and the evidence points to one of the aliens doing it. Soon a murder trial is underway with all the craziness you'd expect from that sort of situation.
Seems like John Marrs' books The One, The Marriage Act and The Family Experiment would fit?
They're all near future societal tech focused and about the impact and ethical dilemmas around their concepts. Shared universe.
I feel like every worthy sci-fi book is also social commentary. But I understand that some books are particularly devoted to it. You've probably read Bradbury's Fahrenheit and that one with the Electric Ship by PKD.
The Pupppet Masters is about alien slugs trying to take over humankind through the possession and control of our bodies. I'm pretty sure the slugs in Futurama are based on that.
The book has lots of social commentary as it describes how the US and world adapts to and reacts to the slugs. But it's also Heinlein so you'd have to endure some stuff that are probably unlike your own worldviews. I don't think it's particularly egregious, considering Heinlein, and it's really fun. Lots of insightful comedy in that book. Great world building too.
The science in this book is very soft and mostly made-up. I would consider it a "social science fiction" with an element of comedy and absurd, as it feels like social commentary is the meat the author was going for.
To be clear it's not that they're not social commentary but some science fiction is almost entirely focused on the society, the sociology, the anthropology rather than the technology and that's what I'm looking for. Some do an excellent job of addressing all of it of course and those are excellent recs in this thread too
But yes I've read Fahrenheit 451 and Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep.
That's okay. I just finished my comment above. I was editing as you wrote.
Gotcha, I've read quite a bit of Heinlein and I'm not sure I have the patience anymore. I've read Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land among a few others so it's not the politics, it's the propensity for having a self insert surrounded by women who prefer to be barefoot, pregnant with PhDs.
I'm not sure how bad that vibe is here, but like, I couldn't get through Friday because the sexual assault stuff up top was VERY off-putting.
That's cool. Puppet Masters is a much lighter reading though.
Fair, if I can snag a copy for cheap I'll probably give it a shot. I'll just sigh a lot.
You can try the "original"! The Body Shatchers by Jack Finney is great, and that theme pretty much mandates social commentary.
Red Rising, by Pierce Brown.
My friend pitched the book as "What you wished The Hunger Games was". I don't think I can describe it better. It is really, really good. If this at all piques your interest, go for it. I bought it with an audible credit and listened to it quite quickly. A few months later they released a dramatized audiobook. It was in 2 parts, so required 2 credits, but I bought it instantly because the story is so good. This story is easily worth 3 audible credits.
A note about the rest of the series: They are good, but not as good as Red Rising. Red Rising easily works as a standalone book, so there should be no problem if you read it and never even consider reading the others.
I realized something while typing this. My other big recommendation had Red in the title and was set on Mars. I think I have a type.
I have a lengthy post here somewhere about why I dislike the Red Rising series (including the first book). Unfortunately I don't think it does a good job of dealing with examining society until later books and even then it does such a poor job of it IMO. I can get why people like the first book, but I finished the first trilogy only because a podcaster I follow was covering them and quit on the 4th book.
They're just really not written for me. In contrast I think the themes of Hunger Games really hold up upon an adult reread.
Edited a link to my thoughts. I finished the trilogy just under a year ago and while Golden Son felt like he had a co-author and all of a sudden talked about some of these issues, it didn't really save my opinions on it.
Fair enough. The best thing about storytelling is that there is something for everyone, and not everyone will like everything.
If you happen to be able to dig up a link to your post, I would be interested in reading it.
I edited it in! You might have to scroll up a comment or two to get all the context.
No judgement for enjoying something I don't or anything, I wanted to like these books, I just didn't.