I read the first three Dune books around fifty years ago. All I remember of the experience is constantly thinking what junk they were. I tried going back to the first one a few years ago. I made it through the first few pages, then decided now to waste any more of my life on such trash. If the Dune books hold a profound meaning for you, maybe you ought to do some deep self-examination.
@@jankafka7330. The first trilogy is the set up for the second trilogy matey. I've read it all many times. Read from God Emperor. All you need to know from the first trilogy is that Paul condemns his unborn to a future he shrinks away from. He is a failed hero after all. I don't even re read the 1st trilogy anymore. It's crap compared to the 2nd
@@stephennewberry9815 - Stephen - don't waste your time. The guy is clearly intellectually superior to us, and is doing us a favour by tactfully letting us know by means of facts, and not mere matters of personal preference. Dune is trash and we are clearly deficient in judgement, learning and intellect to think otherwise. We should be asking for his advice as to what to read to enrich our lives, and help us elevate ourselves to the kind of lofty plane he himself inhabits, . Maybe Ulysses (JJ's), Auto Da Fe, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity's Rainbow, Point Counter Point, The Magic Mountain, The Glass Bead Game or similar, all of which and more he's bound to have read, as he must have a very high IQ and a voracious capacity for understanding, esp when compared to dull minded readers like all of us Herbert fans.
I'm no longer shocked that modern SF readers are unfamiliar with the works of Olaf Stapledon. But, Stapledon is THE premiere philosopher of SF with his future history of the human race with "Last and First Men" and history of the universe with his "Star Maker." These are the words of Arthur C. Clarke about Olaf Stapledon. “No other book [Last and First Men] had a greater influence on my life…[It] and its successor Star Maker are the twin summits of [Stapledon’s] literary career” If you read these works you will never forget them and see the genesis of a multitude of later SF books whose authors cribbed from Stapledon. "Star Maker culminates with a brief but searing encounter with the omnipotent and yet imperfect Star Maker itself, who created all the universes in an endless series of efforts to improve upon the last. The Star Maker is never satisfied, and yet derives ultimate meaning through those same acts of creation. Stapledon’s descriptions of the Star Maker’s efforts in the final part of Star Maker are truly overwhelming, and bring to mind the latest and most modern ideas of quantum universes, infinite probabilities, the curvature of space-time, and the origins of the universe." STUART STAROSTA Star Maker: The Philosophy of Olaf Stapledon. www.centauri-dreams.org/2011/11/28/star-maker-the-philosophy-of-olaf-stapledon/
First and Last Men, & Star Maker are unique, in that they're not really novels, & yet they have science fictional elements. I think a lot of writers have probably read those books (or at least they should) just to get a feel for the many themes & philosophies available in the genre.
I had forgotten about this novel. I just read a synopsis of it, and still remembered far more detail than was in the synopsis, even given the decades since I originally read it. It certainly changes how you view things, and how time can move things to insignificance, or greatness, and the futility and hope of it all.
“Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.”
I’m happy to see the forever war in this list. I consider this book a must read for any sci-fi fan. It’s a short book and an easy read but it’s relevant even today. Also finally somebody gives love to speaker for the dead, it’s the best one in the series, it’s the one I keep coming back and re-reading and it’s shocking and profound everytime. Good list over all.
The conceptions of futuristic Society in the Forever War, and the possibility of Hive Consciousness are Concepts that still resonate with me years later. As well as the alienation of seeing your home and change around you
Personally, I gotta champion A Scanner Darkly by Philip K dick for this genre. It's deeply moving, thoroughly thought provoking and hilarious. It also has a tragic, bitter sweet ending which makes you think about evreything you know about society, how it should be and how it usually turns out!
Thank you. I would add that a central theme in Diaspora is immortality: how to structure your life when you can choose to live forever. Can you keep deriving meaning from your existence after you have studied every subject you've ever been interested in, learned every skill you ever wanted to master and become every person you ever wanted to be? Do you, at some point, choose to delete all your previous memories and start afresh? Or do you decide to "pull the plug" for good? The finiteness of existence that all humans to this day have faced puts so many constraints on our lives. Diaspora, by vastly expanding the time horizon, makes us realize and reflect on these constraints.
Thank you for adding my all time favourite book!Cloud Atlas! I wouldn't have pegged it as scifi because it has so many genres but I see why you did and it makes perfect sense
"Underrated"? WTF are you talking about? _Speaker for the Dead_ won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and John C. Campbell awards. Tell me again how that makes it "totally underrated".
Orson Scott Card is a disgusting human being, and he will never see a penny of my money in royalties. I don't want my thought processes polluted by anything that he has to say.
@@AlbertaGeek Maybe SevenPlanets meant under-read and under-appreciated. I suspect the number of people who have read SFTD is far fewer than the number who have read Ender’s Game. I never knew the sequel was so good and haven’t read it yet so I was glad for this wake up call…
@@MikeWiest Under-read and under appreciated?! The series has sold in excess of 20 million copies worldwide, the book won all 4 of top US awards and half a dozen global awards. If someone has read Ender's Game and yet wasn't aware of SFTD then they are simply not awake, let alone paying any attention. Personally, I think it's trite and yet another one of the authors unsophisticated attempts to shove his religion down people's throats, dressed up in American Libertarian political assumptions.
Great list! I’m going to order a few of these right now. If you haven’t already read it, I’d like to recommend A Memory Called Empire but Arkady Martine. It’s about a space diplomat trying to protect her homeworld’s sovereignty from a rapacious galactic empire. But to do so, she must grapple with the cultural and linguistic construction of personhood, community, and otherness, especially as those concepts come up against issues of imperialism, mass media, AI, and neuroscience.
As always, you have the perfect video for what I was interested in. No need to recommend Dune again, so I'm happy to have more to delve into. Always happy to see another Le Guin book I havent read yet.
Read CS Lewis's sci fi trilogy. He is the only sci fi writer I know who doesn't assume naturalistic technological humanism, and in this sense he actually presents a fresh philosophical perspective.
Thank you for this. I have always loved the Forever War ( I was a grunt in the 80's) I have read the Left hand of darkness but I wasn't much of a fan. I loved Ender's war but I never knew that that Speaker for the dead was a sequel. Thank you for letting me know, I will buy it now. Cheers from Australia.
“Left Hand..” is overrated. When I hear it praised I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Honestly, I got more encouragement to think deeply about gender from the best and worst of Robert Heinlein’s attempts to tackle that topic. U.K.L.’s novel is a one note “but what if a branch of humans became flexi-sexual” excuse to not have an interesting story in spite of creating a unique future-history setting. She can write fantasy, but not sci-fi. We only read a small percentage of Shakespeare’s and Dickens’ works, so it’s not a knock on her as an author to have a below average book, but I don’t know how anyone gets anything out of it. Or puts it in a list like this with other actually enjoyable and intellectually stimulating books.
@@davidpalmer4184 I haven’t read Glory road yet, I’ll add it to my list based on your recommendation 👍🏻 SiaSL is such a great book…and so many people’s favorite. An underrated story of his to read if you haven’t is a short called “Solution Unsatisfactory.” It is set early in his interconnected stories, but is one of his most tightly written in my opinion.
"Ender's Game" is actually the prequel to "Speaker for the Dead". Card adapted a short story he had done earlier in order to flesh out the backstory of the main character of SFTD.
Thank you for showing me these novels. I have seen but never read the Forever War and Speaker of the Dead. Your thoughts on them have intrigued me. The only one I would add to the list would be Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Philip K Dick. The movie adptation Bladerunner was decent and good eye candy for the time. Yet it was lacking, as the novel explains so much more. Not just about human/android dynamics but such topics as environmentalism and extinction.
Another thought-provoking tale you shoul read is someone I recently discovered. Her name is N.K. Jemison. So far I've only read the Broken Earth series but I intend to read much more of her work. It's not an easy read (so I think not for everyone) because I was always trying to figure out who was "speaking," when they were doing it, and what was *really happening.
@Carnefice Well I'll accept that the description might not be great, but the writing is great! What I described was a storytelling device. It had nothing to do with poor writing. I conveyed that it wasn't something everyone would like, but I loved it, obviously. 😊 Edit: What didn't make it into the description, is that though I called it SciFi here, It's not actually how I'd describe it. It has elements of that, but I think it might be more of fantasy. Anyway, there has been debate among others about which genre to call it. My 2 cents was that it was both and more. Certainly explored deep themes and philosophies. And I would read it again knowing what I didn't know before. It's a great series, in my opinion.
If looking for a much newer title, I've found The Human Entanglement (L.P. Magnus) to have some interesting philosophical and political ideas buried under a uniquely grounded sci-fi. Makes you think about what's just down the road
I take my philosophy where I can get it, but mostly books. I tend to read sci-fi for (space) adventure and dreaming though. But the magnitude of the universe sure makes you ponder. A message to you, Rudy.
I just bought Diaspora on your recommendation. While I'm not fond of The Forever War, I find the other books on this list very interesting. I assume that whether or not I like Diaspora, it will be just as interesting.
Interesting list. I agree with the Le Guin and Mitchell selections. To me, as a lifetime Sci Fi fan and trained philosopher, I have to say I'm aghast Philip K Dick and Iain M Banks aren't on the list... Maybe there's more to come...
I'm always surprised at how little footprint Iain M Banks has anymore. He was a modern writer with the most incredible imagination. Yet, just a decade after his death, I rarely see a mention of him. I agree about Philip K Dick too. Although quite a few of his novels have been adapted for film, at least.
Very nice...I've been postponing "Diaspora " for a long time now ( I only read few stories & novella by Egan )...I ' ll give it a shot soon... Also, very nice visual art ( as usual ) ... Stanislaw Lem's five big first contact novels ( Solaris, Fiasco, His Master's Voice, Invincible, Eden ) are some of the most philosophical SF out there...
I found "Diaspora" to be hard to penetrate, but Egan's "Permutation City" was also very rich in similar themes, but a little more approachable. Worth checking out.
Very interesting. Surprised to find I'd read 4 of these books despite not being a prolific SF reader. Loved all four, so now need to get hold of Diaspora, the one I haven't read. Thanks.
Hi Darrel, last weekend I read Forever War, because of your recommendation. Loved it! Thank you very much! So you are an influencer 😉. Always looking forward to your videos!
Hi Jasper, that’s great! I’m so pleased you enjoyed it and that you found the recommendation useful. And thanks for your kind comments. I’m always grateful for them.
I would add Frank Herberts' The Dosardi Experiment to your list, which explores the nature of justice, hierarchies/power structures and body swapping amongst others.
Greg Egan. His book "Permutation City" is also a deeply provocative exploration, partly into how future humans will deal with endless time. You live forever, what are you doing to DO for millions of years? One guy decides to take a few million years to master crafting the perfect chair, just making them over and over. What if when you do something you can repeat it to eliminate any errors no matter how slight, as many times as necessary until it is literally perfect? You notice smaller and smaller errors and remove them on the next iteration. But a billion years have passed, are you gonna pick something else out to perfect, or have you already perfected perfecting? You've done everything including just sitting still for a billion years, but you still have trillions of years left. People regret the limitation of time, but what if there is none?
I recently discover this channel. Really like it! Greetings from Argentina! Reccomendation fo you, "The Eternaut" a sci-fi graphic novel from my country. It will blow your mind.
To me, good science fiction is a fiction of ideas, although those ideas can be more or less philosophical depending on what kind of ideas they are. One of the more philosophical ones is Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. It is quite a fascinating book with several ideas in it.
I think you should add Downbelow Station, Merchanters Luck, Cyteen and Regenesis by C J Cherryh. The last two delve very deeply into manufactured gene soldiers, rebirth etc
A book that tends to fly under the radar, that actually changed my life and which I cannot recommend highly enough, is Too Like the Lightening by Ada Palmer. It's the single most important book in developing my love for philosophy. I don't think the back cover blurb does it justice, but every piece of the story is built around a philosophical question. Rather than a dystopia, it explores a utopia and asks big questions like would you destroy this world for a better one. I would be putting the book down every few pages just to stew over what I just read. It's really beautiful stuff. I just want people to read it lol
Maybe this fits: "Blood Music" by Greg Bear. An engineered microbe escapes the lab in the body of its creator and remakes humanity in every way. Is what happens to humanity a tragedy or an astonishing evolution that expands the potential of humanity far beyond anything ever imagined? It makes you continuously struggle with how to escape and how to be a part of what happens. But an intense brain twister that makes you always feel like you're not keeping up like a Greg Egan book, but still makes you imagine being alive in a completely new way. Which part is the will to death?
One of Ursula K. LeGuin's lesser recommended books is my favorite: The Lathe of Heaven. It's about a man who realizes that what he dreams during sleep comes true in the world. He goes to see a psychiatrist for help to learn how to sleep without dreaming, but the psych starts to use the man to create a "better" world.
I view "The Forever War" as "Starship Troopers" with a Vietnam War flavor, which is to be expected since the author was in that war. And their was a sequel called "Forever Free", which picks up where the first book left off. Haldeman wrote another book, "Forever Peace", but it's not related, but equally deep philosophically.
"The Left Hand of Darkness" is one of my favorite SF books EVER! I first read it in the early 70s when I was coming to terms with my sexuality and the nature of love. It had an immediate and profound impact on how I've lived my life. Might I also recommend "The Dispossessed" by Le Guin. Although she subtitled it "An Amibguous Utopia", the society of Anarres still strikes me as a model that holds promise for a new way to order our society.
I was just about to add 'The Dispossessed" to the list. It was hands down the number one book I read all of last year. I'm still catching myself thinking about certain passages nearly a year after I read it.
Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan An interesting comparison to The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin Both deal with socio-economic dichotomies which are relevant to us today regarding how to deal with economic power games. Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez weigh in on the same issue with an even more heavy handed technological approach.
I’m an voracious reader of non-fiction books, and haven’t read Fantasy/Sci-Fi fiction in many years. Focusing on more logical information has stifled My creative juices and I find it difficult to conjure imagination while reading fiction?! Tips to transition to fiction reading or feedback is warmly welcome?
All good choices, but I'm afraid I just can't resist adding one of my own favourites to the list. 🙂 For a truly thought-provoking exploration of human intelligence and consciousness try Peter Watts' 2006 novel 'Blindsight'. It is not the easiest of reads but is incredibly rewarding.
Blindsight is one of the most boring books I've ever read. It's as slow as molasses, with a non existant story and bland characters. Complete waste of time.
@@camcolt3530 Blindsight is not an 'easy' read, I'll certainly give you that, but it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, so it can't have been all that bad. Perhaps they just saw (or read) something in it that you missed?
@@SteampunkEngineering I've read countelss sci-fi books, but BlindSight was so bad it made me angry. I concede that it tackled interesting themes about conciousness, but the entire book was just a vessel for the author to talk about his idea of alien intelligence. On the surface that might sound interesting, but there was NO real story, plot, or interesting characters... No stakes... No conclusion. Nothing . It also didn't help that no matter how thourough the author attempted to describe scenes and scenarios, you simply could not picture what he was talking about.
@@Raikenbolai I'd argue that alterd Carbon is not underrated at all. It's in fact quite highly rated. The first season of the Netfilx show captured the story pretty well. The Vampire in Blindsight was a pointless addition that contributed nothing to the narrative.
The Forever War is a winner, because it’s two books for the price of one. First, it’s an original and well-written Hugo winner about an interstellar war. Second it is a beautiful (and intentional ??) novel about aging, as we have the author’s device of time compression employed to have young people’s world repeatedly ripped from them- which happens to all of us only once over a lifetime. A wonderful illustration of “Age cannot be kind.” As for the “philosophical” part, balderdash. All that need be the case for a good novel is that it be well written and speak the truth.
If we're getting philosophical, it's hard to beat "A Case of Conscience" by James Blish. It's about humanity discovering an alien race with no religion but perfect morality. The book deals with how humanity reacts to this and the philosophical implications of these aliens' very existence. It won the Hugo back when that award still meant a lot.
I’ve read 4 out of the 5 and I own a copy of Diaspora. I loved Permutation City so I’m looking forward to that one! For philosophical sci-fi the first thing that came to mind was Solaris. I read it recently and found it extremely impactful.
Sorry to disagree. Most SF is tosh that hides behind a front of thinking differently. As someone writes up above, there is very little actual philosophy in SF, however a very few authors go into a tad more depth on some topics. They’ll never make course on philosophy from works of SF alone, I’m afraid.
I found solaris to be such a disappoint. A never ending worldbuilding description of the "ocean" and the history of it and then by the time they finish explaining it the books over and you feel like it just got going.
@@randygraham926 thanks, a fun fact: the Invincible was the first novel I read by Lem, while I don't consider better, I enjoyed more, I came from a communist country so I was exposed to a lot of Soviet sci-fi, though Lem will be deeply bother whether he learn someone called him "Soviet writer"
Read the Forever War back in the 70's. Also read the original Dune series, and took away a "philosophical/Political" point of great value too. To only slightly paraphrase a statement of the Bene Gesserit (The Reverend Mother)..."Religion often serves as a valuable political tool for controlling a population". Proven time and time again...
Good SF is always philosophical. I would prefer the Foundation series, A Fire Upon the Deep and many works by Heinlein, Clark and Dick over the items on your list.
Diaspora sounds cool af! Definitely gonna check it out soon. I’d highly recommend The Hidden Girl & Other Stories by Ken Liu, I feel like you’d like it. So glad to have found this channel, your videos are really well made, just subbed 🔥🔥🔥
@@NiteOwl2000 There are so many great suggestions in these comments I actually took some time today to see if I could scrape the comments and process them through chatGPT to get a list of the books. I found some ways to scrape the comments from TH-cam, but after working in the file for like an hour, chatGPT basically said, "sorry, I couldn't figure it out." I think it took so long because it was extracting words and comparing them to all the books it knew about, and coming up empty, basically doing a db search on every single word and phrase. I didn't think it would work but it was free to try!
I’m in the midst of Forever War as I write. The LeGuinn I found a couple of years back. I’d recommend either to anyone. As others have said, I’m surprised at the lack of P K Dick and L Stam, who both have strong philosophical aspects to much of their work. Perhaps a list of only 5 was too narrow a line to draw, here. I will seek due diligence on Diaspora to see if it will suit my philosophical inclination. While much SF flatters to deceive on the philosophy front there are some genuinely interesting and thoughtful novels and short stories out there if you go looking for them. Generally I’d advise caution on this topic, however, and think it brave of you to suggest it at all. Happy reading!
Haze by Modesitt Postman by Brin Shockwave Rider by Brunner Alas Babylon by Pat Frank Drowned World by J.G. Ballard Midshipmans Hope series by Fentuch all relevant.
In 1952, serial works by Raymond Jones were published under the title "This Island Earth". The simple theme asked the question, should living organisms allow machines to make life/death decisions? In the late summer three years later, in a proposal for a study, John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. And the race was on...
Speaker for the dead is an excellent book. The author is a less than stellar example of the characters in his book. I am lose to give Mr. card any money under any circumstances. If you wanna buy some of his books support, your local used bookstore.
Thank you Darrel!!! Super interesting as always 😊 THANK YOU FOR COVERING GREG EGAN, my favorite 😅 I'm curious about The Left Hand of Darkness, I love stories where gender is explored. Like Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder in which humans have grown out of gender, being genderless and sexless.
Diaspora is great, this is the first time i heard someone speaks about it. It is so underrated, thanks! I have also read first two books mentioned. Not sure if i would go for O. S. Card because of his homophobic stands, as much as I am against cancel culture, but still, not for me.
![The 15 Best Sci-Fi Books I've Ever Read [Updated Again]](/img/n.gif)
I would definitely consider Dune (aka The Best Science Fiction Novel Ever Written) to be philosophical sci fi.
I don't know whether I would consider the first book to qualify, but the sequel, "Messiah" certainly does!
I agree fully and the philosophical dimension becomes more important as the series (though only those written by FH) progresses.
I read the first three Dune books around fifty years ago. All I remember of the experience is constantly thinking what junk they were. I tried going back to the first one a few years ago. I made it through the first few pages, then decided now to waste any more of my life on such trash.
If the Dune books hold a profound meaning for you, maybe you ought to do some deep self-examination.
@@jankafka7330. The first trilogy is the set up for the second trilogy matey.
I've read it all many times. Read from God Emperor. All you need to know from the first trilogy is that Paul condemns his unborn to a future he shrinks away from. He is a failed hero after all.
I don't even re read the 1st trilogy anymore. It's crap compared to the 2nd
@@stephennewberry9815 - Stephen - don't waste your time. The guy is clearly intellectually superior to us, and is doing us a favour by tactfully letting us know by means of facts, and not mere matters of personal preference. Dune is trash and we are clearly deficient in judgement, learning and intellect to think otherwise. We should be asking for his advice as to what to read to enrich our lives, and help us elevate ourselves to the kind of lofty plane he himself inhabits, . Maybe Ulysses (JJ's), Auto Da Fe, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity's Rainbow, Point Counter Point, The Magic Mountain, The Glass Bead Game or similar, all of which and more he's bound to have read, as he must have a very high IQ and a voracious capacity for understanding, esp when compared to dull minded readers like all of us Herbert fans.
I'm no longer shocked that modern SF readers are unfamiliar with the works of Olaf Stapledon. But, Stapledon is THE premiere philosopher of SF with his future history of the human race with "Last and First Men" and history of the universe with his "Star Maker." These are the words of Arthur C. Clarke about Olaf Stapledon. “No other book [Last and First Men] had a greater influence on my life…[It] and its successor Star Maker are the twin summits of [Stapledon’s] literary career”
If you read these works you will never forget them and see the genesis of a multitude of later SF books whose authors cribbed from Stapledon.
"Star Maker culminates with a brief but searing encounter with the omnipotent and yet imperfect Star Maker itself, who created all the universes in an endless series of efforts to improve upon the last. The Star Maker is never satisfied, and yet derives ultimate meaning through those same acts of creation. Stapledon’s descriptions of the Star Maker’s efforts in the final part of Star Maker are truly overwhelming, and bring to mind the latest and most modern ideas of quantum universes, infinite probabilities, the curvature of space-time, and the origins of the universe." STUART STAROSTA
Star Maker: The Philosophy of Olaf Stapledon. www.centauri-dreams.org/2011/11/28/star-maker-the-philosophy-of-olaf-stapledon/
First and Last Men, & Star Maker are unique, in that they're not really novels, & yet they have science fictional elements.
I think a lot of writers have probably read those books (or at least they should) just to get a feel for the many themes & philosophies available in the genre.
Don't forget Sirius!
@@clancykelly5508 WOOF!
A Canticle for Leibowitz should be on this list. It is a stunning novel that was way ahead of its time.
I had forgotten about this novel. I just read a synopsis of it, and still remembered far more detail than was in the synopsis, even given the decades since I originally read it. It certainly changes how you view things, and how time can move things to insignificance, or greatness, and the futility and hope of it all.
This is one of my favorite novels, and one I re-read every few years
Probably the only sci-fi novel that should be among the five or ten best English-language novels overall.
“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
I’m happy to see the forever war in this list. I consider this book a must read for any sci-fi fan. It’s a short book and an easy read but it’s relevant even today. Also finally somebody gives love to speaker for the dead, it’s the best one in the series, it’s the one I keep coming back and re-reading and it’s shocking and profound everytime. Good list over all.
The conceptions of futuristic Society in the Forever War, and the possibility of Hive Consciousness are Concepts that still resonate with me years later. As well as the alienation of seeing your home and change around you
Personally, I gotta champion A Scanner Darkly by Philip K dick for this genre. It's deeply moving, thoroughly thought provoking and hilarious. It also has a tragic, bitter sweet ending which makes you think about evreything you know about society, how it should be and how it usually turns out!
That ending.
Thank you. I would add that a central theme in Diaspora is immortality: how to structure your life when you can choose to live forever. Can you keep deriving meaning from your existence after you have studied every subject you've ever been interested in, learned every skill you ever wanted to master and become every person you ever wanted to be? Do you, at some point, choose to delete all your previous memories and start afresh? Or do you decide to "pull the plug" for good? The finiteness of existence that all humans to this day have faced puts so many constraints on our lives. Diaspora, by vastly expanding the time horizon, makes us realize and reflect on these constraints.
Thank you for adding my all time favourite book!Cloud Atlas! I wouldn't have pegged it as scifi because it has so many genres but I see why you did and it makes perfect sense
I agree. It's hard to peg this down to one genre but it's also one of my favourites.
I really liked Cloud Atlas too. Is it scifi? In parts, definitely. In others, engrossing, thoughtful fiction.
Speaker For The Dead. Beautiful, inspiring, and totally underrated. Thanks for including it! 7🛸
Totally agree.
"Underrated"? WTF are you talking about? _Speaker for the Dead_ won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and John C. Campbell awards. Tell me again how that makes it "totally underrated".
Orson Scott Card is a disgusting human being, and he will never see a penny of my money in royalties. I don't want my thought processes polluted by anything that he has to say.
@@AlbertaGeek Maybe SevenPlanets meant under-read and under-appreciated. I suspect the number of people who have read SFTD is far fewer than the number who have read Ender’s Game. I never knew the sequel was so good and haven’t read it yet so I was glad for this wake up call…
@@MikeWiest Under-read and under appreciated?! The series has sold in excess of 20 million copies worldwide, the book won all 4 of top US awards and half a dozen global awards. If someone has read Ender's Game and yet wasn't aware of SFTD then they are simply not awake, let alone paying any attention.
Personally, I think it's trite and yet another one of the authors unsophisticated attempts to shove his religion down people's throats, dressed up in American Libertarian political assumptions.
Great list! I’m going to order a few of these right now. If you haven’t already read it, I’d like to recommend A Memory Called Empire but Arkady Martine. It’s about a space diplomat trying to protect her homeworld’s sovereignty from a rapacious galactic empire. But to do so, she must grapple with the cultural and linguistic construction of personhood, community, and otherness, especially as those concepts come up against issues of imperialism, mass media, AI, and neuroscience.
As always, you have the perfect video for what I was interested in. No need to recommend Dune again, so I'm happy to have more to delve into. Always happy to see another Le Guin book I havent read yet.
Thanks for the great summeries. I've been meaning to read The Forever Wars for a while now. Moving it to the top of my list.
Thank you for your surveys, as you have new books for me to read!
No Stanisław Lem, whose work is by definition philosophical sf?
Goodreads is always quite personal. For me, Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" was a read I've never forgotten.
Read CS Lewis's sci fi trilogy. He is the only sci fi writer I know who doesn't assume naturalistic technological humanism, and in this sense he actually presents a fresh philosophical perspective.
Thank you for this. I have always loved the Forever War ( I was a grunt in the 80's) I have read the Left hand of darkness but I wasn't much of a fan. I loved Ender's war but I never knew that that Speaker for the dead was a sequel. Thank you for letting me know, I will buy it now. Cheers from Australia.
“Left Hand..” is overrated. When I hear it praised I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Honestly, I got more encouragement to think deeply about gender from the best and worst of Robert Heinlein’s attempts to tackle that topic.
U.K.L.’s novel is a one note “but what if a branch of humans became flexi-sexual” excuse to not have an interesting story in spite of creating a unique future-history setting.
She can write fantasy, but not sci-fi.
We only read a small percentage of Shakespeare’s and Dickens’ works, so it’s not a knock on her as an author to have a below average book, but I don’t know how anyone gets anything out of it. Or puts it in a list like this with other actually enjoyable and intellectually stimulating books.
@@JasonJrake Hi Jason, I absolutely love Heinlein! Time enough for love, Stranger in a strange land and Glory road are amongst my favorite books.
@@davidpalmer4184 I haven’t read Glory road yet, I’ll add it to my list based on your recommendation 👍🏻
SiaSL is such a great book…and so many people’s favorite.
An underrated story of his to read if you haven’t is a short called “Solution Unsatisfactory.”
It is set early in his interconnected stories, but is one of his most tightly written in my opinion.
"Ender's Game" is actually the prequel to "Speaker for the Dead". Card adapted a short story he had done earlier in order to flesh out the backstory of the main character of SFTD.
You have a new sub🔔. Great analysis and the visuals are great too!. You could add Blindsight to the list, and the Southern Reach trilogy
Thank you for showing me these novels. I have seen but never read the Forever War and Speaker of the Dead. Your thoughts on them have intrigued me. The only one I would add to the list would be Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Philip K Dick. The movie adptation Bladerunner was decent and good eye candy for the time. Yet it was lacking, as the novel explains so much more. Not just about human/android dynamics but such topics as environmentalism and extinction.
Another thought-provoking tale you shoul read is someone I recently discovered. Her name is N.K. Jemison. So far I've only read the Broken Earth series but I intend to read much more of her work. It's not an easy read (so I think not for everyone) because I was always trying to figure out who was "speaking," when they were doing it, and what was *really happening.
That sounds like terrible writing
@Carnefice Well I'll accept that the description might not be great, but the writing is great! What I described was a storytelling device. It had nothing to do with poor writing. I conveyed that it wasn't something everyone would like, but I loved it, obviously. 😊
Edit: What didn't make it into the description, is that though I called it SciFi here, It's not actually how I'd describe it. It has elements of that, but I think it might be more of fantasy. Anyway, there has been debate among others about which genre to call it. My 2 cents was that it was both and more. Certainly explored deep themes and philosophies. And I would read it again knowing what I didn't know before. It's a great series, in my opinion.
If looking for a much newer title, I've found The Human Entanglement (L.P. Magnus) to have some interesting philosophical and political ideas buried under a uniquely grounded sci-fi. Makes you think about what's just down the road
LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven and Lem's hilarious Cyberiad.
I take my philosophy where I can get it, but mostly books. I tend to read sci-fi for (space) adventure and dreaming though. But the magnitude of the universe sure makes you ponder. A message to you, Rudy.
I just bought Diaspora on your recommendation. While I'm not fond of The Forever War, I find the other books on this list very interesting. I assume that whether or not I like Diaspora, it will be just as interesting.
Interesting list. I agree with the Le Guin and Mitchell selections. To me, as a lifetime Sci Fi fan and trained philosopher, I have to say I'm aghast Philip K Dick and Iain M Banks aren't on the list...
Maybe there's more to come...
I'm always surprised at how little footprint Iain M Banks has anymore. He was a modern writer with the most incredible imagination. Yet, just a decade after his death, I rarely see a mention of him.
I agree about Philip K Dick too. Although quite a few of his novels have been adapted for film, at least.
Very nice...I've been postponing "Diaspora " for a long time now ( I only read few stories & novella by Egan )...I ' ll give it a shot soon...
Also, very nice visual art ( as usual ) ...
Stanislaw Lem's five big first contact novels ( Solaris, Fiasco, His Master's Voice, Invincible, Eden ) are some of the most philosophical SF out there...
Diaspora isn't for the faint hearted. It can be tough at times. But I found it well worth the effort (as with most of Egan's work).
I found "Diaspora" to be hard to penetrate, but Egan's "Permutation City" was also very rich in similar themes, but a little more approachable.
Worth checking out.
Very interesting. Surprised to find I'd read 4 of these books despite not being a prolific SF reader. Loved all four, so now need to get hold of Diaspora, the one I haven't read. Thanks.
Hi Darrel, last weekend I read Forever War, because of your recommendation. Loved it! Thank you very much! So you are an influencer 😉. Always looking forward to your videos!
Hi Jasper, that’s great! I’m so pleased you enjoyed it and that you found the recommendation useful. And thanks for your kind comments. I’m always grateful for them.
Wow, The Forever War! Published a half-century ago and still strong. An eye opener.
I would add Frank Herberts' The Dosardi Experiment to your list, which explores the nature of justice, hierarchies/power structures and body swapping amongst others.
Dosadi
@@franklinbradley3160 It's been a while since I read it, so give me some slack please :)
Thank you! I'm going to dive in!!
Thank you for the great suggestions. I will definitely have a look at them, especially Diaspora sounds exciting. :)
Darrel, Speaker for the Curious. Big ta!
I need to read all these books. Very good recommendations, thanks!
Greg Egan. His book "Permutation City" is also a deeply provocative exploration, partly into how future humans will deal with endless time.
You live forever, what are you doing to DO for millions of years?
One guy decides to take a few million years to master crafting the perfect chair, just making them over and over. What if when you do something you can repeat it to eliminate any errors no matter how slight, as many times as necessary until it is literally perfect?
You notice smaller and smaller errors and remove them on the next iteration.
But a billion years have passed, are you gonna pick something else out to perfect, or have you already perfected perfecting?
You've done everything including just sitting still for a billion years, but you still have trillions of years left.
People regret the limitation of time, but what if there is none?
Amazing collection that went directly to my to-read list
Thanks a lot
I recently discover this channel. Really like it! Greetings from Argentina! Reccomendation fo you, "The Eternaut" a sci-fi graphic novel from my country. It will blow your mind.
Hola, esa novela gráfica está en inglés también o solo en español? Dónde se consigue?
@@IRosamelia hay ediciones en inglés. No se exactamente donde podrías conseguirlas😅
@@holyfreak8 ah bueno, y cual es el nombre del autor?
@@IRosamelia Hector Germán Oesterheld (guión) y Francisco Solano López (dibujo).
Thank you! And thanks for the recommendation.
Excellent! Just added two new books to my TBR thanks to your overview. Nicely done!
To me, good science fiction is a fiction of ideas, although those ideas can be more or less philosophical depending on what kind of ideas they are. One of the more philosophical ones is Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. It is quite a fascinating book with several ideas in it.
I think you should add Downbelow Station, Merchanters Luck, Cyteen and Regenesis by C J Cherryh. The last two delve very deeply into manufactured gene soldiers, rebirth etc
Excellent author.
A book that tends to fly under the radar, that actually changed my life and which I cannot recommend highly enough, is Too Like the Lightening by Ada Palmer. It's the single most important book in developing my love for philosophy. I don't think the back cover blurb does it justice, but every piece of the story is built around a philosophical question. Rather than a dystopia, it explores a utopia and asks big questions like would you destroy this world for a better one. I would be putting the book down every few pages just to stew over what I just read. It's really beautiful stuff. I just want people to read it lol
thanks for sharing
Without Dahlgren by Samuel Delaney this list is not complete.
Maybe this fits: "Blood Music" by Greg Bear.
An engineered microbe escapes the lab in the body of its creator and remakes humanity in every way.
Is what happens to humanity a tragedy or an astonishing evolution that expands the potential of humanity far beyond anything ever imagined?
It makes you continuously struggle with how to escape and how to be a part of what happens.
But an intense brain twister that makes you always feel like you're not keeping up like a Greg Egan book, but still makes you imagine being alive in a completely new way.
Which part is the will to death?
Diaspora was such an interesting book. The over use of physics was a bit dry, but it wove beautifully into the progression of the story.
One of Ursula K. LeGuin's lesser recommended books is my favorite: The Lathe of Heaven. It's about a man who realizes that what he dreams during sleep comes true in the world. He goes to see a psychiatrist for help to learn how to sleep without dreaming, but the psych starts to use the man to create a "better" world.
I view "The Forever War" as "Starship Troopers" with a Vietnam War flavor, which is to be expected since the author was in that war. And their was a sequel called "Forever Free", which picks up where the first book left off. Haldeman wrote another book, "Forever Peace", but it's not related, but equally deep philosophically.
"The Left Hand of Darkness" is one of my favorite SF books EVER! I first read it in the early 70s when I was coming to terms with my sexuality and the nature of love. It had an immediate and profound impact on how I've lived my life.
Might I also recommend "The Dispossessed" by Le Guin. Although she subtitled it "An Amibguous Utopia", the society of Anarres still strikes me as a model that holds promise for a new way to order our society.
agree!
I’m not sure how corrupt anarchistic bureaucracy could be anyone’s idea of a Utopia!?
I was just about to add 'The Dispossessed" to the list. It was hands down the number one book I read all of last year. I'm still catching myself thinking about certain passages nearly a year after I read it.
The Man in the Maze and Dying Inside and Vornan 19 by Robert Silverberg i think would be classics of this type.
Speaker is the best SF sequel ever. Vastly underrated.
Thanks for a good video. All of these books are familiar and are part of my history as a reader and a writer.
Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan
An interesting comparison to
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
Both deal with socio-economic dichotomies which are relevant to us today regarding how to deal with economic power games.
Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez
weigh in on the same issue with an even more heavy handed technological approach.
Philip K. Dick -do androids dream of electric sheep
I’m an voracious reader of non-fiction books, and haven’t read Fantasy/Sci-Fi fiction in many years. Focusing on more logical information has stifled My creative juices and I find it difficult to conjure imagination while reading fiction?! Tips to transition to fiction reading or feedback is warmly welcome?
I never read the successor to Endors War, thanks for the tip. Sounds really good.
Xenogenesis Saga by Octavia Butler also a thought provoking read. Highly recommend.
Holy shit, I’m reading the first one in the series right now and it’s sooooo good 🤩
All good choices, but I'm afraid I just can't resist adding one of my own favourites to the list. 🙂
For a truly thought-provoking exploration of human intelligence and consciousness try Peter Watts' 2006 novel 'Blindsight'. It is not the easiest of reads but is incredibly rewarding.
Blindsight is one of the most boring books I've ever read. It's as slow as molasses, with a non existant story and bland characters. Complete waste of time.
@@camcolt3530 Blindsight is not an 'easy' read, I'll certainly give you that, but it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, so it can't have been all that bad. Perhaps they just saw (or read) something in it that you missed?
Yeah. Blindsight is the one I would add. Really bizarre to have hard sci AND vampires. I also think Altered Carbon is underrated
@@SteampunkEngineering I've read countelss sci-fi books, but BlindSight was so bad it made me angry. I concede that it tackled interesting themes about conciousness, but the entire book was just a vessel for the author to talk about his idea of alien intelligence. On the surface that might sound interesting, but there was NO real story, plot, or interesting characters... No stakes... No conclusion. Nothing . It also didn't help that no matter how thourough the author attempted to describe scenes and scenarios, you simply could not picture what he was talking about.
@@Raikenbolai I'd argue that alterd Carbon is not underrated at all. It's in fact quite highly rated. The first season of the Netfilx show captured the story pretty well. The Vampire in Blindsight was a pointless addition that contributed nothing to the narrative.
Stephen Baxter, Xeelee sequence
John C. Wright, Golden Age trilogy
Peter Watts, Blindsight and Echopraxia
Iain M. Banks, Culture series
The Forever War is a winner, because it’s two books for the price of one. First, it’s an original and well-written Hugo winner about an interstellar war. Second it is a beautiful (and intentional ??) novel about aging, as we have the author’s device of time compression employed to have young people’s world repeatedly ripped from them- which happens to all of us only once over a lifetime. A wonderful illustration of “Age cannot be kind.”
As for the “philosophical” part, balderdash. All that need be the case for a good novel is that it be well written and speak the truth.
My recommend is: "Too Like the Lightning"
I'd vote for The Bridge by Iain Banks.
Cracking recs cheers
Surely you've read Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos - it doesn't get more philosophical than that!
If we're getting philosophical, it's hard to beat "A Case of Conscience" by James Blish. It's about humanity discovering an alien race with no religion but perfect morality. The book deals with how humanity reacts to this and the philosophical implications of these aliens' very existence. It won the Hugo back when that award still meant a lot.
I’ve read 4 out of the 5 and I own a copy of Diaspora. I loved Permutation City so I’m looking forward to that one!
For philosophical sci-fi the first thing that came to mind was Solaris. I read it recently and found it extremely impactful.
It's so gratifying to see so many others who value Greg Egan here.
"Permutation City" changed the way i think about everything.
@@itsROMPERS... Dust Theory 🤯
@@WordsinTime ikr? That was some beautiful shit!
Don't worry, we'll just run the app ON THE UNIVERSE!
This list without any Stanislaw Lem book is incomplete.
I love scifi BECAUSE it's philosophical. I didn't realise there was a category. If so.. then that 'category' is 90% of all sci fi, lol :D
Sorry to disagree. Most SF is tosh that hides behind a front of thinking differently. As someone writes up above, there is very little actual philosophy in SF, however a very few authors go into a tad more depth on some topics. They’ll never make course on philosophy from works of SF alone, I’m afraid.
"Starship Troopers" should be on this list. The movies just used the names ans settings. The book is about why we fight.
Shame to don't see Solaris on the list, but I know you are preparing a second part video to this topic secretly.......lol
I found solaris to be such a disappoint. A never ending worldbuilding description of the "ocean" and the history of it and then by the time they finish explaining it the books over and you feel like it just got going.
🤣
Very much enjoyed Solaris as well. Check out 'The Invincible' by Lem as well if you haven't read it. Very interesting novella written in the 1960s.
@@randygraham926 thanks, a fun fact: the Invincible was the first novel I read by Lem, while I don't consider better, I enjoyed more, I came from a communist country so I was exposed to a lot of Soviet sci-fi, though Lem will be deeply bother whether he learn someone called him "Soviet writer"
Loved this. Will read most of these!
Read the Forever War back in the 70's. Also read the original Dune series, and took away a "philosophical/Political" point of great value too. To only slightly paraphrase a statement of the Bene Gesserit (The Reverend Mother)..."Religion often serves as a valuable political tool for controlling a population". Proven time and time again...
Good SF is always philosophical. I would prefer the Foundation series, A Fire Upon the Deep and many works by Heinlein, Clark and Dick over the items on your list.
It never is.
i enjoyed the movie After Yang, viewed twice ... Kogonada has a lovely aesthetic/humane vision of things
I would suggest Children of Time, Children of Ruin, and Children of Memory. Especially the last one questions the concept of life and existence.
Cloud Atlas. No better choice. A masterpiece.
Diaspora sounds cool af! Definitely gonna check it out soon. I’d highly recommend The Hidden Girl & Other Stories by Ken Liu, I feel like you’d like it. So glad to have found this channel, your videos are really well made, just subbed 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks so much. And thanks for the recommendations 🙂
Another great book by Egan is "Permutation City".
@@itsROMPERS... Have you read Axiomatic?
@@NiteOwl2000 I have not! I will have to look it up!
@@NiteOwl2000 There are so many great suggestions in these comments I actually took some time today to see if I could scrape the comments and process them through chatGPT to get a list of the books.
I found some ways to scrape the comments from TH-cam, but after working in the file for like an hour, chatGPT basically said, "sorry, I couldn't figure it out."
I think it took so long because it was extracting words and comparing them to all the books it knew about, and coming up empty, basically doing a db search on every single word and phrase.
I didn't think it would work but it was free to try!
Nice to see Cloud Atlas on the list.
I've read all butone, thanksfor the tip for Diaspora!
I’m in the midst of Forever War as I write. The LeGuinn I found a couple of years back. I’d recommend either to anyone. As others have said, I’m surprised at the lack of P K Dick and L Stam, who both have strong philosophical aspects to much of their work. Perhaps a list of only 5 was too narrow a line to draw, here. I will seek due diligence on Diaspora to see if it will suit my philosophical inclination. While much SF flatters to deceive on the philosophy front there are some genuinely interesting and thoughtful novels and short stories out there if you go looking for them. Generally I’d advise caution on this topic, however, and think it brave of you to suggest it at all. Happy reading!
The Dispossessed changed my outlook on everything. For me the best novel
Haze by Modesitt
Postman by Brin
Shockwave Rider by Brunner
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank
Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
Midshipmans Hope series by Fentuch
all relevant.
I would include "A Clockwork Orange" in this genre.
In 1952, serial works by Raymond Jones were published under the title "This Island Earth". The simple theme asked the question, should living organisms allow machines to make life/death decisions? In the late summer three years later, in a proposal for a study, John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. And the race was on...
Yes to The Forever War. I'd suggest The Mote in God's Eye.
4 substantial works and one I seemed to have missed. I will add Diaspora to my reading list.
No Philip K. Dick?
I've read three of the five and consider them classics. Hopefully, that says something good about the other two.
Speaker for the dead is an excellent book. The author is a less than stellar example of the characters in his book. I am lose to give Mr. card any money under any circumstances. If you wanna buy some of his books support, your local used bookstore.
I've never read any Greg Egan. Seems like I should!
Neuromancer?
Just GREAT art work...
Scifi odyssey: 'what is philosophical scifi'
Me: 'futurama'
I have sinned so far. Knew about The Forever War but never read it. That must change, I know now…
Ok, I just bought it. I will start reading tonight! The power you have over people like me! 😉😂
As luck would have it, there's another great book by Haldeman called "All My Sins Remembered." It's one of my favorites.
Wow, I'm currently reading "Diaspora" by Egan. It's hard to follow and challenging, but it's really interesting and mind-bending.
Thank you Darrel!!! Super interesting as always 😊 THANK YOU FOR COVERING GREG EGAN, my favorite 😅
I'm curious about The Left Hand of Darkness, I love stories where gender is explored. Like Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder in which humans have grown out of gender, being genderless and sexless.
If you're interested in SciFi explorations of gender, you might like the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler!
@@asmaloney Oh yeah I heard about that, I'll check it out! :)
Lessons in Chemistry. A very surprizing book.
no mention of one of the greatest of all sf works r a heinliens stranger in a strange land
Great! I'd add The EON trilogy by Greg Bear (RIP).
Diaspora is one of my favourite books, but boy is that ending bleak.
Diaspora is great, this is the first time i heard someone speaks about it. It is so underrated, thanks! I have also read first two books mentioned. Not sure if i would go for O. S. Card because of his homophobic stands, as much as I am against cancel culture, but still, not for me.
Why are there no timestamps in your vid ?!