r/scifi • u/OpinionKindly2094 • 2d ago
Recommendations If you’re into sci-fi, recommend me something that will blow my mind ..
Hi Everyone
I’ve been wanting to explore more sci-fi stuff lately, whether it’s movies, series, books, or even mind-blowing theories about space, time travel, aliens, and the future of humanity.
I’m looking for something that makes you think long after it’s over. Something that completely changes the way you look at things.
What are some sci-fi movie, series, or concept you think everyone should experience at least once?
Drop your best recommendations! 👽🛸
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u/TheShrikeTreeOfPain 2d ago
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds
The Dreaming Void - Peter F Hamilton
The Expanse - James SA Corey
The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu
The Player of Games - Iain M Banks
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u/Uncle_owen69 2d ago
Seconding Hyperion. I am currently on book 4 of the series and the lore and story is so good. So far the first book is easily the best though.
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u/belgeric 2d ago
Plus one for all those ones.
So as for Peter F Hamilton I would rather start by Night Dawn trilogy (then read all books ;)I also add:
- Fire upon the deep (and other books from serie Zone of though) - Vernor Vinge
- Spin -Robert Charles Wilson (2 books after)
- Dark Matter and Recursion by Blake Crouch
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u/TwoDMike 2d ago
Was about to start House of Suns. It will be my first Alastair Reynolds book. I've heard good things so I am excited!
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u/AGlitchedNPC 2d ago
Battlestar Galatica, I can't speak to the original but the remake is amazing
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u/senza_titolo 2d ago
I’ve watched the series 3 times now and I think it’s a close tie with The Expanse for best.
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u/NarcanBob 2d ago
OP, like the others, this series is so incredibly well done and has so many elements of modern conflict and political discourse, particulalry when it came out in 2003.
And oh yeah: the science fiction elements are also kick ass!!
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u/Interesting_Prune513 2d ago
Some that kind of changed how I look at things
- 3 body problem
- Blindsight
- Flowers for Algernon
- Anything by Ted Chiang (Exhalation, or Stories of Your Life and Others)
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u/Schillz 2d ago
Adrian Tchaikovsky; Children of Time probably one of the more thought provoking sci-fi I've read in a long time.
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u/spinning_and_winning 2d ago
Booooo this is basic Reddit. Sorry. Being the downvotes. Yes I read it. I was… whelmed.
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u/avgplayer 2d ago
Waych Bugonia, you won’t regret it. Very few sci fi movies manage to stick the landing like this one
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u/craigengler 2d ago
The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin (Book)
The episode of Cabinet of Curiosities by Panos Cosmatos called The Viewing (TV)
The anime series Attack on Titan (TV)
The Arrival (movie)
Annihilation (Book....movie is good but I think the book is better)
Blade Runner (movie)
2001: A Space Odyssey (movie)
Soylent Green (movie)
Contact (movie) and Interstellar (movie) aren't my person favorites, but a lot of people love them and find them thought-provoking
Altered States (movie)
Ex Machina (movie)
Others recommended Spin, A Fire Upon the Deep, Hyperion and Blindsight (books), all of which are great. Also The Chronoliths (book) by Spin author Robert Charles Wilson was pretty great.
The Demolished Man (book)
The short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
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u/Round_Bluebird_5987 2d ago
If you watch Soylent Green, you should also check out the book it's based on--Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
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u/Skatneti 2d ago
AOT is a good call, if you like your anime, check out Starblazers. (Space Battleship Yamato)
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u/Round_Bluebird_5987 2d ago
Here are a few that I haven't seen mentioned:
Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe--Not an easy read, but wow!
Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott--Euclidean geometry turned Victorian satire
Starmaker, by Olaf Stapledon--No characters, no plot, and still utterly fascinating and possibly the most influential book for how aliens are portrayed
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke--The ending still haunts me
Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky--Digging through the rubbish heap of the unknowable
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell--If the concept of a religious horror science fiction novel appeals at all . . .
Dying Inside, by Robert Silverberg--Made my heart break for a total schmuck
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u/Random_Musings3 2d ago
The Sparrow is so well written but so dark. Really made me think about Jesuits...
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u/Tas42 2d ago
After Flatland, read Sphereland by Dionys Burger about 80 years later. It continues the story but applies Einsteinian concepts.
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u/Round_Bluebird_5987 1d ago
That's one I probably need to read. I remember reading Flatterland by Ian Stewart when it came out, but it didn't make much of an impression and it seems to be among the books I've purged from my shelves in the years since.
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u/this-is-heavy-94 2d ago
Gattaca (movie) Legend of the Galactic Heroes (anime series, the classic one from the 80s/90s) Contact by Carl Sagan (novel)
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u/TapAdmirable5666 2d ago
"What’s the one sci-fi movie, series, or concept you think everyone should experience at least once?"
No doubt. The Expanse.
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u/LeonPrien2000 2d ago
Came here to say this. Show or book series, both are incredible and a must see for every scifi fan imo
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u/S_Gimalaev 2d ago
Трилогия Джона Скальци "Война старика", если вкратце , то там пенсионерам дают новые тела и отправляют на межгалактическую войну
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u/Ninefingered 2d ago
Permutation city, by Greg Egan
Solaris, by Stanislaw lem
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr
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u/livertaker 1d ago
Aniara - amazing indie SF movie, blew my mind how good it is. Buy the blu ray and watch the short movie that comes with it as it’s also an excellent SF movie, really original take on zombies.
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u/planeruler 2d ago
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The books or the BBC radio series but not the movie.
It's funny but still thoughtful.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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u/Alfrasco 2d ago
Try Dragon’s Egg. I think about that all the time. Truly alien aliens.
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u/OpinionKindly2094 2d ago
Dragon Egg is a fantasy short film, though. The book Dragon’s Egg is a sci-fi novel about intelligent alien life on a neutron star. I really liked the concept; it’s so unique and fascinating!
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u/PhysicsLegitimate515 2d ago
what do you mean by mind-blowing exactly, like a big twist ending or more of a slow burn that rewires how you think about time?
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u/Ok-Row-6088 2d ago
This really depends on your appetite to read deep technical scientific jargon. Some of the masters get very detailed basing their stories on actual theories. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of those. There are absolutely no bad books in his repertoire, but some of them are way more technical than others. Ministry for the future will open your eyes to the possible direction Our world is currently heading in. The years of rice and salt will show you how the world is all about chance and how one minor detail changes everything. The Mars trilogy covers so many potential real futures for us. Some of them are currently in the works. If you want something, the same level, but not quite as deep technical the Atlantis Gene by AG Riddle. Another one who you can't go wrong with any of his books. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is always worth a read. So is 1984 by George Orwell. Fahrenheit, 451 is also a good book by Ray Bradbury.
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u/micrographical 2d ago
Read Neuromancer by William Gibson before the upcoming adaptation is released.
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u/Random_Musings3 2d ago
Two books that made me think deeply about radical pacifism:
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
The Dispossed by Ursula K LeGuin
Both involve a peaceful planet next to a more earth-like planet, and interactions between the two.
And Yoon Ha Lee (Machineries of Empire, about math and calendars and interstellar warfare) is also mind-blowing.
Also, here are 5 of my favorite SF novels that I recommend to friends:
Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Cozy science fiction is rarer than cozy fantasy, but Chambers pulls it off nicely. Galaxy is the fourth book of the series, but works well as a standalone about a group of aliens trapped in the space equivalent of a B&B learning about each other’s traditions.
Martha Wells, Murderbot. I discovered Martha Wells through her brilliant The Death of the Necromancer mystery fantasy novel, but the Murderbot Diaries is definitely the highlight of her recent work. The series follows a security robot with a taste for soap operas. In the TV adaptation, the clips of the soap opera The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon were the best parts.
Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire. Politics, poetry, cultural assimilation, murder… this book and its sequel are both brilliant and original (and apparently, influenced by Armenian history, which I learned when I was today years old by reading the Wikipedia page).
Connie Willis, Bellwether. I just discovered that Connie Willis also writes political commentary, but my first exposure to her was the brilliant but dark time travel novel Doomsday Book. She followed that up, in big contrast, with the similarly brilliant but hilarious To Say Nothing of the Dog (set in the same universe). Bellwether, on the other hand, is a near future novel about a scientist studying chaos theory and a scientist studying fads and the hijinks involved in their day-to-day work at a bizarre corporation.
C.S. Friedman, The Madness Season. C.S. Friedman made her name with the great fantasy trilogy Coldfire (it has a bit of SF trapping the same way that Pern has an SF overlay), but The Madness Season about a vampire being abducted by aliens may be my favorite book of hers. The book is much less ridiculous than that sentence.
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u/Skatneti 2d ago
Nice! You sold me at the comparison of Pern, so will defo checkout your recommendations.
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u/Overall-Lead-4044 2d ago
I'd go for The Three Body Problem (book trilogy), Arrival (film), The Thirteenth Floor (film)
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u/BooksLoveTalksnIdeas 2d ago
Extremely good sci-fi action-thriller (my favorite Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow), which is free on YouTube right now: https://youtu.be/tQhbguH9rjM?is=FQRTmySN8ROYw8S7
Also, other really good sci-fi movies to “blow your mind” with their plot are (in order of best): Star Trek Generations, Interstellar, Passengers (2016), 2010 the year we make contact, Oblivion (another Tom Cruise movie). I believe Passengers is currently free in YouTube too.
For sci-fi adventure series, my top recommendation is Stargate SG-1. I think it’s free in pluto tv (website with movies and series, better than Netflix).
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u/Skatneti 2d ago
To watch - The Signal. Logans Run. Moon.
To read - Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Orion by Ben Bova Anything by Isaac Asimov.
Fun facts/theories - The only thing that survives a black hole is information. There might be "bubbles" in space that have different physical laws than ours. Entropy can never be reversed, and will be the reason for the ultimate cold death of the universe.
Bit dark that last one, but on that point, please read The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. It's a fantastic short story about reversing entropy!
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u/DavidThi303 2d ago
For me it's the series Lucifer. As an agnostic I found the questions it rasied about God to be really interesting.
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u/Expensive-Sentence66 2d ago
I've read a lot of scifi that sent my head spinning for a few hours. All the way back to Asimov's 'Last Question'. In terms of literature Ellison's 'Region Betwen' left my head spinning for days and made me give up fiction for awhile. House of Leaves if you are really into some brain gymnastics.
'Tales from the Loop' was the only TV installment I've seen recently that made gut punches. Spaceships going 'whooosh' and shooting bullets' no longer makes is past my frontal cortex.
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u/MadeOfEternal 2d ago
-Logan's run
-Fantastic planet
-The holy mountain - if you think an inward journey could help answer those big questions and curiosities...
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u/Unis_Torvalds 1d ago
- Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
- There is no Antimemetics Division by QNTM
- Scavenger's Reign
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u/thundersnow528 1d ago
Dan Simmons' Illium and Olympos - chaotic and all over the place with themes and stories, but so much fun. Nothing really like it.
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u/CTOAlecTrik 1d ago edited 7m ago
Bio Nostalgie (Sascha Dickel/Hörspiel) Eden (Stanisław Lem) Kyberiade (Stanisław Lem) Ubik (Philip K. Dick) Die denkenden Wälder (A. D. Foster) Bedenke Phlebas (Iain M. Banks) Der ewige Krieg (Joe Haldeman) Wir (Jewgeni Samjatin)
Filme/ 2001 (Kubrick,Clark) Projekt Brainstorm (D.Trumbull) Silent Running (D.Trumbull) District 9 (Blomkamp) Zardoz (J.Boorman) Welt am Draht (ZDF R.W.Fassbinder) Alien (R. Scott) Blade Runner (R.Scott/Philip K Dick) Akira (K.Otomo) Forbidden Planet (F.M.Wilcox) PI (D.Aronofsky) Metropolis (F.Lang) Gravity (A.Cuaro)
Sachbücher/ Die ersten drei Minuten (S.Weinberg) Universe in a Nutshell (S. Hawking) „Lebst du in einer Computersimulation?(N.Bostrom) Endophysik (O.E.Rössler) Sie belieben wohl zu scherzen, Mr. Feynman "virtuelle Teilchen"(R.Feynman) Warum niemand die Quantentheorie versteht "Superposition” (F.Verstraet) The principles of quantum mechanics (P.Dirac)
All diese Dinge stellen ein ideales Fundament da wenn jemand nachdenken möchte denn sie stellen ein Prinzip in den Mittelpunkt, es ist immer besser eine Frage zu stellen als eine Antwort zu geben
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u/Superb-Bicycle-6029 23h ago
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlinn. I've worn out 3 paperback copies over the years. Spoiler if you don't cry when the computer dies, you have no soul.
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u/Ok-Tadpole-8994 16h ago
The Windup Girl
Novel by Paolo Bacigalupi
Falling out of cars
Or any other book by Jeff Noon
Player of Games
Or others by Ian M. Banks
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u/Rizzo265 15h ago edited 15h ago
Ubik by PKD
SOMA by Fractional Games
Scavenger's Reign by HBO Max
Counterpart by STARZ
Pantheon by AMC
Akira by TMS
Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón
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u/PrinceFlorfian 2d ago
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer Lucifers Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
If I had to recommend just one, it would be The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. That book is flawless and such a refreshing perspective.
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u/UndocumentedSailor 2d ago
"There is no antimemetics division" is singlehandedly the most mind bending thing I've read, and I've read a LOT.
A lot of others are just posting very good sci-fi.