Sci-fi books which don't involve too much space travels and massive world builds?
Don't really know how to explain this. I like sci fi and would love to dig deeper into it. Am avid reader and enjoyed Project Hail Mary (though set in space, this book is just amazing), Dune, short stories by Ray Bradbury and TV shows like Raised by the Wolves, Westworld, From (love From!). But e.g. Foundation I really disliked. Wheel of time is massive and I lost interest. Even the guide through galaxy I appreciated but was not really into it. Somehow, all those lots of traveling, lots of worlds, lots of many novel/invented names and terms render reading laborious for me.
Can you help me pin what is that I like and perhaps offer me a suggestion where to start? Thanks!
EDIT: thanks everyone for your excellent suggestions! So happy to be a part of lemmy community. I might make a follow up thread in couple of months so we can discuss some of the works. And lastly, if you been reading this far: have a good weekend.
How about The Expanse or The Martian? They’re both relatively hard sci-fi that focuses mostly on our own solar system.
The Martian tells the tale of a man stuck on Mars and his ability to survive on his own whilst those back on Earth figure out a way to get him back. Both the book and the film are great so you can’t go wrong with either.
The Expanse covers more of the local system. Earth and Mars are on the brink of war, whilst others live out near the asteroid belt, Jupiter and beyond. It goes a little sci-fi later on but it’s an inherently human story that has some great characters living in a time when space travel is still dangerous but achievable by humanity. It starts a little slow but ramps up brilliantly and has a nice conclusion that wraps everything up pretty neatly. You’ve got 9+ books, a 6 season TV series on Amazon Prime, and a newly released TellTale video game, all of which are well produced and worth investing time in.
The Martian I am saving as one of those cannot go wrong books, in case i ever run into reading blockage. But Expanse i didn't check out. Will do now. Thanks
My immediate thought was Expanse too. A fairly manageable scale to everything, for the most part, with space travel within relatively strict bounds.
Dune is an example of massive world-building with a tons of jargon, but you still liked it? It seems that this post is saying you don't like books like Dune, so how did you manage to enjoy it?
It sounds to me like while OP can absolutely enjoy longer, more complex works, they can prove daunting and time consuming, so they're looking for shorter and more straightforward stories.
Maybe I'm casting my own experiences onto this, but I know that's a feeling I get too, especially with some video games. Some of my favorites are 200+ hours of meticulous exploration and grinding, but I rarely find myself with the energy to engage with journeys of this magnitude, so I usually gravitate more towards shorter stuff.
Exactly this. Thank you. :)
You do know nothing is black and white in life, right?
Anyways, I wouldn't put Dune as my 5* read, but I did enjoy it. I only read the main part of the main Dune book, not the whole series, prequels etc. Also, it is mainly set on one planet.
I don't blame you for not reading the rest of the Dune series, it wasn't my cup of tea, either, but why don't you watch a movie or something if you don't want to actually read a book?
Have you tried Asimov's short stories? 'I, Robot' is mostly logic problems presented in a dramatic way. Good read.
I haven't. I thought I wasn't really into short stories... Till I discovered Ray Bradbury. Now I am very much into short stories. So will give Asimov a try for sure.
Philip K Dick, too. You'll be amazed at how many movies his short stories and novellas have been adapted into.
Try the short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster.
VERY different genre, but if you're digging short stories, i really dig earnest hemmingway's stuff.
Check out Ted Chiang as well -- his two short story collections (Story of Your Life and Others; Exhalation) are some of the best I've ever read. He wrote the story upon which the film Arrival was based. Lots of things about time, consciousness, free will, humanity, all beautifully done.
Try some cyberpunk stuff, it’s great “local” sci-fi, with hardly any of that muck you don’t like.
“Neuromancer” - William Gibson
“Snow Crash” - Neal Stephenson
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” - Philip K Dick
Why is it always those 3? Is there no other cyberpunk books people read? They are very heavy reads. Heres a few "mediocre" cyberpunk books I found entertaining, everyone takes place on earth:
I just read Nexus, which is called post cyberpunk.
I assume its this one by Ramez Naam? Looks cool.
It's really good, especially if you like technothrillers.
Yes, that’s it
Even better, The Big Book of Cyberpunk comes out next month.
Cool! Thanks for the tip, choomba!
I suggest Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The whole series is good but each is stand alone. There is a world and it’s in space but the stories are people scale.
I was hoping someone would mention this series!
Love that cozy sci-fi. The Last Gifts of the Universe was also really good. Mostly a story about people in space.
I’ll throw in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Both classics that are great page turners. Take place against the backdrop of an intergalactic society but remain focused on singular planets and their societies (well if you include their anarchic moons). Great characters with meaningful relationships. Left Hand has more of an interpersonal focus, Dispossessed more societal, but both amazing in their own way.
I believe it was advertised as a trilogy before the third book got published. And frankly, third book is written as the final book of a trilogy. The newer books should’ve been a separate saga, and there’s a chance that they were initially planned as such.
I started on the fourth book, it just doesn't hit quite as well as the first three. I feel perfectly content stopping the series after the third book, it finishes Darrow's story really well.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is such a good recommendation really, I have to elaborate why: I love The Stand (rebuilding the society), Heart is a Lonely hunter (american southwest) and 1000 years of solitude (story that spans across number of generations). So thanks!
Yes, or for something I enjoyed much more, Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
A great book, but it certainly includes a lot of invented vocabulary to deal with, and the reader is expected to just roll with it and sort the vocabulary out on their own.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Ursula K. Le Guin is an example of a writer that does deep but focused worldbuilding. Her sci-fi books tend to be about a single planet, sometimes two like in The Dispossesed. You could try that one or even better start with The Left Hand of Darkness. I like how she sets up various unusual alien factors (geopolitics, biology, society, natural environments) and lets them interplay but also without forgetting a plot.
She keeps popping up so I think I really have to check her out. :)
Maybe take a look at post apocalyptic sci Fi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction), as it includes a lot of interesting futuristic tech, but it is mostly limited to earth. There's probably another category where things like blade runner fit too
Hey thanks for this, excellent resource! (Cozy catastrophe is def my new favorite genre name)
If that's the case, try The Road.
Just finished it a week ago. That prose... From another planet.
He's so good. Too good - reading Blood Meridian was like having my face dragged across fresh gravel, but in a good way, somehow?
Is really The Road a science fiction book? It is definitely post-apocalyptic, but I don't remember any sci-fi elements on it.
Solid recommendation though..
I read it as a post apocalyptic story, but I think mcarthy described it as a near future, non specific "ecological catastrophe," which retrospectively recolored the story for me - tipped it from "The Walking Dead, except people" to "cautionary/exploratory speculative fiction on human survival in the face of collapse," for me
Red rising
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are both classics with little world building.
Oh there's just so many. A favorite of mine is Replay by Ken Grimwood. It's a kind of a time travel book, but different from most, and a lot of fun - written in 1986, so not new. Broad plot is that the main character, a middle aged man, dies on the first page and wakes up back in college, back in the 50s, I believe. It gets more interesting from there.
You might enjoy the Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, which is a series that starts with All Systems Red. The first couple are novellas, and the first one was published in 2017, so much more recent. They won a lot of awards. It takes place in an unspecified time in the future, told from the perspective of a cyborg of sorts who is a security bot who has hacked his control unit and doesn't have to do what he's told, but he doesn't want people to know that so he can watch soap operas when he can. He's guarding a small group on an alien planet when things get weird.
I'll recommend one other, very different: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. I believe that was 2007. It's told from the perspective of a guy in near earth future who had late stage Alzheimer's but was given a cure, so is slowly getting back his mental function. Wearable computers are ubiquitous at the time. Also a big award winner.
I hope you find something you like.
Murderbot is good
Agreed!
Omg this comment is so beautiful. Thank you so much! I think I am going to start with your first option, just got it on kindle (I am a total sucker for time/dimension travels, from 11/22/63 (one of my all time favorites) to Time Traveler's wife to Blake Crouch).
Please, please write back and let me/us know what you think!
Hey I just finished the Replay and came to thank you again for mentioning it. Such an amazing book, absolutely one of my best reads so far. Cannot believe it is not more popular. Not only the plot got me, but also the way it was written, so... Human and intelligent. Also there is often quite some interesting info and emotional maturity in the dialogs, and yet they never felt forced, as those well-thought-through-exchanges sometimes tend to be. Just excellent. But gotta say: for once, for freaking once, the main character of time travel invests in stocks. I mean, come on, finally!
Anyways, you literally nailed it with recommending me this one. Will also look up now the other two from the list. Thanks again!
Oh, great! I'm so glad you liked it. I really appreciate your coming back to let me know. Like you, I'm not sure why it isn't more widely known - it's such a fun read.
I have a friend who was a reviewer for a major science fiction magazine back in the day. When I was going through a bad time and needed some escapism, he'd take me to the bookstore and pick things he thought I'd like; Replay was one of those. I'm so glad to be able to point someone else to it.
So I'll make this recommendation a little more hesitantly. There's another time travel book I really like - one that is is more well known - The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. It's really great and really well written, but it's also... very, very strange. It's the kind of time travel where, if you go back a little, then there are two of you at that point. The character does some odd things. One to consider.
Let me know what you think of the others!
I recently finished The Psychology of Time Travel, not sure if you’ve read it, but it was really good and interesting! And totally unique
I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Culture series by Iain M. banks. Much like Dune there is a ton of world building that occurs in the novels but it’s not the focus of any one novel. You can read them independently and still enjoy them. The concepts he tackles in the novels were way ahead of their time and his prose and s second to none. The novel Consider Phlebas is typically where most people start, but I started The Player of Games.
Seconding The Player of Games as the place to start in the Culture novels, although there is notably a lot of space travel in the Culture series overall which might be why people are avoiding them for this request. But 100% worth giving TPoG a read, for sure - and it in particular has no space travel past the opening, iirc.
Against a Dark Background from Banks is good too, much less space travel, a very adventurous plot and worldbuilding which is dense but doesn't overtake the book.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
Aliens destroy earth and the protagonist must compete in an rpg style dungeon created underneath the earth with his (ex) girlfriends cat.
Funny, heart warming, and blood pumping
An oldy, but The day of the triffids by John Wyndham
I have a massive soft spot for his stuff. I'm still hoping that someone will adapt The Kraken Wakes for film or TV one of these days.
Guant's Ghosts - Dan Abnett
it's warhammer 40k but it doesnt really focus on space too much, other than they always travel through space to get from one battlefield to the next. lots of mud & blood trench warfare.
Love this series. Very episodic, self contained but also with the contuation of character arcs and themes over novels. Good pick.
The Three Body Problem trilogy, especially the first two books.
Trying to avoid too many spoilers, the first book is about a Chinese scientist investigating a mysterious threat. It’s not too heavy on world building, and it’s set on present day earth.
Second book, The Dark Forest, is about how this impossible threat is dealt with, and I think it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve read.
I think the third book, Death’s End, went overboard quite a bit, but it’s still a good one.
Isaac Asimov: ( The Caves of Steel ) Next books in the series involve space travel. But nothing large the world building is very limited. All short reads. Was written in the 50s keep that in mind with some of the language.
Most of the rest of Asimov is a lot more self contained than foundation. I like the rest of his stuff but Foundation is too abstract for me.
Yeah the Robot series was great if you like whodunits - the focus is very much on the plot, and all the world building we get directly impacts the plot
If you like grounded sci-fi that elicits a "it could happen in a few years" vibe firmly rooted on Earth, check out William Gibson. Most of his stuff is excellent, but "The Peripheral" and its followup "Agency" are recent highlights. From his older stuff I very much enjoyed "Virtual Light" the most. More than his acclaimed "Neuromancer" (he invented the word cyberspace in 1982 and popularized it in this 1984 novel) even.
Neal Stephenson - "Seveneves" One of my all time favorite sci-fi books. It is set mostly in space, but very realistic and never leaves the Earth's influence. Time setting is basically now or a few years from now.
Also by Stevenson: "Anathem" Marvellous alternate universe story with a few twists. It's on Earth, just ... different.
If you wanna go for the classics (1960 roughly), look into Stanislaw Lem. "Solaris", "Eden" and "Transfer" all left a lasting impression on me.
Anathem is one of my top faves!
I’ve seen this recommended several times but haven’t yet read it, so i tried to go ahead. Now I know why I never read it. It a hold but “estimated several months”
Oryx & Crake by Maraget Atwood was very interesting and fun to read. Dealt mostly with biological-related technology and human-scale drama. No spacemen.
Stranger in a Strange Land.
It relies on a scifi premis for the first chapter then takes place on earth. It's a fun look at human culture from an outsider's perspective.
I tried it and was just so off put by the 1950s sexism.
I know right! It's kind of unpalatable.
It's like the worst Heinlein novel idk why it got so popular, probably because of the free love stuff.
I really enjoyed Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I recommend it.
I also recommend this recommendation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nexus_Trilogy Everything in these books happens on earth and is pretty much like today. Only there is a drug invented that enables human brains to join networks.
You also listed fantasy, so I'd like to recommend N.K. Jemisin. She won the Hugo award for a novel 3 years in a row for her first 3 books, and has I think 2 more? So 5 Hugo's on 7 years?
Those three books are called the Broken Earth trilogy, starting with The Fifth Season, and it's probably my favourite trilogy. (Not correcting, just adding detail so they are easier to find). The magic system here always feels very specific and 'grounded' (heh), so it doesn't feel like the fluffy magic of more "high fantasy", and maybe connects more with sci-fi sensibilities? Anyway, i agree that it's excellent.
OP could also look at Ursula Le Guin. The Earthsea books are amazing, very low-key and character focused. More in the fantasy space too though, but so is Dune pretty much. She also has Left Hand of Darkness, which was great and more on the sci-fi side (no actual space travel or other planets, aside from references), particularly if they have any interest in a kind of meditation on cultural differences and gender.
Ugh just read Fifth Season and am reading Obelisk Gate now. Just SO good.
Can recommend The City We Became by them. Not entirely flawless, but I rattled through it in no time and was plenty good enough for me to go out and buy the second in the series (i think of two).
You might like the Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews. It's a series of 6-9 books but they are good by themselves. Kinda fantasy, kinda sci-fi. The books are short and fun and will keep you entertained. My other favorites are Brandon Sanderson and David Dalglish.
Nexus trilogy. It takes place on Earth, present day, a young neurologist discovers that a drug is actually nano machines and gives people the ability to share thoughts, communication, memories, and experiences. The researcher struggles to decide if this is good for all of humanity. Very good descriptions of technology, hacking, programming, exciting action (US gov is trying to reign in the nano machines.
The ultimate topic is transhumanism as technology gives us bigger than human abilities and posthumanism, where the changes we make now qualify us as so different in skills and abilities that we are no longer human.
I just finished the first book and I enjoyed it a lot.
Any of these?
Just some non-space novels that have stuck with me.
Avoid Alastair Reynolds imo. Lots of jumping around and meeting new aliens but not engaging on the character level well.
I'd recommend finding collections of short stories. You often don't have a lot of time to write expansive world building details when you've only got a few thousand words and a brief plot to get through. And a collection of different authors can make sure you have a variety if some of the authors aren't your preference and then you can look at longer works by the authors you do like.
I enjoyed the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison - they're short, reasonably light comic sci-fi.
I'm really enjoying the Wool Trilogy my Hugh Howey. It's maybe more dystopia than sci-fi but in the same vein for sure.
My recommend is Semiosis by Sue Burke, it's very different.
Also the commonwealth saga which is big but not overwhelming
I've read memory of empire lately, which is a political intrigue in a Sci Fi setting. It's centered around one city palace.
I second Lebowitz, the expanse and Ursula especially. Left hand of darkness is amazing.
If you enjoy project hail Mary and the generational aspect of 1000 years of solitude, you might enjoy children of time which has similar themes. It's my current favorite.
Rainbows end, windup girl and scanner darkly are also great suggestions with no space travel.
Windup Girl was a recent discovery for me, and it was excellent!
Thanks, especially for summarizing other comments. Also, sorry for my 1000 years of solitude misspell... Marques didn't dream as big as Asimov haha
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Many sci-fi and fantasy authors spend so much time world-building that they seem to forget the plot for 20 pages or so. On the other end some just put in sequences of action with only a token plot like many movies today. Finding one that has the right balance is very difficult. Back when before electronic books, more than a few paperbacks ended up being tossed across the room in frustration.
Since you've gotten a lot of recommendations for more popular works, I'll toss in few less commonly mentioned ones. All of these have a decent balance of world-building and plot.
Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey.
The Madness Season & This Alien Shore - C.S. Friedman.
The Parafaith War - L. E. Modesitt Jr.
Murderbot series - Martha Wells - lots of space travel and world building, but it's funny as hell so it's worth it.
Dan_Simmons : ( Hyperion ) Also has world building nothing crazy. Involves multiple timelines. But written as a space opera. Think ( The Canterbury Tales )
Possibly Existence by David Brin? There’s some stuff around space travel and alien contact, and it ain’t exactly a short, but is mostly set on a future earth.
There’s also a lot of “future jargon” which grates a little, but is quite fun to look at something written in 2012(?) about a future involving wearables and AI among others.
Yes, yes, you are totally correct - delivery can make all the difference.
But I have to add that my main problem is that I am a scientist and big part of my job is to read immense amount of literature and memorize/connect often obscure terms. So when I read for pleasure (I love my job, but still) what I tend to enjoy the most are character heavy, emotional books with beautiful prose, written by people with deep understanding of life. Quite opposite to the academic literature.
So you are right, yes, this slog issue is not restricted to SF (e.g. I don't read epic fantasy either; GoT and LOTR books I skipped myself as well), but SF in particular is something I really want to dig deeper, as there the ideas challenge my brain and remain lingering far after I finish the piece.
But! - I prefer to do it without being forced into a memory challenge. Because if I start and within the first two pages there are 15 names and 3 planets and lots of traveling (i really damn hate descriptions of pure traveling, like please lets just skip that part) then I lose interest in the main idea and the ideas are what I am after.
So Tldr yes, you are absolutely right, it is also the prose and the delivery, but still no prose or delivery would keep me long motivated or make me deeply enjoy reading work which has too many names or weird, invented terms.
Lots of the classics aren't super space travel-y. Stranger in a Strange Land, Childhoods End, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, Ender's Game.. Animorphs 😄
Rendezvous with Rama by A. C. Clarke. Honestly, anything by Clarke fits your criteria very well. Very little world building or character development, just straight to the point hard (but still amazing!) sci-fi. His short stories are fun too.
P.S. You may stumble across legends that Rama has three sequels. Don't believe them, there is only one book. And even if it were true, the sequels wouldn't be written by Clarke despite him being listed as a co-author.
I recently read and really enjoyed Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. The book is more of a solarpunk future with a heavy focus on the characters. It's pretty short too! All takes place on a single planet, felt very grounded after I just finished with a Culture book.
I Thoroughly enjoyed The Dispossessed by Ursle leGuin. Just enough world building to destroy it all in the narrative.
Check out The Greg Mandel trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. A lot of sci-fi, not focused on space travel.
I also love his large Commonwealth universe with several trilogies and novels in it that can be read independently, but these are definitely space based. I would start with the Void Trilogy. It is defined as a space opera. There are just so many cool sci-fi concepts though :)
Ann Lecke’s “Imperial Radch” does happen in multiple locations, but revolves primarily around people relationships and de-genders English language for a delightful effect.
Peter Watts will make you learn a lot of words and concepts, will have you read author notes at the end of his books, and will have you take a look at the list of scientific literature used in writing said books. Main overarching topic - consciousness might not be as central to intelligence as we default to thinking it to be.
Charles Stross’ books can take you into space, but are hardly about space or new worlds. Hell, the most space travel heavy book of his I read - Neptune's Brood - explores the ideas of money and debt.
Greg Egan’s everything, but there are two that I immediately remember when I think about his bibliography. “Diaspora” explores weird space times, consciousness bootstrapping, and problems of communication. “Orthogonal” trilogy is “math of spacetime: what could be” as a novel.
Cory Doctorow explores problems of identity and privacy. Start with “Little brother” (yes, it is a 1984 reference) and “Down and out in the Magic kingdom” and expand further.
John Meaney’s “Nulapeiron sequence” is an easy read that builds its world alongside shedding its main character ignorance.
https://lemmy.world/post/2368503
The Windup Girl
The Water Knife
Both by Paolo Bacigalupi - I'd describe both as ecological dystopian near-future sci-fi - both books are exceptional and based on Earth.
Clifford d Simak wow a lot of very relatable stories that feature interaction as well as the tech. Kind of like Stephen King in relation to horror.
Nathan Lowell's The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series is great, it's a space opera following normal people trying to make a living in space. It's a nice break from the hard scifi where everything goes wrong and the hero fixes everything, it's just a nice entertaining stress free read.
Philip k. Dick ' Do androids dream of electric sheep?' and 'Ubik'. He also made some great short novels.
@giriinthejungle
Anything by Harry Harrison (Stainless Steel Rat, Bill the Galactic Hero). Fun kind of silly but mostly challenge authority.
Spider Robinson (Callahan's Cross Time Saloon). Fun stories mostly about relationships.
The All Guardsmen Party.
Eon by Greg Bear. It’s a bit dated as it takes place during the cold war, but it’s an excellent read.
Short stories are the best way to go, anything by Ted Chiang for example
Dune but I'm not that far in yet
Late to this party and I have to agree to Ian M Banks, Ursula K Le Guin, Philip K Dick (very weird, discontinuous, but free-floating and fascinating) and many more. Just to add a couple of things that HAVEN'T been mentioned, that really may get your sci-fi juices flowing: Brian Aldiss's expansive "Helliconia" trilogy is a cracker - and I think you may see echoes of it in the premise of "Game of Thrones". I'd also like to plug John Brunner - his work "The Shockwave Rider" is dated now, but essential reading. It is the first book to ever feature the idea of a computer virus. Also DO follow up on "The Machine Stops" by EM Forster - full text available online for free. If it doesn't BLOW YOUR MIND that it features social media overload, and was written in 1909, well, nothing will.
In new wave sci fi, you might also want to check out J.G. Ballard - too weird and hardcore for many, but the missing link between Moorcock-style sci-fi and mainstream fiction - think 1960s to 1990s Black Mirror. One last recommendation. If you have time and interest, check out the much neglected and ultra-weird work of C.L. Moore. Her "Northwest Smith" character is the prototype for Han Solo for sure, (Space Pirate and smuggler with a concealed heart of gold, flies a deceptively fast ship with just one crewman, who's an alien. Carries a "heat blaster" which is also configurable as a energy sword. Too many coincidences!)
Never too late for good recommendations! I am happy such a good collection of suggestions was made, not just for me but for everyone. Thanks for contributing!
isn't world building the whole point of sci-fi?
I think they are wanting world building on a smaller scale. Although I don't think world building is really about any particular size. If the entire setting took place on Earth or it spanned the entire universe, the amount of world building could be the same.
I recommend Greg Egan.
He doesn't go in much for the spaceships thing.
His earlier stuff is better.
Start with AXIOMATIC. It's a collection of short stories.
Then... oh maybe Diaspora, Quarantine or Permutation City.