Sorry to hijack the topic (slightly), but after reading all books from The Culture by Iain M. Banks I'm looking for similar Sci-fi.
Any recommendations?
Sorry to hijack the topic (slightly), but after reading all books from The Culture by Iain M. Banks I'm looking for similar Sci-fi.
Any recommendations?
[delayed]
Nobody is quite like Banks.
Some of the closest would likely be:
Charles Stross' various SF, especially the space opera-adjacent stuff. (He has an large range. Merchant Princes and Laundry series are good, but not at all along the lines of Banks.)
Gregory Benford's Galactic Center Saga.
Vernor Vinge's three Zones of Though books.
David Brin's Uplift series.
Perhaps Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean le Flambeur series.
Max Gladstone's Emperess of Forever shares a similar setting, but is much lighter.
The writing of Gene Wolfe and Tamayn Muir has, I think, much in common with Banks in terms of depth and character, but even though SF they have a very different feel and focus to their works.
And, of course, if you want the original space opera, it might be worth tracking down E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen books. Galactic Patrol and Grey Lensman are the heart of it and ought to be read first. Second Stage Lensman and Children of the Lens are worthy sequels that complete the story. They're pretty breezy reads and very different from Banks in everything but the setting of a galaxy filled with different species, and likely seem somewhat hackneyed now, but they're also the source of most space opera archetypes. (If you think of a space opera trope, it probably came from Lensman. Star Wars is largely a Lensman/Flash Gordon mashup.)
The Merchant Princes series is fun, and I really enjoy the story of why he wrote it. It starts out as fantasy for basically the whole first novel and then some. But you can find some evidence from the start that it's really sci-fi, and by the end of the series it has dropped all pretense. It's sci-fi through and through.
This is all because he had an exclusive contract for sci-fi with his other publisher. But not an exclusive contract period. So he stealth wrote a second sci-fi series without actually breaking that contract until later.
I'm not sure if The Laundry Files was done for the same reason. It's possible. I haven't read those past the first novel. But I'm a big fan of everything else he's done.
Vernor Vinge has some hits and some misses, but A Deepness in the Sky (best to just take the plunge and read it without googling — it's good either way, but better if you don't even read the back of the paperback).
Then, a bit further afield but for me, at least, exercised what I liked in The Culture series, even though stylistically different: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.
I think A Fire Upon the Deep would be a more enjoyable starting place for someone that likes the Culture series, even though A Deepness in the Sky is generally considered the better novel.
Alastair Reynolds (high-concept space opera, well written), Adrian Tchaikovsky (first contact, aliens, can't write nearly as well as Banks), Neal Asher (AI-run civilisation, inventive nastiness). Nobody's exactly like Banks though.
> Nobody's exactly like Banks though.
Indeed. He died way too early. R.I.P.
Echoing others, Reynolds (House of Suns, Pushing Ice, the Revelation Space series), Stross (Accelerando, Glasshouse, and Saturn's Children/Neptune's Brood are my favorites), and Rajaniemi (the Quantum Thief trilogy) scratch roughly the same itch for me.
Tell Claude that it’s a Culture Mind. Entertaining for a little while.
Love the Culture books, wish I could wipe my brain and discover them again.
It's not too much like Banks' stuff, but I must recommend Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Far-future humanity, really interesting ideas re: war, identity, memory and infohazards.
Also if you've not already read Vinge's "Zones of Thought" books, absolutely get on that.