Recommended fiction books
Notes
These books are arranged alphabetically by fiction genres, then by authors within genres
I’ve read all of these, and I can vouch for that they’re well-written, page-turning, provocative, mind-blowing, and/or funny. It’s easy enough to find lists of ‘Great Books of Western Civilization’ or ‘The Top 100 Novels of All Time’; I’ve tried to focus on quirky, lesser-known books that have resonated with me.
For each book, there’s a ‘link’ that you can click that will take you straight to the Amazon page for the book, so you can see further information, and order it in hardcopy or ebook format if you want.
This list focuses on selected genres and authors that I know the most about; I haven’t included lots of other fiction genres (like mysteries, crime, or fantasy) that are well worth exploring, but that I don’t know as well.
This list was created on March 15, 2020; I’ll update it again soon with many more titles, will fix formatting & missing info, and will add Amazon links if they’re missing.
My all-time favorite fiction series
The ‘Culture’ series of science fiction novels by Scottish author Iain M. Banks (1954-2013). They’re mind-blowing, sexy, violent, page-turners with awesome space battles, secret agents, and hyper-intelligent AI ‘Minds’ that raise profound questions about ethics, meaning, consciousness, post-human evolution, etc. They’ve inspired a lot of my thinking about what a fully automated libertarian poly utopia would look like.
There are 9 novels in the series, published 1987-2012. They’re all worth reading, and the order doesn’t matter very much, so I’ll just list them chronologically. (You can get all 9 in a set here.)
Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
Use of Weapons (1990)
The State of the Art (1991)
Excession (1996)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008)
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)
Of these, my perennial favorites are Excession, Surface Detail, and The Player of Games
Other favorite authors
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Yes you’ve seen the movies, but have you actually read the real thing?
Henry James (1843-1916), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and his incredible, wise, difficult late trio from 1902-1904: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), The Golden Bowl (1904) — some of the best, most intelligent literary fiction ever written
Nicholson Baker (1957 - ): vivid, poignant micro-descriptions of contemporary life, mixed with wild, eccentric erotica. My favorites: The Mezzanine (1988), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), The Everlasting Story of Nory (1999).
Chuck Palahniuk (1962 - ): hilarious, horrifying, transgressive; I’ve read almost all of his novels, but my favorites are Fight Club (1996), Survivor (1999), Choke (2001), Lullaby (2002), Rant (2007), and Invisible Monsters Remix (2012).
Neal Stephenson (1959 - ): brilliant high-concept near-future science fiction; his early works were visionary page-turners; his later works tended to get very long and slow-paced, but some are worth the effort. My favorites: Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond Age (1995), Anathem (2008), Seveneves (2015)
Short story collections
James Joyce (1882-1941): Dubliners (1914)
Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986): Collected Fictions (1999)
John Cheever (1912-1982): The Stories (1978)
Italo Calvino (1923-1985): Invisible Cities (1974)
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964): The Complete Stories (1971)
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989): Sixty Stories (1981), Forty Stories (1987)
Science fiction classics
Mary Shelley, (1797-1851): Frankenstein (1818)
Jules Verne (1828-1905): 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), The Mysterious Island (1874), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), The Begum’s Millions (1879)
H. G. Wells (1866-1946): The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898)
Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950): Last and First Men (1930), Star Maker (1937): one volume
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963): Brave New World (1932)
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988): Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), Time Enough for Love (1973)
Alfred Bester (1913-1987): The Demolished Man (1953), The Stars My Destination (1956)
Stanislaw Lem (1921- 2006): Solaris (1961), The Cyberiad (1965), His Master’s Voice (1968)
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008): Childhood’s End (1953), The City and the Stars (1956), 2001: A space odyssey (1968), Rendezvous with Rama (1973),
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992): The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), The Complete Robot (1982), Nightfall (1941/1990)
Frank Herbert (1920-1986): Dune (1965)
Brian Aldiss (1925-2017): Barefoot in the Head (1969), Helliconia Trilogy (1982-1985)
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982): The Man in the High Castle (1962), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), A Scanner Darkly (1977), Valis (1981)
Ursula K. LeGuin (1928-2018): The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Lathe of Heaven (1971), The Dispossessed (1974),
Joe Haldeman (1943 - ): The Forever War (1974)
Daniel Keyes (1927-2014): Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Roger Zelazny (1937-1995): Lord of Light (1967), Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), The Chronicles of Amber (1970-1978)
Larry Niven (1938 - ): Ringworld (1970), Lucifer’s Hammer (1977)
Carl Sagan (1934-1996): Contact (1985)
Science fiction, recent
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-1983)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1982), The Difference Engine (1990)
Orson Scott Card: Ender’s Game (1985)
Greg Bear: Blood Music (1985), The Forge of God (1987), Queen of Angels (1990)
Alan Moore: Watchmen (1987)
Stephen Baxter: The Xeelee Sequence (1991-1994)
Ken MacLeod: Fall Revolution series (1995-1999)
Peter F. Hamilton: The Reality Dysfunction (1996), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997), The Naked God (1999)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
Max Brooks, World War Z (2006)
Dave Eggers, The Circle (2014)
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Mars Trilogy (1992-1996)
Liu Cixin: The Three-Body Problem (2008), The Dark Forest (2008)
Ernest Cline: Ready Player One (2012)
Andy Weir: The Martian (2015)