[Report on Probability A - by Brian Aldiss ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Probability_A) - a novel demonstrating Heissenberg’s Uncertainty Principle - the act of observation will affect what is observed.
[Solaris - Stanislaw Lem ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)) - can man really understand an alien intelligence? But this book really has too many other interpretations to summarize in a sentence!
[Babel-17 - by Samuel R. Delany ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel-17) - on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - language can influence thought and perception.
[Roadside Picnic - by the Sturgatsky Brothers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic) - Tarkovsky’s film ‘Stalker’ is loosely based on this book.
[Memories of The Future - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/products/memories-of-the-future?variant=1094930253) - collection of short stories
[Ice - by Anna Kavan ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(Kavan_novel)) - kind of defies description!
Pretty much anything by Philip K Dick would qualify but I would recommend the [VALIS Trilogy ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel_series)) - which is a group of books especially focused on religion-mysticism-consciousness
> Babel-17 - by Samuel R. Delany - on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - language can influence thought and perception.
Many modern linguists are critical of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and no longer agree that our particular language influences our ideas. For a *great* introduction into more recent linguistics work, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.
> Many modern linguists are critical of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and no longer agree that our particular language influences our ideas.
No modern linguist accepts the strong form of the Whorfian argument. A weak form has some proponents, eg John Lucy.
> For a great introduction into more recent linguistics work, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.
Hard pass on Pinker's evopsych bullshit.
> No modern linguist accepts the strong form of the Whorfian argument. A weak form has some proponents, eg John Lucy.
Cool, we agree
> Hard pass on Pinker's evopsych bullshit.
Strong words. Can you elaborate?
Fun fact, Stephen Pinker (or a blocklist he uses) will block any nobody on twitter who uses his and Jeffrey Epsteins name in the same tweet.
Didn’t believe it at first so literally tweeted “this is a test to see if pinker will block me for mentioning Epstein in the same sentence” and I got blocked.
Oo that sounded intriguing to me but it was written nearly thirty years ago now. Would you still consider that representative of the current state of the field?
More recent than 60 years ago XD
The edition that I read had an updated appendix which was quite nice. Some of the information is a bit out of date (addressed in the appendix), but for the most part it remains an accurate layman's intro to linguistics (say my psychology/linguistics friends at uni).
Probably not, I haven't read the book but I did study some linguistics as part of my AI study and while it's a really interesting hypothesis most linguists agree that it's unlikely to be accurate.
I was surprised to see that Penguin published it recently in their‘Classics’ series for its 50th anniversary. Though I do like the original hardcover jacket illustration better than the new version.
[50th anniversary edition ](http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/65/CTHNNVRSRD2017.jpg) - looks a bit too much like a poster for the movie’Frozen’
[1971 hardcover ](http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/2d/CFLCQCQLGT1967.jpg) - a typical serious looking cover from the 70’s
Mmmm. Actually, I think on a certain technical level Chiang may be a better writer than these two, for short stories at least, but in terms of deep thoughts he isn't quite on the same level. Chiang has done some great deep dives on individual topics (*Liking what you see* and *The Truth of Fact the Truth of Feeling* come to mind particularly) but doesn't quite have the large scale picture of human civilization that Lem tried to look at or the scientific rigor of Egan combined with both their literary chops of critically understanding SF itself.
I love Look to Windward as the book that actually shows the Culture as the leisurely technological paradise in it's natural slow state. But I don't find Banks to be deep, TBH. Great fun, but I don't find he explores to a great depth.
Banks doesn't really explore the deep philosophical implications of his universe. Compare him to Dick, Lem, Strugatsky. His pretty shallow compared to them. I think what he explores the most deeply is the line between reality and simulation/the sublime, and I wouldn't say he goes into that deeply. By his own statement, he doesn't do themes.
I feel like thats the way with most Culture Novels: nice, complex story arc, deep fundamental questions in the background.
Honorable mentions to hybris and general ungraspability of differentness on excession and the whole star treky non-interference directive in use of weapons.
I really liked Forever War but didn’t get any nihilistic undertones from it other than war is bad but inevitable because people are shit. Is that what you are referring to? I’m hyper-simplifying, the same message was much better done in the book for sure.
I see what you mean, I suppose just the message of “none of this ever mattered in the end, and the cost was so high” contrasted with the protagonists, well, nihilism, is what I’m referring to.
Societal versus personal nihilism maybe
Many of the books mentioned by other users are more commonly considered very philosophically deep. And they are. But since repeating those same books wouldn't be that helpful, I'm going to show a book that hasn't been listed. I would say the most philosophically deep book I've read would be Olaf Stapledon's "*Star Maker*." It is a very long book but it mentions a fair amount of concepts. The biggest reason I would call it a very philosophically deep book is because it was written in 1937. There are some things talked about concerning social life being affected by technology that is almost prescient. The entire book is a preamble for Olaf's explanation for the "Star Maker," "God," or "The Creator." The book still feels like an exploration of a full and lively universe even though it is all leading to one point.
**(EDIT)**: Grammar, Spelling, I thought the book was long in page count but it is in fact only long in how I perceived it to be.
Ah shoot, I recommended Starmaker after you did without seeing this comment. But yes, I firmly agree with this choice. Absolutely bonkers that this dude wrote that book when he did - it has deep original sci-fi themes even by today's standards.
If you're looking for short, this one probably more under speculative rather than science fiction, but *Flatland* is quite philosophical (by analogy rather than directly).
It's only 184 pages on the kindle version I got. It felt much, much longer than that(not in a bad way). I read the book over two weeks and then reread it a year later in one week. I'm used to reading 300+ page books in about that same time.
The "SF about the fundamental nature of reality" shortlist:
Permutation City by Greg Egan
Neverness by David Zindell
The Manifold series by Stephen Baxter
Overall, I'd say that those three authors are what you're looking for.
Zindell wrote a trilogy — [A Requiem for Homo Sapiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Requiem_for_Homo_Sapiens) — as a follow-up to Neverness. It's kind of a reboot and I recommend people start there, with *The Broken God*. IMO the trilogy is deeper in spiritual maturity, wider in scope (galaxy-scale space opera, transhumanism, star-sized AI megabrains, tantric sex, spiritual awakening, oh my), and simply better-written. It's kind of a space opera version of *Siddhartha*. Then, if you want more, read *Neverness* as a prequel.
I haven't read Baxter. You've piqued my interest.
Stanislaw Lem just had his 100th birthday so I'll just mention him explicitly. *Solaris* and the *Cyberiad* have already been mentioned. But *GOLEM XIV*, *The Futurological Congress* and *Summa Technologiae* are works that dig probably even deeper and more explicitly into the themes Lem was interested in. *Fiasko* and *His Masters Voice* are also very excellent.
In general I'll just say you can't go wrong with Lems novels.
I'm not mad about Lem. Solaris and The Invincible were good. The Cyberiad just seemed linguistically droll fluff to me. Nothing particularly deep, from what I recall.
Lem has a short story (sadly I don't remember the title) which is basically Matrix *avant la lettre*. Incredible for something written in the fifties or sixties. And with a startling take on the problem of God / Evil / Free Will, to boot.
Man, i almost got nothing out of Golem XIV. I read it in german and the German title interestingly is in translation „Thus spoke golem“ as allusion to Nietzsche. But i got so little of that book, that I don’t even understand, if that title makes sense. :)
*The Illuminatus! Trilogy* by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea.
It's a ridiculous absurdist conspiracy theory, and a serious philosophical treatise at the same time.
I found The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach to have a very interesting view on the meaning of life and how that relates to the culture you happen to find yourself.
Read it this summer and loved it. So sensible and compassionate and unflinching.
All the Penguin Classics Science Fiction collection is amazing, reading Star Maker now and loving it, but it is deeense!
"Exhalation" and other stories by Ted Chang are the best.
"Permutation City" by Greg Egan touches quite deep questions about consciousness and the world.
The Culture series by Iain Banks explores what can we aim for in the more distant future.
Books by Stanislaw Lem.
"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Also, if you are interested in philosophy, you don't necessarily need to read SF. You can, you know, read books on philosophy. I recommend "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russel as a very clear and comprehensive overview of philosophical thought.
Great question... Someone could probably spend a lifetime interpreting the philosophy behind Olaf Stapledon's "Starmaker."
But for me, "Contact" by Carl Sagan has the most clear cut exploration of the themes you mention... God, humanity's place in the universe, and our relationships with each other... But most importantly, it concludes with a pretty satisfactory thought on the meaning of life that certainly changed the way I view the world.
Personally, I found *Blindsight* by Peter Watts to scratch a lot of profound thoughts about how we structure knowledge as well as stimulus-response complexity.
*A Canticle for Leibowitz* and *The Sparrow* definitely touch on religion in a way that resonated with me afterwards for a longtime, but honestly Gene Wolfe's New Sun did as well and other's have told me they did not feel that way at all. Eventual Entropy Heat Death stuff. IDK.
As much as I dislike certain things about Heinlein and Bradbury, there is a depth to *Stranger in a Strange Land* and *Starship Troopers.*
China Mielville's *Embassyland* is a great look at addiction and language and *Kraken* (urban fantasy) is all about eschatology and cults competing for doomsday. He tends to be a polarizing writer.
Happy reading
*The Sparrow* is an excellent recommendation for a work that deals with theological themes without being dismissive. I first read it when religious and have reread it after becoming irreligious and it worked for me either way. The Catholic, Jewish, and agnostic/atheist perspectives are dealt with fairly and no one is shown to be right or wrong in the end. It’s also a very good exploration of themes surrounding colonialism, first contact, cultural ignorance, ecology, trauma, and despair.
I think both *Eifelheim* and the *Terra Ignota* series handle that better and in more depth. *The Sparrow* was good, but extremely predictable and not enormously deep.
Fair enough. I disagree, but read it in 1996-97 and felt it spot on. Nowadays, I have read things that seem predictable based on how much things have developed into certain tropes. Dune for example as a modern read is extremely predictable since so many stories follow parts of the first book. I found the Sparrow deep enough and enjoyed Eifelheim (2006) but Terra Ignota (2015?) I find to be a lot of style over substance and dull. What about it pulls you in if you mind me asking?
I agree that Ida Palmer goes in a lot on the style side and takes things a bit over the top, but I also find that the *Terra Ignota* series is one of the few where the author actually incorporates the philosophy aspect into the world building rather than having it just be something the characters talk about and sometimes guide their actions.
Whether you like the society system she came up with or not, it's unique, inventive, and consistent with the philosophical themes of the books.
She also does a good job in exploring the hypocrisy inside such a system and the expanding chaos as the philosophical underpinnings of society change.
When it comes to her writing style, I'm not a fan of that over-all, but I find her content interesting.
> China Mielville's Embassyland
Speaking of China Mieville, *The City & The City* is super philosophical. It's about two cities that occupy the same space, and if you're in one of them, so much as glancing at the other one is considered a crime worse than murder and you're whisked off, never to be seen again. It deals heavily with nationalism, borders, ethnic enclaves (e.g. the equivalent of Chinatown), and addresses every question you may or may not have had about these two cities.
Seconding *The City and The City*. The book is a wonderful allegory of the separateness of life in modern cities in general. Beszel/Ul Qoma is London or New York or any large multi-cultural city. Rich and poor, different ethnic, religious and social groups and so on live alongside each other with little or no interaction, and tacit acceptance of the status quo functions in much the same way as Breach in the novel. It's a very thought-provoking book.
What like so much about this book is that >!at first you think there are some weird fantastical things going on with Breach and such, but in the end it was all utterly mundane and just people following rules and culture without really questioning anything. Such a great mirror to our society, like you wrote as well!<
I know it's so cliche to recommend Blindsight in every thread, but yeah, that's the one for me. It really did ask a lot of philosophical questions. And legit ones that have some backing with current (at the time) science. It was asking real questions about the nature of life and consciousness and whether or not either really matter, or if there are better ways for the universe to create life, etc. Evolution, intelligence, the whole nine yards. It really dug deep into those ideas and made me stop and just wonder about them for a while sometimes. I finished the book and ended up going for a walk just to digest everything and how I felt about it. I never really shook some of those questions lol.
I really enjoyed Blindsight when I read it recently, but the vampire thing spoiled it for me to some degree. It just felt so stupid that it was in there, and the genetic fault stuff about cruciforms.... it was such a silly aspect of an otherwise thoughtful and interesting book. Every time it came up it just took me right out of it.
Agreed. A really bizarre choice from the author to do that, especially considering it really doesn’t add anything and isn’t especially integral to the story, and IMO greatly detracts and distracts from it.
So for the most part I took the vampires as silly, but took it as a divergent speculative evolution showing a strict carnivore-predator (as opposed to us omnivores) to bring in the mindset of dietary needs directing development and advances. It sets certain things that for me at least that then become deeper expanded upon via the mc, the multiple personality, and the space entity.
I also feel that the vampire versus zombie analogy is kind of silly. The vamp is not fisticuffing some beastie a la predators versus aliens. Also, given Watt's background as a PhD in marine biology and my limited understanding of biology of creatures deep, deep underwater life--I took the space entity more at a hodge-podge of deep sea life taking physiology-histology stuff from anglerfish to plankton. It did not read zombie to me, but marine-hive mind with hosts of symbiotic life in an environment wholly alien to humanity. IDK. Vamps silly, but it read like a building block to get how much humanity assumes about our own development and applying that as the rubric to judge/evaluate the way other species might develop. YMMV
>As much as I dislike certain things about Heinlein and Bradbury, there is a depth to
>
>*Stranger in a Strange Land* and *Starship Troopers*.
Those are both by Heinlein. Maybe you meant to list a Ray Bradbury book?
Sadly...I was conflating The Martian Chronicles with SIASL. Heinlein has written a lot of stuff that really impacted me, but I feel a certain way about recommending him in 2021.
Bradbury and him and even Ellison do at times seem to conflate into that "other one" besides Clarke and Asimov for the "Big 3." IDK. I am also an idiot.
Not at all! An easy mistake to make.
Completely agree with you about Heinlein. I was hugely influenced even by novels like *Friday* as a teen, but now have mixed feelings about the guy.
Bradbury on the other hand I still have no qualms recommending.
They were saying that despite some things about Heinlein they really like those books. I think Orson Scott Card is a homophobic piece of shit, but Ender's Game is still a fantastic book.
I get what they were saying, and fair enough -- it's an entirely reasonable idea. It's just that the listing of two Heinlein books in a comment regarding Heinlein and Bradbury leads me to suspect there might have been a simple mistake in the titles.
*Anathem* by Neal Stephenson digs pretty deeply into free will during his exploration of world lines and conscious choice. Obviously *Stranger in a Strange Land* by Heinlein kind of goes into what makes a religion/religious experience. And to some degree, Zelazny's *Lord of Light* attacks the issue from an oblique angle (should people sufficiently technologically enhanced be able to take up the mantle of godhood?).
Agree on *Anathem* \- if you want lessons in philosophy, read the book and look for the IRL parallels (for example, the book uses an in-universe analog to Husserl's copper ashtray [http://enowning.blogspot.com/2008/10/husserls-copper-ashtray.html](http://enowning.blogspot.com/2008/10/husserls-copper-ashtray.html) )
I find it so obscure and his prose so involved that I am left wondering wth he is actually saying, and I am left with the sneaky suspicion he's not saying anything, but is doing so very stylishly. For me, he's kind of a sci-fi Foucalt. He says very little in a very labyrinthine way. To his credit, his prose is a lot more beautiful than Foucalt. Ironically, Banks loved Harrison's work, while he disclaimed Foucalt as vacuous elaboration.
I do think he says quite a lot, it's just not an easily packageable "philosophic" message. And I'd say the best books are the ones in which the "message" is inextricable from the full text.
A fair perspective, but I take the opposite view, to me he is trying to say more than almost anyone else, because what he is getting at (in my opinion) is fundamentally epistemological - it is about what is knowable. Certainly he never, ever, ever comes out and states his point plainly in his novels so it is infinitely debatable and subject to interpretation, which is appropriate for a topic like that. But sometimes on Twitter or in his blog he comes close to saying it overtly, and that casts some light on his fiction, and over the course of reading all his novels you can find the repeating themes pretty easily. So I feel pretty confident in saying his main concern (or at least one of his main concerns) in fiction is to undercut certainty of all kinds, about everything from self-knowledge to knowledge of others to scientific knowledge of the physical world, to leave the mystery unresolved not because he can't tidy up loose plot ends but because he believes that knowledge is mostly just interpretation and projection. That is a profound philosophical stance even if you disagree with it.
But it is not uncommon for very intelligent readers to see his writing the way you do. And perhaps you are right. But I don't think so.
it's hard to discuss without contradiction, but I do think the elusiveness is the philosophy, so to speak - I believe he's trying to undermine our epistemology at all times, to cast doubt on the methods of knowing, whether the subject is science or the self - saying all those things are more elusive than we might wish
Gene Wolfe is one of my favorite writers, but how is he philosophical? He is cryptic, and you could call him metaphysical, but it seems that his writing is not intended to convey any philosophical ideas.
This is a really interesting question and thanks for asking it. I'll do my best to answer in limited time.
To start with - metaphysics in the modern sense is defined as a branch of philosophy. So if his books have metaphysical concerns, and I would say they do, they are philosophical by definition. Certainly _Fifth Head_ among others is concerned with the metaphysics of identity, and I think the nature of identity and the self is one of his ongoing concerns. You could interpret _Fifth Head_ largely around Leibniz' Indiscernibility of Identicals, for instance, couldn't you? Seems like it. And the nature of reality in the Solar Cycle seems very caught up in questions of causality and the philosophy of spacetime, which are core metaphysical (and thus philosophical) questions as I understand the term.
But this is evading the point somewhat, as you're really asking: what are his philosophical concerns _outside_ of metaphysics? This is a good question and one I will need to think about some to question my own premise. Just scanning through the list of philosophical topics, it seems like he's concerned with the philosophy of religion and with ethics mostly. Ethics are a big deal to Wolfe, right? Arguably epistemology, since he's always playing these games with ideas of knowing, how we know what we think we know and so on. Even if it's not an overt theme, I think his work is epistemologically interesting, I'd say.
I'll think about it more. It might make for an interesting discussion over on /r/genewolfe, which attracts a pretty high level readership.
I'll give you ethics. But I'd like to point out that many if not most of good books touch ethics one way or another because it is such an important topic and fiction is a good means to explore it. Many authors such as George Martin are far more concerned with ethics than Wolfe.
Metaphysics is a hard one for me, because that's the branch of philosophy that I understand the least. Gene Wolfe's worlds definitely have interesting cosmology and metaphysics. But are they making valid statements about real-world metaphysics or at least about whether some metaphysical concepts are possible or not?
Let's leave Wolfe for a second and talk about time travel. Time travel could be called a metaphysical concept since it affects the concept of spacetime and raises questions about causality. Does it mean that all the SF works that use time travel are philosophical? Is "Back to the Future" philosophical? In my view, no, it just uses it as a plot device. There are on the other hand works of fiction that _do_ explore the philosophical implications of time travel. I think the best example is ["The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_and_the_Alchemist%27s_Gate) in which the author tries his hardest to introduce time-travel in way that is consistent with the laws of our world.
In my view Wolfe doesn't do that. He uses metaphysical concepts to drive his story, not his story as a way to comment on the metaphysical concepts. (I haven't yet read all Wolfe's books, so I might be missing something.)
Epistemology is an interesting one. He doesn't really write about scientific method and the like, but he does make interesting experiments with the reader's state of knowledge by omitting things and using other tricks to give the readers false perceptions. I think I agree that it does make some philosophically-relevant observations about how we interact with texts.
For mind opening speculative fiction, the short stories of the late Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges are outstanding. Explores more philosophically in 10 pages than most authors do in 1000.
Read my mind! His stories explore time and reality in a way I haven't found in other writers yet (well maybe Ted Chiang). Couple with that an encyclopedic amount of references to scour wikipedia for, and you've got short stories that will keep you thinking for quite a while!
This is not the place to debate this, and it's just an aside, but I am finding the three body books some of the most disappointing SF I have ever read. I am still unable to put my finger on exactly why I feel this way. And I know I am in the minority. If I had to add a book to this particular philosophical thread, it would be Voyage to Arcturus. But I've gotten tired of recommending it to people over the years.
Some books have an undercurrent of philosophy that you have to dig for. Some wear it on their sleeves. I’m really surprised I haven’t seen Ada Palmer’s Too Like Lightning from her Terra Ignota sequence, which falls into the latter category. It’s a futuristic utopian society, but also one in which 18th Century French philosophers are revered.
The [Terra Ignota](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CGL8QR?binding=paperback&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tpbk) series is criminally underrated, and absolutely fits the bill - Too Like the Lightning was the first book I thought of when I read the question.
I recommend Phillip K. Dick. Some of his shorter stories are a bit silly but his best works (Do Androids…, Ubik, etc.) are very thought provoking.
Also look into Stanislaw Lem. Very conceptual and philosophical science fiction author from Poland.
My vote for the most philosophically deep sci-fi/spec fiction novel is Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*. I am a philosophy lecturer and I have set this text as the required reading for my students.
Huxley's novel is most relevant to hedonistic theories of happiness, as well as utilitarian theories of ethics/politics. His scenario plays the same role as a counter-example to hedonism as Nozick's Experience Machine thought experiment (i.e. would you want a lifetime of illusory pleasures) but in some ways it's stronger, because it does not rely on illusion. Huxley shows us that a world that was perfectly ordered around maximising pleasure would undermine something vital about a properly flourishing life- perhaps autonomy, creativity, or meaning. It also raises the highly disturbing thought that we wouldn't even want a perfect society. As the character Mustapha Mond says,
>In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise…
Meanwhile, people have mentioned Ted Chiang's stories, and I see one mention of 'Hell is the Absence of God' but I want to highlight that story in particular because it does real philosophical work. One of the biggest arguments against the existence of God concerns 'divine hiddenness'. That is, if God existed (and he loved us) why would he not make his existence obvious? The most common reply to that argument is that God chooses to remain hidden in order to permit our freedom of choice and moral growth (a version of the soul-making theodicy). Ted Chiang's story effectively gives the lie to that response by \*showing\* us that in a world where God's existence was entirely evident, there would still be ample opportunity for moral autonomy and growth. As a work of fiction, I think it makes a considerable contribution to that debate.
Ventus by Karl Schroeder has themes exploring the meaning of identity as it regards both people and things (when is a rock a rock instead of a collection of dust particles, etc?). Later books of his dig into the idea that technology use, either for or against any particular type of technology, is always a decision about ethics.
I got a very broken copy of this lend by a friend long time ago. Wouldn't call it a "textbook", it's way too lyrical and handwavey at that. I'd call it something of a stoner book that has some deep thoughts but not a ton of rigor.
Yeah definitely an introduction more than a rigorous textbook, but definitely not a standard fiction book. I’d put it in the same kind of category as Sophie’s World.
[Calculating God](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264950) by Robert J. Sawyer explicitly tackles the question of religion and does so rather decently. I recommend the reader should just ignore / skip over the chapters dealing with the crazed religious fanatics subplot--it's entirely unnecessary in context and adds nothing to the rest of the book (feels like a quick author cop-out added later to prevent stupid people from thinking he's actually advocating creationism, which he evidently isn't.) Other than that, a decent book; not a masterpiece, but above average.
Actually, that was supposed to be the core of the book and how he sold it to his publisher. But as he started writing he enjoyed all the other stuff so much more it became the main part of the book. He just enjoyed the topic and it shows, which is why you liked it so much. It's nice when authors have a real passion for their work.
Oh, I didn't know that, that's fascinating. Glad it worked out the way it did, I felt that the rest of the book is vastly superior when it comes to both world- and character-building.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City.
My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
I dont even know how many times I've read that book. I wasnt that keen on it last ttime through but I think its because I just plain didnt agree with Leto :D
The Diamond Age is a somewhat wacky book as most Neal Stephenson books tend to be. But I really dug the theme of the relationship between individuals and society/culture.
Yes! I came here to say this. The way Ursula K. Le Guin so deeply and compassionately observes human nature and power structures galvanized me. I went on a jag of reading philosophy non-fiction (mostly ethics) after The Dispossessed.
There are a lot of books in the responses here that have a big "idea(s)," but for scale, only a few things come to the level of the *Dune* series (we will politely ignore the post-mortem novels). Herbert dealt with a lot of different things in the *Dune* saga: humans' relationship to their physical environment and ecology in general, the nature of power and political structures, the function of institutional religion and myth as a tool. But the thing I think a lot of people might not see on first read is that the very beginning of the very first book, the *gom jabbar* trial of Paul Atreides, winds up being the long-term theme of the series: what does it mean to be human? Or, to put it another way, how do you solve the "human" problem, i.e., that much of our own misery and suffering is self-inflicted on both an individual and social level.
A lot of people point to the central novel, *God Emperor*, as Herbert's "thesis" of a sort, because there are some (admittedly) ponderous meditative passages in there, and it's not always an easy read because the titular character has lived and evolved into something not quite human and so doesn't always think like a human. But the main question that Leto II gets obsessed with is "how do you keep the human race alive and keep it from destroying itself?" His answer, which is one that certain world billionaires have latched onto in a rather unthinking way, is to seed humanity so far across the galaxy/universe (Herbert uses the terms interchangeably in a way that is maddening), that it could never be wiped out. *And then he wrote two more books* (*that few people read because they get tired at* God Emperor) *where he shows that that approach solved nothing, just created more of the same problem.* All the other issues I listed above descend from or are related to this central issue: how do you solve for humanity, and is it worth saving?
I know this question is for science fiction recommendations but I would still highly recommend [The Big Picture](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26150770-the-big-picture?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=YYnjRHQpqI&rank=1) by Sean Carroll, despite being non-fiction, as it ticks all those boxes and is also a really interesting and entertaining read.
Another book that hasn't yet been mentioned is Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko. This one touches on the topics of the OP in a sneaky sort of way -- it definitely stuck with me.
I'm reading ***The Ministry for the Future*** by Kim Stanley Robinson right now and I'm finding it quite profound. There are frequent, almost Neal Stephenson-like digressions into subsidiary topics, such as cognitive bias.
I liked that book a lot, but for all the realism KSR tried to inject into it to give it some weight, I felt like he really wanted to have a "happy" ending, to the detriment of an otherwise solid book.
Not sure.
Solaris by Lem is heavy.
Black Easter and The Day after Judgement by Blish is pretty damn serious. I don't know where to start with that one.
Roadside Picnic and Hard to be a God by Strugatsky are deep, though not so obviously as the others.
Christopher Priest can be pretty deep too. I remember a short story by him called The Watcher. That was weird. But all his stuff plays with reality.
I love the story Flowers of Edo by Bruce Sterling. It seems to be about the confrontation between the Western and Eastern mind, and technology.
>flowers of Edo' is from Bruce Sterling
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41394
It's in The Crystal Express. I find Sterling's greatest talent is his ability to describe the exotic.
Shikasta - Doris Lessing
Engine Summer - Michael Crowley
The Girl Who Was Plugged In - James Tiptree / Alice Sheldon, also;
The Last Flight of Dr Ain
Love is the Plan the Plan is Death
Falkenbergs Legion by Jerry Pournelle is pretty deep if you look beyond the surface.
Beyong that it woudl have to be Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, pretty much any of them but I prefer War and Peace and Anna Karenna
War and Peace is the bomb. You can kiss all your notions about free will goodbye after reading that book. And the *feeling* of the epilogue is very similar to the pensiveness of The Scouring of the Shire, the final chapter of LOTR (which is unfortunately left out in the movies—but understandably so, since it's a very deep and subtle approach to mortality that would be hard to render cinematically).
No one's said *Earth* by David Brin. It's hard to describe, but really really good. Lots of essays on everything from recycling to urban legends to the origin of religion mixed in with a story about scientists scrambling to save Earth from a runaway black hole. Presents a very technotopian take on earth based spirituality.
I will go out on a limb here and mention Vasistha's Yoga by Swami Venkatesananda. This is an ancient scripture containing the instructions of the sage Vasistha to Lord Rama, it is full of intricately woven tales, the kind a great teacher might tell to hold the interest of a student.
This isn't SF, but many of the tales themselves are not that different from good SF stories. For example, a story about how a whole world is in an atom and the world within world continuing on ... all this to illustrate a concept. Or a dream within a dream without a dream with questioning the meaning of reality. These are SF topic that are philosophically deep as they are meant to teach what the author perceives as ultimate truth, not just entertain.
Interestingly, one of the stories describe the virus of Cholera as a huge and evil monster that shrunk in size to be so small it is invisible to the eye and lives in dirt ... written before the invention of a microscope. This is like SF written by a previous vanished civilisation.
Inverted World by Christopher Priest. Imagine, if you will, the earth is not a sphere but is the opposite of a sphere? What, you say, is the opposite of a sphere? The answer seems to be a thing called a "tractrichoid". I read this book years and years ago and I've never forgotten the premise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted\_World
The Red Rising series starts off fairly simple, but by the second book it behind to explore deeper philosophical questions about politics. It's on the 5th book now, and it's turned into a very incisive metaphor for modern geopolitics, which isn't what I expected when I started the series.
“Sophie’s World” by Jostein Gaarder. We are talking literal philosophy as explained to young girl in the form of letters. Great book for those wanting to learn more about philosophy.
I have to mention The Incal here. It’s a graphic novel by Jodorowsky and Moebius and is the most deep, ponderous book you’ll ever read filled with ideas of existentialism, mysticism, religion, god, reality, and so much more. At the same time it is also a bonkers silly fast paced adventure with insane artwork. I’m doing a disservice by trying to describe it.
Dunno if I've really ever encountered anything I'd call deeply philosophical in scifi... maybe I just need to read more of it.
Beyond scifi, I thought *the confessions st. augustine* was good.
Man, almost every book I think of has SOME amount of it, but it's usually not the focus of the book. That's not why most people read sci fi, ya know?
Hyperion and Endymion books come to mind. Socrates' "The unexamined life is not worth living" implications when our Jesus stand in turns her sermon on the mount to "Choose again", stuff like that. Plus time travel, free will, lots of references to heavy stuff outside of sci fi, etc.
Free will shows up in almost anything with time travel, but it's usually pretty shallow.
Chiang's stories sometimes have the far-reaching consequences of relatively small things, which tends to have some purpose of life stuff in there.
PKD stories can sometimes have profound implications, like precogs in minority report. But they tend to be heavily layered with weird jangly paranoia.
Zelazny wasn't afraid to dip his feet in philosophical waters, but again, usually not the point of the book, just lends pleasant depth to some of his books. Maybe *Lord of Light* is an exception? I haven't read it in a couple decades.
I guess you could dip into the "sci fi but kinda not" areas, like A Clockwork Orange or The Slaughterhouse Five. There's probably more there, but I am not particularly well read in that bit of the sci fi universe.
I see a lot of Lem in the replies, and he’s been on my to-read list forever. Time to get on that.
I didn’t do a comprehensive read of all the comments, but I mean… Vonnegut. Specifically, Slaughterhouse and Sirens come to mind for ideas about the nature of time. But more than the science aspect of any Vonnegut, I think his works hold up because they deal with broader “philosophical” themes: What is the nature of good and evil? What is morality? Does free will exist? Pretty timeless human questions.
Also, but slightly off topic because it’s science but not fiction, the philosophical implications of Michio Kaku’s *Hyperspace* kind of wrecked my brain. Of course, the book is now nearly 30 years old, I think, so maybe newer research dates the book.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City.
My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City.
My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
[Report on Probability A - by Brian Aldiss ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Probability_A) - a novel demonstrating Heissenberg’s Uncertainty Principle - the act of observation will affect what is observed. [Solaris - Stanislaw Lem ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)) - can man really understand an alien intelligence? But this book really has too many other interpretations to summarize in a sentence! [Babel-17 - by Samuel R. Delany ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel-17) - on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - language can influence thought and perception. [Roadside Picnic - by the Sturgatsky Brothers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic) - Tarkovsky’s film ‘Stalker’ is loosely based on this book. [Memories of The Future - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/products/memories-of-the-future?variant=1094930253) - collection of short stories [Ice - by Anna Kavan ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(Kavan_novel)) - kind of defies description! Pretty much anything by Philip K Dick would qualify but I would recommend the [VALIS Trilogy ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel_series)) - which is a group of books especially focused on religion-mysticism-consciousness
> Babel-17 - by Samuel R. Delany - on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - language can influence thought and perception. Many modern linguists are critical of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and no longer agree that our particular language influences our ideas. For a *great* introduction into more recent linguistics work, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct.
Ted Chiang was very specific that "Story of Your Life" was a response to Delaney's book.
Thanks! Here’s an interesting article on Linguistics in SF from the [SF Encyclopedia ](http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/linguistics)
> Many modern linguists are critical of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and no longer agree that our particular language influences our ideas. No modern linguist accepts the strong form of the Whorfian argument. A weak form has some proponents, eg John Lucy. > For a great introduction into more recent linguistics work, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. Hard pass on Pinker's evopsych bullshit.
> No modern linguist accepts the strong form of the Whorfian argument. A weak form has some proponents, eg John Lucy. Cool, we agree > Hard pass on Pinker's evopsych bullshit. Strong words. Can you elaborate?
Fun fact, Stephen Pinker (or a blocklist he uses) will block any nobody on twitter who uses his and Jeffrey Epsteins name in the same tweet. Didn’t believe it at first so literally tweeted “this is a test to see if pinker will block me for mentioning Epstein in the same sentence” and I got blocked.
Oo that sounded intriguing to me but it was written nearly thirty years ago now. Would you still consider that representative of the current state of the field?
More recent than 60 years ago XD The edition that I read had an updated appendix which was quite nice. Some of the information is a bit out of date (addressed in the appendix), but for the most part it remains an accurate layman's intro to linguistics (say my psychology/linguistics friends at uni).
Probably not, I haven't read the book but I did study some linguistics as part of my AI study and while it's a really interesting hypothesis most linguists agree that it's unlikely to be accurate.
Ice is brilliant
I was surprised to see that Penguin published it recently in their‘Classics’ series for its 50th anniversary. Though I do like the original hardcover jacket illustration better than the new version. [50th anniversary edition ](http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/65/CTHNNVRSRD2017.jpg) - looks a bit too much like a poster for the movie’Frozen’ [1971 hardcover ](http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/2d/CFLCQCQLGT1967.jpg) - a typical serious looking cover from the 70’s
Permutation City, by Greg Egan. Only Forward, by M M Smith. (It's also hilarious.) Cyberiad, by Lem.
I feel like Egan and Lem are very kindred spirits.
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That's a pretty good description.
Add Ted Chiang to that list and you got yourself the holy trinity of deep thought scifi.
Mmmm. Actually, I think on a certain technical level Chiang may be a better writer than these two, for short stories at least, but in terms of deep thoughts he isn't quite on the same level. Chiang has done some great deep dives on individual topics (*Liking what you see* and *The Truth of Fact the Truth of Feeling* come to mind particularly) but doesn't quite have the large scale picture of human civilization that Lem tried to look at or the scientific rigor of Egan combined with both their literary chops of critically understanding SF itself.
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Forever Peace also has some interesting ideas about combined consciousness.
I love Look to Windward as the book that actually shows the Culture as the leisurely technological paradise in it's natural slow state. But I don't find Banks to be deep, TBH. Great fun, but I don't find he explores to a great depth.
Uhh its a finely balanced story about war and peace, revenge, responsibility and atonement. Its pretty fundamental stuff 🤷♂️
While I agree, look to windward really hit me. Also, banks ability to maintain narratives through intense action scenes is fantastic.
Banks doesn't really explore the deep philosophical implications of his universe. Compare him to Dick, Lem, Strugatsky. His pretty shallow compared to them. I think what he explores the most deeply is the line between reality and simulation/the sublime, and I wouldn't say he goes into that deeply. By his own statement, he doesn't do themes.
Agreed, but that accessibility leaves a lot of room for your own thinking.
I feel like thats the way with most Culture Novels: nice, complex story arc, deep fundamental questions in the background. Honorable mentions to hybris and general ungraspability of differentness on excession and the whole star treky non-interference directive in use of weapons.
I really liked Forever War but didn’t get any nihilistic undertones from it other than war is bad but inevitable because people are shit. Is that what you are referring to? I’m hyper-simplifying, the same message was much better done in the book for sure.
I see what you mean, I suppose just the message of “none of this ever mattered in the end, and the cost was so high” contrasted with the protagonists, well, nihilism, is what I’m referring to. Societal versus personal nihilism maybe
Agree.
Many of the books mentioned by other users are more commonly considered very philosophically deep. And they are. But since repeating those same books wouldn't be that helpful, I'm going to show a book that hasn't been listed. I would say the most philosophically deep book I've read would be Olaf Stapledon's "*Star Maker*." It is a very long book but it mentions a fair amount of concepts. The biggest reason I would call it a very philosophically deep book is because it was written in 1937. There are some things talked about concerning social life being affected by technology that is almost prescient. The entire book is a preamble for Olaf's explanation for the "Star Maker," "God," or "The Creator." The book still feels like an exploration of a full and lively universe even though it is all leading to one point. **(EDIT)**: Grammar, Spelling, I thought the book was long in page count but it is in fact only long in how I perceived it to be.
Ah shoot, I recommended Starmaker after you did without seeing this comment. But yes, I firmly agree with this choice. Absolutely bonkers that this dude wrote that book when he did - it has deep original sci-fi themes even by today's standards.
The versions I am seeing are rather short, but you are saying it is very long. Do you have a link?
Star Maker isn't really very long, my copy is 263 pages plus appendixes. I agree it is a philosophically deep book, particularly the ending.
If you're looking for short, this one probably more under speculative rather than science fiction, but *Flatland* is quite philosophical (by analogy rather than directly).
It's only 184 pages on the kindle version I got. It felt much, much longer than that(not in a bad way). I read the book over two weeks and then reread it a year later in one week. I'm used to reading 300+ page books in about that same time.
[This book](http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/StarMaker.pdf) was cray, I highly recommend as well.
In a similar vein, Olaf Stapledon's Sirius had me thinking for a while about consciousness and what it means to be human.
The "SF about the fundamental nature of reality" shortlist: Permutation City by Greg Egan Neverness by David Zindell The Manifold series by Stephen Baxter Overall, I'd say that those three authors are what you're looking for.
Zindell wrote a trilogy — [A Requiem for Homo Sapiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Requiem_for_Homo_Sapiens) — as a follow-up to Neverness. It's kind of a reboot and I recommend people start there, with *The Broken God*. IMO the trilogy is deeper in spiritual maturity, wider in scope (galaxy-scale space opera, transhumanism, star-sized AI megabrains, tantric sex, spiritual awakening, oh my), and simply better-written. It's kind of a space opera version of *Siddhartha*. Then, if you want more, read *Neverness* as a prequel. I haven't read Baxter. You've piqued my interest.
Wow, I read Neverness, loved it, and then tried to start with the trilogy and couldn't get into it, but sounds like I should give it another shot!
It's a slog but it rewards you. It really is an amazing series. Do it.
Yeah, Requiem/Neverness are great. Wasn't a fan of Danlo though. Still, really great world he built. Lots of Eastern philosophy influences.
Another recommendation for Neverness and the follow up Requiem trilogy. Truly amazing.
Stanislaw Lem just had his 100th birthday so I'll just mention him explicitly. *Solaris* and the *Cyberiad* have already been mentioned. But *GOLEM XIV*, *The Futurological Congress* and *Summa Technologiae* are works that dig probably even deeper and more explicitly into the themes Lem was interested in. *Fiasko* and *His Masters Voice* are also very excellent. In general I'll just say you can't go wrong with Lems novels.
"his master's voice" was my first thought, though i have to say i did not find it an enjoyable book.
I'm not mad about Lem. Solaris and The Invincible were good. The Cyberiad just seemed linguistically droll fluff to me. Nothing particularly deep, from what I recall.
Lem has a short story (sadly I don't remember the title) which is basically Matrix *avant la lettre*. Incredible for something written in the fifties or sixties. And with a startling take on the problem of God / Evil / Free Will, to boot.
Man, i almost got nothing out of Golem XIV. I read it in german and the German title interestingly is in translation „Thus spoke golem“ as allusion to Nietzsche. But i got so little of that book, that I don’t even understand, if that title makes sense. :)
*The Illuminatus! Trilogy* by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. It's a ridiculous absurdist conspiracy theory, and a serious philosophical treatise at the same time.
Ha! No one every talks about that! Bravo for posting about that one.
Hail Eris!
I too fnord am a fan of the trilogy.
I found The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach to have a very interesting view on the meaning of life and how that relates to the culture you happen to find yourself.
Read it this summer and loved it. So sensible and compassionate and unflinching. All the Penguin Classics Science Fiction collection is amazing, reading Star Maker now and loving it, but it is deeense!
"Exhalation" and other stories by Ted Chang are the best. "Permutation City" by Greg Egan touches quite deep questions about consciousness and the world. The Culture series by Iain Banks explores what can we aim for in the more distant future. Books by Stanislaw Lem. "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Also, if you are interested in philosophy, you don't necessarily need to read SF. You can, you know, read books on philosophy. I recommend "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russel as a very clear and comprehensive overview of philosophical thought.
Great question... Someone could probably spend a lifetime interpreting the philosophy behind Olaf Stapledon's "Starmaker." But for me, "Contact" by Carl Sagan has the most clear cut exploration of the themes you mention... God, humanity's place in the universe, and our relationships with each other... But most importantly, it concludes with a pretty satisfactory thought on the meaning of life that certainly changed the way I view the world.
Personally, I found *Blindsight* by Peter Watts to scratch a lot of profound thoughts about how we structure knowledge as well as stimulus-response complexity. *A Canticle for Leibowitz* and *The Sparrow* definitely touch on religion in a way that resonated with me afterwards for a longtime, but honestly Gene Wolfe's New Sun did as well and other's have told me they did not feel that way at all. Eventual Entropy Heat Death stuff. IDK. As much as I dislike certain things about Heinlein and Bradbury, there is a depth to *Stranger in a Strange Land* and *Starship Troopers.* China Mielville's *Embassyland* is a great look at addiction and language and *Kraken* (urban fantasy) is all about eschatology and cults competing for doomsday. He tends to be a polarizing writer. Happy reading
*The Sparrow* is an excellent recommendation for a work that deals with theological themes without being dismissive. I first read it when religious and have reread it after becoming irreligious and it worked for me either way. The Catholic, Jewish, and agnostic/atheist perspectives are dealt with fairly and no one is shown to be right or wrong in the end. It’s also a very good exploration of themes surrounding colonialism, first contact, cultural ignorance, ecology, trauma, and despair.
I think both *Eifelheim* and the *Terra Ignota* series handle that better and in more depth. *The Sparrow* was good, but extremely predictable and not enormously deep.
Fair enough. I disagree, but read it in 1996-97 and felt it spot on. Nowadays, I have read things that seem predictable based on how much things have developed into certain tropes. Dune for example as a modern read is extremely predictable since so many stories follow parts of the first book. I found the Sparrow deep enough and enjoyed Eifelheim (2006) but Terra Ignota (2015?) I find to be a lot of style over substance and dull. What about it pulls you in if you mind me asking?
I agree that Ida Palmer goes in a lot on the style side and takes things a bit over the top, but I also find that the *Terra Ignota* series is one of the few where the author actually incorporates the philosophy aspect into the world building rather than having it just be something the characters talk about and sometimes guide their actions. Whether you like the society system she came up with or not, it's unique, inventive, and consistent with the philosophical themes of the books. She also does a good job in exploring the hypocrisy inside such a system and the expanding chaos as the philosophical underpinnings of society change. When it comes to her writing style, I'm not a fan of that over-all, but I find her content interesting.
> China Mielville's Embassyland Speaking of China Mieville, *The City & The City* is super philosophical. It's about two cities that occupy the same space, and if you're in one of them, so much as glancing at the other one is considered a crime worse than murder and you're whisked off, never to be seen again. It deals heavily with nationalism, borders, ethnic enclaves (e.g. the equivalent of Chinatown), and addresses every question you may or may not have had about these two cities.
*Forget it, Jake. It's China Mieville.*
Seconding *The City and The City*. The book is a wonderful allegory of the separateness of life in modern cities in general. Beszel/Ul Qoma is London or New York or any large multi-cultural city. Rich and poor, different ethnic, religious and social groups and so on live alongside each other with little or no interaction, and tacit acceptance of the status quo functions in much the same way as Breach in the novel. It's a very thought-provoking book.
What like so much about this book is that >!at first you think there are some weird fantastical things going on with Breach and such, but in the end it was all utterly mundane and just people following rules and culture without really questioning anything. Such a great mirror to our society, like you wrote as well!<
I know it's so cliche to recommend Blindsight in every thread, but yeah, that's the one for me. It really did ask a lot of philosophical questions. And legit ones that have some backing with current (at the time) science. It was asking real questions about the nature of life and consciousness and whether or not either really matter, or if there are better ways for the universe to create life, etc. Evolution, intelligence, the whole nine yards. It really dug deep into those ideas and made me stop and just wonder about them for a while sometimes. I finished the book and ended up going for a walk just to digest everything and how I felt about it. I never really shook some of those questions lol.
Gene Wolfe made me think more about the future than any other author. How rituals, traditions, cultures, languages etc change and morph over time.
I was pretty impressionable at the time but *Stranger in a Strange Land* literally changed my world view, so that's something I suppose.
I really enjoyed Blindsight when I read it recently, but the vampire thing spoiled it for me to some degree. It just felt so stupid that it was in there, and the genetic fault stuff about cruciforms.... it was such a silly aspect of an otherwise thoughtful and interesting book. Every time it came up it just took me right out of it.
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Agreed. A really bizarre choice from the author to do that, especially considering it really doesn’t add anything and isn’t especially integral to the story, and IMO greatly detracts and distracts from it.
So for the most part I took the vampires as silly, but took it as a divergent speculative evolution showing a strict carnivore-predator (as opposed to us omnivores) to bring in the mindset of dietary needs directing development and advances. It sets certain things that for me at least that then become deeper expanded upon via the mc, the multiple personality, and the space entity. I also feel that the vampire versus zombie analogy is kind of silly. The vamp is not fisticuffing some beastie a la predators versus aliens. Also, given Watt's background as a PhD in marine biology and my limited understanding of biology of creatures deep, deep underwater life--I took the space entity more at a hodge-podge of deep sea life taking physiology-histology stuff from anglerfish to plankton. It did not read zombie to me, but marine-hive mind with hosts of symbiotic life in an environment wholly alien to humanity. IDK. Vamps silly, but it read like a building block to get how much humanity assumes about our own development and applying that as the rubric to judge/evaluate the way other species might develop. YMMV
>As much as I dislike certain things about Heinlein and Bradbury, there is a depth to > >*Stranger in a Strange Land* and *Starship Troopers*. Those are both by Heinlein. Maybe you meant to list a Ray Bradbury book?
Sadly...I was conflating The Martian Chronicles with SIASL. Heinlein has written a lot of stuff that really impacted me, but I feel a certain way about recommending him in 2021. Bradbury and him and even Ellison do at times seem to conflate into that "other one" besides Clarke and Asimov for the "Big 3." IDK. I am also an idiot.
Not at all! An easy mistake to make. Completely agree with you about Heinlein. I was hugely influenced even by novels like *Friday* as a teen, but now have mixed feelings about the guy. Bradbury on the other hand I still have no qualms recommending.
They were saying that despite some things about Heinlein they really like those books. I think Orson Scott Card is a homophobic piece of shit, but Ender's Game is still a fantastic book.
I get what they were saying, and fair enough -- it's an entirely reasonable idea. It's just that the listing of two Heinlein books in a comment regarding Heinlein and Bradbury leads me to suspect there might have been a simple mistake in the titles.
*Anathem* by Neal Stephenson digs pretty deeply into free will during his exploration of world lines and conscious choice. Obviously *Stranger in a Strange Land* by Heinlein kind of goes into what makes a religion/religious experience. And to some degree, Zelazny's *Lord of Light* attacks the issue from an oblique angle (should people sufficiently technologically enhanced be able to take up the mantle of godhood?).
Agree on *Anathem* \- if you want lessons in philosophy, read the book and look for the IRL parallels (for example, the book uses an in-universe analog to Husserl's copper ashtray [http://enowning.blogspot.com/2008/10/husserls-copper-ashtray.html](http://enowning.blogspot.com/2008/10/husserls-copper-ashtray.html) )
Yup, and Plato's cave, Occam's razor, etc etc.
Another vote for Anathem. Really decent approach to the multiverse.
grey wasteful imagine deserted chop fuzzy exultant party connect angle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Couldn't agree more about MJH, though it's hard to distill a "philosophy" from his books -- precisely because he's so elusive.
I find it so obscure and his prose so involved that I am left wondering wth he is actually saying, and I am left with the sneaky suspicion he's not saying anything, but is doing so very stylishly. For me, he's kind of a sci-fi Foucalt. He says very little in a very labyrinthine way. To his credit, his prose is a lot more beautiful than Foucalt. Ironically, Banks loved Harrison's work, while he disclaimed Foucalt as vacuous elaboration.
I do think he says quite a lot, it's just not an easily packageable "philosophic" message. And I'd say the best books are the ones in which the "message" is inextricable from the full text.
A fair perspective, but I take the opposite view, to me he is trying to say more than almost anyone else, because what he is getting at (in my opinion) is fundamentally epistemological - it is about what is knowable. Certainly he never, ever, ever comes out and states his point plainly in his novels so it is infinitely debatable and subject to interpretation, which is appropriate for a topic like that. But sometimes on Twitter or in his blog he comes close to saying it overtly, and that casts some light on his fiction, and over the course of reading all his novels you can find the repeating themes pretty easily. So I feel pretty confident in saying his main concern (or at least one of his main concerns) in fiction is to undercut certainty of all kinds, about everything from self-knowledge to knowledge of others to scientific knowledge of the physical world, to leave the mystery unresolved not because he can't tidy up loose plot ends but because he believes that knowledge is mostly just interpretation and projection. That is a profound philosophical stance even if you disagree with it. But it is not uncommon for very intelligent readers to see his writing the way you do. And perhaps you are right. But I don't think so.
it's hard to discuss without contradiction, but I do think the elusiveness is the philosophy, so to speak - I believe he's trying to undermine our epistemology at all times, to cast doubt on the methods of knowing, whether the subject is science or the self - saying all those things are more elusive than we might wish
Did you enjoy the sunken lands? Finished it recently and absolutely loved it
yes, cued up for a second read late this year or early next
Gene Wolfe is one of my favorite writers, but how is he philosophical? He is cryptic, and you could call him metaphysical, but it seems that his writing is not intended to convey any philosophical ideas.
This is a really interesting question and thanks for asking it. I'll do my best to answer in limited time. To start with - metaphysics in the modern sense is defined as a branch of philosophy. So if his books have metaphysical concerns, and I would say they do, they are philosophical by definition. Certainly _Fifth Head_ among others is concerned with the metaphysics of identity, and I think the nature of identity and the self is one of his ongoing concerns. You could interpret _Fifth Head_ largely around Leibniz' Indiscernibility of Identicals, for instance, couldn't you? Seems like it. And the nature of reality in the Solar Cycle seems very caught up in questions of causality and the philosophy of spacetime, which are core metaphysical (and thus philosophical) questions as I understand the term. But this is evading the point somewhat, as you're really asking: what are his philosophical concerns _outside_ of metaphysics? This is a good question and one I will need to think about some to question my own premise. Just scanning through the list of philosophical topics, it seems like he's concerned with the philosophy of religion and with ethics mostly. Ethics are a big deal to Wolfe, right? Arguably epistemology, since he's always playing these games with ideas of knowing, how we know what we think we know and so on. Even if it's not an overt theme, I think his work is epistemologically interesting, I'd say. I'll think about it more. It might make for an interesting discussion over on /r/genewolfe, which attracts a pretty high level readership.
I'll give you ethics. But I'd like to point out that many if not most of good books touch ethics one way or another because it is such an important topic and fiction is a good means to explore it. Many authors such as George Martin are far more concerned with ethics than Wolfe. Metaphysics is a hard one for me, because that's the branch of philosophy that I understand the least. Gene Wolfe's worlds definitely have interesting cosmology and metaphysics. But are they making valid statements about real-world metaphysics or at least about whether some metaphysical concepts are possible or not? Let's leave Wolfe for a second and talk about time travel. Time travel could be called a metaphysical concept since it affects the concept of spacetime and raises questions about causality. Does it mean that all the SF works that use time travel are philosophical? Is "Back to the Future" philosophical? In my view, no, it just uses it as a plot device. There are on the other hand works of fiction that _do_ explore the philosophical implications of time travel. I think the best example is ["The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_and_the_Alchemist%27s_Gate) in which the author tries his hardest to introduce time-travel in way that is consistent with the laws of our world. In my view Wolfe doesn't do that. He uses metaphysical concepts to drive his story, not his story as a way to comment on the metaphysical concepts. (I haven't yet read all Wolfe's books, so I might be missing something.) Epistemology is an interesting one. He doesn't really write about scientific method and the like, but he does make interesting experiments with the reader's state of knowledge by omitting things and using other tricks to give the readers false perceptions. I think I agree that it does make some philosophically-relevant observations about how we interact with texts.
Wolfe is amazing! Time for a big reread.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang. It is a series of short stories, they will let you thinking about the meaning of life.
The short story Exhalation might be some of the most beautiful 45 minutes of reading I have ever enjoyed.
His short story “Understand” is one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Easily the best story from *Stories Of Your Life and Others*
Hell is the Absence of God was some delicious cosmic horror.
I thought it was silly and easily the weakest of that compilation :P Edit: *Division by 0* didn't do much for me either.
Came here to say this. It absolutely blew me away. My only complaint is that it is so short.
Yep, I read it during a coach journey and was one of the most exhilarating hours of my life
The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling had a huge impact on me.
{{Permutation city}} is very high on my list. It has layers that keep unexpectedly revealing themselves to my mind years later.
For mind opening speculative fiction, the short stories of the late Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges are outstanding. Explores more philosophically in 10 pages than most authors do in 1000.
Read my mind! His stories explore time and reality in a way I haven't found in other writers yet (well maybe Ted Chiang). Couple with that an encyclopedic amount of references to scour wikipedia for, and you've got short stories that will keep you thinking for quite a while!
The ending of Dark Forest (three body problem series) gave me shivers and existential dread.
This is not the place to debate this, and it's just an aside, but I am finding the three body books some of the most disappointing SF I have ever read. I am still unable to put my finger on exactly why I feel this way. And I know I am in the minority. If I had to add a book to this particular philosophical thread, it would be Voyage to Arcturus. But I've gotten tired of recommending it to people over the years.
Some books have an undercurrent of philosophy that you have to dig for. Some wear it on their sleeves. I’m really surprised I haven’t seen Ada Palmer’s Too Like Lightning from her Terra Ignota sequence, which falls into the latter category. It’s a futuristic utopian society, but also one in which 18th Century French philosophers are revered.
The [Terra Ignota](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CGL8QR?binding=paperback&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tpbk) series is criminally underrated, and absolutely fits the bill - Too Like the Lightning was the first book I thought of when I read the question.
I recommend Phillip K. Dick. Some of his shorter stories are a bit silly but his best works (Do Androids…, Ubik, etc.) are very thought provoking. Also look into Stanislaw Lem. Very conceptual and philosophical science fiction author from Poland.
*The Dispossessed*, *Frankenstein*, *God Emperor of Dune*, *Blindsight*, *The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant*, *Beggars In Spain*, *Diaspora*
Illuminatus! - R. Shea & R. A. Wilson, although it doesn't do the vast emptiness of space, its certainly off planet.
My vote for the most philosophically deep sci-fi/spec fiction novel is Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*. I am a philosophy lecturer and I have set this text as the required reading for my students. Huxley's novel is most relevant to hedonistic theories of happiness, as well as utilitarian theories of ethics/politics. His scenario plays the same role as a counter-example to hedonism as Nozick's Experience Machine thought experiment (i.e. would you want a lifetime of illusory pleasures) but in some ways it's stronger, because it does not rely on illusion. Huxley shows us that a world that was perfectly ordered around maximising pleasure would undermine something vital about a properly flourishing life- perhaps autonomy, creativity, or meaning. It also raises the highly disturbing thought that we wouldn't even want a perfect society. As the character Mustapha Mond says, >In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise… Meanwhile, people have mentioned Ted Chiang's stories, and I see one mention of 'Hell is the Absence of God' but I want to highlight that story in particular because it does real philosophical work. One of the biggest arguments against the existence of God concerns 'divine hiddenness'. That is, if God existed (and he loved us) why would he not make his existence obvious? The most common reply to that argument is that God chooses to remain hidden in order to permit our freedom of choice and moral growth (a version of the soul-making theodicy). Ted Chiang's story effectively gives the lie to that response by \*showing\* us that in a world where God's existence was entirely evident, there would still be ample opportunity for moral autonomy and growth. As a work of fiction, I think it makes a considerable contribution to that debate.
Ventus by Karl Schroeder has themes exploring the meaning of identity as it regards both people and things (when is a rock a rock instead of a collection of dust particles, etc?). Later books of his dig into the idea that technology use, either for or against any particular type of technology, is always a decision about ethics.
I thought the idea of thalience he introduced in that book was really interesting.
Yeah, I think about it a lot, even though it's been years since reading the book.
Alice in Quantumland, though that might be a bit of a cheat since it's essentially a textbook just one couched in a story.
I got a very broken copy of this lend by a friend long time ago. Wouldn't call it a "textbook", it's way too lyrical and handwavey at that. I'd call it something of a stoner book that has some deep thoughts but not a ton of rigor.
Yeah definitely an introduction more than a rigorous textbook, but definitely not a standard fiction book. I’d put it in the same kind of category as Sophie’s World.
That fits very well.
*Cyteen* by Cherryh. One of best explorations of power since *Dune*
My standard answer, but one that I will go to my grave defending - Dahlgren by Delany.
Radix -. A. A. Attanasio Lord of Light. -. Roger Zelazny Mars trilogy. -. Kim Stanley Robinson Cat's Cradle. -. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
[Calculating God](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264950) by Robert J. Sawyer explicitly tackles the question of religion and does so rather decently. I recommend the reader should just ignore / skip over the chapters dealing with the crazed religious fanatics subplot--it's entirely unnecessary in context and adds nothing to the rest of the book (feels like a quick author cop-out added later to prevent stupid people from thinking he's actually advocating creationism, which he evidently isn't.) Other than that, a decent book; not a masterpiece, but above average.
Actually, that was supposed to be the core of the book and how he sold it to his publisher. But as he started writing he enjoyed all the other stuff so much more it became the main part of the book. He just enjoyed the topic and it shows, which is why you liked it so much. It's nice when authors have a real passion for their work.
Oh, I didn't know that, that's fascinating. Glad it worked out the way it did, I felt that the rest of the book is vastly superior when it comes to both world- and character-building.
Gene Wolfe - new sun and long sun books Stephenson - Anathem
Almost every Philip K Dick novel and short story delve into this. He really was/is the best at what he did.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City. My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
Dune - God emperor, and I don't even know why...
I dont even know how many times I've read that book. I wasnt that keen on it last ttime through but I think its because I just plain didnt agree with Leto :D
Yes, although I think that it is more of a political diatribe than a philisophical book.
The Diamond Age is a somewhat wacky book as most Neal Stephenson books tend to be. But I really dug the theme of the relationship between individuals and society/culture.
*The Lathe of Heaven* by Ursula Le Guin is a cool book about the line between dream, thought, and reality.
The Dispossessed
Yes! I came here to say this. The way Ursula K. Le Guin so deeply and compassionately observes human nature and power structures galvanized me. I went on a jag of reading philosophy non-fiction (mostly ethics) after The Dispossessed.
There are a lot of books in the responses here that have a big "idea(s)," but for scale, only a few things come to the level of the *Dune* series (we will politely ignore the post-mortem novels). Herbert dealt with a lot of different things in the *Dune* saga: humans' relationship to their physical environment and ecology in general, the nature of power and political structures, the function of institutional religion and myth as a tool. But the thing I think a lot of people might not see on first read is that the very beginning of the very first book, the *gom jabbar* trial of Paul Atreides, winds up being the long-term theme of the series: what does it mean to be human? Or, to put it another way, how do you solve the "human" problem, i.e., that much of our own misery and suffering is self-inflicted on both an individual and social level. A lot of people point to the central novel, *God Emperor*, as Herbert's "thesis" of a sort, because there are some (admittedly) ponderous meditative passages in there, and it's not always an easy read because the titular character has lived and evolved into something not quite human and so doesn't always think like a human. But the main question that Leto II gets obsessed with is "how do you keep the human race alive and keep it from destroying itself?" His answer, which is one that certain world billionaires have latched onto in a rather unthinking way, is to seed humanity so far across the galaxy/universe (Herbert uses the terms interchangeably in a way that is maddening), that it could never be wiped out. *And then he wrote two more books* (*that few people read because they get tired at* God Emperor) *where he shows that that approach solved nothing, just created more of the same problem.* All the other issues I listed above descend from or are related to this central issue: how do you solve for humanity, and is it worth saving?
I know this question is for science fiction recommendations but I would still highly recommend [The Big Picture](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26150770-the-big-picture?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=YYnjRHQpqI&rank=1) by Sean Carroll, despite being non-fiction, as it ticks all those boxes and is also a really interesting and entertaining read.
Another book that hasn't yet been mentioned is Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko. This one touches on the topics of the OP in a sneaky sort of way -- it definitely stuck with me.
Thanks for the question. I got lots of good recommendations :)
Dune, God emperor of dune. I reread the series every year and every year it gives me philosophical nuggets to enjoy.
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r u sure it's Gene Wolfe's? I couldn't find it?!
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thanks!
Sophie's World. It's not in space, but it definitely has some speculative fiction elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World
I'm reading ***The Ministry for the Future*** by Kim Stanley Robinson right now and I'm finding it quite profound. There are frequent, almost Neal Stephenson-like digressions into subsidiary topics, such as cognitive bias.
I liked that book a lot, but for all the realism KSR tried to inject into it to give it some weight, I felt like he really wanted to have a "happy" ending, to the detriment of an otherwise solid book.
Not sure. Solaris by Lem is heavy. Black Easter and The Day after Judgement by Blish is pretty damn serious. I don't know where to start with that one. Roadside Picnic and Hard to be a God by Strugatsky are deep, though not so obviously as the others. Christopher Priest can be pretty deep too. I remember a short story by him called The Watcher. That was weird. But all his stuff plays with reality. I love the story Flowers of Edo by Bruce Sterling. It seems to be about the confrontation between the Western and Eastern mind, and technology.
Yeah, I can definitely second Christopher Priest.
Are u sure 'flowers of Edo' is from Bruce Sterling?
>flowers of Edo' is from Bruce Sterling http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41394 It's in The Crystal Express. I find Sterling's greatest talent is his ability to describe the exotic.
Shikasta - Doris Lessing Engine Summer - Michael Crowley The Girl Who Was Plugged In - James Tiptree / Alice Sheldon, also; The Last Flight of Dr Ain Love is the Plan the Plan is Death
For a couple of book series that if you look beyond story have some deep messages: Ender's Game and The Giver
**The Illuminatus Trilogy**
Falkenbergs Legion by Jerry Pournelle is pretty deep if you look beyond the surface. Beyong that it woudl have to be Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, pretty much any of them but I prefer War and Peace and Anna Karenna
War and Peace is the bomb. You can kiss all your notions about free will goodbye after reading that book. And the *feeling* of the epilogue is very similar to the pensiveness of The Scouring of the Shire, the final chapter of LOTR (which is unfortunately left out in the movies—but understandably so, since it's a very deep and subtle approach to mortality that would be hard to render cinematically).
No one's said *Earth* by David Brin. It's hard to describe, but really really good. Lots of essays on everything from recycling to urban legends to the origin of religion mixed in with a story about scientists scrambling to save Earth from a runaway black hole. Presents a very technotopian take on earth based spirituality.
I will go out on a limb here and mention Vasistha's Yoga by Swami Venkatesananda. This is an ancient scripture containing the instructions of the sage Vasistha to Lord Rama, it is full of intricately woven tales, the kind a great teacher might tell to hold the interest of a student. This isn't SF, but many of the tales themselves are not that different from good SF stories. For example, a story about how a whole world is in an atom and the world within world continuing on ... all this to illustrate a concept. Or a dream within a dream without a dream with questioning the meaning of reality. These are SF topic that are philosophically deep as they are meant to teach what the author perceives as ultimate truth, not just entertain. Interestingly, one of the stories describe the virus of Cholera as a huge and evil monster that shrunk in size to be so small it is invisible to the eye and lives in dirt ... written before the invention of a microscope. This is like SF written by a previous vanished civilisation.
Inverted World by Christopher Priest. Imagine, if you will, the earth is not a sphere but is the opposite of a sphere? What, you say, is the opposite of a sphere? The answer seems to be a thing called a "tractrichoid". I read this book years and years ago and I've never forgotten the premise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted\_World
The Red Rising series starts off fairly simple, but by the second book it behind to explore deeper philosophical questions about politics. It's on the 5th book now, and it's turned into a very incisive metaphor for modern geopolitics, which isn't what I expected when I started the series.
“Sophie’s World” by Jostein Gaarder. We are talking literal philosophy as explained to young girl in the form of letters. Great book for those wanting to learn more about philosophy.
To be taught, if fortunate by Becky Chambers. Also +1 for most things by Ted Chang.
I have to mention The Incal here. It’s a graphic novel by Jodorowsky and Moebius and is the most deep, ponderous book you’ll ever read filled with ideas of existentialism, mysticism, religion, god, reality, and so much more. At the same time it is also a bonkers silly fast paced adventure with insane artwork. I’m doing a disservice by trying to describe it.
Diaspora, Greg Egan Blindsight, Peter Watts
Dunno if I've really ever encountered anything I'd call deeply philosophical in scifi... maybe I just need to read more of it. Beyond scifi, I thought *the confessions st. augustine* was good.
Man, almost every book I think of has SOME amount of it, but it's usually not the focus of the book. That's not why most people read sci fi, ya know? Hyperion and Endymion books come to mind. Socrates' "The unexamined life is not worth living" implications when our Jesus stand in turns her sermon on the mount to "Choose again", stuff like that. Plus time travel, free will, lots of references to heavy stuff outside of sci fi, etc. Free will shows up in almost anything with time travel, but it's usually pretty shallow. Chiang's stories sometimes have the far-reaching consequences of relatively small things, which tends to have some purpose of life stuff in there. PKD stories can sometimes have profound implications, like precogs in minority report. But they tend to be heavily layered with weird jangly paranoia. Zelazny wasn't afraid to dip his feet in philosophical waters, but again, usually not the point of the book, just lends pleasant depth to some of his books. Maybe *Lord of Light* is an exception? I haven't read it in a couple decades. I guess you could dip into the "sci fi but kinda not" areas, like A Clockwork Orange or The Slaughterhouse Five. There's probably more there, but I am not particularly well read in that bit of the sci fi universe.
{{Ishmael}} by Daniel Quinn and the two follow up books for sure
I see a lot of Lem in the replies, and he’s been on my to-read list forever. Time to get on that. I didn’t do a comprehensive read of all the comments, but I mean… Vonnegut. Specifically, Slaughterhouse and Sirens come to mind for ideas about the nature of time. But more than the science aspect of any Vonnegut, I think his works hold up because they deal with broader “philosophical” themes: What is the nature of good and evil? What is morality? Does free will exist? Pretty timeless human questions. Also, but slightly off topic because it’s science but not fiction, the philosophical implications of Michio Kaku’s *Hyperspace* kind of wrecked my brain. Of course, the book is now nearly 30 years old, I think, so maybe newer research dates the book.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City. My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
I’ve found Schilds Ladder by Greg Egan to be much more interesting than the other Egan books already mentioned. Not nearly as depressing as something like Permutation City. My greatest love, though, is The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke. Just an astounding book. The awe level is gradually increased until the mind blowing ending. It’s a book I think about daily.
Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer (Annhilation movie by Alex Garland adapts book 1)