intelligent, character-driven sci-fi recommendations, please

[MilkMoon]

I know virtually nothing about sci-fi at all, and it's not my usual thing -- but I happened to pick up Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet recently, and liked it (and its less-good sequels).

Could people please suggest intelligent, character-driven sci-fi that isn't eaten by its own world-building? 'Other than Becky Chambers, I've literally only read Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, Frank Herbert's Dune (not for me) and Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas (too many battle sequences for me).

All and any thoughts appreciated. Oh, and not YA.

Thank you!

Try the Dark Forest series - first book is the Three Body Problem.

Thank you, that looks interesting. Does it have central female characters? I couldn’t tell from a glance at the plot summary.

Stephanie Saulter's Gemsigns series (set in a future with genetically modified humans)

Should say 'intelligent and character driven' is exactly the sort of SF that I like.

I have to say I wouldn't consider the Three Body Problem as particularly character driven, though it is a really interesting series & very well worth reading. Certainly it's very different in style from Small Angry Planet.

Ursula le Guin has written lots so if you enjoyed LHOD maybe try some of her others. I think the last - novella length - story in her collection The Birthday of the World "Paradises Lost" would absolutely tick all your boxes. (The rest of the collection is also very good & the story Solitude is one of my favourite SF short stories ever.)

More recent - Autonomous by Annalee Newitz is a good zippy read with a cyberpunk feel.

The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson (its disturbing but clever - stick with it)
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett

I've liked a few books by John Scalzi, Lock In and its sequel Head On have strong female characters, and the narrator might be either sex, it's not clear. It's a police/mystery plot set in the near future. The Android's Dream also has a good characters of both sexes and is a thriller type sci-fi.

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a book with several great female characters called Children of Time. One of them is also a metre-long, sentient, hunting spider named Portia, but she's female and epic. There is a sequel called Children of Ruin which isn't quite as good IMO but worth reading. I've started one other of his books but it had a war theme which I don't enjoy at all.

You might also like Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.

@Sadik

Should say 'intelligent and character driven' is exactly the sort of SF that I like. I have to say I wouldn't consider the Three Body Problem as particularly character driven, though it is a really interesting series & very well worth reading. Certainly it's very different in style from Small Angry Planet.

Ursula le Guin has written lots so if you enjoyed LHOD maybe try some of her others. I think the last - novella length - story in her collection The Birthday of the World "Paradises Lost" would absolutely tick all your boxes. (The rest of the collection is also very good & the story Solitude is one of my favourite SF short stories ever.)

Yes, I should read more ULeG. I did read a collection of her short stories — The Wind’s Twelve Quarters? The Moon’s Twelve Quarters?— years ago, and thought some of them were brilliant. I really like her anthropological thing, whereas I’m not bothered about whether the Exukathron intergalactic fleet runs on petrol or algae, and there are limits on how much backstory about trade in the early centuries of the Titrath Empire I’m prepared to trudge through.

What about her earlier novels — Rocannon’s World and the few after that?

Will check out your other recommendations, thanks.

The book that made me realise I liked science fiction was A rag, a bone and a hank of hair by Nicholas Fisk. Written for pre-teens, but probably still worth a look.

Connie Willis: Blackout/ All Clear - the last story in two parts of a time-travelling historians series. I haven't read the first two, and I think they're stand-alone narratives. Her Bellwether is also very good.

Robert A Heinlein in small doses (there are only so many times you can read about the difficulties of leading a group of rugged individualists, or about red-headed mathematicians even when you are one). Have spacesuit, will travel is one of his "juvenilia" so you don't have to put up with the occasionally tiresome sex. Ditto Tunnel in the sky. The Moon is a harsh mistress won a Hugo award. Time for the stars plays with the light-speed twin paradox. Don't start with Friday.

Ha, have space suit will travel is what encouraged this red head to learn calculus at the age of 13

I did read all 6 of Dune, kinda... took four attempts at the fourth one and read large parts of it in the same way as I read the Patrick O'Brian books: [sail] flapped and he pulled the [rope] and grabbed the [rope] and [did a thing] to the [sail]

(I gave up on Lord of the Rings half-way through Mordor. World-building is not one of my priorities.)

Just marking for when I dont have a sleeping child on me and can properly investigate.

Loved proper sci fi but over last few years have read much more fantasy and space opera type stuff. Which is fun. But could do with a return.

Cant think of most of what I read but am a fan of Asimov's short stories. They always felt like "real" sci fi to me!

Oh, I’d forgotten Connie Willis. I picked up someone else’s copy of her Domesday Book at a moment of crisis and liked it, despite it being not my usual thing either.

I realise I sound as if I’ve just landed from Planet Clueless, but I usually read pretty much exclusively literary fiction, and I am probably the equivalent in sf terms of someone saying ‘Oh, have you heard of this chap Shakespeare? Is he any good?’

Thanks for all suggestions — will check them all out.

Connie Willis’s time travel novels are The Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog (completely different and very lighthearted), and Blackout/All Clear.

I’d second Children of Time - Portia is my heroine.

Ancilliary Justice by Anne Leckie is good.

But tbh nobody has every written a better book than The Left Hand of Darkness.

Oh, god, exactly, @merryhouse. You’re a better woman than I am. The giant sand worms finished me. I think I kept reading out of a sense of incredulity that I was reading a novel that featured giant sand worms.

I’m terrible for remembering names of books but I love a lot of Ursula le guin’s books, including the left hand of darkness. I recently reread The Disposessed, which is very philosophical. One of my all time faves is The forever War by Joe Haldeman- from a male perspective though, as most are. I really enjoy Iain M Banks- they are not all as war based as consider phlebas, perhaps try A player of games. Alfred Bester and Adrian thchaikovsky also worth checking out. Following the suggestions with interest!

Have you read any Margaret Atwood? Quite a lot of her stuff falls into the Sci Fi bracket. I've just finished the Oryx and Crake trilogy. Dystopian future, humanity all but wiped out by a plague, great characters thought provoking ideas and gripping story. Got to the end of the first book before finding out it was a trilogy, I was so pleased 😀

Olaf Stapledon star marker is a 1930s classic sci fi book that I really enjoyed. It’s got a philosophical bent and is epic in scope.

" I really like her anthropological thing"

That absolutely nails what I love in SF - how does the world work and why. Her earlier books are fine, but for vintage le Guin I'd go for The Dispossessed (and the linked short story The Day Before the Revolution), The Birthday of the World collection, and actually you might really like Always Coming Home which is rather more experimental in style but definitely fits the 'anthropological' side.

Another older one - Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin & the sequels. She's a linguist, & they're very much about how language works to shape society.

Much more blokey, but still worth reading is Neal Stephenson. Anathem is amazing - in a way it is all world & not much story, but actually it doesn't matter IMO. It's set mainly in a Concent, quasi-monastic institutions where the residents only communicate with the outer world once every 1, 10, 100 or 1000 years depending on the order.

Particularly given your interest in literary fiction, you might find Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series worth a look.

Sheri Tepper might appeal to you. She's often described as an eco-feminist. The Gate To Women's Country in particular is one of my favourites.

Tom Holt’s Portable Door series is funny and intelligent. Perhaps not quite true sci-fi but close enough for me.

Penguin have released a new series of classic sci-fi, might be worth checking out : www.penguin.co.uk/series/pengscifi/penguin-science-fiction.html

Lois McMaster Bujold.

It's set mainly in a Concent, quasi-monastic institutions where the residents only communicate with the outer world once every 1, 10, 100 or 1000 years depending on the order.

Working from home in a wreck of a house we've only just moved into, and juggling homeschooling a tempestuous eight-year-old, and this sounds to me utterly blissful. Where do I sign up?

Thanks for all suggestions am noting everything. Yes, I suppose what I'm looking for is literary fiction in a sf setting? To those who suggested Atwood, I didn't much like the bit of her post-Oryx and Crake stuff I've read, and I'm a reluctant Doris Lessing reader since unfulfilling encounters with The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook years back but I'd actually forgotten she wrote sf.

Where should one start with Lois McMaster Bujold? And is it YA?

No, def for adults. Start with Shards of Honour (may be in an omnibus with Barrayar, the sequel, in which case title will be Cordelia's Honour.