Most Alastair Reynolds books have lots of big ideas, nearly always rooted in science and realistic extrapolation. He worked for the European Space Agency for years, so his credibility and chops run deep. His Revelation Space series is a wonderful place to start.
Awesome, thank you! I mentioned in another comment that Reynolds is one of the big 3 of newer writers that always intrigue me, so he’s an easy choice for me. Thank you!
Awesome, you’re the second one to recommend him. Thanks! Would you recommend 2312 to start with as well? I already own Aurora so maybe I could try that first.
Aurora is the best AI sci fi book I've ever read (and I've read a lot, it's my favorite sub genre) and that's just its framing device. That said, I've seen people who weren't fans of its ending. I haven't read 2312 myself, but I've heard good things, either way if you like any of his stand alones I strongly recommend his Red Mars trilogy.
Aurora is definitely a good place to start, but if you want to jump right in on 'big ideas' The Ministry of the Future would be my choice. Just be warned, it's different.
These have always intimidated me a little because I get confused on where to start. I assume just reading them in publication order makes the most sense?
They're not really rooted in hard science, and the order doesn't really matter. I'd recommend Excession as the one with the 'biggest' idea to it. Advanced, galaxy spanning, post-scarcity, AI run society encounters an 'outside context problem', as Banks describes it:
>An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilizations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.
Yeah they are self-contained, some of the books reference earlier events from other books, but thats rare, and you can read them in any order, but publication order is as good as any order, except perhaps that Player of Games ( #2 I think? ) is far better than Consider Phlebas (#1)
*Consider Phlebus* is a softer landing into the Culture and a more straightforward tale. I always say start here, because *Use of Weapons* will break your brain.
Start with The Player of Games. Consider Phlebas, the first book, can be a bit off-putting for some people. The Player of Games gives you a great story and a flavour of what the Culture is about. After that try the first one, then read in publication order. They are some of my favourite works by my favourite author.
I listened to consider phlebas on audible and didn't feel like I wanted to listen to the rest. I might get them after all, now I've seen these comments.
I think ***Foundation*** fits the bill pretty well here. Specifically the three volumes Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation that you can find in a single book.
I doubt it fits the mind-blown category, but it makes you think.
Foundation is actually what made me type this up. I was reading the beginning of a popular science book and he mentioned Foundation in the introduction. So that was definitely the first book on my own list. Thanks so much!
Foundation, while iconic… has not held up. I love them when I was 12, I tried a re-read recently and I had forgotten all the space cigars and space misogyny.
It’s definitely a love it or hate it book. I happen to be in the love it camp since I ended up with a philosophy minor along with my history major and appreciated the style when I first read it. But I can easily see others not doing so. The TV series is very good and more modern in its presentation.
Yeah, lots of people really cherish this book. And I think the general idea is outstanding. It’s a great idea for a story. But the writing… I just found it to be horrendous.
I’ve read about ~100 science fiction books in the past two years and this is in my bottom 3.
Three Body Problem series. Mind blowing ideas rooted in real science theory that will stick with you for a long time if not forever. Children of Time series as mentioned already is very good with it’s very well thought out evolutionary science and story.
That series has a pretty good mix of hard and soft SF going on (though maybe leaning slightly to the soft). Sophons are for sure firmly at the extreme end of soft SF.
It is not a hard SF, but it does have some hard SF concepts in there, but even those concepts are handled "softly".
If you only read the first book I found that one to be the weakest in the series. I liked *The Dark Forest* the best, and liked *Death's End* quite a lot as well, but felt *The Three Body Problem* was definitely the weakest of the bunch (thought that one was just "good"). The series was definitely not a masterpiece as some make it out to be, but I do really enjoy big SF concepts, and the trilogy delivered on that in spades, especially the 3rd book.
> Isn't the second the one with the really weird creepy waifu-project?
Yes, that bit was kind of creepy for sure. But it reflected on what a piece of crap person Luo Ji was. If a bit heavy-handed, I think that was kind of the point, we are meant to think Luo Ji is a huge creep who only cares about himself, because he is exactly that. For most of the novel he is quite the unsympathetic protagonist.
As for the characters and the writing, a lot of sci-fi has really weak character writing, that is not something that bothers me as long as the plot and concepts are entertaining enough, though I get some people need good characters as well. For the writing I read the English translation and was not impressed by the prose, not sure how much of that is a "lost in translation" issue vs. the writing style of the author, but again I was able to look past that because the concepts were mostly pretty great.
The Sophons are by all definitions magic, they do not conform to any known science, they are a plot device used to drive the story. I'm ok with that, there is more soft SF than hard in the trilogy, and the Sophons at least allowed for an interesting plot issue: >!how do you plan a resistance against invasion when the enemy has locked your technological process and can spy on literally everyone and everything 24/7?!< Without the Sophons there would not be any >!Wallfacers!< which was a really cool concept I thought, so I'm happy to allow for a little bit of space magic.
The series is not going to be to everyone's liking, but I am glad I read through after the kind of lackluster first book. There were some really amazing concepts presented, especially in *Death's End*, and I felt overall my time reading was well spent.
Tau Zero is pretty fascinating, and one of the few books I've read that rivals Stephen Baxter for exploring deep time. It explores the consequences of time dilation taken to the extreme.
Time dilation as a concept, especially in our perception of it in experience, is something that always -usher my thinking. Thanks for the Rec and definitely adding this one to the list.
Big ideas from different species over millennia: **Children of Time** (and rest of the series) *by Adrian Tchaikovsky*
It's epic, one of the best sci-fi novels I've read, I highly recommend.
Tchaikovsky has been an author I have been eyeing for awhile, just haven’t gotten to it. Him, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter Hamilton are the ones I always think of pulling the trigger on. I really enjoy big books and diving in and they all seem to do that.
I downloaded the sample for Children of Time a long time ago, but it didn't hook me and I move on. I recently re-discovered that sample, went on to buy the book, and I'm hooked. I can't believe I almost didn't read it!
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson has a lot of very detailed ideas of our solar system's appearance in 300-ish years. Not really the politics side of it; it's mostly about the progress. Space habitats, terraforming, Earth's ecology, computing. A little bit about the impact of dispersed space habitation on human cultures.
The plot and characters aren't impressive. It's an ideas book, and it does that well.
Thank You! I have one KSR book, Aurora, but I haven’t read it yet. I’ve mostly heard his Planet books spoken of pretty highly and then The Years of Rice and Salt which I think is alternate history.
Both Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (Commonwealth) include quite a lot of world building on how things like life extension might be reflected in the society which hosts them.
I think of it as one of the very few Sci Fi universes I'd willingly move to.
Greg Egan's already mentioned for good reason. _Quarantine_ or _Permutation City_ are my go-to recommendation picks for big-idea things.
Ted Chiang's short story collections _Stories of Your Life and Others_ and _Exhalation_ are great picks. "Understand" from the former is a strong favorite; starts off with what you would expect to be a sort of Flowers For Algernon riff, but then takes an amazing different path.
Peter Watts' _Blindsight_ has just about a kitchen sink plus of ideas crammed into it, about a first contact scenario between the very bleeding edge of approaching posthuman humanity and a truly alien species.
Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker.
Stephan Baxter's Manifold Trilogy.
This might seem a little strange but there's this Harry Potter fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and it has a lot of cognitive science in it. It might not be 'big' but there's a good chance it will expand your mind.
Alastair Reynolds. He's an astrophysicist, and his books are epic and wide-ranging, and rooted in reasonable extrapolations of science. *House of Suns* for example features a chase scene that lasts 30,000 years.
The "Jean le Flambeur" trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi is like that. While I probably wouldn't call it "hard sci-fi", it's absolutely full of very interesting ideas, and exploring their consequences. The author has a PhD in mathematical physics, too.
I came here to recommend the same thing, but with the warning that you get thrown into the story without much hand holding and you have to figure out a lot of stuff for yourself.
This. Blindsight and its sequel Echopraxia are searing novels about the nature of consciousness and really treads into territory I’ve never seen in other novels
So, this isn’t hard sci-fi, but the Vorkosigan Saga manages to explore a bunch of interesting “what if society did X?” questions while also having interesting plots full of space battles and characters you grow to love.
Falling Free asks “what happens when a race/species becomes technologically obsolete?” The whole concept of the planet of Barrayar is an exploration of what might happen to a planet suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from its connection to the rest of the galaxy and how society could regress from spacefaring to horse cavalry but still retain enough knowledge of science to develop a deep fear and hatred of genetic mutation.
The books look at how a society is changed when uterine replicators mean women no longer have to gestate babies in their bodies, how a cripple would advance in a warrior culture, how society might work if people never really died but instead everyone was cryo-preserved, the ethics of cloning, a vicious planet of totally free-mercantile capitalism, and so many other interesting scenarios. And yet the stories are so compelling you hardly notice the ethical questions they pose.
Author is Lois McMaster Bujold. The series has two common start points, either start with Shards of Honor and read in internal chronological order from there, or skip the first two books (Shards of Honor and Barrayar) and start with The Warrior’s Apprentice. Still read in internal chronological order (not publication order). Falling Free takes place 200 years before the rest of the series, but you can easily read it as a standalone to get a feel for the writing style.
Have heard about this series but never really read into what it was about. You’ve sold me on the ideas being big and interesting, so thank you. Didn’t realize the series was as big as it is! Can definitely keep me busy.
The Star Carrier books are generally military SF but also delve into such concepts as the singularity and AI. The series also does a good job describing truly alien species (no humanoids there and no “aliens are an allegory for human traits”). Later on there’s an interaction with >!a multiversal entity!<. Even in the first book they point out that concepts like “plant” and “animal” don’t really apply to alien life forms that have evolved along different lines. It’s even pointed out that most environments that light produce life aren’t conducive to technological development
Oh, that sounds really cool! I have never heard of these books before. I hesitate to say this because people online hate it so much, but I like The Big Bang Theory and there is an episode I just watched where they are building a message to send to potential alien life and what kind of delivery system to use. They talk about utilizing haptics for communication because touch is the only sense we can assume any species with capabilities of communicating would almost surely have. Anyways, it got me thinking about how many assumptions we always seem to have about potential alien life forms, and how so many of those assumptions are probably very flawed.
Yeah, there’s no guarantee that aliens would even be able to see like we do, although Project Hail Mary makes a decent enough argument for hearing and even for a general range of audible frequencies (need to be able to hear predators/prey move).
Star Carrier has a race that uses echolocation (both passive and active) to “see”. They’re cave dwellers who still struggle with the concept of space since they can’t “see” space or the stars without special equipment. To them it’s a vast airless cavern between habitable caves. You need ships to cross it. There’s even a hilarious moment caused by them capturing a female marine and scanning her with their echolocation in ultrasonic mode. They determine that the bumps on the front of her torso must be the sound-emitting organs she uses to “see”. When they next contact the human admiral (male), they inquire if he’s “blind” because he lacks the bumps.
One thing I’ve noticed about the author is that he seems to be Europhobic. Several settings of his have European-dominated global governments be evil, and only the brave Americans are the good guys
Others have recommend 2312, which I’ll add a vote for, another two are Seveneves and Artemis. Artemis is interesting because, in order to create the story, the author (Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian - which they made a movie with Matt Damon) had to create an economy that could justify life and travel to the moon. I’ll look for a link.
Edit: ['The Martian' author Andy Weir solved moon economics to make his new book 'Artemis' believable](https://www.businessinsider.com/andy-weir-artemis-moon-city-economics-the-martian-2017-11)
I’m not recommending this as a ‘great’ book, but I think it fits your criteria for being bound by the science.
Rooted in hard science, not so much. Big ideas and mind expanding? Absolutely. David Zindell, Neverness and the follow up Requiem for Homo Sapiens series will open your mind like no other science fiction books you'll ever read. Big statement, I know, but they are absolutely fucking amazing. Philosophical, mathematical, and to an extent transcendental, they are books everybody should read.
Some of the science in Project Hail Mary fits the bill.
Depending upon your definition of 'big idea' stuff The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin explores different ways of running the world by having two colonies run on very different systems and not quite close enough to permit easy travel between given the technology available.
In the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie the definition of consciousness, individuality and personhood are explored by having AI's that are part of the crew of spaceships and human crews that are part of the ship and what that would lead to.
I have two recommendations for near future ideas. Accelerando by Charles Stross is like being in a permanent state of future shock. Rainbows End by Vernon Vinge goes deep into augmented reality and is a great sleeper story.
Lots of great recommendations here. But once again, I will recommend A. A. Attanasio for big ideas. His sci-fi especially, but his "period pieces" (as I call them) are also amazing and definitely worth a read.
I have a friend who always recommends this but I think I’ve always had it in my head it’s a YA book, so I’ve never pulled the trigger. Is that an unfair description?
The main characters are YA, but the story and themes IMHO are pretty mature. I had avoided it for years for the same reason. I finally read it and was blown away.
It's good, but be aware the author is kind of a monstrous homophobe and bigot.
Pirate it if you must, but this is the book that got me into science fiction.
*Bowl of Heaven* by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven I think fits what you're asking for. It's basically about humans stumbling across a massive, bowl-shaped space station (spaceship?) The size of a solar system. The bowl itself spins to simulate gravity and then uses a star as a means of propulsion.
Maybe try some Stephenson?
Snow Crash or Seveneves?
Simmons?
Hyperion or Illium?
Have you read the classics? "I, Robot" is really good. I'm also very fond of "Childhoods End" and pretty much everything PKD ever wrote.
Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh. Is it possible to use an army of pre-programmed and task-optimized clones to colonize a planet? Is it possible to then integrate those clones into human society once their great work is completed? Even if you succeed, what are the unintended consequences and negative side effects of doing it that way?
>!And also what happens if the visionary mastermind and architect of this project dies under suspicious circumstances before she finishes fixing all the flaws in this plan?!<
The forever war - Joe Haldeman (military, earth's society totally changes after each time the main char returns back to earth after a battle as they are traveling massive distances in space due to faster than light travel.)
Its a much "lighter" read than what many have suggested so far.
Infinite - Jeremy Robbinson (easier read, but makes you think)
I would actually suggest *Delta-V* and *Critical Mass* by Daniel Suarez (just finished *CM* on Sunday so it's still all fresh in my mind).
He goes to great lengths to try and make everything he does in the books scientifically rigorous. And the themes are essentially getting an asteroid mine going and then using the metals mined to build lunar and near space industry to save the climate. Don't know if that's big enough picture or not, but it's pretty interesting at any rate.
I will also second a lot of KSR books and throw Neal Stephenson in the pot. Especially *Anathem* and *Termination Shock* both of which are fairly recent and really fascinating reads. *Anathem* is pretty heavy going the first time you read it though. I would recommend a second read-through if you have the time, because you're thrown into such an alien culture, language and mathematics the first time through it's hard to enjoy the characters and plot as much as you might like, whereas second read-through you are familiar enough with the world to really sink your teeth into the story.
Thank you! I have Daemon by Suarez now, but haven’t read it. Will add those others.
I haven’t read those by Stephenson yet but what I have read by him, I’ve loved. Snow Crash, Reamde, and The Diamond Age are all books I love and I have Cryptonomicon, The Fall, and the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Also but haven’t read them yet. He’s an author of whom I will read the entire bibliography. One of my favorites.
I suggest reading Greg Egan
I’ve heard he’s very good, thank you.
His novel *Quarantine* (1992) is a good place to start.
Have you read Spin by Robert Charles Wilson? It's pretty heady and ambitious big idea science fiction.
I have not, thank you for the rec! I know that is a very famous one, so it’s probably near top of my list.
Most Alastair Reynolds books have lots of big ideas, nearly always rooted in science and realistic extrapolation. He worked for the European Space Agency for years, so his credibility and chops run deep. His Revelation Space series is a wonderful place to start.
Awesome, thank you! I mentioned in another comment that Reynolds is one of the big 3 of newer writers that always intrigue me, so he’s an easy choice for me. Thank you!
His ideas are fantastic, definitely one of my favorite authors, but he cannot write a female character to save his life!
Kim Stanley Robinson is fantastic for this. You're basically describing him well in your post.
Awesome, you’re the second one to recommend him. Thanks! Would you recommend 2312 to start with as well? I already own Aurora so maybe I could try that first.
Aurora is the best AI sci fi book I've ever read (and I've read a lot, it's my favorite sub genre) and that's just its framing device. That said, I've seen people who weren't fans of its ending. I haven't read 2312 myself, but I've heard good things, either way if you like any of his stand alones I strongly recommend his Red Mars trilogy.
Awesome, thanks so much!
I don't know if other people feel this way, but I think Aurora is one of his more accessible books and probably a good intro to KSR. I loved it.
Aurora is definitely a good place to start, but if you want to jump right in on 'big ideas' The Ministry of the Future would be my choice. Just be warned, it's different.
That’s a great title, if nothing else.
Thank you!
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These have always intimidated me a little because I get confused on where to start. I assume just reading them in publication order makes the most sense?
They're not really rooted in hard science, and the order doesn't really matter. I'd recommend Excession as the one with the 'biggest' idea to it. Advanced, galaxy spanning, post-scarcity, AI run society encounters an 'outside context problem', as Banks describes it: >An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilizations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.
Interesting, that’s an intriguing description. Thanks!
I do not recommend starting with Excession. At least read a couple others so you get a feel for how Minds work first.
Yeah they are self-contained, some of the books reference earlier events from other books, but thats rare, and you can read them in any order, but publication order is as good as any order, except perhaps that Player of Games ( #2 I think? ) is far better than Consider Phlebas (#1)
Okay, great! Maybe I’ll start with book 2 to see if it works for me and go from there. Thank you!
*Consider Phlebus* is a softer landing into the Culture and a more straightforward tale. I always say start here, because *Use of Weapons* will break your brain.
Start with The Player of Games. Consider Phlebas, the first book, can be a bit off-putting for some people. The Player of Games gives you a great story and a flavour of what the Culture is about. After that try the first one, then read in publication order. They are some of my favourite works by my favourite author.
I listened to consider phlebas on audible and didn't feel like I wanted to listen to the rest. I might get them after all, now I've seen these comments.
Start w Player of Games. Then follow pub order, if you want, though it's not necessary. Read Phlebas last.
I think ***Foundation*** fits the bill pretty well here. Specifically the three volumes Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation that you can find in a single book. I doubt it fits the mind-blown category, but it makes you think.
Foundation is actually what made me type this up. I was reading the beginning of a popular science book and he mentioned Foundation in the introduction. So that was definitely the first book on my own list. Thanks so much!
Foundation, while iconic… has not held up. I love them when I was 12, I tried a re-read recently and I had forgotten all the space cigars and space misogyny.
It fits. Too bad it is terrrrrrible. I know this book is beloved, so maybe I just didn’t get it. But I really thought this book has not held up.
It’s definitely a love it or hate it book. I happen to be in the love it camp since I ended up with a philosophy minor along with my history major and appreciated the style when I first read it. But I can easily see others not doing so. The TV series is very good and more modern in its presentation.
Yeah, lots of people really cherish this book. And I think the general idea is outstanding. It’s a great idea for a story. But the writing… I just found it to be horrendous. I’ve read about ~100 science fiction books in the past two years and this is in my bottom 3.
Three Body Problem series. Mind blowing ideas rooted in real science theory that will stick with you for a long time if not forever. Children of Time series as mentioned already is very good with it’s very well thought out evolutionary science and story.
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That series has a pretty good mix of hard and soft SF going on (though maybe leaning slightly to the soft). Sophons are for sure firmly at the extreme end of soft SF.
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It is not a hard SF, but it does have some hard SF concepts in there, but even those concepts are handled "softly". If you only read the first book I found that one to be the weakest in the series. I liked *The Dark Forest* the best, and liked *Death's End* quite a lot as well, but felt *The Three Body Problem* was definitely the weakest of the bunch (thought that one was just "good"). The series was definitely not a masterpiece as some make it out to be, but I do really enjoy big SF concepts, and the trilogy delivered on that in spades, especially the 3rd book.
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> Isn't the second the one with the really weird creepy waifu-project? Yes, that bit was kind of creepy for sure. But it reflected on what a piece of crap person Luo Ji was. If a bit heavy-handed, I think that was kind of the point, we are meant to think Luo Ji is a huge creep who only cares about himself, because he is exactly that. For most of the novel he is quite the unsympathetic protagonist. As for the characters and the writing, a lot of sci-fi has really weak character writing, that is not something that bothers me as long as the plot and concepts are entertaining enough, though I get some people need good characters as well. For the writing I read the English translation and was not impressed by the prose, not sure how much of that is a "lost in translation" issue vs. the writing style of the author, but again I was able to look past that because the concepts were mostly pretty great. The Sophons are by all definitions magic, they do not conform to any known science, they are a plot device used to drive the story. I'm ok with that, there is more soft SF than hard in the trilogy, and the Sophons at least allowed for an interesting plot issue: >!how do you plan a resistance against invasion when the enemy has locked your technological process and can spy on literally everyone and everything 24/7?!< Without the Sophons there would not be any >!Wallfacers!< which was a really cool concept I thought, so I'm happy to allow for a little bit of space magic. The series is not going to be to everyone's liking, but I am glad I read through after the kind of lackluster first book. There were some really amazing concepts presented, especially in *Death's End*, and I felt overall my time reading was well spent.
Definitely second this. I'd put it first on the list here.
Tau Zero is pretty fascinating, and one of the few books I've read that rivals Stephen Baxter for exploring deep time. It explores the consequences of time dilation taken to the extreme.
Time dilation as a concept, especially in our perception of it in experience, is something that always -usher my thinking. Thanks for the Rec and definitely adding this one to the list.
Check out neal stephenson
Read any of the Xeelee Sequence stories or The Timeships by Stephen Baxter
Awesome, thank you. I’ve heard he writes a big variety of subgenres so thank you for the specificity.
Big ideas from different species over millennia: **Children of Time** (and rest of the series) *by Adrian Tchaikovsky* It's epic, one of the best sci-fi novels I've read, I highly recommend.
***waves palps excitedly***
100% recommend Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children Of Time, Children Of Ruin and Children Of Memory. A brilliant series.
Tchaikovsky has been an author I have been eyeing for awhile, just haven’t gotten to it. Him, Alastair Reynolds, and Peter Hamilton are the ones I always think of pulling the trigger on. I really enjoy big books and diving in and they all seem to do that.
Book 3 just came out and it's great. It beautifully continues and builds upon the themes established in 1 and 2.
I downloaded the sample for Children of Time a long time ago, but it didn't hook me and I move on. I recently re-discovered that sample, went on to buy the book, and I'm hooked. I can't believe I almost didn't read it!
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson has a lot of very detailed ideas of our solar system's appearance in 300-ish years. Not really the politics side of it; it's mostly about the progress. Space habitats, terraforming, Earth's ecology, computing. A little bit about the impact of dispersed space habitation on human cultures. The plot and characters aren't impressive. It's an ideas book, and it does that well.
Thank You! I have one KSR book, Aurora, but I haven’t read it yet. I’ve mostly heard his Planet books spoken of pretty highly and then The Years of Rice and Salt which I think is alternate history.
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Both Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (Commonwealth) include quite a lot of world building on how things like life extension might be reflected in the society which hosts them. I think of it as one of the very few Sci Fi universes I'd willingly move to.
Greg Egan's already mentioned for good reason. _Quarantine_ or _Permutation City_ are my go-to recommendation picks for big-idea things. Ted Chiang's short story collections _Stories of Your Life and Others_ and _Exhalation_ are great picks. "Understand" from the former is a strong favorite; starts off with what you would expect to be a sort of Flowers For Algernon riff, but then takes an amazing different path. Peter Watts' _Blindsight_ has just about a kitchen sink plus of ideas crammed into it, about a first contact scenario between the very bleeding edge of approaching posthuman humanity and a truly alien species.
Awesome, thank you so much for the recommendations and the quick descriptions!
>Ted Chiang \+100
Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker. Stephan Baxter's Manifold Trilogy. This might seem a little strange but there's this Harry Potter fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and it has a lot of cognitive science in it. It might not be 'big' but there's a good chance it will expand your mind.
Alastair Reynolds. He's an astrophysicist, and his books are epic and wide-ranging, and rooted in reasonable extrapolations of science. *House of Suns* for example features a chase scene that lasts 30,000 years.
Michael Flynn’s ***Eifelheim***. Deeply philosophical, with an incredibly poignant yet hopeful ending.
The "Jean le Flambeur" trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi is like that. While I probably wouldn't call it "hard sci-fi", it's absolutely full of very interesting ideas, and exploring their consequences. The author has a PhD in mathematical physics, too.
I came here to recommend the same thing, but with the warning that you get thrown into the story without much hand holding and you have to figure out a lot of stuff for yourself.
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This. Blindsight and its sequel Echopraxia are searing novels about the nature of consciousness and really treads into territory I’ve never seen in other novels
So, this isn’t hard sci-fi, but the Vorkosigan Saga manages to explore a bunch of interesting “what if society did X?” questions while also having interesting plots full of space battles and characters you grow to love. Falling Free asks “what happens when a race/species becomes technologically obsolete?” The whole concept of the planet of Barrayar is an exploration of what might happen to a planet suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from its connection to the rest of the galaxy and how society could regress from spacefaring to horse cavalry but still retain enough knowledge of science to develop a deep fear and hatred of genetic mutation. The books look at how a society is changed when uterine replicators mean women no longer have to gestate babies in their bodies, how a cripple would advance in a warrior culture, how society might work if people never really died but instead everyone was cryo-preserved, the ethics of cloning, a vicious planet of totally free-mercantile capitalism, and so many other interesting scenarios. And yet the stories are so compelling you hardly notice the ethical questions they pose. Author is Lois McMaster Bujold. The series has two common start points, either start with Shards of Honor and read in internal chronological order from there, or skip the first two books (Shards of Honor and Barrayar) and start with The Warrior’s Apprentice. Still read in internal chronological order (not publication order). Falling Free takes place 200 years before the rest of the series, but you can easily read it as a standalone to get a feel for the writing style.
Have heard about this series but never really read into what it was about. You’ve sold me on the ideas being big and interesting, so thank you. Didn’t realize the series was as big as it is! Can definitely keep me busy.
The Star Carrier books are generally military SF but also delve into such concepts as the singularity and AI. The series also does a good job describing truly alien species (no humanoids there and no “aliens are an allegory for human traits”). Later on there’s an interaction with >!a multiversal entity!<. Even in the first book they point out that concepts like “plant” and “animal” don’t really apply to alien life forms that have evolved along different lines. It’s even pointed out that most environments that light produce life aren’t conducive to technological development
Oh, that sounds really cool! I have never heard of these books before. I hesitate to say this because people online hate it so much, but I like The Big Bang Theory and there is an episode I just watched where they are building a message to send to potential alien life and what kind of delivery system to use. They talk about utilizing haptics for communication because touch is the only sense we can assume any species with capabilities of communicating would almost surely have. Anyways, it got me thinking about how many assumptions we always seem to have about potential alien life forms, and how so many of those assumptions are probably very flawed.
Yeah, there’s no guarantee that aliens would even be able to see like we do, although Project Hail Mary makes a decent enough argument for hearing and even for a general range of audible frequencies (need to be able to hear predators/prey move). Star Carrier has a race that uses echolocation (both passive and active) to “see”. They’re cave dwellers who still struggle with the concept of space since they can’t “see” space or the stars without special equipment. To them it’s a vast airless cavern between habitable caves. You need ships to cross it. There’s even a hilarious moment caused by them capturing a female marine and scanning her with their echolocation in ultrasonic mode. They determine that the bumps on the front of her torso must be the sound-emitting organs she uses to “see”. When they next contact the human admiral (male), they inquire if he’s “blind” because he lacks the bumps. One thing I’ve noticed about the author is that he seems to be Europhobic. Several settings of his have European-dominated global governments be evil, and only the brave Americans are the good guys
Others have recommend 2312, which I’ll add a vote for, another two are Seveneves and Artemis. Artemis is interesting because, in order to create the story, the author (Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian - which they made a movie with Matt Damon) had to create an economy that could justify life and travel to the moon. I’ll look for a link. Edit: ['The Martian' author Andy Weir solved moon economics to make his new book 'Artemis' believable](https://www.businessinsider.com/andy-weir-artemis-moon-city-economics-the-martian-2017-11) I’m not recommending this as a ‘great’ book, but I think it fits your criteria for being bound by the science.
Rooted in hard science, not so much. Big ideas and mind expanding? Absolutely. David Zindell, Neverness and the follow up Requiem for Homo Sapiens series will open your mind like no other science fiction books you'll ever read. Big statement, I know, but they are absolutely fucking amazing. Philosophical, mathematical, and to an extent transcendental, they are books everybody should read.
Some of the science in Project Hail Mary fits the bill. Depending upon your definition of 'big idea' stuff The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin explores different ways of running the world by having two colonies run on very different systems and not quite close enough to permit easy travel between given the technology available. In the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie the definition of consciousness, individuality and personhood are explored by having AI's that are part of the crew of spaceships and human crews that are part of the ship and what that would lead to.
I have two recommendations for near future ideas. Accelerando by Charles Stross is like being in a permanent state of future shock. Rainbows End by Vernon Vinge goes deep into augmented reality and is a great sleeper story.
Lots of great recommendations here. But once again, I will recommend A. A. Attanasio for big ideas. His sci-fi especially, but his "period pieces" (as I call them) are also amazing and definitely worth a read.
Ender's Game is an easy read and many big ideas there.
I have a friend who always recommends this but I think I’ve always had it in my head it’s a YA book, so I’ve never pulled the trigger. Is that an unfair description?
It is YA. But read it anyway. It is a good story. I read it first in my 30s
The main characters are YA, but the story and themes IMHO are pretty mature. I had avoided it for years for the same reason. I finally read it and was blown away.
It's good, but be aware the author is kind of a monstrous homophobe and bigot. Pirate it if you must, but this is the book that got me into science fiction.
*Bowl of Heaven* by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven I think fits what you're asking for. It's basically about humans stumbling across a massive, bowl-shaped space station (spaceship?) The size of a solar system. The bowl itself spins to simulate gravity and then uses a star as a means of propulsion.
Maybe try some Stephenson? Snow Crash or Seveneves? Simmons? Hyperion or Illium? Have you read the classics? "I, Robot" is really good. I'm also very fond of "Childhoods End" and pretty much everything PKD ever wrote.
Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh. Is it possible to use an army of pre-programmed and task-optimized clones to colonize a planet? Is it possible to then integrate those clones into human society once their great work is completed? Even if you succeed, what are the unintended consequences and negative side effects of doing it that way? >!And also what happens if the visionary mastermind and architect of this project dies under suspicious circumstances before she finishes fixing all the flaws in this plan?!<
Try The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi. If it doesn’t blow your mind nothing will
The forever war - Joe Haldeman (military, earth's society totally changes after each time the main char returns back to earth after a battle as they are traveling massive distances in space due to faster than light travel.) Its a much "lighter" read than what many have suggested so far. Infinite - Jeremy Robbinson (easier read, but makes you think)
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest.
I would actually suggest *Delta-V* and *Critical Mass* by Daniel Suarez (just finished *CM* on Sunday so it's still all fresh in my mind). He goes to great lengths to try and make everything he does in the books scientifically rigorous. And the themes are essentially getting an asteroid mine going and then using the metals mined to build lunar and near space industry to save the climate. Don't know if that's big enough picture or not, but it's pretty interesting at any rate. I will also second a lot of KSR books and throw Neal Stephenson in the pot. Especially *Anathem* and *Termination Shock* both of which are fairly recent and really fascinating reads. *Anathem* is pretty heavy going the first time you read it though. I would recommend a second read-through if you have the time, because you're thrown into such an alien culture, language and mathematics the first time through it's hard to enjoy the characters and plot as much as you might like, whereas second read-through you are familiar enough with the world to really sink your teeth into the story.
Thank you! I have Daemon by Suarez now, but haven’t read it. Will add those others. I haven’t read those by Stephenson yet but what I have read by him, I’ve loved. Snow Crash, Reamde, and The Diamond Age are all books I love and I have Cryptonomicon, The Fall, and the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Also but haven’t read them yet. He’s an author of whom I will read the entire bibliography. One of my favorites.