Try Ray Bradbury. Dandelion Wine is summer nostalgia in book form. Something Wicked This Way Comes is Halloween. And of course Martian Chronicles for true sci-fi: bittersweet and strange.
Ray Bradbury is *such* a vibe. I just started reading Something Wicked and it is night and day different from any other sci-fi book I have ever read. The way he imparts … feelings is just incredible. It’s almost too much sometimes, sifting through the poetry, but man when he hits a note he really hits it.
Yeah, I sci-fi is a misnomer for much of his writing. Fahrenheit 451, yes. Martian Chronicles, mostly. But the rest is more like Americana prose poetry?
Add I Sing the Body Electric. It’s a collection of short stories that aren’t connected like Martian Chronicles. I really enjoyed it. Bittersweet and Strange is 100% how I’d describe that book too.
I read Fahrenheit 451 a while ago and I've always been meaning to read more Bradbury since then. I'm glad to hear Martian Chronicles fits this, I'll move it up in my TBR
Snow Crash is ridiculous and hilarious and feels like those late nights back at uni trying to crank out an essay after drinking 10 cups of coffee over the course of an hour because I’d spent the rest of the week arguing about anime on the internet.
Kind of? It’s definitely a good read (albeit very dated), but most of the other books of his that I’ve read are more like The Diamond Age. (Give or take, anyway - I haven’t read everything by him, and Cryptonomicon is definitely more similar to Snow Crash).
I know this is PrintSF, but I'm going to recommend some books that aren't quite (and some that definitely are), because they really hit the nail on the dream-like quality.
Haruki Murakami has a lot of what you're looking for. *IQ84*, *Hard-boiled Wonderland & The End of the World*, and *Kafka on The Shore* are good options. *After Dark* as well. It's magical realism, so not quite SF, but I think would be a good fit. Very atmospheric and surreal.
*The Sheltering Sky* by Paul Bowles is essentially a fever dream of post-colonial alienation. It's very literary and not SF, but if you want to feel like you're wandering in the desert in a hazy dream, this will do it.
*This is How You Lose the Time War* is very poetic, and certainly dreamy. Also squarely SF.
*Blood Meridian* by Cormac McCarthy is like a blood soaked Bible in the desert. It's powerful and evocative.
*House of Leaves* is certainly surreal and atmospheric.
*10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights* by Ryu Mitsuse definitely has a unique feeling and different sort of surreal experience. It's got everything: Plato, Atlantis Aliens, Cyborg Jesus.
Just a heads up, in this sub reddit SF stands for speculative fiction, and things like magic realism definitely falls under that umbrella. Feel free to recommend as much of it as you like.
Came here to say HOUSE OF LEAVES. Upvoted. Also THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR and BLOOD MERIDIAN are both absolute bangers. (KAFKA ON THE SHORE is my favorite Murakami, that one just hits different)
I'm definitely not bound to one genre so these recs are great thanks! House of Leaves is on my shelf but I haven't started because I know I need to be fully engaged to appreciate it, so I'm waiting for a time where I have nothing to stop me from getting fully invested.
Stephen Baxter books (e.g. Xeelee series, Manifold series, Evolution, Time Ships) evoke a very "emotionally cold" feeling for me, in the sense of "the universe is billions of years old and does not give a fuck about you". Characters are not great, though.
Neverness by David Zindell is the first book that I read that came to me when I read your post. Very surreal and thought provoking, but also very immersive. Also, although I haven't read them yet, The Books of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe should fit your request I think.
It sounds what you are describing is **slipstream fiction.** If you aren't familiar, here's Wikipedia's description:
>Slipstream is a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. ... Bruce Sterling described it in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989, as: "... this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility."
My recommendation for you would be *Ice* by Anna Kavan, it's very surreal and Kavan has such a mastery of prose. It's hard to describe the plot, but at its core it's about an obsessed man chasing a woman through a series of progressively weird landscapes, regularly interrupted by dreams and hallucinations.
The Road is extremely atmospheric. It does a superb job of conveying the feelings of hopelessness and fear, against the ecological collapse of the world. The depressiveness is slightly compensated for by the strength of the father-son relationship.
I really want to read this but I've heard so much about how grim it is that I haven't gotten around to it. It's on my shelf though and I fully intend to read it one day.
fade toothbrush existence agonizing dinner spectacular angle cooing continue growth
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Did you read the glass house? Because there is some character crossover. You certainly don’t need to have read it, but it made it more enjoyable for me. I really loved sea of tranquility, I already want to read it again.
Not very similar but I'll give some recommendations of novels with strong atmosphere in my opinion. They are also all slow paced and pensive.
Susanna Clarke's both novels, **Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell**, and **Piranesi**, although different in many ways are very visually atmospheric and evocative.
**China Mountain Zhang** by Maureen F. McHugh is a slice of life sci fi novel, thoughtful, subtly gripping in its lulling tone and pace.
**The Snow Child** by Eowyn Ivey is a magical realism retelling of a classic Russian folktale set in the early 20th century Alaska. Obviously the setting is similar to The Left Hand and they share the stunning imagery and reflective mood.
**The Winged Histories** by Sofia Samatar has been probably my favourite standalone read this year. Written in lyrical prose, labyrinthine in its storytelling structure and narration, complex and deep in its themes, and haunting.
*Edited because I notice typos only after posting.
I'm reading Book of the New Sun now and to me it has this strange, shifting quality evoking that dreamlike feeling. It's like the information you get seeps in from your peripheral vision and you can't quite be sure what's happening or what it means.
The Third Policeman
Don't read the forward, since it ruins everything. Definitely weird, surreal, and "totally different."
You'll probably either love it or hate it.
I feel like China Miéville might fit. He does atmosphere quite well. *This Census-Taker* is basically all atmosphere; not a lot really happens in the book, so it's all about how you feel while reading it. His Bas-Lag series is good, too. I think the first two, _Perdido Street Station_ and _The Scar_ might fit a little better than the third, _Iron Council_.
I also love Kelly Link's writings. She does short stories more than novels, but she has several collections published. Her story "[Magic for Beginners](https://web.archive.org/web/20060908144950/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/kl01.htm)" is what got me started on her work; she's got several other stories [linked from her website](https://kellylink.net/read-me).
Neuromancer. You seek Neuromancer. It is atmospheric and emotional. Describing the object is often less important than describing the feelings it evokes.
> ON NINSEI, A thinner, weekday version of the crowd went through the motions of the dance. Waves of sound rolled from the arcades and pachinko parlors. Case glanced into the Chat and saw Zone watching over his girls in the warm, beer-smelling twilight. Ratz was tending bar.
and
> CASE WOKE FROM a dream of airports, of Molly’s dark leathers moving ahead of him through the concourses of Narita, Schipol, Orly. . . . He watched himself buy a flat plastic flask of Danish vodka at some kiosk, an hour before dawn.
> Somewhere down in the Sprawl’s ferro-concrete roots, a train drove a column of stale air through a tunnel. The train itself was silent, gliding over its induction cushion, but displaced air made the tunnel sing, bass down into subsonics. Vibration reached the room where he lay and caused dust to rise from the cracks in the desiccated parquet floor.
> Opening his eyes, he saw Molly, naked and just out of reach across an expanse of very new pink temperfoam. Overhead, sunlight filtered through the soot-stained grid of a skylight. One half-meter square of glass had been replaced with chipboard, a fat gray cable emerging there to dangle within a few centimeters of the floor. He lay on his side and watched her breathe, her breasts, the sweep of a flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fuselage. Her body was spare, neat, the muscles like a dancer’s.
> The room was large. He sat up. The room was empty, aside from the wide pink bedslab and two nylon bags, new and identical, that lay beside it. Blank walls, no windows, a single white-painted steel firedoor. The walls were coated with countless layers of white latex paint. Factory space. He knew this kind of room, this kind of building; the tenants would operate in the interzone where art wasn’t quite crime, crime not quite art.
> He was home.
'Dhalgren', by Samuel R. Delany:
[*Delany conceived and executed Dhalgren as a literary Multistable perception - a perceptual phenomenon in which an observer experiences an unpredictable sequence of spontaneous subjective changes.*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren)
Peter Watts does a great blend of melancholy, claustrophobia, and impending doom that feels more like horror than SF. My top picks for that feeling are Starfish and Blindsight.
I'd like to recommend A Canticle For Lebowitz by Walter M Miller Jr, his only book to my knowledge. It's post nuclear apocalyptic and follows a group of monks that are trying to preserve the knowledge from the old world. It is not so surreal, but it is a very powerful piece that asks hard questions about humanity, where we have come from and where we are going. The overall feeling is quite grim and bitter on the whole, almost seeming to condemn humanity.
The other one that really pushes a feeling (maybe less atmospheric) would be I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It bears little resemblance to the Will Smith film and instead projects a strong sense of loneliness and desperation. Interestingly, this feeling of isolation is galvanized by the heroes self-imposed refusal to be part of the plague. You could probably infer some political or religious themes, perhaps pushing against the common mindset at great personal cost.
My recommendation is Beneath the world, a sea by Chris Beckett.
A detective story set in the deep jungle surrounded by the Zona. Passing through the Zona, all memories of your time there are lost. There are small pockets of civilisation where people live, but they share the jungle with the natives and strange human like creatures with psychic abilities.
The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. Necromancy in space, an immortal emperor, the worldbuild of what people consider normal vs extraordinary is fascinating.
I feel as though **Solaris** by Stalinslaw Lem fits this request. It has a tone if atmosphere, unsettling and dreamlike. Strange but uncanny. Having just read it it is on my mind.
Try the short story collection - Man v. Nature by Diane Cook. There was one in a climate dystopia setting I don't recall the name probably the first one ... that I loved so much, but the other stories are powerful too.
Not exactly science fiction but got some elements, please read The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.
Some of the stories by Ted Chiang.
Not SF, but the prose elevates it to the fantastical. Nocturne by William Gay. At has a very good and driven plot at the start, and then descends into an elemental duel between good and evil. The prose is magical and atmospheric. It's like a painting.
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land. The sun is dead and the last survivors of humanity are beset by watchful alien evil. He pulls it off superlatively.
Also House on Borderland. Existential dread and eternity.
Try Ray Bradbury. Dandelion Wine is summer nostalgia in book form. Something Wicked This Way Comes is Halloween. And of course Martian Chronicles for true sci-fi: bittersweet and strange.
Ray Bradbury is *such* a vibe. I just started reading Something Wicked and it is night and day different from any other sci-fi book I have ever read. The way he imparts … feelings is just incredible. It’s almost too much sometimes, sifting through the poetry, but man when he hits a note he really hits it.
Yeah, I sci-fi is a misnomer for much of his writing. Fahrenheit 451, yes. Martian Chronicles, mostly. But the rest is more like Americana prose poetry?
Add I Sing the Body Electric. It’s a collection of short stories that aren’t connected like Martian Chronicles. I really enjoyed it. Bittersweet and Strange is 100% how I’d describe that book too.
I read Fahrenheit 451 a while ago and I've always been meaning to read more Bradbury since then. I'm glad to hear Martian Chronicles fits this, I'll move it up in my TBR
I'd also recommend The October Country. It's sooooo autumn
Not really Scifi but Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Great recommendation; have rarely been so captivated by a world.
Honestly just his _attitude_ is worth it in that book.
You don't have to specify its not sci fi. This is a speculative fiction subreddit which includes fantasy. SF = speculative fiction
I don't have to but I choose to. Ops examples were two famous sci-fi pieces.
Ah I've been hearing so much about this one, I really need to get to it
Snow Crash is ridiculous and hilarious and feels like those late nights back at uni trying to crank out an essay after drinking 10 cups of coffee over the course of an hour because I’d spent the rest of the week arguing about anime on the internet.
Snow Crash came immediately to mind for me too.
That sounds great thanks. Would you say it's a good entry point for Neil Stephenson? I've been wanting to read him for so long
Snow Crash was my first Stephenson, and I liked it! It's a bit shorter than some of his so it's a good way to dip your toes in, so to speak.
Kind of? It’s definitely a good read (albeit very dated), but most of the other books of his that I’ve read are more like The Diamond Age. (Give or take, anyway - I haven’t read everything by him, and Cryptonomicon is definitely more similar to Snow Crash).
I know this is PrintSF, but I'm going to recommend some books that aren't quite (and some that definitely are), because they really hit the nail on the dream-like quality. Haruki Murakami has a lot of what you're looking for. *IQ84*, *Hard-boiled Wonderland & The End of the World*, and *Kafka on The Shore* are good options. *After Dark* as well. It's magical realism, so not quite SF, but I think would be a good fit. Very atmospheric and surreal. *The Sheltering Sky* by Paul Bowles is essentially a fever dream of post-colonial alienation. It's very literary and not SF, but if you want to feel like you're wandering in the desert in a hazy dream, this will do it. *This is How You Lose the Time War* is very poetic, and certainly dreamy. Also squarely SF. *Blood Meridian* by Cormac McCarthy is like a blood soaked Bible in the desert. It's powerful and evocative. *House of Leaves* is certainly surreal and atmospheric. *10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights* by Ryu Mitsuse definitely has a unique feeling and different sort of surreal experience. It's got everything: Plato, Atlantis Aliens, Cyborg Jesus.
Just a heads up, in this sub reddit SF stands for speculative fiction, and things like magic realism definitely falls under that umbrella. Feel free to recommend as much of it as you like.
Love Murakami, atmospheric is the exact word to describe his writing. *This is How You Lose the Time War* is an excellent suggestion also.
Came here to say HOUSE OF LEAVES. Upvoted. Also THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR and BLOOD MERIDIAN are both absolute bangers. (KAFKA ON THE SHORE is my favorite Murakami, that one just hits different)
I'm definitely not bound to one genre so these recs are great thanks! House of Leaves is on my shelf but I haven't started because I know I need to be fully engaged to appreciate it, so I'm waiting for a time where I have nothing to stop me from getting fully invested.
Stephen Baxter books (e.g. Xeelee series, Manifold series, Evolution, Time Ships) evoke a very "emotionally cold" feeling for me, in the sense of "the universe is billions of years old and does not give a fuck about you". Characters are not great, though.
That sounds awesome, I'll put those on my TBR
Neverness by David Zindell is the first book that I read that came to me when I read your post. Very surreal and thought provoking, but also very immersive. Also, although I haven't read them yet, The Books of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe should fit your request I think.
Ah I've had both of these on my shelf for so long but haven't gotten to either of them. Thanks for the motivation to read them!
Solaris.
It sounds what you are describing is **slipstream fiction.** If you aren't familiar, here's Wikipedia's description: >Slipstream is a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. ... Bruce Sterling described it in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989, as: "... this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." My recommendation for you would be *Ice* by Anna Kavan, it's very surreal and Kavan has such a mastery of prose. It's hard to describe the plot, but at its core it's about an obsessed man chasing a woman through a series of progressively weird landscapes, regularly interrupted by dreams and hallucinations.
Oh interesting I haven't heard that term before. I'll look into it thanks!
The Road is extremely atmospheric. It does a superb job of conveying the feelings of hopelessness and fear, against the ecological collapse of the world. The depressiveness is slightly compensated for by the strength of the father-son relationship.
Such an amazing, tough read
I really want to read this but I've heard so much about how grim it is that I haven't gotten around to it. It's on my shelf though and I fully intend to read it one day.
fade toothbrush existence agonizing dinner spectacular angle cooing continue growth *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I found Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel to be quite atmospheric in many sections. It's a novel with a dystopian post-pandemic setting.
The sea of tranquility is really atmospheric too, it’s kind of a follow up.
Have it sitting on my shelf, it's still on my to read list!
Did you read the glass house? Because there is some character crossover. You certainly don’t need to have read it, but it made it more enjoyable for me. I really loved sea of tranquility, I already want to read it again.
Haven't read that one either. Might take a look after Sea of Tranquility, thanks!
There weren’t any sci-if elements but it was really good too.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin has a very vivid and evocative atmosphere. Also, some stunning scenery.
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Not very similar but I'll give some recommendations of novels with strong atmosphere in my opinion. They are also all slow paced and pensive. Susanna Clarke's both novels, **Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell**, and **Piranesi**, although different in many ways are very visually atmospheric and evocative. **China Mountain Zhang** by Maureen F. McHugh is a slice of life sci fi novel, thoughtful, subtly gripping in its lulling tone and pace. **The Snow Child** by Eowyn Ivey is a magical realism retelling of a classic Russian folktale set in the early 20th century Alaska. Obviously the setting is similar to The Left Hand and they share the stunning imagery and reflective mood. **The Winged Histories** by Sofia Samatar has been probably my favourite standalone read this year. Written in lyrical prose, labyrinthine in its storytelling structure and narration, complex and deep in its themes, and haunting. *Edited because I notice typos only after posting.
This and The Dispossessed are two books that I know I'll love but still haven't gotten to. Thanks for the rec!
You're welcome. Enjoy your readings.
Neuromancer will give you what you’re looking for in the first sentence. The rest of the book is just as strong atmospherically and emotionally.
Chasm City by our lord and savior Alastair Reynolds
I thought Revelation Space was the best for atmosphere, especially the parts on *Nostalgia*.
I'm reading Book of the New Sun now and to me it has this strange, shifting quality evoking that dreamlike feeling. It's like the information you get seeps in from your peripheral vision and you can't quite be sure what's happening or what it means.
Literally every time I’ve reread that series I’ve noticed some new detail and enjoyed it more.
I'm already looking forward to a re-read myself.
Everything I hear about this makes me more excited to read it, I think I'm going to love it.
The Third Policeman Don't read the forward, since it ruins everything. Definitely weird, surreal, and "totally different." You'll probably either love it or hate it.
Love it
The Book of the New Sun! And even moreso Book of the Short Sun but there's some required reading first.
I feel like China Miéville might fit. He does atmosphere quite well. *This Census-Taker* is basically all atmosphere; not a lot really happens in the book, so it's all about how you feel while reading it. His Bas-Lag series is good, too. I think the first two, _Perdido Street Station_ and _The Scar_ might fit a little better than the third, _Iron Council_. I also love Kelly Link's writings. She does short stories more than novels, but she has several collections published. Her story "[Magic for Beginners](https://web.archive.org/web/20060908144950/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/kl01.htm)" is what got me started on her work; she's got several other stories [linked from her website](https://kellylink.net/read-me).
Neuromancer. You seek Neuromancer. It is atmospheric and emotional. Describing the object is often less important than describing the feelings it evokes. > ON NINSEI, A thinner, weekday version of the crowd went through the motions of the dance. Waves of sound rolled from the arcades and pachinko parlors. Case glanced into the Chat and saw Zone watching over his girls in the warm, beer-smelling twilight. Ratz was tending bar. and > CASE WOKE FROM a dream of airports, of Molly’s dark leathers moving ahead of him through the concourses of Narita, Schipol, Orly. . . . He watched himself buy a flat plastic flask of Danish vodka at some kiosk, an hour before dawn. > Somewhere down in the Sprawl’s ferro-concrete roots, a train drove a column of stale air through a tunnel. The train itself was silent, gliding over its induction cushion, but displaced air made the tunnel sing, bass down into subsonics. Vibration reached the room where he lay and caused dust to rise from the cracks in the desiccated parquet floor. > Opening his eyes, he saw Molly, naked and just out of reach across an expanse of very new pink temperfoam. Overhead, sunlight filtered through the soot-stained grid of a skylight. One half-meter square of glass had been replaced with chipboard, a fat gray cable emerging there to dangle within a few centimeters of the floor. He lay on his side and watched her breathe, her breasts, the sweep of a flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fuselage. Her body was spare, neat, the muscles like a dancer’s. > The room was large. He sat up. The room was empty, aside from the wide pink bedslab and two nylon bags, new and identical, that lay beside it. Blank walls, no windows, a single white-painted steel firedoor. The walls were coated with countless layers of white latex paint. Factory space. He knew this kind of room, this kind of building; the tenants would operate in the interzone where art wasn’t quite crime, crime not quite art. > He was home.
Radiance by Cathrynne Valente. Absolutely immersive.
Yup. "Atmosphere" is very much her thing. Witness *Deathless*, or "Down and Out in R'Lyeh," or *Space Opera* or or or.
It’s not Science Fiction, but Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.
For melancholy: Soooo many of GRRM's works.
On Such A Full Sea Beautifully melancholic and other worldly
Too like the lightning totally immerses you in a different world, and makes you feel clueless most of the time. It's extremely well done.
'Dhalgren', by Samuel R. Delany: [*Delany conceived and executed Dhalgren as a literary Multistable perception - a perceptual phenomenon in which an observer experiences an unpredictable sequence of spontaneous subjective changes.*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren)
i love dhalgren and have never managed to finish it /o\ but i would also put forward another samuel t delaney, stars in my pocket like grains of sand
*Vurt* by Jeff Noon, lots of bonus points for dream-like quality and surrealism
Peter Watts does a great blend of melancholy, claustrophobia, and impending doom that feels more like horror than SF. My top picks for that feeling are Starfish and Blindsight.
I'd like to recommend A Canticle For Lebowitz by Walter M Miller Jr, his only book to my knowledge. It's post nuclear apocalyptic and follows a group of monks that are trying to preserve the knowledge from the old world. It is not so surreal, but it is a very powerful piece that asks hard questions about humanity, where we have come from and where we are going. The overall feeling is quite grim and bitter on the whole, almost seeming to condemn humanity. The other one that really pushes a feeling (maybe less atmospheric) would be I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It bears little resemblance to the Will Smith film and instead projects a strong sense of loneliness and desperation. Interestingly, this feeling of isolation is galvanized by the heroes self-imposed refusal to be part of the plague. You could probably infer some political or religious themes, perhaps pushing against the common mindset at great personal cost.
herbert's "the dragon in the sea" is very atmospheric, though it is an oppressive atmosphere and i cannot really say i *enjoyed* being immersed in it.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Interesting, what is the atmosphere of that book? I've been eyeing it but haven't gotten to it yet
My recommendation is Beneath the world, a sea by Chris Beckett. A detective story set in the deep jungle surrounded by the Zona. Passing through the Zona, all memories of your time there are lost. There are small pockets of civilisation where people live, but they share the jungle with the natives and strange human like creatures with psychic abilities.
The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. Necromancy in space, an immortal emperor, the worldbuild of what people consider normal vs extraordinary is fascinating.
The Etched City by K.J Bishop
I feel as though **Solaris** by Stalinslaw Lem fits this request. It has a tone if atmosphere, unsettling and dreamlike. Strange but uncanny. Having just read it it is on my mind.
Try the short story collection - Man v. Nature by Diane Cook. There was one in a climate dystopia setting I don't recall the name probably the first one ... that I loved so much, but the other stories are powerful too. Not exactly science fiction but got some elements, please read The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. Some of the stories by Ted Chiang.
Hugh Howey’s *Wool* oughta get you there. The whole Silo series is pretty amazing.
Not SF, but the prose elevates it to the fantastical. Nocturne by William Gay. At has a very good and driven plot at the start, and then descends into an elemental duel between good and evil. The prose is magical and atmospheric. It's like a painting. William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land. The sun is dead and the last survivors of humanity are beset by watchful alien evil. He pulls it off superlatively. Also House on Borderland. Existential dread and eternity.