this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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What lesser-known sci-fi reads do you recommend? (tildes.net)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Zoomba669@lemmy.world to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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There are some great novel recommendations here, but I wouldn't say that most of them are lesser-known.

What are your recommendations?

As for me, I've exclusively read well-known novels, except if you consider someone like Alfred Bester obscure, for example.

One exception: Misha Burnett's Endless Summer: Twelve Strange Tales of Mankind's Future. It's a collection of exceptionnaly well-crafted stories. It ain't a novel, though.

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[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad. It's an anthology style and takes place in a far future where most of the characters are robots, focusing often on two constructors who compete with each other in achieving some goal first or building the best machine for a contest.

[–] FreeLikeGNU@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Other than the Tarkovsky's production, it's been adapted into movies rather badly, but Lem's Solaris is a fine read as well.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 1 week ago

I feel like stepping outside native English works is a bit like cheating. 😃 There's a lot of super interesting European scifi. During the USSR it was a major form of escapism and veiled criticism all over Eastern Europe so that area alone yielded a massive amount of scifi, but there's a rich history of the genre all over Europe. Mostly it got translated to neighboring European languages, seldom to English, and even if it did most likely never reached other continents.

To fit the theme I will give some French examples because French scifi has some major wierdos:

  • Pierre Stolze, "Marilyn Monroe et les samouraïs du père Noël" (Marilyn Monroe and Santa's samurais)
  • Gerard Klein, "Les Seigneurs de la guerre" (The Lords of War)
  • Pierre Barbet, "L'Empire du Baphomet" (Baphomet's Empire)

If you manage to read any of them I don't think you'll be dissapointed.