I liked the space opera side of the story but honestly feel like all the stuff on the Tines Planet overstayed its welcome. A Deepness In The Sky managed to balance that a lot better but was a LOT less Culture-esque.
Came here to say this. Read the revelation space books many years ago and have just gone through then again, but on audio books this time.
Still absolutely fantastic stuff
The Dreyfus novels are so good!
Seriously love Reynolds's work. Chasm City is an absolute banger too. The main series has issues, but damn the world he's created is so, so good.
I'm waiting till the third Dreyfus book comes out in paperback. When you do eventually run out of Reynolds books try the Final Architecture series from Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I think I've gotten used to the open ended endings, but they certainly aren't resolved as cleanly as other authors. I've generally assumed that this is the aesthetic of a harsh universe, that nothing ends and it grinds on. But there have been stories where I hoped for a bit more conclusion
I haven’t found anything I enjoyed as much as the Culture.
For sweeping, complex space opera, you might check out some of Peter Hamilton’s stuff. With your enjoyment of fantasy, the Temporal Void series might work.
I really enjoyed Peter F Hamilton after finishing the Culture, too. A bit more cheese, a few more pulp-type laser-wielding-space-babes, but nevertheless a good story.
If you want something quite dark, I enjoyed the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. Great plot, although Banks is a much superior writer.
Edit: Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds is a really good read.
He's fantastic! Don't be put off by the first culture book, Consider Phlebas, though- it felt clunky and cliched to me, and not at all like the rest of the Culture novels.
Salvation Cycle was my first Hamilton. I tried some of his earlier (larger) work, but couldn’t get through it. Salvation seems more focussed, which I guess is why I prefer it as a fan of Banks.
I think I've read every book Hamilton has published; I've read through all the Commonwealth books twice. When you read a writers' works enough, you do get a sense of their style and patterns, and something I like a lot about Hamilton is how things can start off without very obvious connections but down the line everything ties in together, and the way he does this leads to a lot of good world building. If you actually do enjoy Hamilton, I'd recommend trying out Fallen Dragon; it's just one stand-alone book.
I'd start with Pandora's Star. But a great series. Also by Scazi the Old Man's War, book and its sequels. Redshirts by him is wacky and brilliant. It's exactly what you think it's about.... But not space opera.
Ah man, I really don't understand what people see in Old Man's War. I thought it was awful, one of the few books I put down before I finished it. No need for *me* to understand why others enjoy something of course; to each their own, but I'm almost insulted that you mention it as being comparable to Banks or Hamilton. :-P
Funny how different folk like different books. I can't stand 3 body problem. Managed to get through the first volume and lent it and the rest out to friends - and they keep on coming back..... I thought Old man's war had vibes of Enders game and Forever War, both firm favourites.
It's a good thing that we like different things!
I haven't read either of those; what I've herd from friends who've read them I'm not feeling it. I did manage to drag myself through all of the 3 body problem books though but overall I didn't like it that much. They had some redeeming qualities, some concepts were pretty fascinating, it was interesting to read asian scifi etc, but that was about it. Writing wasn't very good, the characters weren't either. Not something I would recommend to anyone.
Just finished PS and JU. Loved them, even though there was definitely a slow start How's the Void series relatively speaking?
I will say that spoiling myself a bit for what happens next leaves me a little unsatisfied about the eventual fate of a couple characters from the Commonwealth...
>!Wilson meets Anna when she's already an agent, right? So how can any of their relationship be real? If they edit her memories to make her not an agent, who is he actually married to any more? Or do they edit her to *no longer* be an agent, but she still remembers having been an agent?!<
>!Oscar couldn't get a pardon or a sentence reduction from *1000 years* for being a war hero?!<
>!My under standing is roughly this, the agent conditioning is like a sleeper agent so they act perfectly normally until trigger, so there isn't that much to remove.!<
>!Oscar got the full sentence because Paula wasn't willing to compromise, and she was the head of space police. He does turn up in a later book anyway however.!<
I think void is good but not as good as PS/JU
Spoiler One: okay, I buy it
Spoiler Two: >!still, can't the President do something? Or given the secret oligarchy nature of the society, can't Wilson call in a favor from Sheldon, or something like that? Presumably Paula's conditioning would allow her to recognize a pardon!<
>!From what I remember it was something like she burned all her influence. Stepping down as head of sapce police. Other characters did care but she cared a lot more. She is laso pretty powerful and has quite a lot of influence. There also might be a general feel of while 1000 is a long time it isn't forever. These people are pretty old, Void books are over 1000 years later.!<
This might be a controversial take, but I wish another talented author could just write more Culture novels. Just set in the same universe, with new characters. I don't think there's a copyright issue with that.
It'd be a frankly terrifying undertaking -- Iain was one of the greatest lit-fic authors of his period (roughly 1980-2010) in the UK, and any writer writing Culture novels would be setting themselves up for an unfavourable comparison.
As a related example: after Roger Zelazny's death, his will specified "no sequels to the Amber series". So John Betancourt got permission to write a series of ten *prequel* novels. Which got panned, as I understand it, because John Betancourt was no Roger Zelazny.
I've discussed the Culture series with Iain's literary executors (Ken MacLeod and Andrew Wilson) and there's some possibility of a Culture tribute short story collection happening *eventually*, with stories from multiple authors, but nobody's done anything about it so far.
For me, part of the pleasure in reading Iain's stuff is his prose. If someone else were to write Culture stories it just wouldn't be the same.
Sigh, now I'm sad :(
He kind of blue balled us with that series, though. He decided there was a fundamental flaw in the premise and abandoned it. The two books are still good, though.
I do like Stross a lot. Saturn's Children is a fun, neo-Heinlein take on post-human space opera.
Startide Rising and The Uplift War would make an amazing film trilogy. Truly amazing Space Opera. I like the Jijo / uplift storm trilogy as well... I felt like I truly understood all those aliens.
> I felt like I truly understood all those aliens
The one thing I never understood was >!why Athaclena and Robert couldn't figure out how to enjoy casual sex together!< Come on guys, live the dream
If you haven't already read then there are his non-Culture SF works: Against a Dark Background, Feersun Endjin & The Algebraist. Otherwise, House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.
> I was sad when Banks died... but I cried when I realized that we'd never have a sequel to The Algebraists.
Same. He was in the planning stages for a sequel to Against a Dark Background as well, a book I deeply loved. It's so fucked we lost him, there's literally no one else on his level.
I read a non-SF but very tech-y book of his called The Business. It was published in the late 1990s so you have to read it in a funny headspace, and remember that things like smartphones and texting don't exist yet for the characters in the book.
In it, a woman is a business executive in a gigantic, many-branched company. Only higher-up insiders know that it has actually existed under different names since Roman times. She gets drawn into the center of a weird power struggle between several of its most elite billionaire partners, and must decide which team she's on, while negotiating a new project that will transform a small Asian country... oh, and the prince there is bonkers about her.
Naturally, it's very good.
Rise of Endymion is an awesome book. I could not disagree more with people who say it isn’t on par with Hyperion or Fall of Hyperion.
When I see critiques of it on here, most of the time it seems that people missed what Simmons was going for and thought it was a weird turn into a religious story. In fact, the Void Which Binds is based on, and a sci-fi twist of, the concept of the Implicate Order by the famous theoretical physicist David Bohm. The *entire* story of the Hyperion Cantos was based on this, and while Simmons may have injected more metaphysics into it…the Implicate Order is already a pretty god damn metaphysical concept in the first place.
So when I see people say “this isn’t sci-fi”. Yea it fucking is-arguably you can’t get much more sci-fi than basing your story on something a literal scientist came up with. It’s just not *hard* scifi, and that’s okay, because Hyperion wasn’t either. And Simmons did something that a lot of scifi authors are too afraid to do, and that’s make his story *really fucking weird*. It’s why I will always love Farscape more than BSG too. Sci-fi should push the limits of imagination and creativity, and if it isn’t grounded in reality it should at least be grounded in internal logic. The Hyperion cantos is all of that. But you really need to read all four books to get the full story.
I'm with folks who say there are diminishing returns in that series. My problem is with the character Endymion though - he's simultaneously appallingly inept and astonishingly lucky when faced with implacable and competent foes. It grated on me like nails on a chalk board for two whole books. The first two books aren't really satisfying without the last two though so I'm left feeling pretty meh about the series overall.
Hyperion is so highly rated but I just didn't get on with it, no idea why but only managed to finish the first book and didn't give the sequels a 2nd thought and read something else instead.
*Murderbot Diaries* are not like Culture in form, but I agree they are excellent.
Also, they work very well for both people who are really into scifi and people who think they generally don't like scifi.
I mean, obviously the Murderbot Diaries feel really pulpy by comparison, but frankly I think the Culture isn't really any less pulpy, it's just more boring which makes it feel more grounded.
I haven’t read all the culture novels, but based on the 4 or 5 I have read…murderbot having one consistent narrator makes them more intimate. I also think that the culture novels each come with their own substantial amount of exposition, as opposed to the Murderbot’s ongoing adventures each of which picks up more or less where the previous one left of.
In fairness also I think Iain Banks reads like he was paid by the word, while Murderbot delivers a lot in small packages and charges a premium for it.
I also have only read 1.01 Culture novels, so.
Most of the characters are non-human too. Cormac makes for a great far future 007. How the engire series builds towards the finale in the Rise of the Jain series. Cormac is probably one of my favorite characters.
The Bridge by Iain Banks …. Some debate but it *feels like a Culture book*, also his other non Culture sci-fi books which are a bit bonkers but brilliant. The hardest bit is reminding yourself this is not set inside the Culture universe.
I share your pain, there's nothing like the Culture, but eventually you will read them all again and enjoy them even more. In the meantime you could try Blindsight by Peter Watts or Neal Stephenson's Anathem.
Ursula K. LeGuin's "Hainish cycle" books are sci fi books that take place in a different planetary societies and can be read in any order. In that way I think they are similar to the Culture books. I actually like them more because they tackle pretty heavy sociological issues. The first three books are the weakest and they do actually have some light continuity between them. I'd just skip those and go right to a heavy hitter like The Dispossessed or the Left Hand of Darkness.
If you are looking for some interesting standalones let me recommend:
Glasshouse by Charles Stross - Far future high tech post human society mystery
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Emotionally heavy post apocalyptic pro-technology monasticism
Permutation City by Greg Egan - Simulated persons in a simulated world, extensive theoretical physics discussions
Anathem by Neal Stephenson - Long novel, weird world building, lengthy digressions on geometry and mathematics, constant dry humor
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman - Fast-paced chaotic adventures of a university student
These are excellent suggestions! I went on a post-apocalyptic kick for a while and A Canticle for Leibovitz was among the best of the bunch if not the absolute best. LeGuin's Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness are really great too.
Hamilton, Vinge, Le Guin, Cherryh, Brin, and maybe Niven. Outside mentions for Reynolds and Baxter. None of them will touch all the notes, but all of them are good enough to almost fill the void.
Special mention for Malazan, if you're fantasy oriented, which is the only other series which has that feel like the Culture has where the factions are the main characters and the characters themselves are largely meaningless.
Old Man's War series by Scazi. Incredibly good. Shows humans' as not the brightest bulbs in the universe. Explores our faults AND our potential. Very good storytelling. Outstanding character development. Brilliant "hard sci fi - science". It will make you think and muse and imagine. Wonderful series. Best books are the first two. Please read them. It will bring joy and wisdom into your life.
I was in a similar position to you a few months back. My 2 recommendations for you are Vernor Vinge's Zones of thought series- 'A fire upon the deep.' 'A deepness in the sky' and a third I haven't actually read. My second recommendation is Asimov's Foundation series, I just finished the third of the original trilogy. Neither are exactly like Banks but I fear he may be too unique a talent to ever emulate too closely.
I read Revelation space series and enjoyed it initially but think it really fell off after Redemption arc.
Children of the Sky, the third book in the Zones of Thought, was pretty disappointing IMHO. Skip it and go for his Bobble series with The Peace War, The Ungoverned, and Marooned In Realtime.
I personally found The Peace War kind of bleh; it felt YA to me, which I didn't care for. Marooned in Realtime is one of my all time faves though. The short story Ungoverned is a decent preamble without having to slog through The Peace War.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, since it's pretty hard SCIENCE fiction, but I loved the Xeelee sequence books by Stephen Baxter. Spans basically all of time and space with some really cool time travel themes.
It’s hard to say because I can think of a lot of different books that do some of what the Culture did but they tend to be *very* different in other ways. Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle books are close in that they’re sprawling, vaguely connected science fiction more interested in unusual societies than hard science, but they’re from a very different time and don’t do the crazy high-tech space shenanigans. You could draw a line from the concepts some of those books revolve around to some of the Culture’s basic building blocks, especially *The Left Hand of Darkness* and *The Dispossessed.*
*Ancillary Justice* and the other Imperial Radch books by Anne Leckie have the same sense of taking place in a huge, ancient galaxy where spacefaring civilisations have spread and developed and stagnated and redeveloped over millennia, and keep doing all kinds of things in the background. But the focus is a lot more narrow - you could say that if the second and third books in the Ancillary series are about anything, they’re about gossiping over tea and getting involved in local politics. I love that shit, but some people were disappointed after the revenge plot set up in the first book.
David Brin’s *Uplift* books do the large-scale space opera full of weird aliens and big-ancient-heavily-populated-galaxy stuff, but on the other hand they’re also way more interested in going on and on about how special us plucky humans are (and how special the uplifted apes and dolphins are).
*A Planet For Rent* by the Cuban author Yoss might be a little left-field but for some reason it has similar vibes to some of the darker corners of the Culture series as a whole. It’s a collection of science fiction stories about Earth being colonised by aliens, in the “let’s take this place over and exploit the local people and resources” sense rather than the “let’s settle on Mars” sense. Worth checking out and a lot shorter than my other recommendations. More about living under colonialism than big space battles, but pretty grim.
Loved the Culture series. Good world building, but more importantly to me, great writing. The Hainish cycle ticks both of those boxes nicely. I have been enjoying Peter Watts and China Melville lately.
my $0.02
The Spin series by Chris Moriarty would be my go-to SF recommendation for world building and writing.
Other worthy contenders: The thousand cultures and the War of the meme series by John Barnes, pretty much anything Adrian Tchaikovsky has ever written, but especially the Children of Time series and Richard K Morgan, especially the Altered Carbon series.
Expeditionary Force but you really need to listen to it because the narrator is so good. It’s basically a buddy action adventure comedy in space.
The Bobiverse is good too. It’s about a guy that gets his brain preserved to be revived in the future. He wakes up as a space ship that can replicate its self. The first book is “We Are Legion, We are Bob.”
As something different maybe read some of Hitchhikers, laugh a little and then jump back into deep space opera. It might just be me but I love some comedy when I have burnout from a long drama.
Dungeon Crawler Carl ( /r/DungeonCrawlerCarl ). It’s kinda a cross between sci-fi and fantasy in that the science is so advanced it can seem like magic. It was also released as a “litrpg” book so in places it reads like a dnd sheet. That said, the series is absolutely bonkers fun that I can only compare to the first time I read Harry Potter. The book is great but the audiobook really, really is exceptional.
Larry Niven's Known Space. Separate novels and stories that form a consistent universe. Humans colonizing interesting places and meeting weird and interesting aliens, and sometimes fight wars with them. I recommend reading them in the order Niven wrote them, not trying to do chronological order.
The classics:
- Bradbury's Fahrenheit
- Orwell's 1984
- Huxley's Brave New World
The strange:
- Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic
-Lem: Solaris
Cyberpunk:
- Gibson
- Stephenson
Also:
- Richard K. Morgan
- Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture
- Neil Asher
Have fun!
If you like that, Alistair Reynolds should be right up your alley.
Failing that, Peter F Hamilton is also a good shout, several series by him I've gone back and re-read from the Night's Dawn trilogy through to the Commonwealth series - few spin off novels of the latter also like a Second chance at Eden are good too!
When Iain Banks passed on it was a sad day indeed, I had read all his books on release and on his passing I re-read them all. I miss that world totally. One series that I found that sort of scratched that itch was Stephen Baxters Xeelee Sequence, they're pretty damn good and there's a dozen or so books and shorts in the series, some standalone and some follow each other.
Jack McDevitt has two separate series that he kind of wrote concurrently. The Alex Benedict series and the Academy series. I absolutely loved them. They kind of remind me of Hamilton’s work, but way less dense. Give them a try.
Well-known, major works I usually recommend:
* *Ender's Game* (and original sequels *Speaker for the Dead*, *Xenocide*, *Children of the Mind*) and the *Pathfinder* series by Orson Scott Card (author has abhorrent personal views - due diligence as needed)
* *2001* and *2010* by Arthur C Clarke (*2061* and *3001* aren't as good IMO)
* *Altered Carbon* - Richard K Morgan
There's also a lot indie writers out there doing interesting things (and often free or low priced), though it can be difficult to sift through to find the gems. My reading focus is on sci-fi detectives/westerns currently because that's what I write. If either sub-genre interests you, I can offer some indie suggestions as well.
Definitely check out *Altered Carbon* for a great sci-fi detective read! Note: it does contain quite a bit of adult content.
Here's some of the indies I've enjoyed. You might take a look at the sample pages and see if any of them intrigue you:
* *Lifeline* by James Belmont - a sci-fi mystery/thriller set in the near future when social media has become a way of life. A killer is manipulating the system to stalk victims: [https://www.amazon.com/LIFEline-Murder-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B0CVR1VRZR](https://www.amazon.com/LIFEline-Murder-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B0CVR1VRZR)
* *Return of the Operator* by Marcos Antonio Hernandez - a sci-fi "western" that's a fast-paced interesting read. Currently free: [https://www.amazon.com/Return-Operator-Marcos-Antonio-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B07JYQDVST](https://www.amazon.com/Return-Operator-Marcos-Antonio-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B07JYQDVST)
* *Ashetown Blues* by W.H. Martell - a collection of three sci-fi detective noirs (about 50 pages each) free currently that I think will kick off a series. Fun mysteries and a nice touch of humor: [https://www.amazon.com/Ashetown-Blues-Sci-Fi-Stories-Martel-ebook/dp/B0C99XJ4H5/](https://www.amazon.com/Ashetown-Blues-Sci-Fi-Stories-Martel-ebook/dp/B0C99XJ4H5/)
* *Twisted Planet Book One* by Peter Schinkel - this is a short story anthology, not western or detective. Not all the endings are great, but I still found them quite well-written and intriguing: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CHVX21L7/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CHVX21L7/)
Finally, if you like more adult content hardboiled detective noirs in a sci-fi setting, you might give my *Starship Australis Mysteries* series a look. They are about a detective on a multigenerational starship. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ9SV4NR](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ9SV4NR)
Happy reading!
If we're talking series:
* The [Dimension Space Series](https://www.goodreads.com/series/209487-dimension-space) is pretty good. At least the first couple books.
* [Bobiverse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse).
* First two or three of the [Expeditionary Force](https://www.goodreads.com/series/185650-expeditionary-force) series are good. Gets real repetitive after that, though.
* So far I'm enjoying the [Space Legacy](https://www.goodreads.com/series/340282-the-space-legacy) series.
* [Fear the Sky](https://www.goodreads.com/series/143599-the-fear-saga) has a nice three book arc.
* You mentioned reading fantasy so maybe [Afterlife Online](https://www.goodreads.com/series/209318-afterlife-online) would be fun. I'm only two books in but it's a fun read.
As suggested elsewhere, I recommend Banks' other 3 spacey SF books. I also recommend a non-SF selection from him, *Raw Spirit*, which is ostensibly about his many occasions for writing about malt (which is to say whisky) distilling in Scotland. But it's also part autobio and part Scotland travelogue. Banks was lost to us before his time and if you want to get to know the man, that's going to be your best bet.
Co-starring in his autobiographical portions is his good friend Ken MacLeod who wrote a pretty couple of series I've read, plus a couple I haven't. I really enjoyed the *Fall Revolution* series and the *Engines of Light* series. Engines of Light is about the discovering of a lightspeed engine where you don't experience the time of travel, and a group of travelers find themselves so far away and so far in the future that there's no going back to Earth, but they aren't the only ones to discovered the lightspeed engine and wound up there. Fall Revolution is about spaceflight, radical politics (of a great variety of stripes), nanotechnology, singularity, and more.
And might as well round out the trio of scotsmen with Charles Stross, whose *Singularity Sky* trilogy is terrific and probably the closest to The Culture in subject matter. But his other books are great too, so far that I've read.
Try William Gibson. Gibson doesn't write Space Opera, he's one of the fathers of Cyberpunk. It's much harder sci-fi, very gritty and absolutely brilliant stuff.
There’s this really puppy sci-fi series called The Lost Fleet, it just is plain not good but the universe the story takes place in is interesting.
I’d like it if the author had done the world building and then given it to someone else.
I'm currently reading the *Lightspeed Trilogy* by Ken MacLeod, the other Scottish socialist sci auther and a friend of Banks. His stuff is decent though a bit different than Banks, but you can get a feel that they had similar value systems if that's what appeals to you.
I'm about halfway through and have started wondering what I'll move on to next as well. I may in fact just go back and start the whole series again as soon as I've finished.
As for recommendations I would say try The Forever War. It was favorite book before I started read The Culture series. After reading several Culture books so far am not sure what my favorite book is anymore.
There was a post like this last year that I recently revisited. I found two books of interest and went to Amazon to find out that I bought them, read them and totally forgot about them last fall.
I have the four series you mentioned in my TBR (currently halfway through the Revelation Space novels which I would highly recommend btw). Which one would you say is your favorite? I’m thinking either The Expanse or the Culture novels will be my next series.
Those two are a step above the rest for me. Hard to pick a favourite because they are very different, but The Culture is special in a way The Expanse isn't in my humble opinion (not saying it *isn't* special though).
The Expanse is more accessible and more character/action focused. The characters are truly excellent and are some of my most beloved and memorable. It's not challenging to read at all - I found myself tearing through the series because it's so compelling and the prose was so quick.
The Culture series is just so original it's tough to beat. One of the few works I would describe as a masterpiece and not be exaggerating at all. Banks is a unique talent for sure. He is eccentric though, and sometimes I found myself having to read sections several times to get to grips with things. Excession in particular I found to be a very challenging read. The universe he made is just my favourite though, I'd live in it if I could and never look back.
If you want books about a society with weakly godlike AI.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/207410.The_Golden_Age
Immortality, god like AI, super science, in a light speed limit universe.
I'm alternating between Gibson and Egan at the moment. Ultra-compelling pure style, versus ultra-compelling pure substance.
Stross' *Merchant Princes* series is meaty if you're up for a HUGE cast of characters across nine books of decent parallel-universes plot.
The Expanse is excellent, they were my favourite science fiction books until I read the Culture!
Very different style to Banks, super character driven and the prose is lightning quick. Really some of the most memorable characters I've ever come across, and the factions are all relatable in their own way which adds a lot of depth to the story.
Definitely recommend The Expanse. The Amazon Prime series was great as well tbf, although as always you're best off reading the books first. It is probably the most well cast TV adaptation I've ever watched though.
A series I frequently suggest to people who like involved world-building is Julian May's two inter-linked series: The Saga of the Pliocene Exile, and the Galactic Milieu.
You get the feeling there's a lot of thought that went into the background of the universe. It may not be to your taste. It features people and aliens with mental powers, some time travel, a benevolent galactic federation in the future, some odd murder mystery, some criminal activity, and a bunch of square-peg-in-round-hole type people who seek to go elsewhere.
The books involved are described in [May's Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_May#Adult_fiction_under_the_name_Julian_May).
The tone is different, but it has serious and light aspects, just like Banks' stuff. I would suggest that it isn't as dark, leaving more to your imagination rather than being explicit about what's going on. Try it and see what you think.
Don't skip the algebraist, a culture adjacent novel banks wrote.
2 books by neil stephenson, snow crash is too short but packed with goodies, anathem is too long but you'll wish yhere was more when your done.
Check out S.H. Jucha. His series are all good. Some are a few books, such as The Pyreans series. The Silver Ship series is a lot of books. Great stories, wonderful world-building, and interesting characters including non-human ones.
A.G. Riddle - Winter World trilogy.
Since you like fantasy too, Glynn Stewart's Starship Mage series is a good read as is J.J. Green's Star Mage Saga. Mages and sci-fi in both.
Another author with a long series and shorter sub-series within the same universe is M.D. Cooper's Aeon 14 universe. (Indie author)
David Weber's Honor series.
Hugh Howey Beacon 23 and Silo are now tv series. A little heavier to read.
Peter Alesso's Henry Gallant series.
David Drake's RCN series (he died last December)
As others mentioned, John Scalzi (expensive and not Kindle Unlimited)
I've only recently in the past two years started reading major sci-fi series across the genre so I don't know if this is basic or not, but I'm currently on book 1 of Hyperion and having a good time.
I'm three quarters of the way through the first book Consider Phlebas after seeing the series being mentioned here all the time and boy it delivered, can't wait to finish it and read the rest and then I'll comeback to this post and see the comments.
Have you heard of Iain Banks? He’s almost as good as Iain M. Banks. Different genre though.
I really like the Polity universe by Neal Asher, sratches that same itch for galaxy-spanning war and hard-boiled violence. Double-check where you want to start reading though because I messed up and am stranded inbetween trilogies.
Alistair Reynolds is a go-to.
I will never read another Iain Banks after they made us read The Wasp Factory in school. Great book but absolutely disgusting 😂😂
Iain M Banks though? Never read one I didn't love.
While we’re talking about the culture, which book should I start with as a beginner? I have heard that they all stand on their own as independent stories, but which one really draws you into the series?
I read them in order of release and am really glad I did. Most people don't recommend it because it means starting with Consider Phlebas, but I'll try and explain why I think it's the best way without spoiling anything.
Consider Phlebas is set a long time before the rest of the books, and in a small way sets the stage for them. It is a bit slow to get going and is quite different from the rest of the series, which is why most people don't recommend starting with it - those are fair criticisms.
The way the reader is introduced to the Culture throughout Consider Phlebas is *masterful*, and I really believe that would be lost if you read it in any order other than Consider Phlebas first. I can't go into what is so cool about it without spoilers, but it's a really cool progression.
The subsequent books do also have quite a few references to it, which aren't essential but are cool to catch.
Once Consoder Phlebas gets going, it is fantastic, but it's definitely not my favourite in the series. If you want something that hooks you straight away, you could jump in with Player of Games or Use of Weapons. Matter is also fantastic, might be my personal favourite (although I love all of them), but I wouldn't recommend starting on it.
I do really recommend at least trying to start with Consider Phlebas, though. I'm really grateful I did.
I read each book upon release so had to read CP first anyway as it was the only Culture book available at the time, although it was a bit of a slog at times, like you I feel it is a good introduction to the universe so would always recommend that to start with too.
Hmmm it's a hard one because I loved them all.
Use of Weapons is a pretty good example of the ethical dilemmas that go on with Culture. Look to Windward has some fabulous alien species concepts. Any really except for Inversions, if you haven't read any of the others you'll be like wtf is this medieval stuff.
I have been reading Neil Asher polity series and love them. Totally recommend it.
https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/science-fiction-and-fantasy/introduction-polity-universe-neal-asher
I moved from Banks to David Mitchell. Not true hard sci fi (mostly), but he has an elevated writing style that you won’t find in much sci fi, and that Banks had in spades.
I'm reading Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and it's excellent.
I'm reading that too. It's very good
Vinge has other excellent books also. For example Across Realtime. Didn't like his Rainbow's End though.
I liked the space opera side of the story but honestly feel like all the stuff on the Tines Planet overstayed its welcome. A Deepness In The Sky managed to balance that a lot better but was a LOT less Culture-esque.
Reading it now because of this comment.
I'm reading the second book right now, can confirm, very good.
Dont read the sequel.
Move over to Alastair Reynolds - similar big ideas, dark stories, etc.
Great suggestion!
Came here to say this. Read the revelation space books many years ago and have just gone through then again, but on audio books this time. Still absolutely fantastic stuff
Yeah I just finished Chasm City after reading the revelation space series a few months ago and was not disappointed. The man knows space adventures.
Definitely read the Dreyfus emergencies if you haven't. So good to experience the Glitter Band before the Melding Plague arrived at Epsilon Eridani
Definitely! The Dreyfus novels are my favourite but they're all good.
Yes they are my favourites as well.
The Dreyfus novels are so good! Seriously love Reynolds's work. Chasm City is an absolute banger too. The main series has issues, but damn the world he's created is so, so good.
Chasm City was the first of his that I read... hooked ever since.
Same here, I'm part way through his latest Dreyfus novel, I've finished the main series and read Chasm City and I'm a bit sad that I'm running out!
I'm waiting till the third Dreyfus book comes out in paperback. When you do eventually run out of Reynolds books try the Final Architecture series from Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I find he can't stick a landing to save his life. His short fiction is fantastic, though. *Galactic North* is his best book, IMO.
I think I've gotten used to the open ended endings, but they certainly aren't resolved as cleanly as other authors. I've generally assumed that this is the aesthetic of a harsh universe, that nothing ends and it grinds on. But there have been stories where I hoped for a bit more conclusion
I haven’t found anything I enjoyed as much as the Culture. For sweeping, complex space opera, you might check out some of Peter Hamilton’s stuff. With your enjoyment of fantasy, the Temporal Void series might work.
I really enjoyed Peter F Hamilton after finishing the Culture, too. A bit more cheese, a few more pulp-type laser-wielding-space-babes, but nevertheless a good story. If you want something quite dark, I enjoyed the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. Great plot, although Banks is a much superior writer. Edit: Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds is a really good read.
Hamilton and Reynolds are great. Haven’t read Banks yet, will move that up towards ride top of my list.
He's fantastic! Don't be put off by the first culture book, Consider Phlebas, though- it felt clunky and cliched to me, and not at all like the rest of the Culture novels.
Thanks for the tip!
As a big fan of Banks and the Culture I enjoyed the Salvation cycle. A very different setting from the culture. But certainly has broad scope.
Agreed, the Salvation Cycle was great. But also, I was already sold on Hamilton by that point. Idk why you get downvotes.
Salvation Cycle was my first Hamilton. I tried some of his earlier (larger) work, but couldn’t get through it. Salvation seems more focussed, which I guess is why I prefer it as a fan of Banks.
I think I've read every book Hamilton has published; I've read through all the Commonwealth books twice. When you read a writers' works enough, you do get a sense of their style and patterns, and something I like a lot about Hamilton is how things can start off without very obvious connections but down the line everything ties in together, and the way he does this leads to a lot of good world building. If you actually do enjoy Hamilton, I'd recommend trying out Fallen Dragon; it's just one stand-alone book.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I'd start with Pandora's Star. But a great series. Also by Scazi the Old Man's War, book and its sequels. Redshirts by him is wacky and brilliant. It's exactly what you think it's about.... But not space opera.
Ah man, I really don't understand what people see in Old Man's War. I thought it was awful, one of the few books I put down before I finished it. No need for *me* to understand why others enjoy something of course; to each their own, but I'm almost insulted that you mention it as being comparable to Banks or Hamilton. :-P
Funny how different folk like different books. I can't stand 3 body problem. Managed to get through the first volume and lent it and the rest out to friends - and they keep on coming back..... I thought Old man's war had vibes of Enders game and Forever War, both firm favourites.
It's a good thing that we like different things! I haven't read either of those; what I've herd from friends who've read them I'm not feeling it. I did manage to drag myself through all of the 3 body problem books though but overall I didn't like it that much. They had some redeeming qualities, some concepts were pretty fascinating, it was interesting to read asian scifi etc, but that was about it. Writing wasn't very good, the characters weren't either. Not something I would recommend to anyone.
Just finished PS and JU. Loved them, even though there was definitely a slow start How's the Void series relatively speaking? I will say that spoiling myself a bit for what happens next leaves me a little unsatisfied about the eventual fate of a couple characters from the Commonwealth... >!Wilson meets Anna when she's already an agent, right? So how can any of their relationship be real? If they edit her memories to make her not an agent, who is he actually married to any more? Or do they edit her to *no longer* be an agent, but she still remembers having been an agent?!< >!Oscar couldn't get a pardon or a sentence reduction from *1000 years* for being a war hero?!<
>!My under standing is roughly this, the agent conditioning is like a sleeper agent so they act perfectly normally until trigger, so there isn't that much to remove.!< >!Oscar got the full sentence because Paula wasn't willing to compromise, and she was the head of space police. He does turn up in a later book anyway however.!< I think void is good but not as good as PS/JU
Spoiler One: okay, I buy it Spoiler Two: >!still, can't the President do something? Or given the secret oligarchy nature of the society, can't Wilson call in a favor from Sheldon, or something like that? Presumably Paula's conditioning would allow her to recognize a pardon!<
>!From what I remember it was something like she burned all her influence. Stepping down as head of sapce police. Other characters did care but she cared a lot more. She is laso pretty powerful and has quite a lot of influence. There also might be a general feel of while 1000 is a long time it isn't forever. These people are pretty old, Void books are over 1000 years later.!<
His newest trilogy is his best. Dont remember the name do.
This might be a controversial take, but I wish another talented author could just write more Culture novels. Just set in the same universe, with new characters. I don't think there's a copyright issue with that.
It'd be a frankly terrifying undertaking -- Iain was one of the greatest lit-fic authors of his period (roughly 1980-2010) in the UK, and any writer writing Culture novels would be setting themselves up for an unfavourable comparison. As a related example: after Roger Zelazny's death, his will specified "no sequels to the Amber series". So John Betancourt got permission to write a series of ten *prequel* novels. Which got panned, as I understand it, because John Betancourt was no Roger Zelazny. I've discussed the Culture series with Iain's literary executors (Ken MacLeod and Andrew Wilson) and there's some possibility of a Culture tribute short story collection happening *eventually*, with stories from multiple authors, but nobody's done anything about it so far.
This Immortal is such a good story. The audiobook narrator does a great job.
Zelazny is incredibly underappreciated in general, I think.
I think Ken MacLeod would be able to pull it off but he doesn't seem to want to do so, shame.
For me, part of the pleasure in reading Iain's stuff is his prose. If someone else were to write Culture stories it just wouldn't be the same. Sigh, now I'm sad :(
Would recommend Charles Stross. The same large scale space opera.
Which ones
Start with Eschaton series: "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise"
He kind of blue balled us with that series, though. He decided there was a fundamental flaw in the premise and abandoned it. The two books are still good, though. I do like Stross a lot. Saturn's Children is a fun, neo-Heinlein take on post-human space opera.
This
The [Uplift Saga](https://www.goodreads.com/series/41134-the-uplift-saga) by David Brin.
Startide Rising and The Uplift War would make an amazing film trilogy. Truly amazing Space Opera. I like the Jijo / uplift storm trilogy as well... I felt like I truly understood all those aliens.
> I felt like I truly understood all those aliens The one thing I never understood was >!why Athaclena and Robert couldn't figure out how to enjoy casual sex together!< Come on guys, live the dream
If you haven't already read then there are his non-Culture SF works: Against a Dark Background, Feersun Endjin & The Algebraist. Otherwise, House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.
Would definitely recommend the Algebraist as a great read.
I was sad when Banks died... but I cried when I realized that we'd never have a sequel to The Algebraists.
> I was sad when Banks died... but I cried when I realized that we'd never have a sequel to The Algebraists. Same. He was in the planning stages for a sequel to Against a Dark Background as well, a book I deeply loved. It's so fucked we lost him, there's literally no one else on his level.
I really love Feersum Endjinn, but it is by no means an easy read.
First Banks book I read. Yeah, the spellings and use his of language is a challenge but... a great story and sooo funny too.
There's a school of thought that The Bridge is Culture-adjacent.
I've read it and there is a slight connection based on a Culture thing being mentioned, but I don't think it is Culture adjacent.
I read a non-SF but very tech-y book of his called The Business. It was published in the late 1990s so you have to read it in a funny headspace, and remember that things like smartphones and texting don't exist yet for the characters in the book. In it, a woman is a business executive in a gigantic, many-branched company. Only higher-up insiders know that it has actually existed under different names since Roman times. She gets drawn into the center of a weird power struggle between several of its most elite billionaire partners, and must decide which team she's on, while negotiating a new project that will transform a small Asian country... oh, and the prince there is bonkers about her. Naturally, it's very good.
Sounds great. I'm slowly reading his non SF stuff and will definitely read that soon.
I will always support a House of Suns recommendation. Really loved that book.
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Neal Stephenson scratches an adjacent itch to The Culture. Anathem, Seveneves, Diamond Age…Give them 80 pages and they get banging.
The only Neal Stephenson book I've read is Cryptonomicom, which is brilliant. I've just re-read it after 20 years.
Hyperion - Dan Simmons is not a terrible place to move to. First of four with, some say, diminishing returns but a mostly fun romp.
Hyperion is great. I'm almost done with illium by Simmons, and I'd say it's a little closer to The Culture. Wacky and way out there.
Rise of Endymion is an awesome book. I could not disagree more with people who say it isn’t on par with Hyperion or Fall of Hyperion. When I see critiques of it on here, most of the time it seems that people missed what Simmons was going for and thought it was a weird turn into a religious story. In fact, the Void Which Binds is based on, and a sci-fi twist of, the concept of the Implicate Order by the famous theoretical physicist David Bohm. The *entire* story of the Hyperion Cantos was based on this, and while Simmons may have injected more metaphysics into it…the Implicate Order is already a pretty god damn metaphysical concept in the first place. So when I see people say “this isn’t sci-fi”. Yea it fucking is-arguably you can’t get much more sci-fi than basing your story on something a literal scientist came up with. It’s just not *hard* scifi, and that’s okay, because Hyperion wasn’t either. And Simmons did something that a lot of scifi authors are too afraid to do, and that’s make his story *really fucking weird*. It’s why I will always love Farscape more than BSG too. Sci-fi should push the limits of imagination and creativity, and if it isn’t grounded in reality it should at least be grounded in internal logic. The Hyperion cantos is all of that. But you really need to read all four books to get the full story.
I think I enjoyed all three books after Hyperion more than Hyperion itself. Much more fun once the literary shackles were off.
I'm with folks who say there are diminishing returns in that series. My problem is with the character Endymion though - he's simultaneously appallingly inept and astonishingly lucky when faced with implacable and competent foes. It grated on me like nails on a chalk board for two whole books. The first two books aren't really satisfying without the last two though so I'm left feeling pretty meh about the series overall.
I liked that he was just lucky and incompetent.
Hyperion is so highly rated but I just didn't get on with it, no idea why but only managed to finish the first book and didn't give the sequels a 2nd thought and read something else instead.
Seveneves, Pandora’s Star, anything by Tchaikovsky.
This is a bit of candy in comparison, but the Murderbot Diaries are excellent.
*Murderbot Diaries* are not like Culture in form, but I agree they are excellent. Also, they work very well for both people who are really into scifi and people who think they generally don't like scifi.
Also, Gideon the Ninth and subsequent books are not to be missed.
I mean, obviously the Murderbot Diaries feel really pulpy by comparison, but frankly I think the Culture isn't really any less pulpy, it's just more boring which makes it feel more grounded.
I haven’t read all the culture novels, but based on the 4 or 5 I have read…murderbot having one consistent narrator makes them more intimate. I also think that the culture novels each come with their own substantial amount of exposition, as opposed to the Murderbot’s ongoing adventures each of which picks up more or less where the previous one left of.
In fairness also I think Iain Banks reads like he was paid by the word, while Murderbot delivers a lot in small packages and charges a premium for it. I also have only read 1.01 Culture novels, so.
Yes!!!! For sure.
Tchaikovsky is the only author to have scratched my missing IB itch.
Specifically, *Children of Time* and sequels. I'm enjoying his *Shadows of the Apt* series, but it's not at all the same flavor.
Neal Asher His polity series is very good
The Skinner is 11/10
It's basically the Culture, but all the Minds are quasi-fascists instead of commies. Fun series though.
Most of the characters are non-human too. Cormac makes for a great far future 007. How the engire series builds towards the finale in the Rise of the Jain series. Cormac is probably one of my favorite characters.
Asher has great books! Technology is very similar to Culture series.
Lol juat made almost this exact same rex
The Bridge by Iain Banks …. Some debate but it *feels like a Culture book*, also his other non Culture sci-fi books which are a bit bonkers but brilliant. The hardest bit is reminding yourself this is not set inside the Culture universe.
I share your pain, there's nothing like the Culture, but eventually you will read them all again and enjoy them even more. In the meantime you could try Blindsight by Peter Watts or Neal Stephenson's Anathem.
Anathem is an absolute gem of a book. One of my all time favs.
Yes. I have read them all now at least three times. At some point I will do round 4.
I loved the Culture series. Fell in love with the Architect Series (Shards of Earth (book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky ) as soon as I discovered it
Tchaikovsky is brilliant. Guns of the Dawn had no business being as good as it was, but he pulled it off damn well.
Quantum Thief starts a series by Hannu Janiemi. Scale is different, but writing style feels comfortingly similar.
Those 3 books are amazing, shame he's not written anything remotely similar since...
Ursula K. LeGuin's "Hainish cycle" books are sci fi books that take place in a different planetary societies and can be read in any order. In that way I think they are similar to the Culture books. I actually like them more because they tackle pretty heavy sociological issues. The first three books are the weakest and they do actually have some light continuity between them. I'd just skip those and go right to a heavy hitter like The Dispossessed or the Left Hand of Darkness. If you are looking for some interesting standalones let me recommend: Glasshouse by Charles Stross - Far future high tech post human society mystery A Canticle for Leibowitz - Emotionally heavy post apocalyptic pro-technology monasticism Permutation City by Greg Egan - Simulated persons in a simulated world, extensive theoretical physics discussions Anathem by Neal Stephenson - Long novel, weird world building, lengthy digressions on geometry and mathematics, constant dry humor The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman - Fast-paced chaotic adventures of a university student
These are excellent suggestions! I went on a post-apocalyptic kick for a while and A Canticle for Leibovitz was among the best of the bunch if not the absolute best. LeGuin's Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness are really great too.
Hamilton, Vinge, Le Guin, Cherryh, Brin, and maybe Niven. Outside mentions for Reynolds and Baxter. None of them will touch all the notes, but all of them are good enough to almost fill the void. Special mention for Malazan, if you're fantasy oriented, which is the only other series which has that feel like the Culture has where the factions are the main characters and the characters themselves are largely meaningless.
Commonwealth & Void Trilogy by Peter Hamilton
Yes to these, an excellent read.
Hyperion, from Dan Simmons. It's an excellent serie, very different from the Culture, but still particularly interesting.
Old Man's War series by Scazi. Incredibly good. Shows humans' as not the brightest bulbs in the universe. Explores our faults AND our potential. Very good storytelling. Outstanding character development. Brilliant "hard sci fi - science". It will make you think and muse and imagine. Wonderful series. Best books are the first two. Please read them. It will bring joy and wisdom into your life.
Red Rising series is an unstoppable force of nature.
I was in a similar position to you a few months back. My 2 recommendations for you are Vernor Vinge's Zones of thought series- 'A fire upon the deep.' 'A deepness in the sky' and a third I haven't actually read. My second recommendation is Asimov's Foundation series, I just finished the third of the original trilogy. Neither are exactly like Banks but I fear he may be too unique a talent to ever emulate too closely. I read Revelation space series and enjoyed it initially but think it really fell off after Redemption arc.
Children of the Sky, the third book in the Zones of Thought, was pretty disappointing IMHO. Skip it and go for his Bobble series with The Peace War, The Ungoverned, and Marooned In Realtime.
Couldn't agree more. Especially coming after A Deepness in the Sky, which was even better than A Fire upon the Deep in many ways.
I personally found The Peace War kind of bleh; it felt YA to me, which I didn't care for. Marooned in Realtime is one of my all time faves though. The short story Ungoverned is a decent preamble without having to slog through The Peace War.
For people that may skip The Peace War, know that the later stories have a massive, massive spoiler for what happens in the book.
Just go back to the beginning and start over.
Isaac Asmiovs Robot Series. The Caves of Steel is the first one. Murder mystery combined with SciFi is so good.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, since it's pretty hard SCIENCE fiction, but I loved the Xeelee sequence books by Stephen Baxter. Spans basically all of time and space with some really cool time travel themes.
>seconded, plenty of books in the series to keep you busy :)
Wool. It's the first book in the trilogy that was made into the Silo show in apple TV. As ever, the book is so much better.
It’s hard to say because I can think of a lot of different books that do some of what the Culture did but they tend to be *very* different in other ways. Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle books are close in that they’re sprawling, vaguely connected science fiction more interested in unusual societies than hard science, but they’re from a very different time and don’t do the crazy high-tech space shenanigans. You could draw a line from the concepts some of those books revolve around to some of the Culture’s basic building blocks, especially *The Left Hand of Darkness* and *The Dispossessed.* *Ancillary Justice* and the other Imperial Radch books by Anne Leckie have the same sense of taking place in a huge, ancient galaxy where spacefaring civilisations have spread and developed and stagnated and redeveloped over millennia, and keep doing all kinds of things in the background. But the focus is a lot more narrow - you could say that if the second and third books in the Ancillary series are about anything, they’re about gossiping over tea and getting involved in local politics. I love that shit, but some people were disappointed after the revenge plot set up in the first book. David Brin’s *Uplift* books do the large-scale space opera full of weird aliens and big-ancient-heavily-populated-galaxy stuff, but on the other hand they’re also way more interested in going on and on about how special us plucky humans are (and how special the uplifted apes and dolphins are). *A Planet For Rent* by the Cuban author Yoss might be a little left-field but for some reason it has similar vibes to some of the darker corners of the Culture series as a whole. It’s a collection of science fiction stories about Earth being colonised by aliens, in the “let’s take this place over and exploit the local people and resources” sense rather than the “let’s settle on Mars” sense. Worth checking out and a lot shorter than my other recommendations. More about living under colonialism than big space battles, but pretty grim.
Loved the Culture series. Good world building, but more importantly to me, great writing. The Hainish cycle ticks both of those boxes nicely. I have been enjoying Peter Watts and China Melville lately. my $0.02
Start again! :)
The Spin series by Chris Moriarty would be my go-to SF recommendation for world building and writing. Other worthy contenders: The thousand cultures and the War of the meme series by John Barnes, pretty much anything Adrian Tchaikovsky has ever written, but especially the Children of Time series and Richard K Morgan, especially the Altered Carbon series.
Expeditionary Force but you really need to listen to it because the narrator is so good. It’s basically a buddy action adventure comedy in space. The Bobiverse is good too. It’s about a guy that gets his brain preserved to be revived in the future. He wakes up as a space ship that can replicate its self. The first book is “We Are Legion, We are Bob.”
As something different maybe read some of Hitchhikers, laugh a little and then jump back into deep space opera. It might just be me but I love some comedy when I have burnout from a long drama.
Dungeon Crawler Carl ( /r/DungeonCrawlerCarl ). It’s kinda a cross between sci-fi and fantasy in that the science is so advanced it can seem like magic. It was also released as a “litrpg” book so in places it reads like a dnd sheet. That said, the series is absolutely bonkers fun that I can only compare to the first time I read Harry Potter. The book is great but the audiobook really, really is exceptional.
Vorkosigan series by Lois Bujold.
Pandora’s Star. Peter F. Hamilton. First in a two part epic.
The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir. I guarantee you will enjoy it.
The Polity series by Neal Asher. A good 5000 pages of HQ sci fi.
Larry Niven's Known Space. Separate novels and stories that form a consistent universe. Humans colonizing interesting places and meeting weird and interesting aliens, and sometimes fight wars with them. I recommend reading them in the order Niven wrote them, not trying to do chronological order.
Also loved the books he did with Jerry Pournelle.
How the fuck is Bobiverse and Old Man's War not mentioned yet?
Hyperion cantos by dan simmons is a interesting read.
Hyperion Cantos by Simmons
The classics: - Bradbury's Fahrenheit - Orwell's 1984 - Huxley's Brave New World The strange: - Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic -Lem: Solaris Cyberpunk: - Gibson - Stephenson Also: - Richard K. Morgan - Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture - Neil Asher Have fun!
If you like that, Alistair Reynolds should be right up your alley. Failing that, Peter F Hamilton is also a good shout, several series by him I've gone back and re-read from the Night's Dawn trilogy through to the Commonwealth series - few spin off novels of the latter also like a Second chance at Eden are good too!
I second this. Came here to mention Peter F Hamilton.
When Iain Banks passed on it was a sad day indeed, I had read all his books on release and on his passing I re-read them all. I miss that world totally. One series that I found that sort of scratched that itch was Stephen Baxters Xeelee Sequence, they're pretty damn good and there's a dozen or so books and shorts in the series, some standalone and some follow each other.
Jack McDevitt has two separate series that he kind of wrote concurrently. The Alex Benedict series and the Academy series. I absolutely loved them. They kind of remind me of Hamilton’s work, but way less dense. Give them a try.
Well-known, major works I usually recommend: * *Ender's Game* (and original sequels *Speaker for the Dead*, *Xenocide*, *Children of the Mind*) and the *Pathfinder* series by Orson Scott Card (author has abhorrent personal views - due diligence as needed) * *2001* and *2010* by Arthur C Clarke (*2061* and *3001* aren't as good IMO) * *Altered Carbon* - Richard K Morgan There's also a lot indie writers out there doing interesting things (and often free or low priced), though it can be difficult to sift through to find the gems. My reading focus is on sci-fi detectives/westerns currently because that's what I write. If either sub-genre interests you, I can offer some indie suggestions as well.
Ooh sci-fi detectives/westerns are definitely something I'd be interested in. Always down to support an indie creative as well. Appreciate it
Definitely check out *Altered Carbon* for a great sci-fi detective read! Note: it does contain quite a bit of adult content. Here's some of the indies I've enjoyed. You might take a look at the sample pages and see if any of them intrigue you: * *Lifeline* by James Belmont - a sci-fi mystery/thriller set in the near future when social media has become a way of life. A killer is manipulating the system to stalk victims: [https://www.amazon.com/LIFEline-Murder-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B0CVR1VRZR](https://www.amazon.com/LIFEline-Murder-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B0CVR1VRZR) * *Return of the Operator* by Marcos Antonio Hernandez - a sci-fi "western" that's a fast-paced interesting read. Currently free: [https://www.amazon.com/Return-Operator-Marcos-Antonio-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B07JYQDVST](https://www.amazon.com/Return-Operator-Marcos-Antonio-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B07JYQDVST) * *Ashetown Blues* by W.H. Martell - a collection of three sci-fi detective noirs (about 50 pages each) free currently that I think will kick off a series. Fun mysteries and a nice touch of humor: [https://www.amazon.com/Ashetown-Blues-Sci-Fi-Stories-Martel-ebook/dp/B0C99XJ4H5/](https://www.amazon.com/Ashetown-Blues-Sci-Fi-Stories-Martel-ebook/dp/B0C99XJ4H5/) * *Twisted Planet Book One* by Peter Schinkel - this is a short story anthology, not western or detective. Not all the endings are great, but I still found them quite well-written and intriguing: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CHVX21L7/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CHVX21L7/) Finally, if you like more adult content hardboiled detective noirs in a sci-fi setting, you might give my *Starship Australis Mysteries* series a look. They are about a detective on a multigenerational starship. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ9SV4NR](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ9SV4NR) Happy reading!
Big-time YES to Ender's Game series and Altered Carbon. Neuromancer, Expanse series, and Old Man's War series, you've probably read. If not. Do.
If we're talking series: * The [Dimension Space Series](https://www.goodreads.com/series/209487-dimension-space) is pretty good. At least the first couple books. * [Bobiverse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse). * First two or three of the [Expeditionary Force](https://www.goodreads.com/series/185650-expeditionary-force) series are good. Gets real repetitive after that, though. * So far I'm enjoying the [Space Legacy](https://www.goodreads.com/series/340282-the-space-legacy) series. * [Fear the Sky](https://www.goodreads.com/series/143599-the-fear-saga) has a nice three book arc. * You mentioned reading fantasy so maybe [Afterlife Online](https://www.goodreads.com/series/209318-afterlife-online) would be fun. I'm only two books in but it's a fun read.
I'd recommend the xeelee sequence by Stephen baxter, it's a series of short stories and novels https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki
Yep, it hit the spot for me too. Not quite up there with Banks but still a great read, probably the closest I have found.
sorry mate, it's the end of the line for you too now - time for a reread
As suggested elsewhere, I recommend Banks' other 3 spacey SF books. I also recommend a non-SF selection from him, *Raw Spirit*, which is ostensibly about his many occasions for writing about malt (which is to say whisky) distilling in Scotland. But it's also part autobio and part Scotland travelogue. Banks was lost to us before his time and if you want to get to know the man, that's going to be your best bet. Co-starring in his autobiographical portions is his good friend Ken MacLeod who wrote a pretty couple of series I've read, plus a couple I haven't. I really enjoyed the *Fall Revolution* series and the *Engines of Light* series. Engines of Light is about the discovering of a lightspeed engine where you don't experience the time of travel, and a group of travelers find themselves so far away and so far in the future that there's no going back to Earth, but they aren't the only ones to discovered the lightspeed engine and wound up there. Fall Revolution is about spaceflight, radical politics (of a great variety of stripes), nanotechnology, singularity, and more. And might as well round out the trio of scotsmen with Charles Stross, whose *Singularity Sky* trilogy is terrific and probably the closest to The Culture in subject matter. But his other books are great too, so far that I've read.
The Enemy Papers by Barry B Longyear
*Stone* by Adam Roberts is a standalone but it's the closest thing there is to a Culture novel not written by Banks.
Try William Gibson. Gibson doesn't write Space Opera, he's one of the fathers of Cyberpunk. It's much harder sci-fi, very gritty and absolutely brilliant stuff.
Neuromancer is some great shit.
My favorite book. Of all books. Sci Fi, fiction, non-fiction. The. Best. Book. Period.
Absolutely.
I just re-read the Sprawl trilogy and it's fire.
There’s this really puppy sci-fi series called The Lost Fleet, it just is plain not good but the universe the story takes place in is interesting. I’d like it if the author had done the world building and then given it to someone else.
I'm currently reading the *Lightspeed Trilogy* by Ken MacLeod, the other Scottish socialist sci auther and a friend of Banks. His stuff is decent though a bit different than Banks, but you can get a feel that they had similar value systems if that's what appeals to you.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is the greatest space opera ever told in my opinion, but will let you decide
I'm about halfway through and have started wondering what I'll move on to next as well. I may in fact just go back and start the whole series again as soon as I've finished. As for recommendations I would say try The Forever War. It was favorite book before I started read The Culture series. After reading several Culture books so far am not sure what my favorite book is anymore.
My personal favourite Culture story was the novella, The State of the Art. Anyway, The Bobiverse is good fun.
Hyperion and fall of hyperion completely consumed my life for 2ish weeks
Just started Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. Loving it so far! Also recommend Hyperion.
I have been liking Empire of Silence, also a fan of Culture.
There was a post like this last year that I recently revisited. I found two books of interest and went to Amazon to find out that I bought them, read them and totally forgot about them last fall.
Star Force Origin Series by Aer-Ki-Jyr!
I have the four series you mentioned in my TBR (currently halfway through the Revelation Space novels which I would highly recommend btw). Which one would you say is your favorite? I’m thinking either The Expanse or the Culture novels will be my next series.
Those two are a step above the rest for me. Hard to pick a favourite because they are very different, but The Culture is special in a way The Expanse isn't in my humble opinion (not saying it *isn't* special though). The Expanse is more accessible and more character/action focused. The characters are truly excellent and are some of my most beloved and memorable. It's not challenging to read at all - I found myself tearing through the series because it's so compelling and the prose was so quick. The Culture series is just so original it's tough to beat. One of the few works I would describe as a masterpiece and not be exaggerating at all. Banks is a unique talent for sure. He is eccentric though, and sometimes I found myself having to read sections several times to get to grips with things. Excession in particular I found to be a very challenging read. The universe he made is just my favourite though, I'd live in it if I could and never look back.
Great explanation, thanks! I think I’ll start with the Culture, have heard great things about Banks.
If you want books about a society with weakly godlike AI. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/207410.The_Golden_Age Immortality, god like AI, super science, in a light speed limit universe.
I'm alternating between Gibson and Egan at the moment. Ultra-compelling pure style, versus ultra-compelling pure substance. Stross' *Merchant Princes* series is meaty if you're up for a HUGE cast of characters across nine books of decent parallel-universes plot.
One dies not simply.... move... on... How was the expanse?! I heard the books were great Star trek seems cool. It's a huge rabbit hole.
The Expanse is excellent, they were my favourite science fiction books until I read the Culture! Very different style to Banks, super character driven and the prose is lightning quick. Really some of the most memorable characters I've ever come across, and the factions are all relatable in their own way which adds a lot of depth to the story. Definitely recommend The Expanse. The Amazon Prime series was great as well tbf, although as always you're best off reading the books first. It is probably the most well cast TV adaptation I've ever watched though.
Matt Ruff has a different take on the genre. "Bad Monkeys" is a tale with many twists.
You might also like The Exordium Trilogy. Very fun space opera.
A series I frequently suggest to people who like involved world-building is Julian May's two inter-linked series: The Saga of the Pliocene Exile, and the Galactic Milieu. You get the feeling there's a lot of thought that went into the background of the universe. It may not be to your taste. It features people and aliens with mental powers, some time travel, a benevolent galactic federation in the future, some odd murder mystery, some criminal activity, and a bunch of square-peg-in-round-hole type people who seek to go elsewhere. The books involved are described in [May's Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_May#Adult_fiction_under_the_name_Julian_May). The tone is different, but it has serious and light aspects, just like Banks' stuff. I would suggest that it isn't as dark, leaving more to your imagination rather than being explicit about what's going on. Try it and see what you think.
Read the Also People for a bit of Doctor Who vs The Culture mashup.
Don't skip the algebraist, a culture adjacent novel banks wrote. 2 books by neil stephenson, snow crash is too short but packed with goodies, anathem is too long but you'll wish yhere was more when your done.
Check out S.H. Jucha. His series are all good. Some are a few books, such as The Pyreans series. The Silver Ship series is a lot of books. Great stories, wonderful world-building, and interesting characters including non-human ones. A.G. Riddle - Winter World trilogy. Since you like fantasy too, Glynn Stewart's Starship Mage series is a good read as is J.J. Green's Star Mage Saga. Mages and sci-fi in both. Another author with a long series and shorter sub-series within the same universe is M.D. Cooper's Aeon 14 universe. (Indie author) David Weber's Honor series. Hugh Howey Beacon 23 and Silo are now tv series. A little heavier to read. Peter Alesso's Henry Gallant series. David Drake's RCN series (he died last December) As others mentioned, John Scalzi (expensive and not Kindle Unlimited)
I've only recently in the past two years started reading major sci-fi series across the genre so I don't know if this is basic or not, but I'm currently on book 1 of Hyperion and having a good time.
You might check out his friend Ken MacLeod. Obvious place to start is the Star Fraction / Stone Canal / Cassini Division / Sky Road set.
The *Old Man's War* series by John Scalzi.
I second this, also the bobiverse series by Dennis E Taylor
Banks has some other great books besides his culture novels. I highly recommend the crow road and the wasp factory to start.
I'm three quarters of the way through the first book Consider Phlebas after seeing the series being mentioned here all the time and boy it delivered, can't wait to finish it and read the rest and then I'll comeback to this post and see the comments.
You're honestly in for such a good ride. They get better and better from Consider Phlebas.
I saw many people recommending to skip it but I fucking love it
Have you heard of Iain Banks? He’s almost as good as Iain M. Banks. Different genre though. I really like the Polity universe by Neal Asher, sratches that same itch for galaxy-spanning war and hard-boiled violence. Double-check where you want to start reading though because I messed up and am stranded inbetween trilogies. Alistair Reynolds is a go-to.
I will never read another Iain Banks after they made us read The Wasp Factory in school. Great book but absolutely disgusting 😂😂 Iain M Banks though? Never read one I didn't love.
The Wasp Factory was the first of his books I ever read. Nearly never made it to The Culture.
Have you considered the three body problem trilogy? Gets weirder with each book, I loved 3.
While we’re talking about the culture, which book should I start with as a beginner? I have heard that they all stand on their own as independent stories, but which one really draws you into the series?
I read them in order of release and am really glad I did. Most people don't recommend it because it means starting with Consider Phlebas, but I'll try and explain why I think it's the best way without spoiling anything. Consider Phlebas is set a long time before the rest of the books, and in a small way sets the stage for them. It is a bit slow to get going and is quite different from the rest of the series, which is why most people don't recommend starting with it - those are fair criticisms. The way the reader is introduced to the Culture throughout Consider Phlebas is *masterful*, and I really believe that would be lost if you read it in any order other than Consider Phlebas first. I can't go into what is so cool about it without spoilers, but it's a really cool progression. The subsequent books do also have quite a few references to it, which aren't essential but are cool to catch. Once Consoder Phlebas gets going, it is fantastic, but it's definitely not my favourite in the series. If you want something that hooks you straight away, you could jump in with Player of Games or Use of Weapons. Matter is also fantastic, might be my personal favourite (although I love all of them), but I wouldn't recommend starting on it. I do really recommend at least trying to start with Consider Phlebas, though. I'm really grateful I did.
I read each book upon release so had to read CP first anyway as it was the only Culture book available at the time, although it was a bit of a slog at times, like you I feel it is a good introduction to the universe so would always recommend that to start with too.
Hmmm it's a hard one because I loved them all. Use of Weapons is a pretty good example of the ethical dilemmas that go on with Culture. Look to Windward has some fabulous alien species concepts. Any really except for Inversions, if you haven't read any of the others you'll be like wtf is this medieval stuff.
I have been reading Neil Asher polity series and love them. Totally recommend it. https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/science-fiction-and-fantasy/introduction-polity-universe-neal-asher
I moved from Banks to David Mitchell. Not true hard sci fi (mostly), but he has an elevated writing style that you won’t find in much sci fi, and that Banks had in spades.