My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Additional “cult” sci‑fi & fantasy recommendations

  • Many commenters pile on obscure/underrated picks across eras:
    • Older hard/idea SF: Dragon’s Egg, Starquake, Footfall, The City and the Stars, Colossus, Adiamante, Roadside Picnic, Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality stories.
    • “Weird” or philosophical classics: A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Stars My Destination, The Night Land, Voyage to Arcturus, The Dying Earth, Ticket to Tranai, Titus Groan, We, Kallocain.
    • Modern/near‑future or concept-heavy: Greg Egan (esp. short stories like Luminous, Axiomatic), Blindsight, River of Gods, There Is No Antimimetics Division, XX, On a Red Station, Drifting, Ninefox Gambit, Station Eleven, Sea of Rust.
    • Character‑ or style‑driven fantasy: The Steerswoman series, Little, Big, China Miéville’s The City & the City and others, Windhaven, The Wandering Inn.
    • Fun/“cheesy” page‑turners: Expeditionary Force, Starship’s Mage, Murderbot, Bobiverse, Dream Park, The Long Run, Red Rising (especially as the series develops).

Debate: sci‑fi vs fantasy and why they’re lumped together

  • Several readers dislike that bookstores and streaming services file them under one “sci‑fi/fantasy” bucket, especially those who enjoy one and strongly avoid the other.
  • Others argue they form a continuum (“speculative fiction”):
    • Sci‑fi often contains impossible elements (FTL, telepathy) indistinguishable from magic.
    • Fantasy can have rigorous, quasi‑scientific magic systems.
    • Many works deliberately blur lines (e.g., post‑apocalyptic settings that feel like fantasy, or space operas with quasi‑magical tech).
  • People reference Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology” idea and note that classification is largely marketing, cover art, and vibes, not physics.
  • Star Wars vs Star Trek, Asimov’s telepaths, Banks’ Inversions, Lem’s Cyberiad are used as examples where categorization is ambiguous.

Views on specific authors and styles

  • Strong praise for Ted Chiang, Stanisław Lem, the Strugatskys, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Iain M. Banks, Jack Vance, and qntm; some see them as philosophically richer than much recent work.
  • Andy Weir is divisive: some value his accessibility and tight adventure plots; others find the prose shallow and characters interchangeable.
  • There’s nostalgia for older, idea‑driven works versus modern “formulaic” genre fiction, alongside acknowledgment that accessibility and market realities shape what gets popular.

Curation, “masterworks,” and obscurity over time

  • Commenters recommend publisher-curated lines like Fantasy/SF Masterworks and Appendix N (from early D&D) as discovery tools for foundational but semi‑obscure works.
  • Several note that time turns once‑famous authors into “cult” figures; many younger readers have never heard of mid‑20th‑century greats.
  • There’s broad skepticism about algorithmic recommendation systems, with some preferring human curators (bookstore owners, critics, editors) to surface hidden gems.