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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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[-] Davel23@fedia.io 10 points 1 week ago

Wyrm by Mark Fabi

It's all about computers and online gaming, and it was written in 1988 so it's a little dated, but it's also amazingly prescient in a lot of ways. Furthermore it's a bit like a proto-LitRPG novel before that was even a genre.

Bloom by Wil McCarthy

A really good gray-goo/nanotech apocalypse story.

[-] j_elgato@leminal.space 3 points 1 week ago

Oh yeah, our protag was a serious Mary Sue!

Awesome read though.

[-] Davel23@fedia.io 3 points 1 week ago

Which one? I don't recall either leading character being overly Mary Sue-ish, but it's been a while since I read them.

[-] j_elgato@leminal.space 4 points 1 week ago

Wyrm?

So we have our protag and his encyclopedic knowledge of dork culture, an external hard drive filled with live computer viruses, and he's not just taking class with the local kung fu school - but he knows better than to jog barefoot in the snow: because he's been there/done that. So we are schooling and entire class full of would be martial artists on how to do it better.

And then he's off on a date - because our kung fu, have-laptop-will-teavel, aspie-coder protag is also a chick magnet?

Yeah. Mary Sue.

Awesome read though. Even had chess lines in the back appendix.

[-] Davel23@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Fair enough.

[-] Ixoid@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy is one of my top ten fav Sci Fi novels. Bloom was also good...

[-] Davel23@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

I'll check it out!

this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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