I'm looking for some enthralling reads, preferably Sci-Fi or dystopian novels with philosophical underpinnings

Question

The more popular, the better. I haven't read too much in the way of fiction. However, I thoroughly enjoyed 1984 and Brave New World.

Answer 1

Some of the most beguiling dystopias I've read were by two modern authors: China Mieville and M. John Harrison.

Looking first at China Mieville: I'd probably start with his novel "Iron Council" which is quite dystpoian with more than a few political underpinnings. It's actually the third book in a loose trilogy that begins with "Perdido Street Station" and "The Scar" and I happen to think of the three novels, "Iron Council" is probably the more accessable though "the Scar" contains some of his best prose. Though they are written in a parciluar order, you don't have to read them in order. They share a universe, but that's about it. They're fantasy novels, but at times, they read more like science fiction, espciallially since there are "sciences" that underly the society of New Crobuzon--the featured city in all three books.

In the same genera vein, I'd also suggest M. John Harrison's Viriconium Cycle, which is now available "for the first time" to American readers and collected into a single volume simply called "Viriconium." There are short novels and short stories collected into this volume, all of which take place in the far future (or perhaps the distant past) and though they're classified as fantasy, there is a lot that they share in common with science fiction--up to and including a really bizarre alien invasion that adds a unique dimension to the dystopian nature of the other works.

Equally enthralling would be many of the works of Samuel R. Delany, particularly his dystopian masterwork "Dhalgren" a huge, sprawling novel full of typogrphical tricks and rather startling, lyrical prose. It is sexually explicit, however, and NOT the world's easiest read. It took me a year to get through that book, not because it was so hard, but because there were points where I just had to stop and think about what I'd just read.

Other great science fictional/dystopian or quasi-dystopian works would include:

334 by Thomas Disch
The Fatal Eggs by Mihail Bulgakov
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The futures drawn by William Gibson are quite dystopian, but his focus isn't so much on politics as it is on the more techno-fetishistic elements of life in a world gone distinctly hyper-commercial and in a sense, commercialism has become the new politics in his literary universe. His novels Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive explore the more distant future of this particular universe, while his novels Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties look at a similar universe not too far removed from our own. His stories collected in "Burning Chrome" are probably the best introductions to his body of work as nearly half of those stories all take place in the universe written in the trilogy beginning with Neuromancer.

All of the works I've listed above are quite philosophical in nature, though their approaches to various philosophies are as varied as the authors themselves. I'd probably start with the "newer" works by Mieville and Harrison and work backwards, but all of the books listed above are books that have become touchstones within the science fiction genre, though the works by Harrison and Mivielle move between science fiction and fantasy, carving out a new niche for themselves that is commonly called "new weird."

Answer 2

YA literature has some dystopias...Lois Lowry's The Giver comes to mind. I believe there are some sequels to that book as well, although I can't think of their titles offhand. But Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy definitely qualifies as a dystopian novel. (Uglies; Pretties; Specials).

Orson Scott Card has written many great novels. The Worthing Saga comes to mind as a society gone wrong. It's a great book. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is a book that may qualify in some ways...it's more about a society who has realized that it has messed things up so badly that there is no hope for a future at all--end of humanity, end of life on Earth--unless there is a way to change the past.

Answer 3

Try Stanislav Lem or H.G. Wells
+
Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child, The Memoirs of a Survivor
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives
Amitav Ghosh - The Calcutta Chromosone
Mary Shelley - The Last Man
The future doesn't look bright in any of those!

Answer 4

Anthem by Ayn Rand
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Answer 5

Try William Morris' _News from Nowhere_ (dystopia and great). Have you read any of the Thursday Next books? I'm working on _Lost in a Good Book_ right now and it seems a bit dystopia-esque (very different, very fictional (maybe sci-fi, I can't figure out for sure) but very interesting).

Answer 6

dystopias:
"we" by yevgeny zamyatin influenced orwell's "1984"
"a clockwork orange" by anthony burgess is dystopian without proposing a particular political entity
"iron council" by china mieville is a fantasy world (without swords, sorcerers, or dragons) in which the building of the railroad moves like a juggernaut through the landscape, with political implications.

questionable utopias:
"the dispossessed" by ursula k. leguin contrasts two worlds, the anarchist desert moon anarres and the lush capitalist world urras. not exactly a dystopia but might be what you're looking for
kim stanley robinson's mars trilogy: "red mars", "green mars" and "blue mars" -- the science and politics of terraforming and colonizing

Answer 7

Ender's Game is a rockin' book...I don't know of anyone who doesn't like it. It's about genious kids who go to a military academy in space to learn how to fight aliens. Definitely food for thought in that book.

Dune is a good one, too. A duke and his family go to a desert planet as directed by the emporer. It's a complicated book to explain but the author does a great job in portraying various ways of life and the political fallout of events.

Answer 8

Read:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Bless me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus.

Answer 9

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, or Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Answer 10

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear about leaps in evolution.
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle About society post meteorite strike.
Both are very good books I couldn't put them down.