I read the first 3 Dune books after seeing the movie and hearing about the challenges of getting that story on the screen. Love the first 2, the ending of the 3rd was ok.

I’m 3/4ths through the 4th and final Hyperion books. Absolutely incredible, I’m disappointed knowing I’ll be done with it soon. I highly recommend it if you’re at all curious. The author does an excellent job sneaking deep references into the colorful narrative; Keats and Ancient Greek mythology among them. The characters are vivid, varied, and somehow all relatable.

When I was younger I liked Vonnegut, specifically Galapagos, cats cradle, and slaughter house 5. I recently read Philip K Dicks “do androids… electric sheep” and wasn’t a fan. I loved the film blade runner, but the book kind of trudged on for me with, what I felt was, a let down of an ending. Asimov’s foundation was ok, but it lacked action and the characters seemed thin; I do like the concept a lot, it was just missing something for me.

So what’s next? I read a few classics in school and wasn’t terribly moved by most of them. I’ve considered giving Philip K Dick another chance, and possibly exploring the Dune books not authored by Herbert. I’m not a big fan of fantasy- at least in the horse riding, sword wielding, magic and sorcery vein.

Thanks for any suggestions

      • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        2 days ago

        People, please. Don’t sleep on Butler either. A truly visionary artist. She’s incredible. I hate how late in life I heard of her. Genuinely alien aliens. And she cooked up Make America Great Again for her neofascist fiction party decades before their lizard brains could copy it. It’s literally in the books. She predicted the future with basically 100% accuracy. The series is Earthseed.

      • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        2 days ago

        Btw this is not a criticism of your UKLG rec, I love her too and have read many of her books. She’s incredible. I wanted to rec some non-male, non-white authors as well as the other good recs in this thread. Both authors are incredible

        Edit: Got Le Guin’s initials wrong 😓

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      I recommend you start with the Hainish series’s trilogy (Rocannon’s world, planet of exile, and city of illusions). The Left Hand of Darkness is better, and it doesn’t require any of them, but those books will do a lot of world building so you can just focus on the story rather than ask what the hell the Ekumen is.

      City of illusions is also just hard-core payoff and that made it really interesting