The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle, Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Lieber, the Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison …
And the best trilogy of all, the Gaea Trilogy by John Varley.
This makes me wonder if you’ve happened to read any Iain Banks? His books are highly focused on intervention in developing galactic civilizations and the role of a galactic hyper-power (the Culture) in those interventions. Hard to really describe, but it’s probably one of the best, if not the best utopian vision in science fiction. You can see the whole thing as a giant meditation on human values and pluralism. Hard also to recommend an optimal start point, but player of games or excession are pretty good. Look to windward and surface detail are probably the best novels of the series and would be pretty accessible for an experienced sci-fi/fantasy reader (especially someone who’s read permutation city in the case of surface detail)
One underrated sci fi novel that won a Hugo but I feel like is rarely mentioned is Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. It has so much to say about collectivism vs individualism, slavery, emergencies and government, and most importantly in my opinion, the power of freedom and markets. One of my favorite books.
Yes, it's a franchise novel, but Jeff Grubb is by far the best writer to ever touch a TSR or Wizards of the Coast property, and this particular book doesn't require any background knowledge of the franchise in question. I've read a whole lot of fantasy novels by a lot of authors from greats to hacks (Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, Stephen R. Donaldson, Mercedes Lackey, Piers Anthony, Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Fred Saberhagen, L. E. Modessit Jr., Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, and many, many others) and believe me, this is as good as anything else out there.
One of my favorite series is The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron. A brilliant main character and a whole set of other very well developed characters including a number of strong women. Everyone is adult and most are highly intelligent. A long narrative arc that involves saving the world, universe, universes from some nasty aliens. Set in an alternative England/Scotland/Europe/ Canada/Byzantine Empire (!) around 1350. (Volume two has the map that should have been in volume one. Cameron dislikes maps, which he justifies on the grounds that they were not generally used until the fifteenth century. Beware of the list of characters at the end of volume five because it has a number of spoilers.) Miles is an expert on arms and armour and the fighting techniques of this period. (You can see him on YouTube. He, writing as Christopher Cameron, has an excellent historical series set in Europe around 1350). The magic system is wonderfully plausible and is based on Renaissance memory palaces. He has a splendid take on elves and dragons and an amazing set of monsters. As you read the later books you begin to see that not all of the baddies are bad and you get an interesting slant on what is essentially urbanisation and its effects on the original inhabitants of lands that have been expropriated by humans. The books are generally well written and are great fun.
The Exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge is excellent. Book five leaves us hanging in the air. I think that they had intended to write a many volume saga but it never got written. I don't know why.
I'm suspect these are all before my time (my time being the current century), haven't heard of any of them so I'll have to keep the list and check them out at some point.
My favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet, feel at least appropriately rated, so in terms of underrated, I really enjoy the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. The basic premise is that the main character is the "Abhorsen", a necromancer tasked with keeping the Dead down - it's a fun take on the Chosen One, it's not so much that they have powers that others lack, but more that they're the only person trusted to use them responsibly. I read a lot of other stuff in my childhood but that's one of the only few series that I actually came back to as an adult. I suppose "Rebel of the Sands" by Alwyn Hamilton was also fun and unique, think "Arabian Nights Western", so you have djinn and princes but also six-guns and steam trains.
If I'm allowed to recommend obscure webfiction, Worm feels appropriately rated for something so absurdly long. The recently concluded Practical Guide to Evil probably appeals specifically to the kind of person who enjoy TV Tropes (guilty), given that it's a fantasy universe where the characters draw power from embodying genre archetypes, but again is very long. I'd actually really recommend the City of Angles by Stefan Gagne, (http://stefangagne.com/cityofangles/), hard to say much about why I enjoy it without spoilers, but it's very creative weird fiction about a city of misplaced buildings and people, it's stuck with me in a way that few works of fiction from that period of my life (when I read a LOT of original fiction online) have.
As an aside, you'd probably really like the web serial Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/). It's a cult online book, with creative and realistic uses of superpowers with very very consistent in-universe explanations of basically everything.
Giving your interests in economics I find it hard to believe that Cordwainer Smith's very odd stories did not make your list, especially Nostrilla. Here is something on the setting from Wikipedia
The planet "Old North Australia", or simply "Norstrilia", is the only planet in the Instrumentality of Mankind fictional universe which produces the precious immortality drug "stroon", which indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon (or the "Santaclara drug") is harvested from the huge diseased sheep the Norstrilians raise, and has resisted all attempts at artificial synthesis. Since the Norstrilians have a monopoly, stroon sells for astronomical prices, ..... to protect their culture, imports from other worlds are taxed at rates exceeding 20 million percent, reducing what would be a staggering fortune on another planet to humble penury on Norstrilia itself.
I’m on my fifth Vorkorsigan Saga book. And the story seems perfect for modern Netflix. Non-binary, disabled, strong women characters all without creative license. Also, an emphasis on brain over brawn.
There are at least several seasons of material as well.
Well, I mostly agree with your comments on the books I have read, which is a good sign. My only cavil is that A Civil Campaign is my pick for peak of the Vorkosigan cycle, because it is such a brilliant comedy of manners. And we did get our Ivan novel in the end, so that’s good.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve read enough on your list and enjoyed them to add the rest to my tbr list. I especially appreciate the reminder of the Coldfire Trilogy! It’s been a couple of decades since I read it, and I mostly just remember it being addictively immersive. Time to take it down from the bookshelf again.
I’d add to your CJ Cherryh recommendations her Chanur series. Technically it’s in the Alliance-Union universe but usually listed separately. Two of the spacefaring species that form the Compact, an open trading system among otherwise independent civilizations, are in a region of space that borders the region of Alliance-Union space most remote from Earth.
What distinguishes the Chanur books from her other space operas is how they’re in the comedy-adventure vein. Lots of rollicking fun. Inventing aliens is one of her strengths, and the species in Chanur are especially memorable. (The pronouns of one species would challenge the wokest among us.) Their interactions are filled with every form of competition - with stakes from the personal to the civilizational - from sharp trading to high diplomacy, double-and-triple-crosses to gratuitous violence. And with only the occasional prospect of cooperation. Into this unsocial society of cut-throat merchants a solitary human appears. Hijinks ensue.
Wow - I read a LOT of sci-fi and fantasy in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and the only crossover is the Blue Sword! I read the Thomas Covanent books, but by the end of each one, I wanted to bludgeon the “hero”, Sí it was hard for me to try other Donaldson (he’s an amazing writer, but…). Glen Cook. (Black Company and Garret, PU books are faves, digging back, I was mostly sci-fi - heinlein in particular, Asimov, Clarke. Then I got into Cyberpunk (Gibson, Stephenson, et al). Recently, lots of urban fantasy (Patricia a Briggs, Ilona Andrew’s, Faith Hunter, Eileen Rendahl, Simon Green)… so many books, so little time!
I've read a bunch of these and now want to read the ones I haven't. Loved the Death Gate series as a kid for having interestingly complex and various types of magics.
Curious if you have read, and if so your thoughts, on Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Stephen Erikson?
Some good recs, lots of appealing ones I haven't read. I didn't like Falling Free and quit it pretty early, not sure if that means Bujold isn't for me.
I think the world of Tony Daniel's short fiction (A Dry Quiet War is the best space western ever told in any medium) but I was actually disappointed with Metaplanetary, the sense of wonder was awesome but it didn't feel like the plot was going anywhere. It felt like there was supposed to be much more suspense than the book actually brought to the table.
Cherryh certainly isn't underrated by me, her aliens are some of the best in the biz. Hard to pick a favorite between Cyteen, Chanur and Faded Sun but I think I gotta go with Faded Sun. It had the most satisfying ending.
The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle, Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Lieber, the Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison …
And the best trilogy of all, the Gaea Trilogy by John Varley.
This makes me wonder if you’ve happened to read any Iain Banks? His books are highly focused on intervention in developing galactic civilizations and the role of a galactic hyper-power (the Culture) in those interventions. Hard to really describe, but it’s probably one of the best, if not the best utopian vision in science fiction. You can see the whole thing as a giant meditation on human values and pluralism. Hard also to recommend an optimal start point, but player of games or excession are pretty good. Look to windward and surface detail are probably the best novels of the series and would be pretty accessible for an experienced sci-fi/fantasy reader (especially someone who’s read permutation city in the case of surface detail)
One underrated sci fi novel that won a Hugo but I feel like is rarely mentioned is Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. It has so much to say about collectivism vs individualism, slavery, emergencies and government, and most importantly in my opinion, the power of freedom and markets. One of my favorite books.
This isn't so obscure, but I love Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
The best fantasy novel nobody has read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07C91KLV8/
Yes, it's a franchise novel, but Jeff Grubb is by far the best writer to ever touch a TSR or Wizards of the Coast property, and this particular book doesn't require any background knowledge of the franchise in question. I've read a whole lot of fantasy novels by a lot of authors from greats to hacks (Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, Stephen R. Donaldson, Mercedes Lackey, Piers Anthony, Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Fred Saberhagen, L. E. Modessit Jr., Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, and many, many others) and believe me, this is as good as anything else out there.
One of my favorite series is The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron. A brilliant main character and a whole set of other very well developed characters including a number of strong women. Everyone is adult and most are highly intelligent. A long narrative arc that involves saving the world, universe, universes from some nasty aliens. Set in an alternative England/Scotland/Europe/ Canada/Byzantine Empire (!) around 1350. (Volume two has the map that should have been in volume one. Cameron dislikes maps, which he justifies on the grounds that they were not generally used until the fifteenth century. Beware of the list of characters at the end of volume five because it has a number of spoilers.) Miles is an expert on arms and armour and the fighting techniques of this period. (You can see him on YouTube. He, writing as Christopher Cameron, has an excellent historical series set in Europe around 1350). The magic system is wonderfully plausible and is based on Renaissance memory palaces. He has a splendid take on elves and dragons and an amazing set of monsters. As you read the later books you begin to see that not all of the baddies are bad and you get an interesting slant on what is essentially urbanisation and its effects on the original inhabitants of lands that have been expropriated by humans. The books are generally well written and are great fun.
The Exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge is excellent. Book five leaves us hanging in the air. I think that they had intended to write a many volume saga but it never got written. I don't know why.
I'm suspect these are all before my time (my time being the current century), haven't heard of any of them so I'll have to keep the list and check them out at some point.
My favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet, feel at least appropriately rated, so in terms of underrated, I really enjoy the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. The basic premise is that the main character is the "Abhorsen", a necromancer tasked with keeping the Dead down - it's a fun take on the Chosen One, it's not so much that they have powers that others lack, but more that they're the only person trusted to use them responsibly. I read a lot of other stuff in my childhood but that's one of the only few series that I actually came back to as an adult. I suppose "Rebel of the Sands" by Alwyn Hamilton was also fun and unique, think "Arabian Nights Western", so you have djinn and princes but also six-guns and steam trains.
If I'm allowed to recommend obscure webfiction, Worm feels appropriately rated for something so absurdly long. The recently concluded Practical Guide to Evil probably appeals specifically to the kind of person who enjoy TV Tropes (guilty), given that it's a fantasy universe where the characters draw power from embodying genre archetypes, but again is very long. I'd actually really recommend the City of Angles by Stefan Gagne, (http://stefangagne.com/cityofangles/), hard to say much about why I enjoy it without spoilers, but it's very creative weird fiction about a city of misplaced buildings and people, it's stuck with me in a way that few works of fiction from that period of my life (when I read a LOT of original fiction online) have.
These are now all on my list!
As an aside, you'd probably really like the web serial Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/). It's a cult online book, with creative and realistic uses of superpowers with very very consistent in-universe explanations of basically everything.
Speaking of Lois McMaster Bujold, I love the Penric and Desdemona series...
Giving your interests in economics I find it hard to believe that Cordwainer Smith's very odd stories did not make your list, especially Nostrilla. Here is something on the setting from Wikipedia
The planet "Old North Australia", or simply "Norstrilia", is the only planet in the Instrumentality of Mankind fictional universe which produces the precious immortality drug "stroon", which indefinitely delays aging in humans. Stroon (or the "Santaclara drug") is harvested from the huge diseased sheep the Norstrilians raise, and has resisted all attempts at artificial synthesis. Since the Norstrilians have a monopoly, stroon sells for astronomical prices, ..... to protect their culture, imports from other worlds are taxed at rates exceeding 20 million percent, reducing what would be a staggering fortune on another planet to humble penury on Norstrilia itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norstrilia
I’m on my fifth Vorkorsigan Saga book. And the story seems perfect for modern Netflix. Non-binary, disabled, strong women characters all without creative license. Also, an emphasis on brain over brawn.
There are at least several seasons of material as well.
Who plays Miles though?
Well, I mostly agree with your comments on the books I have read, which is a good sign. My only cavil is that A Civil Campaign is my pick for peak of the Vorkosigan cycle, because it is such a brilliant comedy of manners. And we did get our Ivan novel in the end, so that’s good.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve read enough on your list and enjoyed them to add the rest to my tbr list. I especially appreciate the reminder of the Coldfire Trilogy! It’s been a couple of decades since I read it, and I mostly just remember it being addictively immersive. Time to take it down from the bookshelf again.
I’d add to your CJ Cherryh recommendations her Chanur series. Technically it’s in the Alliance-Union universe but usually listed separately. Two of the spacefaring species that form the Compact, an open trading system among otherwise independent civilizations, are in a region of space that borders the region of Alliance-Union space most remote from Earth.
What distinguishes the Chanur books from her other space operas is how they’re in the comedy-adventure vein. Lots of rollicking fun. Inventing aliens is one of her strengths, and the species in Chanur are especially memorable. (The pronouns of one species would challenge the wokest among us.) Their interactions are filled with every form of competition - with stakes from the personal to the civilizational - from sharp trading to high diplomacy, double-and-triple-crosses to gratuitous violence. And with only the occasional prospect of cooperation. Into this unsocial society of cut-throat merchants a solitary human appears. Hijinks ensue.
Wow - I read a LOT of sci-fi and fantasy in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and the only crossover is the Blue Sword! I read the Thomas Covanent books, but by the end of each one, I wanted to bludgeon the “hero”, Sí it was hard for me to try other Donaldson (he’s an amazing writer, but…). Glen Cook. (Black Company and Garret, PU books are faves, digging back, I was mostly sci-fi - heinlein in particular, Asimov, Clarke. Then I got into Cyberpunk (Gibson, Stephenson, et al). Recently, lots of urban fantasy (Patricia a Briggs, Ilona Andrew’s, Faith Hunter, Eileen Rendahl, Simon Green)… so many books, so little time!
I've read a bunch of these and now want to read the ones I haven't. Loved the Death Gate series as a kid for having interestingly complex and various types of magics.
Curious if you have read, and if so your thoughts, on Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Stephen Erikson?
Some good recs, lots of appealing ones I haven't read. I didn't like Falling Free and quit it pretty early, not sure if that means Bujold isn't for me.
I think the world of Tony Daniel's short fiction (A Dry Quiet War is the best space western ever told in any medium) but I was actually disappointed with Metaplanetary, the sense of wonder was awesome but it didn't feel like the plot was going anywhere. It felt like there was supposed to be much more suspense than the book actually brought to the table.
Cherryh certainly isn't underrated by me, her aliens are some of the best in the biz. Hard to pick a favorite between Cyteen, Chanur and Faded Sun but I think I gotta go with Faded Sun. It had the most satisfying ending.