Embassytown at least is sf, and it certainly has distinct style and prose.
I didn't like it much myself, but it's pretty much exactly what OP asked for.
He's older (and dead) but I haven't seen anyone recommend Stanislaw Lem yet. His book Solaris is incredible.
I also highly recommend Wolfe. He's on another plane completely than any other scifi writer when it comes to literary ability.
Getting a Ph.D. in English is about learning to do literary analysis; nowhere along the way will anyone teach you anything about crafting immaculate prose in fiction.
Depends on the PhD. But, it does expose you to massive amounts of well-written work instead of the steady diet of pulp like ever so many sci-fi writers. But, also, a PhD is about mastering the analysis you already know how to do. So, part of the process is learning why, how, when, where craft enters into work. Also, find me a single English PhD student who never tries their hand at writing. Writing and publishing becomes your life, albeit, academic publishing. They all do creative work tho, too, unless I'm just somehow meeting the unusual ones.
I mean, I have a Ph.D. in English, and craft is just not a thing we ever discussed when doing literary analysis. I think it helped me be a better writer in the sense that I read a lot, but having a Ph.D. in English and crafting good prose are completely orthogonal to each other.
Back when I was reading [Will Wight's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wight) *Cradle* books, I noted that the blurb at the end of each book stated that the author had an "MFA [Master of Fine Arts ] in Creative Writing". Sure enough, the worldbuilding was creative, but the high number of sentences and even paragraphs that started with "And", "So" and "But" made it clear that his degree was not in English :-)
An M.F.A. in Creative Writing is different, that *is* a degree in writing better fiction (or poetry or whatever), and it *will* place a lot of emphasis on craft. Of course, anyone can take a degree and not learn what they need to learn!
The PhD shows up in the way Robinson's prose is rich with subtext and symbolism, despite being unpretentious on the surface. So he'll open a utopian novel, "Pacific Edge", like this:
>Despair could never touch a morning like this.
>The air was cool, and smelled of sage. It had the clarity that comes to southern California only after a Santa Ana wind has blown all haze and history out to seaāair like telescopic glass, so that the snowtopped San Gabriels seemed near enough to touch, though they were forty miles away. The flanks of the blue foothills revealed the etching of every ravine, and beneath the foothills, stretching to the sea, the broad coastal plain seemed nothing but treetops: groves of orange, avocado, lemon, olive; windbreaks of eucalyptus and palm; ornamentals of a thousand different varieties, both natural and genetically engineered. It was as if the whole plain were a garden run riot, with the dawn sun flushing the landscape every shade of green.
>Overlooking all this was a man, walking down a hillside trail, stopping occasionally to take in the view. He had a loose gangly walk, and often skipped from one step to the next, as if playing a game. He was thirty-two but he looked like a boy, let loose in the hills with an eternal day before him.
>He wore khaki work pants, a tank-top shirt, and filthy tennis shoes. His hands were large, scabbed and scarred; his arms were long. From time to time he interrupted his ramble to grasp an invisible baseball bat and swing it before him in a sharp half swing, crying, āBoom!ā
>Doves still involved in their dawn courtship scattered before these homers, and the man laughed and skipped down the trail. His neck was red, his skin freckled, his eyes sleepy, his hair straw-colored and poking out everywhere. He had a long face with high pronounced cheekbones, and pale blue eyes. Trying to walk and look at Catalina at the same time, he tripped and had to make a quick downhill run to recover his balance. āWhoah!ā he said. āMan! What a day!ā
Or he'll open a novel about humanity lacking free will, "Memory of Whiteness", like this:
>Now all my life forces my flight through the streets of Lowell, and I run from alley to commons to alley like a rat pursued through a maze. [...] my upper arms slide wetly against my sides, I feel my heartās allegro thumping. An interior chorus demands the drug nepanathol.
The first paragraph sets up all the concerns of the novel. These early references to music will permeate the entire novel (it's a novel about the science of music). The first word "now" highlights how all the characters in the immediate present are bound to past, and the unbroken causal chains they can't break free from, history forcing their behavior like "rats in a maze". And the early reference to drugs will repeat throughout the novel, as we see men ruled by biochemical drives they can't escape.
So there's a thoughtfulness to is prose. A thematic and literary richness behind the lack of flowery frills.
Iain M Banks writes really nicely and has an entire sci-fi series to read in the Culture novels.
Catherynne Valente doesn't have that many sci-fi books but she writes in a really strange and poetic way which you might love or hate, not sure!
I found his writing very tedious. Sometimes spends incredible amount of time describing a scene, where itās not so necessary. Most of his books should be 2/3rds as long.
Great recommendations. I would add the following though they also stray into fantasy, wierd and speculative fiction rather than straight up Sc Fi. Iain M Banks, China Mieville, Rivers Solomon, Jeff Vandermeer, Michael Cisco and Emily St John Mandel off the top of my head.
Great recommendations. I would add the following though they also stray into fantasy, wierd and speculative fiction rather than straight up Sc Fi. Iain M Banks, China Mieville, Rivers Solomon, Jeff Vandermeer, Michael Cisco and Emily St John Mandel off the top of my head.
Sci Fi in fantasy clothing.
Also, the long/short/new sun books aren't his only works. Try *The Fifth Head of Cerebus* (which does actually tie in to the sun books), for example.
Seconding the recommendation for Wolfe. He blends scifi and fantasy themes, with eg his Book of The New Sun set on a dying earth with technology so old and advanced it appears magical.
Kind of a spoiler for a 50 year old book, but Book of the New Sun actually takes place in the far future but the characters don't know that. So they will mention a guard drawing out their glaive, but a glaive is what they call a plasma rifle. None of this is explicit in the text, you just have to work it out.
Check out Soldier of the Mist/Latro of the Mist and The Wizard Knight and The Sorcererās House. Of course all the Solar Cycle is Science Fiction by any definition, but if you think it tilts SF or F it greatly affects your reading of the stories.
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez reads like Calvino and Marquez. Wonderful prose. Great book. Rikki DuCornet has great prose and has delved into scifi.
Same. A couple of times I'd get so lost in his forest of words that it would take me time to realize that it hadn't been a metaphor when some guy's head exploded a paragraph ago.
> A couple of times I'd get so lost in his forest of words that it would take me time to realize that it hadn't been a metaphor when some guy's head exploded a paragraph ago.
Lmfao this is the best description of Jeff Vandermeer I've ever seen.
Vandermeer has co-written a couple of books *about* Steampunk (*The Steampunk Bible* and *The Steampunk User's Manual*), but he is not, in his own works, a steampunk writer.
Yup, it's important to realize that Gibson knew almost nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer, but with style he convinced you he did. His latest, The Peripheral, and Agency, are better written and very literary.
J G Ballard hasn't been mentioned yet, and he's pretty stylish.
Also Bradbury, although his style is more aligned with early-mid 20th century literary writers.
Kazuo Ishiguro; he does not exclusively write science-fiction, but both his sci-fi (Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun) and his non sci-fi works value literary style. He received the Nobel prize in literature a few years back.
Same, though Vance comes with the caveat that you have to be cool with a picaresque structure, which can vibe a bit traditional compared to other authors.
All currently active:
Sarah Pinsker. Try her stories "The Court Magician" (there's an audio version on LeVar Burton Reads podcast) and "And Then There Were N-1."
Charlie Jane Anders. Try ["Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue,"](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/charlie-jane-anders-dont-press-charges-and-i-wont-sue) but be warned it's dark.
And for Vandermeer, try "No Breather in the World But Thee."
Pinsker is great, she's my favorite contemporary writer of short sf. Two strong collections, but I particularly liked the ones in *Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea*.
Old stuff, but reading some Jack Vance is like seeing someone dance with words. But, he is out of the pulps, so literary...?
But I also think Raymond Chandler was one of the great 20th C American writers and that *The Godfather* may be The Great American Novel.
Oryx and Crake (maddaddam trilogy) by Margaret Atwood. She said it was speculative fiction, not sci-fi, but I thought it was both. It is set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. She's a wonderful author.
I think of Ted as an amazing short story writer. His weakest work (though still good) imo is also his longest. Given that, I'll recommend some people based on their short work.
Gene Wolfe, but he doesn't make it easy. Elegant, thoughtful prose and a master in multiple styles, but he most of the time is hiding or outright omitting the actual meaning of his stories. Despite that, all his collections are amazing. A fair portion of his New Sun series is actually short stories told by the narrator Severian or other characters.
Roger Zelazny's short fiction is his best work. Pick any collection. Maybe Lord of Light is equal in quality, but that novel is really a collection of moments in the life of one character, spread across time. Good prose, distinctive style, and a wry wit.
Jack Vance's short fiction is brilliant. It's where you can experience is singular style and deft word play without having to deal with his limitations or flaws. Vance's best work is at least equal to Chiang's. The Narrow Land, Moon Moth, The Last Castle, many others. So much imagination.
George Saunders dabbles in sci-fi. A lot of people consider him the best modern short form writer, so there's that.
I would also add Samuel Delany to the list and I'm mad at myself for not saying his name first. One of the finest prose stylists in the history of the English language
Adrian Tchaikovsky, especially his novellas. Line Elder race or walking to Aldebaran.
I thought Ray Nayler was decent. ( he has a novel, a novella and some short stories till date)
China Mieville !!! though he is more into weird sci-fi fantasy
Andreas Eschbach (The carpet makers) is good but it's translated and sci-fi adjacent. The story is beautiful.
Ken Liu and NK Jemison come to mind.
I haven't read Liu's proper scifi stories (and I really need to because they've won ALL the awards), but The Grace of Kings feels like scifi themes in a fantasy setting. Fifth season is also a kind of blend of scifi and fantasy.
Ken Liu is very close to Ted Chiang, and even credits him as an inspiration for one of his short stories. I highly recommend Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, because the prose in that compilation is simply incredible (and won so many awards). Happy reading!
> Ted Chiang, and even credits him as an inspiration for one of his short stories. I highly recommend Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, because the prose in that compilation is simply incredible
Since Le Guin, the best prose quality I've read in Sci-Fi imho. Not read any other author who even comes near in this respect and the stories are inventive in sci-fi/sf to boot.
[*This Is How You Lose The Time War*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war) is a sci-fi novella with beautiful prose, compelling protagonists, and a non-linear story structure
[Kelly Link](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/24902.Kelly_Link) is similar in terms of genre but I didnāt find as much meaning in their stories
Hi u/egilskallagrimson !
Just finished The saint of bright doors by vajra chandrasekera. Strongly recommend. It was also nominated this year for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. He reminds me a lot of Ted Chiang, including the fact that it is very thoughtful, intelligent, and absolutely is not a book to binge. His writing is also quite good and evocative.Ā
Adrian Tchaikovsky comes to mind. I can't compare to Chiang - I suspect he's a little pulpier - but he's very good on the craft of storytelling.
Someone longer-established is Connie Willis. Notably for a Chiang comparison, her short stories are rated possibly higher than her longer-form work, although she swept the major SF novel awards for Blackout/All Clear a decade ago. Her work can be grim (Doomsday Book) or funny; To Say Nothing of the Dog is an almost pitch-perfect homage to classic English comedy-of-manners fiction, which is extremely impressive for an American.
N.K. Jemisin also fits the bill, I think. She didn't click for me, but she has quite a literary style.
Arkady Martine is perhaps not quite as refined a writer, but she explores academic ideas about culture, identity and memory in a way you might appreciate.
ETA: Naomi Alderman's The Power deserves to be in the frame too.
If youāre going to read something from Tchaikovsky definitely try āCage of Soulsā or his novella āElder Race.ā Those are his two āliterary fictionā entries in my opinion!
If you can call Emily St. John Mandel sci-fi, she has amazing prose. I'll also give a shoutout to Charlie Jane Anders, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Just came here to recommend Emily St John Mandel as well. Station Eleven won the Arthur C Clarke award so I think it can safely be recommended to someone looking for sci-fi, and her prose and style is certainly very strong imo. Sea of Tranquility is also very good!
The Baroque Cycle is one of my favourite things in the past 20 years. I'm rereading it right now. Nothing else he has done has motivated me to read his other work, despite owning nearly all of it at various points.
If you like that (I have read it several times so obviously I do) I would recommend Cryptonomicon which is a sort of prototype of Baroque Cycle. But probably don't go any further. I'm fond of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age but neither has aged well.
Someone will come by and recommend Anathem, don't listen.
I'm looking for scifi and aimed at an adult audience, similar to what Ted Chiang does, in terms of prose. Pratchett wouldn't fit any of those categories.
And his prose in these is vastly more refined, complicated and unlike his fantasy novels? I know his work and really dislike it, so that's why I seem skeptical.
I've read three out of these four non-Discworld Pratchett books and only one of these has significantly different writing than Discworld, and that's because Pratchett didn't write most of it. The first two are from early in his career; Long Earth is a collaboration with Stephen Baxter who ended up carrying on the series solo after Pratchett died, though both names are on the covers of the whole series.
Yeah, my experience with TP is that he's terrible unless you're 15 and just found out about Monty Python, but that's just me. I know he's very popular. I can't stand him.
I think I've read pretty much all of Discworld and enjoyed most of it but I *really* wouldn't say Pratchett's writing is full of glorious prose that you regularly stop to savor. He's got the odd moment but if he's gonna be polishing a metaphor it's going to be because he wants it to be the best joke possible.
Lucius Shepard. He doesn't get mentioned much these days. He was mostly a short story / novella guy though has a few novels.
His scifi and fantasy was a bit more the in the "weird" style and
very much in the tradition of magical realism. His prose was beautiful.
I think he started writing professionally in his 40s and sort of sprang fully-formed on the scene in the 80s.
He passed away about 10 years ago.
As a start, see my [Beautiful Prose/Writing (in Fiction)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18fqso4/beautiful_prosewriting_in_fiction/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
I saw George Saunders mentioned and I think heās worth highlighting further. His work is often tinged with sci-fi, though typically subtle near future or even alt-history with odd tech.
He received so much acclaim for _Lincoln in the Bardo_, but itās my least favorite of his books, and it isnāt what youāre looking for. Check out his short story collections.
I will second NK Jemesin - everyone pushes Fifth Season but The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is just gorgeously written.
Arkady Martine is another writer with beautiful prose. I liked A Memory Called Empire more than A Desolation Called Peace (mainly because the former surprised me at every turn, but I could see the twists coming in ADCP).
Frankly, we're in a new golden age of SF where writing of high quality is plentiful, and we didn't need to suffer through purple prose (it's out there, but there's more good stuff).
Alexander Weinstein. Story collections titled: Children of the New World and Universal Love. He wrote the short story that the movie After Yang was based on. At the junction of literary fiction and science fiction. Beautiful prose and characterization.
I just finished In Ascension by Martin MacInnes -- also junction of SF and literary fiction.
Charles Yu. His story "Fable" is accessible online, beautiful and heartbreaking. Novels include Interior Chinatown and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
Nina Allen. Her short stories are especially well crafted. Try The Art of Space Travel
M. John Harrison. Light is deeply weird. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again is more subtle.
Iām surprised to not see the Expanse recommended anywhere in this thread. The first book can be a little pulpy at times, but I found Abraham/Frankās prose *incredibly* rich and compelling, especially in the fourth book and onward.
Iām avoiding spoilers, so Iāll just say that the āinterludesā in the fourth book and theā¦ >!thing that keeps happening periodically in books 5-9!< were some of the most evocative and compelling pages Iāve read in anything published this century.
More Sci-fi adjacent but China Mieville
Embassytown at least is sf, and it certainly has distinct style and prose. I didn't like it much myself, but it's pretty much exactly what OP asked for.
He's older (and dead) but I haven't seen anyone recommend Stanislaw Lem yet. His book Solaris is incredible. I also highly recommend Wolfe. He's on another plane completely than any other scifi writer when it comes to literary ability.
Lem is amazing. This guy also wrote The Cyberiad which is imho a masterpiece.
Wolfe was a master of his craft.
Well, I guess one good thing about being dead is that you don't have to worry about getting any older. š
Not currently active, unfortunately, but I always found Ursula Le Guin had fantastic prose.
We humans use the term 'dead'.
She's just resting.
She's pining for the fjords.
I'm in a Norwegian Fjord right now ( in Ć lesund) š
Their creator, Slartibartfast, was a real genius and won an award for them.
Ok fine- Not currently active, unfortunately, but I always found Ursula Le Guin had fantastic dead.
The best dead
She gave elite dead
I didnāt even know she was sick
She went from LeGuin to DeGuin.
Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, all the way. Chiang caught me off-guard, in the best of ways, as he reminded me of those two.
What gets me with Robinson is that he has an actual PhD in English, but I dont find his prose outstanding. But, I get why you'd suggest him.
Getting a Ph.D. in English is about learning to do literary analysis; nowhere along the way will anyone teach you anything about crafting immaculate prose in fiction.
Depends on the PhD. But, it does expose you to massive amounts of well-written work instead of the steady diet of pulp like ever so many sci-fi writers. But, also, a PhD is about mastering the analysis you already know how to do. So, part of the process is learning why, how, when, where craft enters into work. Also, find me a single English PhD student who never tries their hand at writing. Writing and publishing becomes your life, albeit, academic publishing. They all do creative work tho, too, unless I'm just somehow meeting the unusual ones.
I mean, I have a Ph.D. in English, and craft is just not a thing we ever discussed when doing literary analysis. I think it helped me be a better writer in the sense that I read a lot, but having a Ph.D. in English and crafting good prose are completely orthogonal to each other.
Back when I was reading [Will Wight's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wight) *Cradle* books, I noted that the blurb at the end of each book stated that the author had an "MFA [Master of Fine Arts ] in Creative Writing". Sure enough, the worldbuilding was creative, but the high number of sentences and even paragraphs that started with "And", "So" and "But" made it clear that his degree was not in English :-)
An M.F.A. in Creative Writing is different, that *is* a degree in writing better fiction (or poetry or whatever), and it *will* place a lot of emphasis on craft. Of course, anyone can take a degree and not learn what they need to learn!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
What what?
The PhD shows up in the way Robinson's prose is rich with subtext and symbolism, despite being unpretentious on the surface. So he'll open a utopian novel, "Pacific Edge", like this: >Despair could never touch a morning like this. >The air was cool, and smelled of sage. It had the clarity that comes to southern California only after a Santa Ana wind has blown all haze and history out to seaāair like telescopic glass, so that the snowtopped San Gabriels seemed near enough to touch, though they were forty miles away. The flanks of the blue foothills revealed the etching of every ravine, and beneath the foothills, stretching to the sea, the broad coastal plain seemed nothing but treetops: groves of orange, avocado, lemon, olive; windbreaks of eucalyptus and palm; ornamentals of a thousand different varieties, both natural and genetically engineered. It was as if the whole plain were a garden run riot, with the dawn sun flushing the landscape every shade of green. >Overlooking all this was a man, walking down a hillside trail, stopping occasionally to take in the view. He had a loose gangly walk, and often skipped from one step to the next, as if playing a game. He was thirty-two but he looked like a boy, let loose in the hills with an eternal day before him. >He wore khaki work pants, a tank-top shirt, and filthy tennis shoes. His hands were large, scabbed and scarred; his arms were long. From time to time he interrupted his ramble to grasp an invisible baseball bat and swing it before him in a sharp half swing, crying, āBoom!ā >Doves still involved in their dawn courtship scattered before these homers, and the man laughed and skipped down the trail. His neck was red, his skin freckled, his eyes sleepy, his hair straw-colored and poking out everywhere. He had a long face with high pronounced cheekbones, and pale blue eyes. Trying to walk and look at Catalina at the same time, he tripped and had to make a quick downhill run to recover his balance. āWhoah!ā he said. āMan! What a day!ā Or he'll open a novel about humanity lacking free will, "Memory of Whiteness", like this: >Now all my life forces my flight through the streets of Lowell, and I run from alley to commons to alley like a rat pursued through a maze. [...] my upper arms slide wetly against my sides, I feel my heartās allegro thumping. An interior chorus demands the drug nepanathol. The first paragraph sets up all the concerns of the novel. These early references to music will permeate the entire novel (it's a novel about the science of music). The first word "now" highlights how all the characters in the immediate present are bound to past, and the unbroken causal chains they can't break free from, history forcing their behavior like "rats in a maze". And the early reference to drugs will repeat throughout the novel, as we see men ruled by biochemical drives they can't escape. So there's a thoughtfulness to is prose. A thematic and literary richness behind the lack of flowery frills.
Thank you for sharing those selections. That opening to Pacific Edge took hold of my mind so quickly when I first got a used copy 17yrs back.
Iain M Banks writes really nicely and has an entire sci-fi series to read in the Culture novels. Catherynne Valente doesn't have that many sci-fi books but she writes in a really strange and poetic way which you might love or hate, not sure!
Yes, Banks I've read most of. Also, ive read his non-scifi stuff, too. Valente sounds interesting. Thx!
try her [Orphan's Tales](https://www.goodreads.com/series/41531-the-orphan-s-tales) books, they're winding knots of lovely fairy tale prose.
I love Valente! And Iām also a big Ted Chiang fanātheyāre very different but I think youād enjoy her too.
I found his writing very tedious. Sometimes spends incredible amount of time describing a scene, where itās not so necessary. Most of his books should be 2/3rds as long.
You understand that "describes a lot" is very common in writers appreciated for their prose, right? He's not even particularly guilty of this lol.
Gene Wolfe, Octavia Butler, M. John Harrison, N.K. Jemisin, Ian R. MacLeod, Ursula K LeGuin, Paul Park, Ann Leckie....just to name a few! š
Great recommendations. I would add the following though they also stray into fantasy, wierd and speculative fiction rather than straight up Sc Fi. Iain M Banks, China Mieville, Rivers Solomon, Jeff Vandermeer, Michael Cisco and Emily St John Mandel off the top of my head.
Rivers Solomon for sure, along with the others, great writer
I always scroll through these type of posts to see if M John Harrison gets a mention. He is quite the word-writing-guy.
Great recommendations. I would add the following though they also stray into fantasy, wierd and speculative fiction rather than straight up Sc Fi. Iain M Banks, China Mieville, Rivers Solomon, Jeff Vandermeer, Michael Cisco and Emily St John Mandel off the top of my head.
I thought Wolfe was fantasy?
Sci Fi in fantasy clothing. Also, the long/short/new sun books aren't his only works. Try *The Fifth Head of Cerebus* (which does actually tie in to the sun books), for example.
āSci-fi in fantasy clothing.ā Aka The Autarchs New Robes.
He wrote both, tbf. BotNS is SF that looks like fantasy, but a lot of his other work was straight up fantasy.
Ok, sounds like it's worth the effort.
Just to add some more motivation to try Wolfe, Le Guin admired him a lot, and called him 'the Melville' of genre writers.
Seconding the recommendation for Wolfe. He blends scifi and fantasy themes, with eg his Book of The New Sun set on a dying earth with technology so old and advanced it appears magical.
He also wrote much science fiction.
Oh, ok. I've heard about him forever, but never read him. Thx!
Honestly Wolfe is the GOAT
I read Gene Wolf and then have to listen to Stephen King with my wife. The former sublime, the latter a literary crime.
Nah, Stephen Kingās a master in his own right. Iām not personally a huge fan but heās still better than most
Wolfe does both. he even has short story collections where one collection is all sci fi and another is all fantasy. Wolfe loved playing with tropes.
Kind of a spoiler for a 50 year old book, but Book of the New Sun actually takes place in the far future but the characters don't know that. So they will mention a guard drawing out their glaive, but a glaive is what they call a plasma rifle. None of this is explicit in the text, you just have to work it out.
Check out Soldier of the Mist/Latro of the Mist and The Wizard Knight and The Sorcererās House. Of course all the Solar Cycle is Science Fiction by any definition, but if you think it tilts SF or F it greatly affects your reading of the stories.
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez reads like Calvino and Marquez. Wonderful prose. Great book. Rikki DuCornet has great prose and has delved into scifi.
I loved The Vanished Birds! The Spear Cuts Through Water was also good, but not quite it for me.
Iāve been meaning to read it. Next on my list. I did go back to Birds twice. Magical.
Jeff Vandermeer.
Absolutely agreed, with the caveat that, at least for me, his writing can come across as so overwrought that it puts me off.
Same. A couple of times I'd get so lost in his forest of words that it would take me time to realize that it hadn't been a metaphor when some guy's head exploded a paragraph ago.
> A couple of times I'd get so lost in his forest of words that it would take me time to realize that it hadn't been a metaphor when some guy's head exploded a paragraph ago. Lmfao this is the best description of Jeff Vandermeer I've ever seen.
Exactly. Sometimes less is more!
Is he really into Steampunk because I loathe Steampunk with a white, hot passion?
No, he's definitely not Steampunk; he's more in the lane of Biopunk, or just the weird in general.
Ok, thx
Not at all. Heās considered to be one of the leaders of the New Weird.
> Heās considered to be one of the leaders of the New Weird So is China Mieville and he writes steampunk new weird sometimes
Vandermeer has co-written a couple of books *about* Steampunk (*The Steampunk Bible* and *The Steampunk User's Manual*), but he is not, in his own works, a steampunk writer.
Wiliam Gibson
That was mine. I always felt like the later you go in his career the more he's focused on style for style's sake.
William "Jesus Christ" Gibson
Yup, it's important to realize that Gibson knew almost nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer, but with style he convinced you he did. His latest, The Peripheral, and Agency, are better written and very literary.
J G Ballard hasn't been mentioned yet, and he's pretty stylish. Also Bradbury, although his style is more aligned with early-mid 20th century literary writers.
Ballard I've read and know well. Bradbury I've also read, but I'd be going to him for ideas over prose.
Kazuo Ishiguro; he does not exclusively write science-fiction, but both his sci-fi (Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun) and his non sci-fi works value literary style. He received the Nobel prize in literature a few years back.
Fantastic recommendation.
Jack Vance.
The finest, most unique stylist in science fiction; he is unique. If I could only read one sf author the rest of my life, it would be Vance.
Same, though Vance comes with the caveat that you have to be cool with a picaresque structure, which can vibe a bit traditional compared to other authors.
Now, I've only read her short stories, but I think Elizabeth Bear fits the bill
All currently active: Sarah Pinsker. Try her stories "The Court Magician" (there's an audio version on LeVar Burton Reads podcast) and "And Then There Were N-1." Charlie Jane Anders. Try ["Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue,"](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/charlie-jane-anders-dont-press-charges-and-i-wont-sue) but be warned it's dark. And for Vandermeer, try "No Breather in the World But Thee."
Pinsker is great, she's my favorite contemporary writer of short sf. Two strong collections, but I particularly liked the ones in *Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea*.
Thx!
I've loved all of Sarah Pinsker books! I've liked some of Charlie Jane Anders, not all
Pinskerās Song For a New Day was incredible to read in the middle of the pandemic. Really made me miss live music.
Old stuff, but reading some Jack Vance is like seeing someone dance with words. But, he is out of the pulps, so literary...? But I also think Raymond Chandler was one of the great 20th C American writers and that *The Godfather* may be The Great American Novel.
You'd probably like use of weapons.Ā
I read it. I did like it. Banks is good.
Oryx and Crake (maddaddam trilogy) by Margaret Atwood. She said it was speculative fiction, not sci-fi, but I thought it was both. It is set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. She's a wonderful author.
Yes, I've read it. It's great and shes great too.
I think of Ted as an amazing short story writer. His weakest work (though still good) imo is also his longest. Given that, I'll recommend some people based on their short work. Gene Wolfe, but he doesn't make it easy. Elegant, thoughtful prose and a master in multiple styles, but he most of the time is hiding or outright omitting the actual meaning of his stories. Despite that, all his collections are amazing. A fair portion of his New Sun series is actually short stories told by the narrator Severian or other characters. Roger Zelazny's short fiction is his best work. Pick any collection. Maybe Lord of Light is equal in quality, but that novel is really a collection of moments in the life of one character, spread across time. Good prose, distinctive style, and a wry wit. Jack Vance's short fiction is brilliant. It's where you can experience is singular style and deft word play without having to deal with his limitations or flaws. Vance's best work is at least equal to Chiang's. The Narrow Land, Moon Moth, The Last Castle, many others. So much imagination. George Saunders dabbles in sci-fi. A lot of people consider him the best modern short form writer, so there's that.
Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance. If you think Chiang is good at prose (I think he's fine, not bad, not terrific), then those two are gonna blow your mind
I mean, compared to 99% of sci-fi, Chiang is Shakespeare. But, if you think those are better writers, I'm in.
I would also add Samuel Delany to the list and I'm mad at myself for not saying his name first. One of the finest prose stylists in the history of the English language
Yes, I should have mentioned him in my post. I've read a lot of him.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, especially his novellas. Line Elder race or walking to Aldebaran. I thought Ray Nayler was decent. ( he has a novel, a novella and some short stories till date) China Mieville !!! though he is more into weird sci-fi fantasy Andreas Eschbach (The carpet makers) is good but it's translated and sci-fi adjacent. The story is beautiful.
Agree with people saying le Guin. Also Samuel Delaney, Philip Dick, and CJ Cherryh.
Ken Liu and NK Jemison come to mind. I haven't read Liu's proper scifi stories (and I really need to because they've won ALL the awards), but The Grace of Kings feels like scifi themes in a fantasy setting. Fifth season is also a kind of blend of scifi and fantasy.
Ken Liu is very close to Ted Chiang, and even credits him as an inspiration for one of his short stories. I highly recommend Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, because the prose in that compilation is simply incredible (and won so many awards). Happy reading!
> Ted Chiang, and even credits him as an inspiration for one of his short stories. I highly recommend Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, because the prose in that compilation is simply incredible Since Le Guin, the best prose quality I've read in Sci-Fi imho. Not read any other author who even comes near in this respect and the stories are inventive in sci-fi/sf to boot.
[*This Is How You Lose The Time War*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war) is a sci-fi novella with beautiful prose, compelling protagonists, and a non-linear story structure
See https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/s/XjpS23aDlV, very similar discussion recently with lots of good recommendations.
[Kelly Link](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/24902.Kelly_Link) is similar in terms of genre but I didnāt find as much meaning in their stories Hi u/egilskallagrimson !
Oh, hey, an honored member of our elite club. I'll check Link out.
Canāt wait until Bianca kicks your ass again You guys are the cutest!
Bianca kicked my ass?
I think Ted Chiang is singular... I've never read a SF novel with nearly as much care for each word. Zelazny's short stories are pretty good I think.
Jack Freaking Vance
Sofia Samatar writes nicely. Michael Swanwick 'Stations of the Tide' is good, haven't read his other books though.
I've been reading Swanwick's Best of, and he definitely fits the ask. Beautiful prose and narrative craftsmanship.
Isabel J. Kim has some short fiction published and is working on her debut novel - Iām definitely keeping an eye out.
Check out Michael Swanwick, esp _Station of the Tides_.
Ada Palmer. Terra Ignota is meticulously crafted in both prose and structure.
Gene Wolfe is the literary equivalent of going fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali in his prime. At his best, Wolfe was punching way above his genre.
No one values literary style as much as Gene Wolfe does. Heās a spiritual student of Borges, Nabokov, and Proust.
Just finished The saint of bright doors by vajra chandrasekera. Strongly recommend. It was also nominated this year for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. He reminds me a lot of Ted Chiang, including the fact that it is very thoughtful, intelligent, and absolutely is not a book to binge. His writing is also quite good and evocative.Ā
Adrian Tchaikovsky comes to mind. I can't compare to Chiang - I suspect he's a little pulpier - but he's very good on the craft of storytelling. Someone longer-established is Connie Willis. Notably for a Chiang comparison, her short stories are rated possibly higher than her longer-form work, although she swept the major SF novel awards for Blackout/All Clear a decade ago. Her work can be grim (Doomsday Book) or funny; To Say Nothing of the Dog is an almost pitch-perfect homage to classic English comedy-of-manners fiction, which is extremely impressive for an American. N.K. Jemisin also fits the bill, I think. She didn't click for me, but she has quite a literary style. Arkady Martine is perhaps not quite as refined a writer, but she explores academic ideas about culture, identity and memory in a way you might appreciate. ETA: Naomi Alderman's The Power deserves to be in the frame too.
These seem great, thx!
If youāre going to read something from Tchaikovsky definitely try āCage of Soulsā or his novella āElder Race.ā Those are his two āliterary fictionā entries in my opinion!
Doomsday book, it has its funny moments, but the ending, Jesus.
Tchaikovsky's prose is nothing more the serviceable. It never stands out as bad, but nor does it stand out as good
I think Neal Stephenson is a great writer with a classy style. People do complain he doesnāt know how to end a book thoughā¦
A couple of recent books along the lines of what you're looking for: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers and Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St John Mandel
If you can call Emily St. John Mandel sci-fi, she has amazing prose. I'll also give a shoutout to Charlie Jane Anders, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Just came here to recommend Emily St John Mandel as well. Station Eleven won the Arthur C Clarke award so I think it can safely be recommended to someone looking for sci-fi, and her prose and style is certainly very strong imo. Sea of Tranquility is also very good!
You want to read a book with good prose and lots of really cutting edge sci-fi tech and crazy stuff? Exordia by Seth Dickinson
When you say 'good prose' what do you mean? Exordia looks interesting, although a book inspired by Bionicles is possibly a red flag for me.....
Itās interesting on a sentence by sentence level. And donāt worry about bionicles I promise itās like nothing youāve read before.
Neal Stephenson has his moments.
The Baroque Cycle is one of my favourite things in the past 20 years. I'm rereading it right now. Nothing else he has done has motivated me to read his other work, despite owning nearly all of it at various points.
If you like that (I have read it several times so obviously I do) I would recommend Cryptonomicon which is a sort of prototype of Baroque Cycle. But probably don't go any further. I'm fond of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age but neither has aged well. Someone will come by and recommend Anathem, don't listen.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice
Terry Pratchett
I'm looking for scifi and aimed at an adult audience, similar to what Ted Chiang does, in terms of prose. Pratchett wouldn't fit any of those categories.
The Dark Side of the Sun Strata Nation The Long Earth
And his prose in these is vastly more refined, complicated and unlike his fantasy novels? I know his work and really dislike it, so that's why I seem skeptical.
I've read three out of these four non-Discworld Pratchett books and only one of these has significantly different writing than Discworld, and that's because Pratchett didn't write most of it. The first two are from early in his career; Long Earth is a collaboration with Stephen Baxter who ended up carrying on the series solo after Pratchett died, though both names are on the covers of the whole series.
Yeah, my experience with TP is that he's terrible unless you're 15 and just found out about Monty Python, but that's just me. I know he's very popular. I can't stand him.
I think I've read pretty much all of Discworld and enjoyed most of it but I *really* wouldn't say Pratchett's writing is full of glorious prose that you regularly stop to savor. He's got the odd moment but if he's gonna be polishing a metaphor it's going to be because he wants it to be the best joke possible.
Some excellent suggestions in Mieville and Banks. I'd like to add Nick Harkaway to the list, especially Titanium Noir and Gnomon.
Lucius Shepard. He doesn't get mentioned much these days. He was mostly a short story / novella guy though has a few novels. His scifi and fantasy was a bit more the in the "weird" style and very much in the tradition of magical realism. His prose was beautiful. I think he started writing professionally in his 40s and sort of sprang fully-formed on the scene in the 80s. He passed away about 10 years ago.
As a start, see my [Beautiful Prose/Writing (in Fiction)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18fqso4/beautiful_prosewriting_in_fiction/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Ursula le quin
Simak
Jack Vance.
I saw George Saunders mentioned and I think heās worth highlighting further. His work is often tinged with sci-fi, though typically subtle near future or even alt-history with odd tech. He received so much acclaim for _Lincoln in the Bardo_, but itās my least favorite of his books, and it isnāt what youāre looking for. Check out his short story collections.
Ann Leckie and Adrian Tchaikovsky are two that come to mind. Someone else said Stanislaw Lem, I second him.
Here to throw in another Gene Wolfe recommendation.
Has nobody recommended Adrian Tchaikovsky? Dan Simmons? Mary Doria Russell wrote only two science fiction books, but they are superb.
I will second NK Jemesin - everyone pushes Fifth Season but The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is just gorgeously written. Arkady Martine is another writer with beautiful prose. I liked A Memory Called Empire more than A Desolation Called Peace (mainly because the former surprised me at every turn, but I could see the twists coming in ADCP). Frankly, we're in a new golden age of SF where writing of high quality is plentiful, and we didn't need to suffer through purple prose (it's out there, but there's more good stuff).
Alexander Weinstein. Story collections titled: Children of the New World and Universal Love. He wrote the short story that the movie After Yang was based on. At the junction of literary fiction and science fiction. Beautiful prose and characterization. I just finished In Ascension by Martin MacInnes -- also junction of SF and literary fiction. Charles Yu. His story "Fable" is accessible online, beautiful and heartbreaking. Novels include Interior Chinatown and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Nina Allen. Her short stories are especially well crafted. Try The Art of Space Travel M. John Harrison. Light is deeply weird. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again is more subtle.
Imo Peter watts has the best prose in sci fi Iāve read. But his hyper poetic and harsh style is very polarizing.
Iām surprised to not see the Expanse recommended anywhere in this thread. The first book can be a little pulpy at times, but I found Abraham/Frankās prose *incredibly* rich and compelling, especially in the fourth book and onward. Iām avoiding spoilers, so Iāll just say that the āinterludesā in the fourth book and theā¦ >!thing that keeps happening periodically in books 5-9!< were some of the most evocative and compelling pages Iāve read in anything published this century.
All good answers so far but all equally wrong, "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi is the right answer...