Ask HN: Sci-fi recommendations by non-western authors?
While talking with a friend about books, I realised that 99% of the sci-fi I've read was written by western authors. Mostly white men at that. When reading Cixin Lui's Three Body Problem I was pleasantly surprised by the (to my mind) different perspective that his background brought to the telling of the story.
I'd love to hear some sci-fi recommendations featuring authors with different backgrounds. Anything goes: non-westerners, refugees, deeply religious cultists who live in a hidden paradise underneath antarctica, whatever.
Not sure if they count but the novelisation of Mobile suit Gundam https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Suit-Gundam-Escalation-Confron...
Yukikaze and Good luck Yukikaze by Chōhei Kambayashi it ends on a cliffhanger though since the later books did not get translated. https://www.amazon.com/Yukikaze-Chohei-Kambayashi/dp/1421532...
* "The Sword of Kaigen" by M.L. Wang
* "The Green Bone Saga" by Fonda Lee
* "The Weirkey Chronicles" and "Street Cultivation" by Sarah Lin
See also:
* Middle East/Middle Eastern SFF: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/128ozc6/the_2023_r...
* Set in Africa: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ttrhvf/the_2022_rf...
* Set in Asia: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/mhz3k7/the_2021_rf...
(My first thought when reading the title is Three Body Problem, but of course you already read it) Some manga / anime recs:
- Planetes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes) is a hard scifi manga with anime adaptation about daily life of astronauts cleaning up space debris. It feels pretty grounded, you can feel how its like living in Earth orbit and Moon
- Space Brothers / Uchuu Kyodai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Brothers_(manga)) tells the story of a Japanese worker getting kicked out from his company and then he applied to JAXA, following his younger brother's footstep
Not manga/anime/books, but there's a Korean scifi movie at Netflix called Space Sweepers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers), similar to Planetes. What I found interesting is that they have people speaking different language, and you can hear their universal translator translating their conversation to their own languages. Different than western scifi where everyone speaks English
https://www.amazon.com/Selfie-Hir-Dulo-ebook/dp/B0CVWYYJXJ
Cat Country by Lao She is debatably science fiction, being set on Mars as a way to satirise and criticise some parts of Chinese life in the early 1900s; there isn't much science in it, it's social commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Country
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were white Soviet Russian men, famously wrote Roadside Picnic (among other works) which became the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
They were trying to tell stories critical of the way things were, but set in a fantastic world so it could get past the censors. Part of a genre of Russian/USSR sci-fi: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22412.Russian_Science_Fi...
Possibly including Stanisław Lem writing in Eastern-bloc Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem
Reddit thread on African sci-fi and fantasy book suggestions: https://old.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/11zngrs/afr...
The podcast Imaginary Worlds has often covered Science Fiction and Fantasy from around the world and different cultures. Just reading the show notes will give you authors to check out and other links. Even the episodes that are more focused on standard USA/UK works often bring in wider view points than we typically get. Just a few example shows: https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/african-sci-... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/creating-hin... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/octavia-butl... https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/postcolonial...
Other people are covering the big names, so I'll throw in a suggestion in completely the opposite direction: Large portions of the fanfiction and online amateur fiction community, even in English, are international. Even the Western authors frequently bring minority perspectives. Amateur fiction and especially fanfiction doesn't have to be accepted by a publisher or get through editing, so they're free to explore topics and reinterpretations that would be anathema to marketing and PR and the need to make a profit.
Any specific recommendations?
I've looked through royalroad a few times but most amateur sci-fi are more about power-fantasies rather than logically exploring / exploiting an idea.
Out of the few dozen top-rated stories I've tried these are the only 2 I liked:
[1] https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/13468/paladin
[2] https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/30848/burning-stars-fallin...
Hiroshi Sakurazaka wrote 'All you need is kill', which became Edge of Tomorrow film.
And, while not SciFi, I think Haruki Murakami's books are worth a read and might scratch and itch you didn't realise you had. Start with Norwegian Wood if you want a light intro, but then Windup Bird Chronicle next. Possibly 1Q84 after that?
It should be noted that Edge of Tomorrow is reported to be very different from the novel, particularly the conclusion. I've read only the novel and it's a decent read in its own right.
I’d highly recommend Tade Thompson’s novel Rosewater. It’s a bit hard to describe honestly but it’s an afrofuturist novel taking place in Nigeria and involves aliens and mind altering experiences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_(Thompson_novel)
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson is also very good but set on a different planet so a bit more divorced from today. It is still afrofuturism, and still covers a lot of the topics you describe. It can be a bit tough to read, at least I found it to be, as the Caribbean accents are very strong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Robber
I recently read The Poppy Wars trilogy by Rebecca F. Kuang, it's more fantasy and mythology than sci-fi, but it's very entertaining and I found the mythology and history (which I believe is based in China, though in the novel no real countries are named) very interesting.
Last and First idol is a parody of otaku (Japanese) culture.
https://j-novel.club/series/last-and-first-idol
It's really 3x short stories (~200 pages each) but here's a synopsis for the first:
Stanisław Lem is great, if Polish counts as non-Western. I'd especially recommend Cyberiada and Summa Technologiae.
I second this. Lem is one of the best sci-fi writers I've come across.
I would also recommend "The Year's Best Science Fiction" edited by Gardner Dozois, first to 35th editions.
Here’s a good first cut:
https://escapepod.org/people/s-b-divya/
Escape Pod had a strong Indian and other overseas author bend under SB Divya’s editorship. Not everything she hosted was non-western, but much was.
I’ll also throw in The Quiltbag by Ashok K Banker. Lightspeed runs plenty of foreign authors:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-quiltbag/
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a truly mind-bending work.
The Doomed City is also great. Tried to read Noon and it was too unfocused for me.
The movie inspired by Roadside Picnic (Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker) is one of my all-time favorites.
Exactly what I wanted to recommend. Their books progressed from idealistic communist propaganda to disillusioned analysis of totalitarianism, while still (mostly) being set in the same fictional universe.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binti_(novella)
I never know what people mean by western, heres some stuff I like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) - Written by a Russian. Allegedly inspired Orwell.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5450488.Bryn_Hammond Bryn Hammond is an Australian woman who writes chiefly about mongols.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaro Charles Saunders Imaro is one of my top all time reads.
Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_science_fiction
Ted Chiang is American but not white... you've probably heard of him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang
Lots of anime and manga are adaptations of light novels. The first one that came to mind was Haruhi Suzumiya.
I highly recommend Vandana Singh's works, particularly "Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Singh
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang. A really enjoyable story about people on Mars and Earth after their societies and cultures diverge. Definitely felt like a new perspective to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu worth looking into as well.
Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira [japanese, manga, psychics, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo, destroying Tokyo]
Tokyo really gets screwed over in the monster and disaster world.
If you're up for manga, I'd consider giving BLAME! a shot. It's... wild.
Is Poland non-western? This book is certainly unlike anything else I’ve read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)
I'd recommend Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, or maybe His Master's Voice.
You'll get a fascinating blend of psychological realism and eastern-euro science fiction, which I find fascinating (it is much more analog/mechanical, and also refreshingly real about scientific progress / knowledge creation vis a vi the human condition).
They are both rather short, also.
Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe are generally considered part of the West [*] (in contrast to, say, China or Japan), so Stanislaw Lem is western author.
(Outside of that, i would definitely recommend Lem, esp. Fiasco, The Invincible, or Peace on Earth.)
[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world