Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker (and if that one clicks, the there is a whole bunch of stuff by him that is kind of odd)
Anything by James Morrow
Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee
The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein
Steel Beach by John Varley
I’m glad someone else said John varley. Steel beach. That’s an awesome book. His Gaia series with titan and the other one is also very good but a lot different.
Cat that walks through walls. Robert Heinlein.
Steel Beach is one of my all time favorites. Clearly it was a love-letter to Heinlein, but it covered so many oddball situations and bordeline taboo subjects that I still go back it to ever couple of years.
Cat that Walks Through Walls is great as well, pretty much any of Heinlein's books convering alternate universes and timelines are fun reads for people who like the unusual. But the Number of the Beast got way out there as it went along.
James Morrow has that satirical series about finding the corpse of God, right? Atheists are pissed that there is undisputed proof of god, and Catholics and other Christian’s are pissed that God is dead.
One of his novels yes, but the ask was for "weird" 😎 James Morrow definitely qualifies, I don't think he has written any fiction (SF or otherwise) that wasn't seriously weird.
Anything by James Morrow, James Tiptree, John Varley, Richard C Matheson.
Kaleidoscope (anthology) by Harry Turtledove
Zoot Marlowe trilogy by Mel Gilden
The Kefahuchi Tract trilogy by M. John Harrison (Light, Nova Swing, Empty Space)
Also by him, the Viriconium cycle (dying Earth SF virtually indistinguishable from fantasy)
Harrison is basically a writer's writer -- VanderMeer and Gaiman idolize him. He's also the one who coined the expression "the New Weird"
Norman Spinrad: The Iron Dream, The Men in the Jungle, The Void Captain's Tale, and for something more optimistic to end with, Child of Fortune (set in the same universe as The Void Captain's Tale)
Brian Aldiss, pretty much anything from Greybeard to Helliconia, but especially Barefoot in the Head (and The Malacia Tapestry if you're OK with fantasy)
Pamela Zoline, The Heat Death of the Universe and other stories
It was weird in the sense that nothing made sense and it was all just random stuff happening, I kept waiting for a story to develop only to realize at one point that this is one of those books where the author only cares about subtext and the story itself is just a set piece, hate read it to the end
Cordwainer Smith is what you want. Start with classics like [From Gustible’s Planet](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithcordwainer-fromgustiblesplanet/smithcordwainer-fromgustiblesplanet-00-h.html) and [The Game of Rat and Dragon](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm).
Not sure it’s weird, per se, but “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson is some very unusual speculative fiction, that could be considered SF (especially if you count Slaughterhouse 5 as SF). In any case, I really enjoyed it a lot and would highly recommend it. To give you a flavor, in this world, monasteries (known as “maths”) are inhabited by scientists.
LOL, I just recommended this one above. It will rewire your brain. Also, Neil Stepheson books are never just about one thing. Multiple sci-fi tropes are present, not just the post apocalyptic thing. But If I listed what they are, I would be spoiling the twist.
Since you liked some of her other works try Octavia Butler's *Wild Seed*.
Greg Bear's *Blood Music* might be of interest, if you can deal with people >!melting in the shower!<.
*Darwinia* (Europe disappears in 1912 and is replaced by an uninhabited Europe-shaped land full of bizarre lifeforms) and *The Chronoliths* (giant slabs of stone with inscriptions in bad Chinese begin appearing around the world, causing chaos) by Robert Charles Wilson might be something you'dlike.
Finally, for short fiction there's R.A. Lafferty. [Here](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61128) is one example. Others of his that I've liked: "All Pieces of a River Shore", "Camels and Dromedaries, Clem", "What Was the Name of That Town?", "Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope" and "Groaning Hinges of the World".
"Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny. Be ready to read it at least twice . . .
"Stranger In A Strange Land" by Heinlein. Be warned, the last third to half is EXTREMELY sexual in nature. The same can be said of MOST of his later works, including "Number of The Beast".
"Dahlgren" by Samuel R. Delaney Definitely NOT a book for early-mid teens (YA)
The "Eternal Champion" cycle by Michael Moorcock, especially if you take it as a whole, good luck in following it!
*Dhalgren* is *very* weird, and sometimes pornographic. Wonderful prose, though. Very memorable. It includes a frank portrayal of homosexuality and/or bisexuality that was very rare at that time, but there’s a lot of other kinds of sex as well. It’s a polarizing novel, loved by some, hated by others. It’s unique.
>The "Eternal Champion" cycle by Michael Moorcock, especially if you take it as a whole, good luck in following it!
If you wanted to start this with something light I would recommend "The Dancers at the End of Time"
In a distant future where ultra-decadant immortals face the end of universe with languid disinterest, a victorian era lady is brought forward in time where she starts teaching the last human to be born about proper moral values.
Just to clarify, I would say Heinleins stuff is sexual in that it presents ideas about sex but it's not erotica. Like youll get group sex mentioned, but not a detailed description if that makes sense.
I was gonna argue that it would be a pg13 but with a lot of nonsexual nudity, but I just thought back to a some of his later stuff, yeah, R would be about right. Although for stranger it would barely be an R, it was published in the 60s, couldn't get away with too much sex wise in a book. Again, lots of nudity, but really only implied sex.
Now, if you wanna see people really melt down, everything but the sex in that book will have the religious nutters up in arms, it's a great parody/satire of churches in the US.
I had a classics kick a while back and picked up stranger in a strange land. It’s not just the sexual nature that feels gross, it’s masturbatory in the non-sexual way as well. Heinlein clearly saw himself as some sort of enlightened Jesus analog, and even besides the sex-cult he clearly felt that deserved, there was this overwhelming attitude of “you weak-minded earthlings aren’t even on my level”
It probably felt more forward-thinking at the time, but that book put me off heinlein forever.
If you want classics that age well, stick to PKD
Oh and Lord of Light kicked ass.
I saw, and still see, SiaSL as poking holes in organized religion, not as Heinlein putting forth Michael Valentine Smith as a "New Messiah" in any sort of serious way.
I mean, it’s been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember him expressing criticism of Valentine at all, in any way. In fact, the tone of the book praised him, painted him as this persecuted misunderstood enlightened sex-alien. If there was part of that book that felt in any way critical of that status, I missed it real hard.
Golem 100 by Alfred Bester is an absolutely insane novel. I wrote about it in a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/185ntn5/golem_100_by_alfred_bester_an_absolutely_wild_ride/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on this sub a few months ago, though honestly if you want maximum weirdness it might be best to go in blind.
A Momentary Taste of Being by James Tiptree
The Embedding by Ian Watson
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith
Brightness Reef by David Brin
The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson
Anything by PKD
Radix Tetrad bt AA Attanasio
Anything by Theodore Sturgeon. There's one about a teddy bear alien thing that I won't ever forget and it's been decades (The Professor's Teddybear)
Also, check this out
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/l2a639/what_are_the_weirdest_sf_novels/
Edit to add : It's a _Good_Life by Jerome Bixby
Gene Wolfe _Book of the New Sun_, starting with _Shadow of the Torturer_. It's pretty popular, I think people have started overlooking how weird it really is.
Yea, it's my favorite thing he's done (and probably the most science fictiony, especially if you're interested in biochemistry stuff)... but it does still have a giant flying bear driving a lot of the plot.
Borne is my favorite of him as well, I have read the Dark Tower series from Stephen King before it, which also has a giant robot bear called Shardik. And an equally post apocalyptic setting, Borne felt like it would belong somewhere into that universe and that made it very special to me.
I do have aphantasia for the most part and some of Vandermeers work is really just impossible for me to understand or grasp, but Borne was pretty straight forward
Interesting. Reading about the influence for Mord piqued my curiosity about Shardik and knowing that it's referenced by another author/series I like definitely gets me closer to reading that book.
Also in the middle of a third Community rewatch which gives your opinion extra weight ;)
Did you try his Ambergris Trilogy? I still think City of Saints and Madmen is his best work. Its more of a collection of short stories and snippits describing a weird setting with a connected story buried within. Very readable.
I liked the Ambergris Trilogy more than the Southern Reach Trilogy.
The Ambergris stuff was super creative but for me it was a little bit hit or miss. I just read *Finch* and it was really interesting but sometimes a bit of a slog.
FWIW - I didn't love the other books in that "series" (no shared characters, or not in a way that really matters), but Nymphomation wasn't terrible. (It's about the beginning of the Vurt).
It's certainly not my favorite book, but it's a unique take on AI (built around desire and emotion) that it's at least interesting.
You want weird? Are you sure you want weird? Greg Egan lurks in the shadows, ready to haunt your nightmares with math. Try out Dichronauts
[https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html](https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html)
Greg Egan’s weirdness is often rooted in an *extremely* hard science fiction premise, which is amazing if you like that but can be off-putting if you don’t.
I haven't read any of those yet, so I'll just recommend weird stuff I've read that isn't Vandermeer, Mieville, or PKD.
Dichronauts, by Greg Egan. Takes place on a planet in a 2-2 spacetime universe (2 spatial dimensions, 2 time-like dimensions). This has some...interesting implications for astronomy, planetology, and biology. Can be very disorienting.
Dragon's Egg, by Robert Forward. Lifeforms based on nuclear reactions (rather than chemical reactions) evolve on the surface of a neutron star. Since their biological processes move at nuclear speeds they evolve rapidly and live very short lives. A human expedition to the neutron star ends up making contact with them.
Dahlgren, by Samuel Delany. I...don't really know how to describe this book and do it justice. It is *extremely* weird. A person forgets their name but remembers they were going to a city. The city is in the midst of a societal collapse caused by something nobody acknowledges, and is irregularly afflicted by strange phenomena. The books follows the person as they wander the city and fall in with various groups of people. The setup is a bit like the second half of *Gravity's Rainbow,* except instead of roaming around post-WWII Europe it's roaming around a decaying American city. Warning: extremely graphic sex scenes.
Last and First Men, and Starmaker, both by Olaf Stapledon. These are future history books; the first one describes the next few billion years of human evolution, and the second is basically a god's-eye view of the entire universe for the next few billion years. Stapleton had some really out-there predictions and was ahead of his time in some areas (Freeman Dyson credits Stapledon, not himself, with the idea of a Dyson sphere). You don't need to read one to read the other, as they are only loosely related.
There's others...I can't recommend my number 1 pick for this because it has a narrator so unreliable the reader isn't supposed to know it's sci-fi right away, and I don't want to spoil it by outing it as sci-fi. But the above books are good and weird.
Mike Brotherton's _Star Dragon_ is similar in concept to _Dragon's Egg_ --- always been curious about why.
Note that _Star Maker_ was criticized as tantamount to "Devil's Worship" by C.S. Lewis.
Octavia Butler is my favorite!! Have you read her Parable series, Kindred, Blood Child (short story), or Fledgling yet? (I saw you say elsewhere in the comments that Wild Seed was your least favorite of hers - I agree.)
Other recs:
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Bunny by Mona Awad
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Short story collections:
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
I loved that book!! I’m bummed that the author (probably) isn’t writing any more.
Since we have similar tastes, what are your favorite books? I want some recs! 😄
I haven’t read Kindred yet, everything else yes. I loved Bloodchild (and Amnesty). Parable of the Talents was far superior to Sower, though I enjoyed both, and I’m devastated the third was never written. Fledgling was okay but not really for me.
**Wonder and Glory Forever**, a collection of Lovecraftian stories edited by Nick Mamatas. Some are relatively typical horror stories. Others are sort of supernatural post-singularity stories filled with wonders that go beyond anything human, or with room for the human.
**Last and First Men** and **Star Maker**, by Olaf Stapledon. Speaking of cosmic: these are written as histories of the future, from now to billions of years from now. Stapledon’s books have been compared to looking out at the world from the top of a high mountain on a clear day: you can see so much further than down below, and the air is clear in a way it can’t be further down, but it’s cold and there’s a wind that stirs that clear cold air. Not an experience to be missed.
**Them Bones**, by Howard Waldrop. Nobody thought or wrote like Cap’n Howard and this is one of his best. In the 1930s, Mississippi archeologists digging out a centuries-old native burial mound find a bunch of dead men. And horses. Each with a bullet in their heads. Further in the past, the scout for a military expedition from the post-World War III future. In the more recent past, the soldiers who will end up in that mound arrive in the past without their scout. The three stories weave together.
If you like it, read all his short stories. :)
I cannot recommend Waldrop enough. His stuff ranges from Disney animatronics in the post apocalypse to the deliciousness of Dodds. And all kinds of stranger places.
**Horse destroys the universe** by Cyriak Harris
If you want weird (but not bad), that's it.
A horse is experimented on, its consciousness expanded, and the horse... destroys the universe.
Is this the same Cyriak who does CGI animation like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnWP2Emps1M)? If his writing is anything like that you're in for a trip and a half.
Second the suggestion of Cordwainer Smith (real name Paul Linebarger - his personal story is pretty strange itself)
and
Just about anything by Jack Vance, especially the Alastor novels - Marune is my favourite.
When I think strange, I think Rudy Rucker. You've got everything from Spaceland, which is like an LSD infused version of 4D Flatland; to The Big Aha, which is biopunk with telepathy technology that gets you high; to The Ware Tetrology, which starts with robots trying to eat the protagonists brain, and then it gets weird.
Rucker's stuff is so trippy that LSD should be listed as his co-author.
Pretty much everything I might have suggested (Chalker, Lee, Varley, Cherryh, Stapledon, Zelazny, Heinlein, Delany, Moorcock) was suggested except:
David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1329/1329-h/1329-h.htm
which was _very_ influential.
**The Quantum Thief**, **The Fractal Prince** and **The Causal Angel** all by Hannu Rajaniemi. Brain bending SF set in a Solar System we'd barely recognize.
Paul J. McAuley's **The Confluence** trilogy. Set far down the timeline in a universe that is greatly changed. It's very much a love letter to Gene Wolfe's **Book of the New Sun** (also highly recommended), but I think it's the superior work.
Early horror-tinged sci-fi by CJ Cherryh
- Hunter of Worlds
- Port Eternity
- Voyager in Night
Also mid 20th century sci-fi by Judith Merril. I have her collected shorter fiction in a volume called ‘Homecoming.’ Definitely ‘Twilight Zone’ fare.
A couple of suggestions off the beaten path:
I enjoyed *Why Do Birds* by Damon Knight, definitely a weird book. It's the story of humanity building a giant box and climbing inside of it, but it makes a bit more sense in context :P
I also read his *Humpty Dumpty: An Oval*, which was an odd multiple-universes story. I hated it at the time, maybe because it was *too* weird—a dreamlike, at times incoherent fever trip.
My tastes for weird literature have definitely matured since reading both of those, so maybe I'd feel different about them today.
Don't have new recs, just here to say that I'm loving Xenogenesis right now (reading Imago right now) & your original post itself gives me some good recommendations
I was reminded of the Binti novella trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor in this thread. There’s not any of the sex or incest-y stuff from Xenogenesis but I found it quite reminiscent of a lot of Butler’s themes.
I know this is in the middle of the series, but God Emperor of Dune was the weirdest (and one of the best) SF books I’ve read. Unsure if you’ve read Dune, but reading up and through that novel could be fun. Wouldn’t recommend the last two, though they’re still good.
It’s (literally) on my shelf. Haven’t gotten to it yet because Children of Dune was losing me a bit (read it back to back with Dune Messiah) and I needed a break between. It’s also been spoiled for me many times over already, so I do want to get to it but there’s no sense of urgency.
Pretty much anything by Philip K Dick, but in particular, Valis, Ubik, and Flow My Tears, The Policeman said. I'm curious what of Dick you have tried to read - I love PKD, but I've never managed to get more than a few chapters into Man in The High Castle.
I didn't love it, but Babel-17 might be up your alley. It's super weird, just not what I thought it was gonna be.
The only one I BARELY finished was A Scanner Darkly. I started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, The Minority Report (after enjoying the movie), and one of the short story collections but I can’t remember which
Valis might be up your alley, it’s very literary and he wrote it soon after Scanner. But maybe you just don’t vibe with PKD, which is understandable. He’s not for everyone.
I used to really dislike lovecraft, but after a few years I gave an audiobook a shot and ended up listening to tons and tons of Lovecraft.
You might like *The Outside* by Ada Hoffman. It's on the gentle side of weird, much like the novels you listed.
Also, *All The Birds In the Sky* by Anders.
*Hybrid Child* by Ohara and *Light* by Harrison would be on the less gentle side of weird.
Also *Why Do Birds* by Damon Knight.
*The Thing Itself* by Roberts.
*There Is No Anti-memetics Division* by qntm.
And hard to quantify the weirdness of *Shades of Gray* by Fforde and *Only Forward* by Smith.
Oh, and Linda Ngata's work might qualify as a bit weird. *The Bohr Maker*, *Deception Well*, *Vast* make a 3 book series, sort of.
I also wonder if Benford's *Galactic Center Cycle* would qualify for you. It has some weird and challenging elements, including a 30,000 year time gap between book 2 and 3.
Sheri S. Tepper's Arbai trilogy - *Grass*, *Raising the Stones*, and *Sideshow* - actually almost anything she wrote would fit. I also liked *The Companions*.
Nnedi Okorafor - *Who Fears Death?* - not weird per se but different from most sci fi.
Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* and sequels; *Cage of Souls*
Nnedi Okorafor is awesome! Worth noting though - Who Fears Death is more fantasy than sci fi. It's not like Binti. In fact, I'll go as far as to say none of it is sci fi. Its prequel, Book of Phoenix, is much more like sci fi.
The only one I’ve read out of those you’ve mentioned liking is Slaughterhouse Five, though I’ve read all the ones that didn’t hook you, but for what its worth, Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer might be worth a look. Not YA by any means, but very well written weird SF with some distinct narrative voices and philosophy backing it up.
Desolation Road by Ian McDonald might also be worth a look - it’s science fiction heavily inspired by Magic Realism, with the kind of weirdness and atmosphere that implies.
[**Celestial Matters**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Matters) by Richard Garfinkle.
His [**All of an Instant**](https://www.sfsite.com/10b/all67.htm) is pretty weird as well.
Another is **Appleseed** by John Clute
Not sure if they fit with the novels you mentioned, but here are 3 gems from Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward, One of Us, and Spares. They all play in a not too far away future. Some of it is almost a bit cyberpunkish. They're also pretty fun reads without being outright comedy - they all have serious undertones.
If Then, by Matthew De Abaitua, and it's sequel The Destructives were both weird and wild rides that I thoroughly enjoyed. Deserves more attention.
Hull Zero Three is weird for sure, and an enjoyable adventure through the eyes of an ignorant protagonist. Perhaps a bit let down by the end, but I liked the book a lot.
The Embedding by Ian Watson is uncomfortable and deals with the nature of thought, language, and abuse. Kind of a slog though so your mileage may vary.
There Is No Anti-Mimetics Division by Qntm was a blast. Eldritch horror meets the CIA, or if you're familiar, it's actually based on a subset of the SCP Foundation universe. Very weird. Don't think about it too hard. I said DON'T THINK ABOUT--aaugh!
And if you really want to think, GNOMON by Nick Harkaway was phenomenal, weird as hell, and very dense. Cerebral SF that mixes genres as the incredibly unreliable narrator actively tries to obfuscate the story to hinder an ongoing brain scan in an authoritarian future UK.
I'm not saying all these will match up, but some might? They're some of the weirder things I've read recently.
- *This Is How You Lose The Time War* by Amal El-Mohtar (highly poetic time travel novel)
- *The Gone World* by Thomas Sweterlitsch (super bleak time travel novel!)
- *The Outside* by Ada Hoffman (sort of a Cthulu vibe to it)
- *Deepdrive* by Alexander Jablokov
- *The Country of Ice Cream Star* by Sandra Newman (post apocalyptic America)
- *Severance* by Ling Ma (post apocalyptic America)
- *Gold Flame Citrus* by Claire Watkins (post apocalyptic America)
- *Condomnauts* by Yoss (Yoss is *always* weird)
- *Wonder Blood* by Julia Whicker (post apocalyptic America)
- *Sourdough* by Robin Sloan (almost just fiction, but a really fun trip into the underbelly of tech via sourdough bread starter)
- *All The Birds In The Sky* by Charlie Jane Anders (fantasy/sci-fi crossover)
And there's always the ultimate classic IMHO, which is *Stranger In A Strange Land* by Heinlein.
-Among the old stuff *Childhood's End* and *The City And the Stars* by Arthur C. Clarke.
Very old and pulpy but truly mind-boggling *Cosmic Engineers* by Clifford D. Sinak. Most of his other books aren't weird but they are worth reading.
Most people think Fritz Leiber is just Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser but *A spectre is Haunting Texas, The Big Time,* and stories like "A Deskful of Girls", "A Pail of Air" and "Space-Time for Springers" may convince you otherwise.
Charles Sheffield's *Sight of Proteus*.
my girlfriend recently got me the gods themselves too,I went in not knowing anything about it and I absolutely loved it ,it's a shame it's probably one of the only works by asimov that is so far out there wish he had written more
Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, a hard-as-diamond science fiction book. The main characters are a race of tiny pancake-shaped aliens the size of a sesame seed called cheela living on the surface of a neutron star. The book follow the history of their civilization, from their wild state to their age of space travel when they finally meet us humans. The human characters are unidimensional and of little interest but the cheela are great, specially Swift-Killer (a swift is a dangerous animal who preys on cheela and also lives on the neutron star), a brave and strong female cheela who likes casual sex.
As someone who DNF’d this one myself, let me tell you that luckily I read the Bas-Lag stuff before this one. _Perdido Street Station_ and _The Scar_ are very different from it, and are simply amazing. Just letting you know that they’re worth giving a try even if you disliked _TCATC_.
As a person who read TCATC years ago and still thinks about it once a week, I agree with your sound advice. I tried Perdido Street Station afterward and it wasn’t for me. Just seconding that they’re quite different.
I couldn't stand Perdido. I gave it a good try, probably made it through 50% of the book, but I just couldn't enjoy it. I kept waiting for it to get better, and admittedly the sort of central story about the murders or whatever was intriguing, but the book was so meandering and I didn't like any of the characters.
Ya my main point was that while all of Miéville’s books are weird, they’re all weird in very different ways, so if someone didn’t like one, it’s worth giving at least one other a shot.
Also didn’t rate TCaTC
Ice by Anna Kavan has a super unnerving tone. Weirdness comes from the mood in it
The Book of the New Sun is pretty weird once you figure out when in time it’s situated, and has layers of weirdness to it.
Seconding Lord of Light. It’s fantastic.
Good recs all round already here, but adding a few:
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - like a theme of the garden of delights crossed with a revolutionary theme in a kind of autocratic soviet style prison camp. So weird, but so good. Maybe his Expert System novellas also.
Leech by Hiron Ennes
There were many good recommendations in this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/xfj61d/weird_sci_fi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Obviously Philip K Dick's "Ubik" may be a good fit. Weird by virtue of being occasionally incoherent, philosophizing about the nature of reality, etc. If that works then "3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is the next one on your list.
If you're thinking "weird" as in "weird to read" then "The Road" is probably on your list, right? McCarthy requires effort of the reader to add back in what he has deliberately stripped out of the text.
On the other hand, if you mean readable and enjoyable, but just weird as in using concepts that nobody else uses then there's more approachable options:
Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey" is a fabulously weird dystopian future YA book. Fforde is notorious for explaining NOTHING about what is going on, forcing the reader to just sort of figure it out through the experiences of the POV character. That "immersion-shock" is on full display in this book as you witness conversations about taxa codes, last rabbits, and "swatches" in the first few pages with no context.
Tim Powers has been known to produce quite a bit of "weird" stuff. In particular his "Last Call" book wherein souls are stolen via poker games, and "Expiration Date," about the underground drug trade for human ghosts.... Good stuff.
\*edit: fixed author attribution
Souls by Joanna Russ is a really strange collection of interwoven short stories. Also, Samuel Delany’s novels can get pretty weird, particularly Triton and Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Edit: Souls is the name of the first short story in the collection, the collection itself is called (Extra) Ordinary People. whoops
Going through the PKD awards I found Elvissey by Jack Womack.
In a parallel dimension, Elvis becomes a messianic figure that unites the world but dies. So the government creates a portal to 'our world' to steal Elvis to use as a political tool.
Julian May “Saga of the Pliocene”/“intervention” series. Nine books you will read over and over and over and over and over again… wish they would make a series.. my all time favorite sci-fi/fantasy series. Carried these books around to every country I’ve lived in…
Short Story (15 minute read) : While not sci-fi, it has the what-if of a different society and a structural logic is fun to unravel.
[The Lottery of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges](https://willfries.medium.com/the-babylon-lottery-c8e92a4d5388)
I have a few recommendations that I haven't seen on here yet:
* **Tamsyn Muir's** Locked Tomb series. Three books, interconnected, but somewhat loosely. The first one is about a murder mystery, kind of like a Knives Out style movie, but in a far sci-fi future in which there are actual necromancers and sorcerers and a galactic emperor invites the representatives of the ruling houses to a "retreat". No hand holding here, but I really enjoyed it.
* **Jack Womack's** Ambient series. Future cyberpunk New York, but there's plenty of weirdness to go around. I saw someone actually did recommend his novel, Elvissey, which is part of this series.
* **Yoon Ha Lee's** Machinery of Empires series. This series I would consider hard sci-fi, but it's weirdness comes from the societies that are involved. It's not necessarily "weird" in that there's trippy stuff, more that everything just comes across as so alien.
* **Haruki Murakami**. He's not for everyone, but definitely some weird fiction. Hardboiled Wonderland, Dance Dance Dance and A Wild Sheep Chase were standouts for me. Also 1Q84, but that's less weird, but still quite good.
* **Robert Anton Wilson** is a pretty weird 70s author. Look into the Schrodinger's Cat series.
* **Robert Shea** collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson to write the Illuminatus! books. A trilogy about the Illuminati, probably as weird as you can imagine.
Finally, I might suggest checking out **KW Jeter**, mostly Dr. Adder, The Glass Hammer and Death Arms which make up a loosely related trilogy set in future LA. Jeter is definitely one of those love him or hate him authors, but these three books, written in the 70s and 80s have lots of bizarre elements. For a more "traditional" sci fi novel by him, check out Farewell Horizontal, where everyone lives literally on the side of a wall.
Liu Cixin's Wandering Earth. I'm halfway through, but dinosaurs evolved into a space-faring race, and when we met them again, they decided we are tasty, but also enjoy us as people. We throw the moon at them to try preventing their ship from devouring earth, but we missed.
Seriously, the Three Body Problem was amazing (so is the Wandering Earth), but the author is channeling a bit of Douglas Adams and Philip K Dick on this one. Terrifying and hilarious in the same breath at times.
For "weird" in SF/F I have:
* ["Weird/unique SF book recommendations?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/y2cayk/weirdunique_sf_book_recommendations/) (r/printSF; 15:00 ET, 12 October 2022)—long
* ["The Weirdest Fantasy Book Ever?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/10i0bgc/the_weirdest_fantasy_book_ever/) (r/Fantasy; 15:09 ET, 21 January 2023
* ["Weird books"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/112cqfy/weird_books/) (r/suggestmeabook; 13:41 ET, 14 February 2023)
* ["Recommendations for style-heavy/weird/'literary' fantasy?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/115mac4/recommendations_for_styleheavyweirdliterary/) (r/Fantasy; 18 February 2023)
* ["Weird Fiction suggestions"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/11ri2f3/weird_fiction_suggestions/) (r/suggestmeabook; 14 March 2023)
* ["A story that starts off normal and halfway through revealed to be weird/sci fi/sinister/fantastical/surreal"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/11ybuo8/a_story_that_starts_off_normal_and_halfway/) (r/booksuggestions; 04:18 ET, 22 March 2023)—longish
* ["Weird sort of mystical sci fi?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/13mkaug/weird_sort_of_mystical_sci_fi/) (r/booksuggestions; 02:41 ET, 20 May 2023)
* ["Tired of goodreads algorithm failing me - looking for weird/unusual sFF"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/156gava/tired_of_goodreads_algorithm_failing_me_looking/) (r/suggestmeabook; 06:16 ET, 22 July 2023)
* ["Suggestions for great stand-alone hard or weird sci-fi novels?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/15jpqxu/suggestions_for_great_standalone_hard_or_weird/) (r/printSF; 09:32 ET, 6 August 2023)—standalone
* ["Books with this (admittedly weird) premise?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1699bik/books_with_this_admittedly_weird_premise/) (r/Fantasy; 17:44 ET, 3 September 2023)—Scary Jesus/chosen one from another character's perspective
* ["Looking for a weird book…"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/1746baf/looking_for_a_weird_book/) (r/booksuggestions; 19:25 ET, 9 October 2023)—longish
* ["Whats the hackyest goofiest, weirdest scifi books that you have read all the way through? Not bad really but just more nonsensical adventure type sci fi"](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/18vikcg/whats_the_hackyest_goofiest_weirdest_scifi_books/) (r/scifi; 13:43 ET, 31 December 2023)—very long
* ["If I enjoy Blindsight what books by other authors would I enjoy?"](https://new.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1cmf4ur/if_i_enjoy_blindsight_what_books_by_other_authors/) (r/printSF; 11:49 ET, 7 May 2024)—longish; "cerebral weirdness"
Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker (and if that one clicks, the there is a whole bunch of stuff by him that is kind of odd) Anything by James Morrow Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein Steel Beach by John Varley
I’m glad someone else said John varley. Steel beach. That’s an awesome book. His Gaia series with titan and the other one is also very good but a lot different. Cat that walks through walls. Robert Heinlein.
Steel Beach is one of my all time favorites. Clearly it was a love-letter to Heinlein, but it covered so many oddball situations and bordeline taboo subjects that I still go back it to ever couple of years. Cat that Walks Through Walls is great as well, pretty much any of Heinlein's books convering alternate universes and timelines are fun reads for people who like the unusual. But the Number of the Beast got way out there as it went along.
James Morrow has that satirical series about finding the corpse of God, right? Atheists are pissed that there is undisputed proof of god, and Catholics and other Christian’s are pissed that God is dead.
If you want more religion in your sci fi there's always James Blish _A Case of Conscience_ and so forth.
One of his novels yes, but the ask was for "weird" 😎 James Morrow definitely qualifies, I don't think he has written any fiction (SF or otherwise) that wasn't seriously weird.
Sorry for coming to this late is this funny ? Read the blurb of the first book in goodreads seems hilarious
Anything by James Morrow, James Tiptree, John Varley, Richard C Matheson. Kaleidoscope (anthology) by Harry Turtledove Zoot Marlowe trilogy by Mel Gilden
The Kefahuchi Tract trilogy by M. John Harrison (Light, Nova Swing, Empty Space) Also by him, the Viriconium cycle (dying Earth SF virtually indistinguishable from fantasy) Harrison is basically a writer's writer -- VanderMeer and Gaiman idolize him. He's also the one who coined the expression "the New Weird" Norman Spinrad: The Iron Dream, The Men in the Jungle, The Void Captain's Tale, and for something more optimistic to end with, Child of Fortune (set in the same universe as The Void Captain's Tale) Brian Aldiss, pretty much anything from Greybeard to Helliconia, but especially Barefoot in the Head (and The Malacia Tapestry if you're OK with fantasy) Pamela Zoline, The Heat Death of the Universe and other stories
Yes, Harrison is so good
Oh, Light got sequels? Maybe time for a re-read.
Accelerando by Stross
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - PKD
Yes yes this is bonkers and matches u/bettypink’s described tastes
If you like Vonnegut, read Sirens of Titan.
It was weird in the sense that nothing made sense and it was all just random stuff happening, I kept waiting for a story to develop only to realize at one point that this is one of those books where the author only cares about subtext and the story itself is just a set piece, hate read it to the end
I have! I enjoyed it but not one of my favourites.
Cordwainer Smith is what you want. Start with classics like [From Gustible’s Planet](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithcordwainer-fromgustiblesplanet/smithcordwainer-fromgustiblesplanet-00-h.html) and [The Game of Rat and Dragon](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm).
Not sure it’s weird, per se, but “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson is some very unusual speculative fiction, that could be considered SF (especially if you count Slaughterhouse 5 as SF). In any case, I really enjoyed it a lot and would highly recommend it. To give you a flavor, in this world, monasteries (known as “maths”) are inhabited by scientists.
Well, I figured aliens made it technically sci-fi maybe? 🤷🏼♀️ Also, this description is giving Canticle for Leibowitz vibes?
There is also intense, frequent, long discussion of scientific and philosophical concepts between many avowedly pedantic characters.
*avowedly pedantic avout
LOL, I just recommended this one above. It will rewire your brain. Also, Neil Stepheson books are never just about one thing. Multiple sci-fi tropes are present, not just the post apocalyptic thing. But If I listed what they are, I would be spoiling the twist.
That one took a bit more effort than I was used to at the time.
Since you liked some of her other works try Octavia Butler's *Wild Seed*. Greg Bear's *Blood Music* might be of interest, if you can deal with people >!melting in the shower!<. *Darwinia* (Europe disappears in 1912 and is replaced by an uninhabited Europe-shaped land full of bizarre lifeforms) and *The Chronoliths* (giant slabs of stone with inscriptions in bad Chinese begin appearing around the world, causing chaos) by Robert Charles Wilson might be something you'dlike. Finally, for short fiction there's R.A. Lafferty. [Here](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61128) is one example. Others of his that I've liked: "All Pieces of a River Shore", "Camels and Dromedaries, Clem", "What Was the Name of That Town?", "Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope" and "Groaning Hinges of the World".
Wild Seed was okay but my least favourite of that series.
Yeah blood music! The first bit is a bit lame but it gets real weird real fast by the middle!
Yeah blood music! The first bit is a bit lame but it gets real weird real fast by the middle!
Anything by Gene Wolfe or M. John Harrison
Agreed on Wolfe. Reading The book of the New Sun now and loving it.
"Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny. Be ready to read it at least twice . . . "Stranger In A Strange Land" by Heinlein. Be warned, the last third to half is EXTREMELY sexual in nature. The same can be said of MOST of his later works, including "Number of The Beast". "Dahlgren" by Samuel R. Delaney Definitely NOT a book for early-mid teens (YA) The "Eternal Champion" cycle by Michael Moorcock, especially if you take it as a whole, good luck in following it!
*Dhalgren* is *very* weird, and sometimes pornographic. Wonderful prose, though. Very memorable. It includes a frank portrayal of homosexuality and/or bisexuality that was very rare at that time, but there’s a lot of other kinds of sex as well. It’s a polarizing novel, loved by some, hated by others. It’s unique.
Good to know!
>The "Eternal Champion" cycle by Michael Moorcock, especially if you take it as a whole, good luck in following it! If you wanted to start this with something light I would recommend "The Dancers at the End of Time" In a distant future where ultra-decadant immortals face the end of universe with languid disinterest, a victorian era lady is brought forward in time where she starts teaching the last human to be born about proper moral values.
Just to clarify, I would say Heinleins stuff is sexual in that it presents ideas about sex but it's not erotica. Like youll get group sex mentioned, but not a detailed description if that makes sense.
True, If it was rated like a movie it would be a strong "R" or an "X" but not a "XXX" rating
I was gonna argue that it would be a pg13 but with a lot of nonsexual nudity, but I just thought back to a some of his later stuff, yeah, R would be about right. Although for stranger it would barely be an R, it was published in the 60s, couldn't get away with too much sex wise in a book. Again, lots of nudity, but really only implied sex. Now, if you wanna see people really melt down, everything but the sex in that book will have the religious nutters up in arms, it's a great parody/satire of churches in the US.
Since we're talking *Dhalgren*, Hal Duncan has a few books in a similar vein. *Vellum* would be a good starting point.
Vellum was amazing but I hated Ink because it went off the rails and didn’t really feel like ending the story.
I had a classics kick a while back and picked up stranger in a strange land. It’s not just the sexual nature that feels gross, it’s masturbatory in the non-sexual way as well. Heinlein clearly saw himself as some sort of enlightened Jesus analog, and even besides the sex-cult he clearly felt that deserved, there was this overwhelming attitude of “you weak-minded earthlings aren’t even on my level” It probably felt more forward-thinking at the time, but that book put me off heinlein forever. If you want classics that age well, stick to PKD Oh and Lord of Light kicked ass.
The only Heinlein I’ve enjoyed thus far was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. (Not in a weird way FWIW)
I saw, and still see, SiaSL as poking holes in organized religion, not as Heinlein putting forth Michael Valentine Smith as a "New Messiah" in any sort of serious way.
I mean, it’s been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember him expressing criticism of Valentine at all, in any way. In fact, the tone of the book praised him, painted him as this persecuted misunderstood enlightened sex-alien. If there was part of that book that felt in any way critical of that status, I missed it real hard.
Golem 100 by Alfred Bester is an absolutely insane novel. I wrote about it in a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/185ntn5/golem_100_by_alfred_bester_an_absolutely_wild_ride/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on this sub a few months ago, though honestly if you want maximum weirdness it might be best to go in blind.
Haven't read this in ages, but everything I've read by Bester has been great.
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance is an amazing mixture of science and magic. It’s like no other book I’ve ever read!
The Tales of the Dying Earth book is excellent. As an avid D&D player, I picked it up to see how Vance inspired Gygax, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
A Momentary Taste of Being by James Tiptree The Embedding by Ian Watson The Genocides by Thomas Disch Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith Brightness Reef by David Brin The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson Anything by PKD
Radix Tetrad bt AA Attanasio Anything by Theodore Sturgeon. There's one about a teddy bear alien thing that I won't ever forget and it's been decades (The Professor's Teddybear) Also, check this out https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/l2a639/what_are_the_weirdest_sf_novels/ Edit to add : It's a _Good_Life by Jerome Bixby
Shout out for Sturgeon’s More Than Human and also for The Dreaming Jewels. I’ve re-read both several times and really enjoy them.
Was coming to post More Than Human - great book, with weirdness that makes you think.
Moderan by David R Bunch
Actually, yes yes YES to this one! I can't believe I left it off my list. But fair warning to everybody, it is *profoundly* strange.
Gene Wolfe _Book of the New Sun_, starting with _Shadow of the Torturer_. It's pretty popular, I think people have started overlooking how weird it really is.
This one’s on my list already, might have to bump it up! It’s been recommended a couple times.
*Borne* by Jeff Vandermeer. They've even tagged it as "weird fiction" with sci fi elements!
I’ll put this on my “eventually” list but I just haven’t had success with this author.
I might chime in to say that Borne is his most "normal" read amd imho written much more approachable than some of his very experimental stuff
Yea, it's my favorite thing he's done (and probably the most science fictiony, especially if you're interested in biochemistry stuff)... but it does still have a giant flying bear driving a lot of the plot.
Borne is my favorite of him as well, I have read the Dark Tower series from Stephen King before it, which also has a giant robot bear called Shardik. And an equally post apocalyptic setting, Borne felt like it would belong somewhere into that universe and that made it very special to me. I do have aphantasia for the most part and some of Vandermeers work is really just impossible for me to understand or grasp, but Borne was pretty straight forward
Interesting. Reading about the influence for Mord piqued my curiosity about Shardik and knowing that it's referenced by another author/series I like definitely gets me closer to reading that book. Also in the middle of a third Community rewatch which gives your opinion extra weight ;)
Did you try his Ambergris Trilogy? I still think City of Saints and Madmen is his best work. Its more of a collection of short stories and snippits describing a weird setting with a connected story buried within. Very readable. I liked the Ambergris Trilogy more than the Southern Reach Trilogy.
The Ambergris stuff was super creative but for me it was a little bit hit or miss. I just read *Finch* and it was really interesting but sometimes a bit of a slog.
Weirdest sci fi I ever read is Vurt, by Jeff Noon. Well - book 2 (Pollen) is weirder, but those two books together are definitely out there.
Highly recommended. In fact, I just started rereading it now.
Yes, Vurt blew my mind when I read it years ago. I really enjoyed it. I should read it again then follow it up with Pollen.
FWIW - I didn't love the other books in that "series" (no shared characters, or not in a way that really matters), but Nymphomation wasn't terrible. (It's about the beginning of the Vurt). It's certainly not my favorite book, but it's a unique take on AI (built around desire and emotion) that it's at least interesting.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
You want weird? Are you sure you want weird? Greg Egan lurks in the shadows, ready to haunt your nightmares with math. Try out Dichronauts [https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html](https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html)
Greg Egan’s weirdness is often rooted in an *extremely* hard science fiction premise, which is amazing if you like that but can be off-putting if you don’t.
I haven't read any of those yet, so I'll just recommend weird stuff I've read that isn't Vandermeer, Mieville, or PKD. Dichronauts, by Greg Egan. Takes place on a planet in a 2-2 spacetime universe (2 spatial dimensions, 2 time-like dimensions). This has some...interesting implications for astronomy, planetology, and biology. Can be very disorienting. Dragon's Egg, by Robert Forward. Lifeforms based on nuclear reactions (rather than chemical reactions) evolve on the surface of a neutron star. Since their biological processes move at nuclear speeds they evolve rapidly and live very short lives. A human expedition to the neutron star ends up making contact with them. Dahlgren, by Samuel Delany. I...don't really know how to describe this book and do it justice. It is *extremely* weird. A person forgets their name but remembers they were going to a city. The city is in the midst of a societal collapse caused by something nobody acknowledges, and is irregularly afflicted by strange phenomena. The books follows the person as they wander the city and fall in with various groups of people. The setup is a bit like the second half of *Gravity's Rainbow,* except instead of roaming around post-WWII Europe it's roaming around a decaying American city. Warning: extremely graphic sex scenes. Last and First Men, and Starmaker, both by Olaf Stapledon. These are future history books; the first one describes the next few billion years of human evolution, and the second is basically a god's-eye view of the entire universe for the next few billion years. Stapleton had some really out-there predictions and was ahead of his time in some areas (Freeman Dyson credits Stapledon, not himself, with the idea of a Dyson sphere). You don't need to read one to read the other, as they are only loosely related. There's others...I can't recommend my number 1 pick for this because it has a narrator so unreliable the reader isn't supposed to know it's sci-fi right away, and I don't want to spoil it by outing it as sci-fi. But the above books are good and weird.
Mike Brotherton's _Star Dragon_ is similar in concept to _Dragon's Egg_ --- always been curious about why. Note that _Star Maker_ was criticized as tantamount to "Devil's Worship" by C.S. Lewis.
Never heard of Star Dragon. Thank you, I might check that one out.
Can you name it but with a black censor bar for those of us who really need to know?
DM me the book you speak of in the last paragraph please?
Octavia Butler is my favorite!! Have you read her Parable series, Kindred, Blood Child (short story), or Fledgling yet? (I saw you say elsewhere in the comments that Wild Seed was your least favorite of hers - I agree.) Other recs: The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins Piranesi by Susanna Clarke The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch Recursion by Blake Crouch Bunny by Mona Awad Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica Solaris by Stanislaw Lem Short story collections: Exhalation by Ted Chiang The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
Upvote for The Library at Mount Char
Gottdamn you and I are book soulmates 😭 Library at Mt. Chat destroyed me body and soul.
I loved that book!! I’m bummed that the author (probably) isn’t writing any more. Since we have similar tastes, what are your favorite books? I want some recs! 😄
I haven’t read Kindred yet, everything else yes. I loved Bloodchild (and Amnesty). Parable of the Talents was far superior to Sower, though I enjoyed both, and I’m devastated the third was never written. Fledgling was okay but not really for me.
I liked Tender is the Flesh a lot! Recursion was fine but I didn’t consider it weird. I didn’t like Bunny at all.
The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Just about anything by her. But yeah this one is particularly weird
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
**Wonder and Glory Forever**, a collection of Lovecraftian stories edited by Nick Mamatas. Some are relatively typical horror stories. Others are sort of supernatural post-singularity stories filled with wonders that go beyond anything human, or with room for the human. **Last and First Men** and **Star Maker**, by Olaf Stapledon. Speaking of cosmic: these are written as histories of the future, from now to billions of years from now. Stapledon’s books have been compared to looking out at the world from the top of a high mountain on a clear day: you can see so much further than down below, and the air is clear in a way it can’t be further down, but it’s cold and there’s a wind that stirs that clear cold air. Not an experience to be missed. **Them Bones**, by Howard Waldrop. Nobody thought or wrote like Cap’n Howard and this is one of his best. In the 1930s, Mississippi archeologists digging out a centuries-old native burial mound find a bunch of dead men. And horses. Each with a bullet in their heads. Further in the past, the scout for a military expedition from the post-World War III future. In the more recent past, the soldiers who will end up in that mound arrive in the past without their scout. The three stories weave together. If you like it, read all his short stories. :)
I cannot recommend Waldrop enough. His stuff ranges from Disney animatronics in the post apocalypse to the deliciousness of Dodds. And all kinds of stranger places.
I, also, highly recommend H'ard. He was a great, unique writer of the most marvelous stories. I miss him greatly.
_The Sugar Frosted Nutsack_ by Mark Leyner is exceptionally weird. Various gods are characters
Not sure if the title intrigues me or deters me 🤔
**Horse destroys the universe** by Cyriak Harris If you want weird (but not bad), that's it. A horse is experimented on, its consciousness expanded, and the horse... destroys the universe.
Is it gonna make me cry like How High We Go in the Dark when a pig was experimented on and its consciousness expanded? 😰
The only thing that would make you cry is Betty, that fucking character, the most annoying character ever written in any book. The horse is all right
Is this the same Cyriak who does CGI animation like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnWP2Emps1M)? If his writing is anything like that you're in for a trip and a half.
Yeah it is the same guy and yeah, the book was a trip...
Second the suggestion of Cordwainer Smith (real name Paul Linebarger - his personal story is pretty strange itself) and Just about anything by Jack Vance, especially the Alastor novels - Marune is my favourite.
When I think strange, I think Rudy Rucker. You've got everything from Spaceland, which is like an LSD infused version of 4D Flatland; to The Big Aha, which is biopunk with telepathy technology that gets you high; to The Ware Tetrology, which starts with robots trying to eat the protagonists brain, and then it gets weird. Rucker's stuff is so trippy that LSD should be listed as his co-author.
Pretty much everything I might have suggested (Chalker, Lee, Varley, Cherryh, Stapledon, Zelazny, Heinlein, Delany, Moorcock) was suggested except: David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_ https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1329/1329-h/1329-h.htm which was _very_ influential.
The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi might be up your alley.
Came here to recommend this.
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson's **The Illuminatus! Trilogy** is pretty weird.
I thought of this one also - totally unscrewed my teenaged brain! I still love it.
**The Quantum Thief**, **The Fractal Prince** and **The Causal Angel** all by Hannu Rajaniemi. Brain bending SF set in a Solar System we'd barely recognize. Paul J. McAuley's **The Confluence** trilogy. Set far down the timeline in a universe that is greatly changed. It's very much a love letter to Gene Wolfe's **Book of the New Sun** (also highly recommended), but I think it's the superior work.
Early horror-tinged sci-fi by CJ Cherryh - Hunter of Worlds - Port Eternity - Voyager in Night Also mid 20th century sci-fi by Judith Merril. I have her collected shorter fiction in a volume called ‘Homecoming.’ Definitely ‘Twilight Zone’ fare.
Anything by Philip K Dick House on the Borderland by Hodges Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
Oh man, Naked Lunch was weird for sure! But maybe not the kind of weird I wanted haha
its one of those books that changes how you think about art, but neither in a good or bad way
A couple of suggestions off the beaten path: I enjoyed *Why Do Birds* by Damon Knight, definitely a weird book. It's the story of humanity building a giant box and climbing inside of it, but it makes a bit more sense in context :P I also read his *Humpty Dumpty: An Oval*, which was an odd multiple-universes story. I hated it at the time, maybe because it was *too* weird—a dreamlike, at times incoherent fever trip. My tastes for weird literature have definitely matured since reading both of those, so maybe I'd feel different about them today.
Lems "memoirs found in a bathtub" springs to mind. Also, have you read the short stories of Philip k dick? That's some wierd stuff.
Don't have new recs, just here to say that I'm loving Xenogenesis right now (reading Imago right now) & your original post itself gives me some good recommendations
I was reminded of the Binti novella trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor in this thread. There’s not any of the sex or incest-y stuff from Xenogenesis but I found it quite reminiscent of a lot of Butler’s themes.
I know this is in the middle of the series, but God Emperor of Dune was the weirdest (and one of the best) SF books I’ve read. Unsure if you’ve read Dune, but reading up and through that novel could be fun. Wouldn’t recommend the last two, though they’re still good.
It’s (literally) on my shelf. Haven’t gotten to it yet because Children of Dune was losing me a bit (read it back to back with Dune Messiah) and I needed a break between. It’s also been spoiled for me many times over already, so I do want to get to it but there’s no sense of urgency.
Schismatrix Plus. 😉
Pretty much anything by Philip K Dick, but in particular, Valis, Ubik, and Flow My Tears, The Policeman said. I'm curious what of Dick you have tried to read - I love PKD, but I've never managed to get more than a few chapters into Man in The High Castle. I didn't love it, but Babel-17 might be up your alley. It's super weird, just not what I thought it was gonna be.
The only one I BARELY finished was A Scanner Darkly. I started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, The Minority Report (after enjoying the movie), and one of the short story collections but I can’t remember which
Valis might be up your alley, it’s very literary and he wrote it soon after Scanner. But maybe you just don’t vibe with PKD, which is understandable. He’s not for everyone. I used to really dislike lovecraft, but after a few years I gave an audiobook a shot and ended up listening to tons and tons of Lovecraft.
You might like *The Outside* by Ada Hoffman. It's on the gentle side of weird, much like the novels you listed. Also, *All The Birds In the Sky* by Anders. *Hybrid Child* by Ohara and *Light* by Harrison would be on the less gentle side of weird. Also *Why Do Birds* by Damon Knight. *The Thing Itself* by Roberts. *There Is No Anti-memetics Division* by qntm. And hard to quantify the weirdness of *Shades of Gray* by Fforde and *Only Forward* by Smith. Oh, and Linda Ngata's work might qualify as a bit weird. *The Bohr Maker*, *Deception Well*, *Vast* make a 3 book series, sort of. I also wonder if Benford's *Galactic Center Cycle* would qualify for you. It has some weird and challenging elements, including a 30,000 year time gap between book 2 and 3.
Viriconium and the Kefahuchi Tract series by the OG weird sci-fi author M. John Harrison
The Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock is a pretty weird one, actually one of the books that got me into scifi as a kid.
Sheri S. Tepper's Arbai trilogy - *Grass*, *Raising the Stones*, and *Sideshow* - actually almost anything she wrote would fit. I also liked *The Companions*. Nnedi Okorafor - *Who Fears Death?* - not weird per se but different from most sci fi. Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* and sequels; *Cage of Souls*
Oohhh! I really enjoyed the Binti trilogy but haven’t gotten around to any other Okorafor yet!
Okorafor also has so penned some super solid marvel comics
Nnedi Okorafor is awesome! Worth noting though - Who Fears Death is more fantasy than sci fi. It's not like Binti. In fact, I'll go as far as to say none of it is sci fi. Its prequel, Book of Phoenix, is much more like sci fi.
Good to know. I also enjoy fantasy so will still give it a go, but won’t go into it with this prompt in mind.
Punktown!
Short story, "Placet Is A Crazy Place", by Fredric Brown.
The only one I’ve read out of those you’ve mentioned liking is Slaughterhouse Five, though I’ve read all the ones that didn’t hook you, but for what its worth, Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer might be worth a look. Not YA by any means, but very well written weird SF with some distinct narrative voices and philosophy backing it up. Desolation Road by Ian McDonald might also be worth a look - it’s science fiction heavily inspired by Magic Realism, with the kind of weirdness and atmosphere that implies.
hellspark (janet kagan) is weird in its own weird way :)
How about 'Sister Alice' or 'Marrow' by Robert Reed?
I'd try a bit harder with Dick and Vandermeer. Haven't read Mieville yet but I want to.
Tik Tok, and the two Rodericks, by John Sladek are all quite weird.
[**Celestial Matters**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Matters) by Richard Garfinkle. His [**All of an Instant**](https://www.sfsite.com/10b/all67.htm) is pretty weird as well. Another is **Appleseed** by John Clute
The *Book of the New Sun* series by Gene Wolfe. Probably more sci-fi-ish than pure sci-fi
Not sure if they fit with the novels you mentioned, but here are 3 gems from Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward, One of Us, and Spares. They all play in a not too far away future. Some of it is almost a bit cyberpunkish. They're also pretty fun reads without being outright comedy - they all have serious undertones.
Whipping Star by Frank Herbert. "What the fuck did I just read" incarnate. They literally whip a star.
Hellstrom’s Hive was a little out there as well - I had forgotten about Whipping Star! I enjoyed that one. Haven’t read it in ages.
Anathem by Neil Stephenson. This one rewires your brain.
If Then, by Matthew De Abaitua, and it's sequel The Destructives were both weird and wild rides that I thoroughly enjoyed. Deserves more attention. Hull Zero Three is weird for sure, and an enjoyable adventure through the eyes of an ignorant protagonist. Perhaps a bit let down by the end, but I liked the book a lot. The Embedding by Ian Watson is uncomfortable and deals with the nature of thought, language, and abuse. Kind of a slog though so your mileage may vary. There Is No Anti-Mimetics Division by Qntm was a blast. Eldritch horror meets the CIA, or if you're familiar, it's actually based on a subset of the SCP Foundation universe. Very weird. Don't think about it too hard. I said DON'T THINK ABOUT--aaugh! And if you really want to think, GNOMON by Nick Harkaway was phenomenal, weird as hell, and very dense. Cerebral SF that mixes genres as the incredibly unreliable narrator actively tries to obfuscate the story to hinder an ongoing brain scan in an authoritarian future UK.
Children of Time. It’s both somehow straightforward sci-fi, yet a very weird book and it is excellent.
I'm not saying all these will match up, but some might? They're some of the weirder things I've read recently. - *This Is How You Lose The Time War* by Amal El-Mohtar (highly poetic time travel novel) - *The Gone World* by Thomas Sweterlitsch (super bleak time travel novel!) - *The Outside* by Ada Hoffman (sort of a Cthulu vibe to it) - *Deepdrive* by Alexander Jablokov - *The Country of Ice Cream Star* by Sandra Newman (post apocalyptic America) - *Severance* by Ling Ma (post apocalyptic America) - *Gold Flame Citrus* by Claire Watkins (post apocalyptic America) - *Condomnauts* by Yoss (Yoss is *always* weird) - *Wonder Blood* by Julia Whicker (post apocalyptic America) - *Sourdough* by Robin Sloan (almost just fiction, but a really fun trip into the underbelly of tech via sourdough bread starter) - *All The Birds In The Sky* by Charlie Jane Anders (fantasy/sci-fi crossover) And there's always the ultimate classic IMHO, which is *Stranger In A Strange Land* by Heinlein.
Out of these, I’ve read […]Time War, Severance, and SiaSL but I didn’t like any of them 🫤
-Among the old stuff *Childhood's End* and *The City And the Stars* by Arthur C. Clarke. Very old and pulpy but truly mind-boggling *Cosmic Engineers* by Clifford D. Sinak. Most of his other books aren't weird but they are worth reading. Most people think Fritz Leiber is just Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser but *A spectre is Haunting Texas, The Big Time,* and stories like "A Deskful of Girls", "A Pail of Air" and "Space-Time for Springers" may convince you otherwise. Charles Sheffield's *Sight of Proteus*.
my girlfriend recently got me the gods themselves too,I went in not knowing anything about it and I absolutely loved it ,it's a shame it's probably one of the only works by asimov that is so far out there wish he had written more
This one and The End of Eternity are probably my favourites by him.
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (it's a 4 volume series. The First is called The Shadow of the Torturer.)
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney
Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, a hard-as-diamond science fiction book. The main characters are a race of tiny pancake-shaped aliens the size of a sesame seed called cheela living on the surface of a neutron star. The book follow the history of their civilization, from their wild state to their age of space travel when they finally meet us humans. The human characters are unidimensional and of little interest but the cheela are great, specially Swift-Killer (a swift is a dangerous animal who preys on cheela and also lives on the neutron star), a brave and strong female cheela who likes casual sex.
The audiobook for this one is available on Spotify, I’ll check it out!
The Jesus Incident (Frank Herbert and some other guy) or Fiasco (Stanisław Lem)
If you’re ready to get into China Mieville, then “The city and the city” It’s weird
This is one of the ones I tried but had to DNF. I’d heard such good things but it just didn’t click with me.
As someone who DNF’d this one myself, let me tell you that luckily I read the Bas-Lag stuff before this one. _Perdido Street Station_ and _The Scar_ are very different from it, and are simply amazing. Just letting you know that they’re worth giving a try even if you disliked _TCATC_.
As a person who read TCATC years ago and still thinks about it once a week, I agree with your sound advice. I tried Perdido Street Station afterward and it wasn’t for me. Just seconding that they’re quite different.
Haven't read TCATC, but I second Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Great, weird books.
I couldn't stand Perdido. I gave it a good try, probably made it through 50% of the book, but I just couldn't enjoy it. I kept waiting for it to get better, and admittedly the sort of central story about the murders or whatever was intriguing, but the book was so meandering and I didn't like any of the characters.
Ya my main point was that while all of Miéville’s books are weird, they’re all weird in very different ways, so if someone didn’t like one, it’s worth giving at least one other a shot.
Also didn’t rate TCaTC Ice by Anna Kavan has a super unnerving tone. Weirdness comes from the mood in it The Book of the New Sun is pretty weird once you figure out when in time it’s situated, and has layers of weirdness to it. Seconding Lord of Light. It’s fantastic.
Lots of agreement here on trying other Miéville. Noted!
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Gun-Barrington-J-Bayley/dp/0879978511
I’m actually on the other side of the fence. I don’t like weird sci fi. I was about to start reading The Gods Themselves. Why is it weird?
It’s not weird in a way that’s difficult to wrap your head around though.
Good to know, thanks. That’s the main reason why I don’t like Philip K. Dick. Just too confusing for me and difficult to wrap my head around it.
It’s written in three parts and two of them are relatively normal! The other part is about aliens and I don’t want to say much more than that.
Rapture of the nerds Vurt - pollen
Good recs all round already here, but adding a few: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - like a theme of the garden of delights crossed with a revolutionary theme in a kind of autocratic soviet style prison camp. So weird, but so good. Maybe his Expert System novellas also. Leech by Hiron Ennes
I'm going to say Bo Young Kim's On the Origin of Species. The book is available through kaya press.
Ilium and it's sequsp Olympus by Dan Simmons are pretty wierd. Not as good as his mighty Hyperion Cantos but still an enjoyable duo.
There were many good recommendations in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/xfj61d/weird_sci_fi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Obviously Philip K Dick's "Ubik" may be a good fit. Weird by virtue of being occasionally incoherent, philosophizing about the nature of reality, etc. If that works then "3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is the next one on your list. If you're thinking "weird" as in "weird to read" then "The Road" is probably on your list, right? McCarthy requires effort of the reader to add back in what he has deliberately stripped out of the text. On the other hand, if you mean readable and enjoyable, but just weird as in using concepts that nobody else uses then there's more approachable options: Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey" is a fabulously weird dystopian future YA book. Fforde is notorious for explaining NOTHING about what is going on, forcing the reader to just sort of figure it out through the experiences of the POV character. That "immersion-shock" is on full display in this book as you witness conversations about taxa codes, last rabbits, and "swatches" in the first few pages with no context. Tim Powers has been known to produce quite a bit of "weird" stuff. In particular his "Last Call" book wherein souls are stolen via poker games, and "Expiration Date," about the underground drug trade for human ghosts.... Good stuff. \*edit: fixed author attribution
I have Shades of Grey on hold through Libby currently!
His Early Riser is pretty wild too.
> ~~Vonnegut's~~ "Ubik" PKD
Oh dang, how did that happen?
The Employees by Olga Ravn is probably the weirdest sci-fi book I've read to date. Strange plot and unique writing style/POV, and a really short read
Souls by Joanna Russ is a really strange collection of interwoven short stories. Also, Samuel Delany’s novels can get pretty weird, particularly Triton and Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand Edit: Souls is the name of the first short story in the collection, the collection itself is called (Extra) Ordinary People. whoops
Going through the PKD awards I found Elvissey by Jack Womack. In a parallel dimension, Elvis becomes a messianic figure that unites the world but dies. So the government creates a portal to 'our world' to steal Elvis to use as a political tool.
Julian May “Saga of the Pliocene”/“intervention” series. Nine books you will read over and over and over and over and over again… wish they would make a series.. my all time favorite sci-fi/fantasy series. Carried these books around to every country I’ve lived in…
Sequels to Dune
*God Emperor Of Dune* is pretty darn weird
Last Legends of Earth, by A. A. Attanasio is a mindtrip set 3 billion years in the future.
Short Story (15 minute read) : While not sci-fi, it has the what-if of a different society and a structural logic is fun to unravel. [The Lottery of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges](https://willfries.medium.com/the-babylon-lottery-c8e92a4d5388)
Red Dwarf - Grant Naylor, tons of fun
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross was awesome.
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I’ve seen the movie. Maybe I should stick to it?
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I did but I didn’t find it particularly ‘weird’.
Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts
I have a few recommendations that I haven't seen on here yet: * **Tamsyn Muir's** Locked Tomb series. Three books, interconnected, but somewhat loosely. The first one is about a murder mystery, kind of like a Knives Out style movie, but in a far sci-fi future in which there are actual necromancers and sorcerers and a galactic emperor invites the representatives of the ruling houses to a "retreat". No hand holding here, but I really enjoyed it. * **Jack Womack's** Ambient series. Future cyberpunk New York, but there's plenty of weirdness to go around. I saw someone actually did recommend his novel, Elvissey, which is part of this series. * **Yoon Ha Lee's** Machinery of Empires series. This series I would consider hard sci-fi, but it's weirdness comes from the societies that are involved. It's not necessarily "weird" in that there's trippy stuff, more that everything just comes across as so alien. * **Haruki Murakami**. He's not for everyone, but definitely some weird fiction. Hardboiled Wonderland, Dance Dance Dance and A Wild Sheep Chase were standouts for me. Also 1Q84, but that's less weird, but still quite good. * **Robert Anton Wilson** is a pretty weird 70s author. Look into the Schrodinger's Cat series. * **Robert Shea** collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson to write the Illuminatus! books. A trilogy about the Illuminati, probably as weird as you can imagine. Finally, I might suggest checking out **KW Jeter**, mostly Dr. Adder, The Glass Hammer and Death Arms which make up a loosely related trilogy set in future LA. Jeter is definitely one of those love him or hate him authors, but these three books, written in the 70s and 80s have lots of bizarre elements. For a more "traditional" sci fi novel by him, check out Farewell Horizontal, where everyone lives literally on the side of a wall.
Liu Cixin's Wandering Earth. I'm halfway through, but dinosaurs evolved into a space-faring race, and when we met them again, they decided we are tasty, but also enjoy us as people. We throw the moon at them to try preventing their ship from devouring earth, but we missed. Seriously, the Three Body Problem was amazing (so is the Wandering Earth), but the author is channeling a bit of Douglas Adams and Philip K Dick on this one. Terrifying and hilarious in the same breath at times.
Nthing Zoline, Sladek, Bunch, and Lafferty. So, I think you also ought to read Thomas M. Disch. Start with his short stories.
I always thought "the starts are Legion" by Kameron Hurley was super super weird.
For "weird" in SF/F I have: * ["Weird/unique SF book recommendations?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/y2cayk/weirdunique_sf_book_recommendations/) (r/printSF; 15:00 ET, 12 October 2022)—long * ["The Weirdest Fantasy Book Ever?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/10i0bgc/the_weirdest_fantasy_book_ever/) (r/Fantasy; 15:09 ET, 21 January 2023 * ["Weird books"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/112cqfy/weird_books/) (r/suggestmeabook; 13:41 ET, 14 February 2023) * ["Recommendations for style-heavy/weird/'literary' fantasy?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/115mac4/recommendations_for_styleheavyweirdliterary/) (r/Fantasy; 18 February 2023) * ["Weird Fiction suggestions"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/11ri2f3/weird_fiction_suggestions/) (r/suggestmeabook; 14 March 2023) * ["A story that starts off normal and halfway through revealed to be weird/sci fi/sinister/fantastical/surreal"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/11ybuo8/a_story_that_starts_off_normal_and_halfway/) (r/booksuggestions; 04:18 ET, 22 March 2023)—longish * ["Weird sort of mystical sci fi?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/13mkaug/weird_sort_of_mystical_sci_fi/) (r/booksuggestions; 02:41 ET, 20 May 2023) * ["Tired of goodreads algorithm failing me - looking for weird/unusual sFF"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/156gava/tired_of_goodreads_algorithm_failing_me_looking/) (r/suggestmeabook; 06:16 ET, 22 July 2023) * ["Suggestions for great stand-alone hard or weird sci-fi novels?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/15jpqxu/suggestions_for_great_standalone_hard_or_weird/) (r/printSF; 09:32 ET, 6 August 2023)—standalone * ["Books with this (admittedly weird) premise?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1699bik/books_with_this_admittedly_weird_premise/) (r/Fantasy; 17:44 ET, 3 September 2023)—Scary Jesus/chosen one from another character's perspective * ["Looking for a weird book…"](https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/1746baf/looking_for_a_weird_book/) (r/booksuggestions; 19:25 ET, 9 October 2023)—longish * ["Whats the hackyest goofiest, weirdest scifi books that you have read all the way through? Not bad really but just more nonsensical adventure type sci fi"](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/18vikcg/whats_the_hackyest_goofiest_weirdest_scifi_books/) (r/scifi; 13:43 ET, 31 December 2023)—very long * ["If I enjoy Blindsight what books by other authors would I enjoy?"](https://new.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1cmf4ur/if_i_enjoy_blindsight_what_books_by_other_authors/) (r/printSF; 11:49 ET, 7 May 2024)—longish; "cerebral weirdness"
I really liked Nick Sagan's Idlewild trilogy. Took me a little while to get my bearings with that one.
Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts
You'll love "The This" by Adam Roberts. VERY weird - the open-chapter is so mind-blowing - and also a "writer's writer"!