[dupank]

I just started getting into sci fi novels about a year ago. I'm 27. I've read the first three in the Ender's Game series, Foundation (just the first book but plan on reading more), Old Man's War by Scalzi, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All of them I have enjoyed, but I've found that what I really like most out of a sci fi novel is some philosophical perspective. What I mean is I like authors that share their insight into how they imagine the world might work, whether spiritually like Card's idea of philotes, or historically, like the futuristic parody of civilization's past presented by Asimov.

I searched through the other posts of recommended reading but couldn't find something geared towards what I'm looking for. Anybody have any suggestions? Author and book/series would be great. Thanks!

[Loerwyn]

Pretty much any of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s sci-fi books should do the trick. The one I've seen mentioned the most is The Parafaith War, which should be just what you're looking for.

[dupank]

Pretty much any of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s sci-fi books should do the trick. The one I've seen mentioned the most is The Parafaith War, which should be just what you're looking for.

Just read the synopsis and a couple reviews. Sounds like just the thing I'm looking for. Thanks for the suggestion.

[psikeyhackr]

Did you read the whole Old Man's War trilogy or just the first book?

I made the mistake of stopping with the first book. The politics and personal philosophy gets thicker in the next two books with touches of Ender's Game and The Uplift War.

The Uplift War by David Brin is interesting from the chimpanzees' perspective.

Voyage from Yesteryear by James P. Hogan has individualistic social philosophy.

Orphans of the Sky and The Door into Summer by Heinlein.

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin.

Old books put more ideas in fewer words but characters and environs won't have as much detail.

Bujold's Vorkosigan series has thought provoking stuff but more subtle and stretched out than Heinlein. You have to read three times as much for as many ideas.

psik

[dupank]

I only read the first book. I enjoyed it, so if the rest of the series is as you say, I'll keep reading. I'll look into the books/authors you mentioned. Thanks for the suggestions, psik.

[Nicolas]

I'm throwing in a few Ursula K. LeGuinn as well on top of these recommendations. The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Dispossessed, for example, are two novels that are exploring a vast number of philosophical and sociological themes.

[psikeyhackr]

I only read the first book. I enjoyed it, so if the rest of the series is as you say, I'll keep reading. I'll look into the books/authors you mentioned. Thanks for the suggestions, psik.

I would be most interested in what you think of any thoughtful SF. I have a kind of psychological theory about encountering ideas at an early age in that new ideas have more of an impact. I decided I was an agnostic at 12 as a result of SF but I never encountered any adults talking about it until high school. Some ideas people probably don't encounter until college.

It is kind of weird to listen to debates and have read characters in a book making the same points ten years earlier when you barely understood what they were talking about.

psik

[Zeratul]

Most of Stanislaw Lem's novels fit your requirements perfectly. He explored all kinds of philosophical themes in his work, usually in much more depth than is typical for science fiction.

[dupank]

@psik-
What I enjoyed most about Foundation is how Asimov explained huge, historical movements like religion, for instance, so matter-of-factly. It's as if he was disconnected from the issues civilizations have faced, and almost considered them trivial because of their predictability. It makes me think that in the grand scheme of things, the problems of today are silly. Such as red/blue politics. So I wonder why do we waste our time making the same arguments generation after generation? It makes me feel like the human race is some sort of social experiment. Also, when he implies that the human race may or may not have began on Earth, coupled with this repetitive cycle of civilization, it makes my imagination go crazy with the possibilities of where humans came from and how we ended up on Earth.

Ender's Game through Xenocide I liked because Card managed to explain religious concepts in a way I could accept. Like you, I'm also agnostic. I believe there is definitely much, much more to understand in our universe. For the time-being, religion has been the easy answer to all those things we have yet to understand. Religious stories are mostly just silly, but I've always felt that there is a bit of truth hidden in each one. These books made me think about how something similar to heaven might actually exist. Just not at all like what people have imagined over the millennia, but more like Card's concept of Inside Space.

[psikeyhackr]

Oh yeah, there's a free one.

The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper
H. Beam Piper now and again takes a neat twist in an otherwise common plot-line, or strikes an odd note in an apparently straightforward science fiction adventure. Junkyard Planet (in paperback as The Cosmic Computer) has both.

The novel takes up a theme that has been employed often in various ways: a poor backwater culture mining the leftovers of a richer culture, now departed. But this is not near-savages venturing into ruined cities after a great war, nor space-travelers striving to comprehend subtle alien monuments.

Instead, Piper gives us a realistic future version of the logistical backwash of a war, when for a number of scattered human planets, salvaging the materiel left behind by vast interstellar fleet and army forces is the best way to make a cash living. Discovering another hidden and sealed base on their planet gives them something to sell and keeps them going until the next base is found and dismantled. As with all military surplus, the scavengers sell arms and equipment at a wholesale fraction of the original cost. It's a fine world with millions of people, but economically, it's a junkyard plus some expensive-to-export crops.

And then we get to the odd note. The note is despair. Ambition here is to scrounge for logistic leftovers from the interstellar war boom. The postwar bust dried up their economy and their hopes. The fountains are dusty in the graveyard of dreams.

Yet they have one giant, pie-in-the-sky, eldorado hope: the enduring rumor that on their planet is a major secret installation, containing a fabulous military strategic computer. If they can find that base with the supercomputer, they'll have the greatest salvage treasure of the age, and thence the riches to revive their whole planetary economy.

But does the supercomputer exist at all?

Audio - http://librivox.org/the-cosmic-computer-by-h-beam-piper/

PDF - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=24&ved=0CMABEBYwFw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeneration.feedbooks.com%2Fbook%2 F311.pdf&ei=EetzTumlLcrksQKWr9CLBQ&usg=AFQjCNFN_RA8ZUNs_L5NIN_z_PaZMKcX8A&sig2=ViTPXcfiHc1FDUpXqbALcw

psik