Science Fiction

How about The Expanse or The Martian? They’re both relatively hard sci-fi that focuses mostly on our own solar system.

The Martian tells the tale of a man stuck on Mars and his ability to survive on his own whilst those back on Earth figure out a way to get him back. Both the book and the film are great so you can’t go wrong with either.

The Expanse covers more of the local system. Earth and Mars are on the brink of war, whilst others live out near the asteroid belt, Jupiter and beyond. It goes a little sci-fi later on but it’s an inherently human story that has some great characters living in a time when space travel is still dangerous but achievable by humanity. It starts a little slow but ramps up brilliantly and has a nice conclusion that wraps everything up pretty neatly. You’ve got 9+ books, a 6 season TV series on Amazon Prime, and a newly released TellTale video game, all of which are well produced and worth investing time in.

Dune is an example of massive world-building with a tons of jargon, but you still liked it? It seems that this post is saying you don't like books like Dune, so how did you manage to enjoy it?

Try some cyberpunk stuff, it’s great “local” sci-fi, with hardly any of that muck you don’t like.

“Neuromancer” - William Gibson
“Snow Crash” - Neal Stephenson
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” - Philip K Dick

Have you tried Asimov's short stories? 'I, Robot' is mostly logic problems presented in a dramatic way. Good read.

I suggest Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The whole series is good but each is stand alone. There is a world and it’s in space but the stories are people scale.

I’ll throw in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Both classics that are great page turners. Take place against the backdrop of an intergalactic society but remain focused on singular planets and their societies (well if you include their anarchic moons). Great characters with meaningful relationships. Left Hand has more of an interpersonal focus, Dispossessed more societal, but both amazing in their own way.

Maybe take a look at post apocalyptic sci Fi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction), as it includes a lot of interesting futuristic tech, but it is mostly limited to earth. There's probably another category where things like blade runner fit too

A Canticle for Leibowitz

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are both classics with little world building.

Ursula K. Le Guin is an example of a writer that does deep but focused worldbuilding. Her sci-fi books tend to be about a single planet, sometimes two like in The Dispossesed. You could try that one or even better start with The Left Hand of Darkness. I like how she sets up various unusual alien factors (geopolitics, biology, society, natural environments) and lets them interplay but also without forgetting a plot.

Red rising

An oldy, but The day of the triffids by John Wyndham

Oh there's just so many. A favorite of mine is Replay by Ken Grimwood. It's a kind of a time travel book, but different from most, and a lot of fun - written in 1986, so not new. Broad plot is that the main character, a middle aged man, dies on the first page and wakes up back in college, back in the 50s, I believe. It gets more interesting from there.

You might enjoy the Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, which is a series that starts with All Systems Red. The first couple are novellas, and the first one was published in 2017, so much more recent. They won a lot of awards. It takes place in an unspecified time in the future, told from the perspective of a cyborg of sorts who is a security bot who has hacked his control unit and doesn't have to do what he's told, but he doesn't want people to know that so he can watch soap operas when he can. He's guarding a small group on an alien planet when things get weird.

I'll recommend one other, very different: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. I believe that was 2007. It's told from the perspective of a guy in near earth future who had late stage Alzheimer's but was given a cure, so is slowly getting back his mental function. Wearable computers are ubiquitous at the time. Also a big award winner.

I hope you find something you like.

You also listed fantasy, so I'd like to recommend N.K. Jemisin. She won the Hugo award for a novel 3 years in a row for her first 3 books, and has I think 2 more? So 5 Hugo's on 7 years?

I really enjoyed Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I recommend it.

The Three Body Problem trilogy, especially the first two books.

Trying to avoid too many spoilers, the first book is about a Chinese scientist investigating a mysterious threat. It’s not too heavy on world building, and it’s set on present day earth.

Second book, The Dark Forest, is about how this impossible threat is dealt with, and I think it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve read.

I think the third book, Death’s End, went overboard quite a bit, but it’s still a good one.

Guant's Ghosts - Dan Abnett

it's warhammer 40k but it doesnt really focus on space too much, other than they always travel through space to get from one battlefield to the next. lots of mud & blood trench warfare.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Culture series by Iain M. banks. Much like Dune there is a ton of world building that occurs in the novels but it’s not the focus of any one novel. You can read them independently and still enjoy them. The concepts he tackles in the novels were way ahead of their time and his prose and s second to none. The novel Consider Phlebas is typically where most people start, but I started The Player of Games.

I enjoyed the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison - they're short, reasonably light comic sci-fi.

You might like the Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews. It's a series of 6-9 books but they are good by themselves. Kinda fantasy, kinda sci-fi. The books are short and fun and will keep you entertained. My other favorites are Brandon Sanderson and David Dalglish.

Any of these?

• The windup girl
• roadside picnic
• God's war
• sand
• High Rise
• a scanner darkly

Just some non-space novels that have stuck with me.

Avoid Alastair Reynolds imo. Lots of jumping around and meeting new aliens but not engaging on the character level well.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Aliens destroy earth and the protagonist must compete in an rpg style dungeon created underneath the earth with his (ex) girlfriends cat.

Funny, heart warming, and blood pumping

I'd recommend finding collections of short stories. You often don't have a lot of time to write expansive world building details when you've only got a few thousand words and a brief plot to get through. And a collection of different authors can make sure you have a variety if some of the authors aren't your preference and then you can look at longer works by the authors you do like.

Stranger in a Strange Land.

It relies on a scifi premis for the first chapter then takes place on earth. It's a fun look at human culture from an outsider's perspective.

My recommend is Semiosis by Sue Burke, it's very different.

Also the commonwealth saga which is big but not overwhelming

I've read memory of empire lately, which is a political intrigue in a Sci Fi setting. It's centered around one city palace.

I second Lebowitz, the expanse and Ursula especially. Left hand of darkness is amazing.

If you enjoy project hail Mary and the generational aspect of 1000 years of solitude, you might enjoy children of time which has similar themes. It's my current favorite.

Many sci-fi and fantasy authors spend so much time world-building that they seem to forget the plot for 20 pages or so. On the other end some just put in sequences of action with only a token plot like many movies today. Finding one that has the right balance is very difficult. Back when before electronic books, more than a few paperbacks ended up being tossed across the room in frustration.

Since you've gotten a lot of recommendations for more popular works, I'll toss in few less commonly mentioned ones. All of these have a decent balance of world-building and plot.

Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey.

The Madness Season & This Alien Shore - C.S. Friedman.

The Parafaith War - L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Murderbot series - Martha Wells - lots of space travel and world building, but it's funny as hell so it's worth it.

Oryx & Crake by Maraget Atwood was very interesting and fun to read. Dealt mostly with biological-related technology and human-scale drama. No spacemen.

Eon by Greg Bear. It’s a bit dated as it takes place during the cold war, but it’s an excellent read.

Possibly Existence by David Brin? There’s some stuff around space travel and alien contact, and it ain’t exactly a short, but is mostly set on a future earth.

There’s also a lot of “future jargon” which grates a little, but is quite fun to look at something written in 2012(?) about a future involving wearables and AI among others.

https://lemmy.world/post/2368503