Books like Excession
An artefact older than the universe appears at the edge of the galaxy, and the Culture's ship Minds, a rival empire and a pair of estranged lovers are caught up in what to do about it.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Excession
Ancillary Justice
A warship's AI, trapped in a single human body after the destruction of its ship, uncovers a galactic conspiracy at the heart of a brutal empire.
Pandora's Star
In 2380 humanity has spread across hundreds of worlds linked by wormholes, and when an astronomer sees two distant stars vanish inside a barrier, a starship is sent to find out why, with consequences no one foresaw.
The Dreaming Void
In the far future, a man begins dreaming of a perfect world inside the Void at the centre of the galaxy, and when millions decide to follow him there, the galaxy's powers fear that the pilgrimage will trigger the Void's expansion and destroy them all.
A Fire Upon the Deep
When a research team awakens an ancient evil at the edge of the galaxy, two children escape to a medieval world ruled by the Tines, doglike aliens who think in packs, and a rescue mission races across a galaxy where the laws of physics change with distance from the core.
Light
In 1999 a physicist who murders people is close to a breakthrough in quantum computing, while four centuries later a woman wired into her starship and a burnt-out pilot circle the Kefahuchi Tract, where physics breaks down.
Foundation
As the Galactic Empire decays, mathematician Hari Seldon plants a colony of scholars on a remote planet to shorten the coming dark age, and his successors survive crisis after crisis his equations foresaw.
Diaspora
In 2975 most of humanity lives as software in polises, and Yatima, a mind born of no parents, comes into being in one of them, not long before a disaster in space threatens the flesh-and-blood humans left on Earth.
Shards of Earth
Fifty years after the alien Architects stopped reshaping inhabited worlds and vanished, Idris Telemmier, an Intermediary engineered to fight them and now crewing a salvage ship, finds signs that they are back.
Revelation Space
On Resurgam, a barely settled world, the archaeologist Dan Sylveste digs up evidence of the Amarantin, an alien race wiped out nine hundred thousand years ago, while a vast lighthugger crewed by cyborgs crosses the dark to find him.
Hyperion
Seven pilgrims travel to the Time Tombs on Hyperion, each carrying a tale that reveals a different facet of a galaxy at war.
House of Suns
Six million years from now the Gentian Line, a thousand clones of one woman, criss-cross the galaxy and meet every two hundred thousand years to share their memories. Campion and Purslane, two of them who have fallen in love against the Line's rules, are running late for the reunion.
A Memory Called Empire
A young ambassador from a small colony arrives at the heart of a vast empire, where memory is currency and identity is a political weapon.