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Books like Hyperion

Dan Simmons · 1989 · US · science fiction
Book 1 of 4 in Hyperion Cantos
★ 4.28 Goodreads · 321,364 ratings

Seven pilgrims travel to the Time Tombs on Hyperion, each carrying a tale that reveals a different facet of a galaxy at war.

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12 books for readers of Hyperion

The Shadow of the Torturer

Gene Wolfe · 1980 · US 96% match ★ 3.84 Goodreads · 38,458 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in The Book of the New Sun
shares: allusive, far future, quest · uncanny, speculative

Severian, an apprentice in the guild of torturers on a far-future, dying Earth, is exiled for showing mercy to a prisoner, and begins the journey that opens The Book of the New Sun.

The Dreaming Void

Peter F. Hamilton · 2007 · UK 95% match ★ 4.18 Goodreads · 30,308 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Void Trilogy
shares: far future, space opera, religious · speculative, deep world-building

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.

Excession

Iain M. Banks · 1996 · UK 95% match ★ 4.19 Goodreads · 35,907 ratings
Book 5 of 10 in Culture
shares: far future, space opera · speculative, deep world-building

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.

Light

M. John Harrison · 2002 · UK 95% match ★ 3.61 Goodreads · 7,106 ratings
shares: far future, space opera, multiple narrators · uncanny, speculative

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.

House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds · 2008 · UK 94% match ★ 4.24 Goodreads · 34,792 ratings
shares: far future, space opera · speculative, deep world-building

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.

Ancillary Justice

Ann Leckie · 2013 · US 94% match ★ 3.99 Goodreads · 123,970 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Imperial Radch
shares: far future, space opera, hugo award · speculative, deep world-building

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

Peter F. Hamilton · 2004 · UK 94% match ★ 4.22 Goodreads · 55,272 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Commonwealth Saga
shares: far future, space opera, multiple narrators · speculative, deep world-building

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.

A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge · 1992 · US 94% match ★ 4.13 Goodreads · 68,845 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Zones of Thought
shares: space opera, ambitious, hugo award · speculative, deep world-building

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.

The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu · 2008 · China 94% match ★ 4.08 Goodreads · 542,191 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Remembrance of Earth's Past
shares: ambitious, hugo award · cold, speculative

During the Cultural Revolution, astrophysicist Ye Wenjie answers a signal from space, and decades later nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao, investigating a wave of scientists' suicides, is drawn into a strange virtual-reality game and the secret behind it.

The Quantum Thief

Hannu Rajaniemi · 2010 · Finland 93% match ★ 3.83 Goodreads · 24,584 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Jean le Flambeur
shares: far future, space opera · speculative, deep world-building

Jean le Flambeur, a legendary thief, is broken out of the Dilemma Prison, where copies of him play endless rounds of the prisoner's dilemma, by Mieli, a warrior from the Oort cloud whose employer wants a job done in the Oubliette, a moving city on Mars.

Babel-17

Samuel R. Delany · 1966 · US 93% match ★ 3.72 Goodreads · 20,944 ratings
shares: space opera · speculative, uncanny

Rydra Wong, a poet and starship captain, is recruited to crack Babel-17, an enemy code behind a string of sabotage, and discovers that it is a language that changes the way its speakers think.

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · 2019 · US 93% match ★ 4.10 Goodreads · 78,166 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Teixcalaan
shares: far future, space opera, hugo award · speculative, deep world-building

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.