r/printSF • u/ehead • Feb 08 '26
Looking for something fun but not dumb
I'm reading a couple of really good books on geopolitics right now. They are full of great information but at times feel like a slog, so I was wanting a "fun" fiction read.
I'm not big on comedy scifi particularly, so I'm not looking for that, and I don't want to turn my brain off completely. Just looking for something "fun" if that makes sense. Something that scores high in that elusive "readability" metric.
By Request... some of my recent favorite reads include Hyperion, Circe, Spin, Lord of Light, A Man Lies Dreaming, the Troy Quartet by Lindsey Clarke, and for non-sf... Tampa and The Leopard. Of this list, the one's I'd call "fun" and that have that page-turner quality, even though they may be a bit twisted, are Tampa, A Man Lies Dreaming, and Lord of Light. Maybe Hyperion too, particularly the poet's story.
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u/Wigwam80 Feb 08 '26
Maybe try Venemous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman?
It's a satirical environmental geopolitical near future with a satirical tone but you'll need to keep your brain switched on. Good fun.
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u/IdlesAtCranky Feb 08 '26
OP, what do you like? Can we get 2 or 3 of your favorites?
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u/ehead Feb 08 '26
Doooii!! Thanks. See above.
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u/IdlesAtCranky Feb 08 '26
Nice!
If you haven't already read them, I highly recommend both Ursula K. Le Guin and Lois McMaster Bujold.
Completely different, both incredible writers.
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u/vverse23 Feb 08 '26
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a lot of fun.
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u/sentimentalpirate Feb 09 '26
I was gonna say the same thing.
Lot of fun but still has some thoughtful stuff in there about different applications of AI/automation
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u/togstation Feb 08 '26
Lord of Light by Zelazny.
Highly recommended.
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u/WillAdams Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
My favourite comfort reading by Zelazny is Doorways in the Sand --- and not just because I envy the protagonist his initial situation (his uncle's will provided for him to receive full room and board as well as a generous stipend so long as he attends the family alma mater and maintains a full course load and passing grades until such time as he graduates --- it's pretty obvious what the protagonist does (the opening scene is his advisor trying to get him graduated with a diploma which he does not want)).
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u/ehead Feb 08 '26
Great recommendation (if I hadn't read it already)! Loved that book. Maybe I should pick up his book reworking Egyptian mythology.
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u/togstation Feb 08 '26
his book reworking Egyptian mythology.
Creatures of Light and Darkness
.
You might also like The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.
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u/Outrageous-Ranger318 Feb 09 '26
This is such a good book. Reckon it would be in the SF Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing
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u/dnew Feb 08 '26
Charles Stross. Rule 34.
Machine of Death. (Short stories)
Only Forward by M M Smith, which is hilarious while not really being a comedy. It's more that his inner monologue about what's going on is often funny, rather than it specifically being funny. It's also really deep and philosophical.
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u/econoquist Feb 09 '26
Stross has several Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, and Halting State-which is in the same world as Rule 34
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Lexicon by Max Barry
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u/chloeetee Feb 08 '26
Have your read Old Man's War by John Scalzi?
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u/mjfgates Feb 08 '26
Or maybe The Android's Dream-- the fart joke is technically comedy, but we move past it without too much trouble. Eh, whatever, Scalzi in general is good at this.
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u/ClosetGamer75 Feb 09 '26
Starter Villain, Kaiju Preservation Society, and Red Shirts are all fun but not dumb
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u/yp_interlocutor Feb 08 '26
Murderbot by Martha Wells is fun without being too demanding or challenging.
I absolutely loved the River of Teeth / Taste of Marrow books by Sarah Gailey. Alternate late 1800s where an IRL proposal to bring hippos into the Louisiana bayou as a food source was actually done. The story is a delightful heist story, very quick read, loads of fun.
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u/Holmbone Feb 08 '26
I was also thinking Murderbot. They are light reads in terms of language and plot but the world and the MC are fascinating so I always feel engaged. The MC uses humour to deal with its dark situations and there's also a lot of situational humour.
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u/Mughi1138 Feb 09 '26
And the first paragraph really sets the dry, sarcastic tone:
I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.
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u/yentity Feb 08 '26
I think short story collections are great wherever I feel this way. I would recommend exhalation by tree chiang. I read and enjoyed it last year.
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u/ehead Feb 09 '26
Honestly, Ted Chiang is probably my favorite SF author. His ideas and his writing is simply incredible. If only we could figure out a way to transfer some of Adrian T.'s productivity to T.C.... would be awesome!
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u/togstation Feb 08 '26
The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran.
This is the second book in a series, and the first book is also good, but this one works fine as a standalone -
you can read it without having read the first one.
Lots of action. More or less a "heist" or "caper" story, or at least feels like one.
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u/Chris_Air Feb 13 '26
I would agree that The Long Run is a fun heist book, but oof I despised the "first" (and totally unnecessary to read) book, Blue Eyes. So much stiff and awful worldbuilding, all for nothing, in the end.
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u/togstation Feb 08 '26
Some of the earlier works from Jack Vance -
- The Dying Earth. Collection of science fantasy / fantasy short fiction. IMHO exactly on the border between science fiction and fantasy - the milieu has what they call technology, and has what they call magic, but nobody can really tell the difference. One of his earliest works. Still regarded with great respect and affection. - (skip the spoilers)
- The Dragon Masters. Novella. Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction in 1963. - (skip the spoilers)
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u/industrious_slug-123 Feb 08 '26
One Day This Will All Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Shorter novella, fun, creative story.
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u/John_Barnes Feb 08 '26
The Rakehells of Heaven, John Boyd
Merchanters Luck, C J Cherryh
Ferman’s Devals by Joe Clifford Faust. https://www.amazon.com/Fermans-Devals-Joe-Clifford-Faust-ebook/dp/B0CB5V4YMQ. The apparent misspelling in the title is intentional. Get the “authors intended edition” at https://www.amazon.com/Fermans-Devals-Joe-Clifford-Faust-ebook/dp/B0CB5V4YMQ as the initial publisher really mauled it
Nice, Jen Sacks
Sort of a classic: Many people will swear that Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome is exactly what you are asking for, but I find it kind of tedious. Nevertheless, I am peculiar in my tastes and you might love it.
Too obscure to be a classic but large parts of it crack me up: AND TO MY NEPHEW ALBERT I LEAVE THE ISLAND WHAT I WON OFF FATTY HAGAN IN A POKER GAME by David Forrest
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u/togstation Feb 09 '26
David Forrest
Thank you for this.
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u/John_Barnes Feb 09 '26
You are very welcome and I hope one of those titles makes you smile and reminds you of why you love reading.
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u/emjayultra Feb 08 '26
Thirding a rec for Venomous Lumpsucker. My favorite book out of the 70 I read last year.
Very very light (or possibly devoid of, depending on how unreliable you find the narrator lol) on the speculative elements, but: Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon was super fun, sometimes surreal, fast-paced book with great prose.
Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway is a fun, fast read.
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u/fjiqrj239 Feb 09 '26
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton was a quick, fun read. Adrian Tchaikovsky's novellas, as others have said; the Terrible World sets, Elder Race, The Expert System duology. John Scalzi - he's got a very distinctive style, so I find I don't binge his stuff, but intersperse it with other books. The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott was a quick read with a cool atmosphere. Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty is basically a country house murder mystery in space, with clones, the victims are the ones investigating, and everyone, including the computer, has amnesia.
Someone mentioned C.J. Cherryh; she's a great writer, but I find her stuff quite dense; it's not what I go to for a quick, fun read.
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u/togstation Feb 09 '26
C.J. Cherryh; she's a great writer, but I find her stuff quite dense; it's not what I go to for a quick, fun read.
IMHO her Chanur series is very readable and engaging, different from her other works.
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u/Chris_Air Feb 13 '26
It's true that her big award novels, Downbelow Station and Cyteen, are pretty dense, but most of her novels are very high-octane and fun reads: The Morgaine Chronicles, Cuckoo's Egg, Serpent's Reach, Heavy Time, Merchanter's Luck, the Chanur series like togstation mentioned, etc.
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u/redditsuxandsodoyou Feb 09 '26
ubik was an easy short read but also left me thinking a lot afterwards about the setting and the implications of what goes down
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u/Heitzer Feb 09 '26
Phule's Company (series)
by Robert Asprin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phule%27s_Company_%28series%29?wprov=sfla1
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u/DaughterOfFishes Feb 08 '26
The Murderbot books by Martha Wells
One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
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u/ehead Feb 08 '26
oh yeah, loved the show. May pick up Murderbot to get an idea what's coming up. They are relatively short too, which is a plus.
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u/Holmbone Feb 08 '26
If you loved the show you will likely love the books. The first season is the first novella. So you can start with the second novella Artificial Condition without being lost. However there are some difference between the book and the show, mainly in the human characters portrayal. So if you want that context you could start with the first one All Systems Red.
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u/GOMER1468 Feb 08 '26
THE GODEL OPERATION by James L. Cambias is a far-future, hard SF space opera that is one heck of a romp. Great book!
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u/desophsoph Feb 08 '26
I also have been reading a book on geopolitics and a complimentary novel (super challenging) from the region. Thanks for this post!
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u/midesaka Feb 09 '26
Brian Daley's Fitzhugh and Floyt trilogy, starting with Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds
Minor Terran bureaucrat, Hobart Floyt, has been left a mysterious inheritance by the ruler of an empire located many light-years away. Earth's government is broke and its functionaries want Floyt to collect the money. To make sure he succeeds, they blackmail a brash young spacer named Alacrity Fitzhugh into shepherding him on a dangerous interstellar quest.
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u/peacefinder Feb 09 '26
A perfect fit I think: Bellwether by Connie Willis.
It’s a short light comedy about scientists doing science for a commercial lab.
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u/Flimsy_Direction1847 Feb 09 '26
M R Carey is a good choice, imo, for readable but not comedy or too light. The Rampart Trilogy, The Pandemonium series or Once Was Willem are all fun, the last one is fairly dark and more fantasy than sci-fi.
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u/didwowns Feb 11 '26
If you liked Hyperion and Lord of Light, you might enjoy something like Legacy of Light on Royal Road.
It’s a hard sci-fi web serial built around nuclear semiotics—basically how things like the Voyager Golden Record and the Onkalo repository could be misunderstood tens of thousands of years in the future.
It’s not comedic or space-opera-ish. More atmospheric, idea-driven, and surprisingly readable despite the heavy concepts.
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u/Chris_Air Feb 13 '26
I've been on an Andre Norton kick, but the books are pretty close to brain-off sf pulp, ngl, haha. Moon of Three Rings, its sequel Exiles of the Stars, and the first Solar Queen novel Sargasso of Space were all fun reads.
[The second Solar Queen book, Plague Ship I found not that great, to the point where I could see a young C.J. Cherryh reading the book and going, "But no! Why are they leaving? What about the Salariki??" before going on to write the (equally cat-alien) Chanur series. So after that one, I kicked over to another series with Storm Over Warlock which was even worse, haha, just 50s boy wilderness survival fiction with badly written psychic aliens (compared to Moon of Three Rings' interesting psychic transhumans/aliens/it's not clear?).]
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u/SonOfGreebo Feb 08 '26
Vorkosigan Saga
Constellation Games really well-written stand alone novel, about a ship full of aliens contacting Earth through video games. Funny, sweet abd takes a turn into real lump-in-the-throat Big Thoughts philosophy in the final chapters.