I recommend anything by Charles Stross, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga (link gives titles and chronology), and anthing by Ursula LeGuin, but especially City of Illusions and The Left Hand of Darkness.
As much as I love LeGuin, her work tends to be fairly challenging. It’s worth noting that her novels tend to be much easier to read than her short stories, unlike most authors.
You find her novels easier? I’ve loved many LeGuin short stories (most notably The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas, and everything in the Changing Planes collection) but I can’t stand her novels. They lose me ten pages in; I’ve never managed to slog more than halfway through a single one.
The novels are definitely still challenging, but until I’d read a few of her novels and figured out how to think about her writing, I wasn’t able to make sense of most of her short stories (Omelas being one exception to that). I’d get to the end of the text and go ‘wait, was there supposed to be a story in that set of words?’
I recommend anything by Charles Stross, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga (link gives titles and chronology), and anthing by Ursula LeGuin, but especially City of Illusions and The Left Hand of Darkness.
Upvoted for the Vorkosigan suggestion; seconded.
As much as I love LeGuin, her work tends to be fairly challenging. It’s worth noting that her novels tend to be much easier to read than her short stories, unlike most authors.
You find her novels easier? I’ve loved many LeGuin short stories (most notably The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas, and everything in the Changing Planes collection) but I can’t stand her novels. They lose me ten pages in; I’ve never managed to slog more than halfway through a single one.
The novels are definitely still challenging, but until I’d read a few of her novels and figured out how to think about her writing, I wasn’t able to make sense of most of her short stories (Omelas being one exception to that). I’d get to the end of the text and go ‘wait, was there supposed to be a story in that set of words?’