Beginners Guide To Sci Fi

0:00-Intro
16:52-Outro

WHERE TO FIND ME:

[rafaela]

Merphy's excitement about books never fails to make me want to read

[adammullis]

Love your list! Some other great sci-fi starting places are:

Isaac Asimov - Foundation Trilogy
Ursula K Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness; The Dispossessed
George Orwell - 1984
Octavia Butler - Parable Series
Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End; Collected Short Stories
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle

[Thedaubertfamily]

I just love your enthusiasm and excitement over the stories you like. I’m not even a big sci-fi reader (yet), but I’m on goodreads while watching clicking want to read on every single book you listed. Please do not moonlight on QVC because I will be more than BookBroke. 😂

[Enigmanaut]

Oh, and the Martian is still worth a read. It's a very quick read, and Whatney is a really fun character.

[PicklesEsquire]

Thanks for the video Merphy! Found you through your One Piece read through and your videos always make me smile. Love seeing your passion for narratives!

[CancelledPhilosopher]

Merphy should read The Expanse series. Excellent sci-fi. I bet that Daniel Greene has told her about those books.

[bdup]

When I walk into a bookstore and see Children of time books lined up with all the other books by that author next to it, it seemed intimidating, so I am glad to know it is easy to read.

And Skyward was a great start for me I loved it !

[archlectoryarvi]

The Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold is another great scifi starter series. The worldbuilding is amazing with a special emphasis on how new technology affects all aspects of culture as well as having some of the most believable interplanetary governments and organisations in fiction.
The characters are some of the most memorable in any genre and Bujold's prose is simple yet elegant, conveying a lot through as few words as possible.

[ameliapepper]

"Frankenstein" is one of my favorite books of all time! I think people need to know what they're getting into when they start- a slow paced, atmospheric reflection on the nature of humanity and morality. If you're looking for fast paced thrills that fit more of the modern sci-fi aesthetic, probably not your jam, but if you're looking for a masterpiece that shows how insightful speculative fiction can be, it's the best!

[TheAFriendlyGamer]

I recommend reading Halo The Fall of Reach. It was released around the same time as the Halo game in 2001. It's a very good military sci fi story even if you've never heard of Halo. And thanks for the recommendations. Adding more books to my reading list.

[AvtarRekhi]

Definitely a bit heavier sci-fi, but I would strongly recommend The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I'm normally not interesting in sci-fi (there tends to be a shortage of magic and dragons imo), but I was completely taken by this book (and it's sequels). Plus I had never read a book translated from Chinese before, but the English translation was great.

[coreymack]

Thank you for posting videos. I’ve tried getting into reading more as an adult and I just finished my first novel since high school (I’m 26) and it was 754 pages of MMP enjoyment. I’ve been watching your stuff the past month and a half and it’s been keeping me motivated. I’m now on The Hobbit

[maem]

I’ve heard good things about the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. I never read it but some of my friends chose that for a book project where we got to pick our book as long as the group was good with it

[Avzigoyhbasilsikos]

Frankenstein is a very underrated work of fiction for people who aren’t familiar with sci-fi

[alex_unabridged]

Great list and another fab video! I've become an avid viewer of your content in the last couple of months and your passion for books and reading is a joy to watch. My TBR has somewhat exploded due to the amount of recommendations I take from you, but that's no bad thing at all - until recently I was very narrow in my fiction reading in terms of genres (pretty much all horror and thriller) but I'm trying to remedy that by trying some fantasy and Manga, and you've been super helpful in finding stuff that isn't too overwhelming/intimidating to start with as a noob to those types of book! And have been wanting to get into Sci-Fi so this list is perfect for me, all the books sound really interesting. Plus I really appreciate your discussions on things like gatekeeping and audiobooks (my book consumption is 85% audiobooks these days, which is the reason I've got through more books this year than I have in the last 10 years put together!). Thanks for the great recommendations, all the best 🙂

[NovelteaCorner]

Loved this list. Jurassic Park and The Lost World are some of my favourite sci-fi books (and I love the first film, too).

[VICNTCHLLA]

So happy you mentioned Dark Matter! I loved it so much and I'll read another one of his books(Upgrade) in the near future.

[thefantasynerd]

For the AIs in space fans: The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie is crazy good and I think it would work well for fans of Murderbot. In the same general area, but funnier, there's the Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor.

And down on Earth there's the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde - time travelling, jumping into classic books and meeting the characters, dry british humour..all the good stuff ♥

[soniciris]

A really good gateway is middle grade sci-fi because it's very easily digestible on the one axis and so it makes it easier to take in the sci-fi-ness of it all! I recommend 'the Random House Book of Science Fiction Stories', which is a short story collection that really helps show off the concepts sci-fi can do: the Randoms series by David Liss, which would be especially good for someone who isn't into sci-fi books yet but is a nerd generally: and the Dragonback series by Timothy Zahn, which is a fantastic introduction to sci-fi that has a more hard science underpinning while still being exciting well-plotted adventures (and a fantastic gateway into his hard sci-fi for adults!

[partygirlbg]

Awesome video, thanks for the reccomendations!