I am looking for books similar to “At the Mountains of Madness” by H.P. Lovecraft(ive pretty much read everything from lovecraft), “Eversion” by Alastair Reynolds, “Das Eulentor” by Alexander Gruber (dont know if this book ever released in another language), “The Hollow Places” by T. Kingfisher, I also tried reading “Ascension” by Nicholas Binge but it wasnt really to my taste. Hope you have some ideas. thx in advance
Rimworld by Larry Niven?
Just FYI, the genre you’re describing is called BDO (Big Dumb Object).
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
If manga counts, Blame has an absurdly enormous anomalous structure.
In the same direction but with a bit humour thrown in and with 2 girls as characters: Girls Last Tour, where they drive on a Kettenkrad through the ruins of a a gigantic multilayered futuristic city with industrial complexes. They explore the last remnants of human civilisation, so also part future anthropology.
Now that I’m thinking about it, a few mangas have something like that, but only 2 more come to my mind right now:
- Dungeon Meshi (very strong world building in this one)
- Second half of BioMega (from same author as Blame, but not as good in my eyes)
In Blindsight, a spaceship crew explores a huge and incomprehensible alien spaceship. While the book has some interesting thoughts on sentience and intelligence, the plot makes no sense and the crew are cruel sociopaths.
Since you read German: I highly recommend Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher from Walter Moers.
It takes a bit to get there but after the first part of reaching Buchhaim, then the catacombs below it are the main focus. And for me the exploration of the unknown areas there makes it my favourite book.
Ive read all of walter moers, but thanks anyways ;)
I love these kinds of books. A few suggestions:
- Randezvouz With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
- Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
- Solaris by Stanisław Lem
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (not sure about this one, haven’t read it yet.)
- Ringworld by Larry Niven
Hope you find something that fits your tastes and looking forward to other suggestions.
Randezvouz With Rama
This one.
I’ll second Rendezvous with Rama. It’s an excellent book, fitting exactly with the theme. OP is looking for. The first sequel is pretty decent, but the two books in the series after that, while I liked overall, I think they lose the magic that made the original so special.
I’ll also say House of Leaves is also fantastic. It’s disturbing and confusing and really well written. I’d recommend picking up a physical copy if you can, because for this particular book, there’s stuff done with the printing, type setting, font colors, and style that’s hard to replicate on an e-reader. Top tier book!
I haven’t read the others you mentioned, but they’re all on my reading list.
Even the first Rendezvous With Rama sequel (Rama Returns?) is pretty unreadable these days. You can tell distinctly which parts are written by AC Clarke and which by his co-author - Clarke retains the interesting science fiction, his co-author is too busy obsessing over which astronauts his two female characters are going to bang on any given day.
House of leaves gave me nightmares for a week.
Read the physical 'House of Leaves" and gave up.
I think I’d like to see what the e-book version looks like
Here’s another vote for Rendezvous with Rama and Ringworld. (I didn’t like Solaris much, and I don’t know the other two.)
Oh ive actually read randevouz and solaris. dont know why i didnt think of them when making my post. definitly will be checking out your other suggestions.
“Piranesi” or “There Is No Antimemetics Division”
Though the later is more about exploration of hard to grasp cognitive concepts than a structure.
Second for Piranesi - the exploration of that strange place is as enjoyable as the narrative elements of the story. It’s also a pretty quick read, but well worth it!
Sphere, by Michael Crichton
thanks
The Hyperion series, particularly the first book has some of that. And can be read without reading the other books.
A Deadly Education series is pretty much this to an extent. And a series I love!
The Silo series is adjacent to this, I love all three books.
The Expanse series has a few books that fit the bill but you really can’t skip to those books so it may not be what you’re looking for.
Second Deadly education series. Novak is generally great.
If you do read Silo, beware that it will spoil the plot of the first season of the show for you in like the first 30 pages
Yes it will!
Seconding Hyperion. But adding the caveat you should consider reading the second book in the series too, at least, since the first ends a bit on a “cliffhanger” and has no conclusion really.
Thanks
Annihilation has some freaky/disturbing unknown structure exploration in it.
Ive always thought of annihilation as a modern version of the color from space. I havent actually read it though. thanks.
annihilation as a modern version of the color from space
Wow, spot on. I just read the synopsis and Annihilation really seems to be a riff on The Color. Thanks for the pointer.
Good book, but I found its sequels were disappointingly not worth reading.
Strong disagree, for what it’s worth. :-) The 2nd book took awhile to make its way back to the point, but it was on purpose and IMO stuck the landing, and I enjoyed the rest of the ride too.
(I can’t speak to the recently released 4th book yet.)
Iain M. Banks created a whole universal alien system called “The Culture” which are mostly sentient machines. Also woven in is how humans evolved. There are several books of his that exist in the universe of “The Culture”. I haven’t read his stuff in a while but remember being intrigued while reading them.
Will check them him out. thanks.
I was going to recommend him as well. The book Matter is centered around an impossibly old alien megastructure that various new alien civilizations are now living in.
The Stone Builders is good. It’s about a team of scientists exploring the newly discovered remains of an underground city on a colony planet with no known native sentient life.
Jack McDevitt writes a series which is basically space archaeology. You may like those. I think Engines of the Gods is thr first one.
Added to my list. Thanks
Yeah, i also recommend this. I read them a while ago, but Engines of the Gods, Deepsix and Chindi were fun
Yeah, I enjoyed them. I can’t remember where I stopped. But definitely enjoyed the first 3
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Walking To Aldebaran.
Astronaut finds an artifact orbiting past Saturn…
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “The Final Architecture” trilogy also have some of this too with the Originator artifacts.
I usually point people at Adrian’s short standalones before throwing them down the rabbit hole
