Ted Chiang is the greatest living science fiction short story writer I'm aware of, and ranks highly on my all time list.

His short story "Understand" is just... amazing.

It wasn't until I discovered I was on the spectrum that I realized why it clicked so much. >.< I'm masking all the time, running conversational simulations to anticipate the societally-expected response to any given situation (and am high on the IQ spectrum).

https://web.archive.org/web/20140527121332/http://www.infini...

I second this. Exhalation for some reason really resonates with me.

Exhalation is really excellent.

It's not really sci-fi but I also really enjoyed The Merchant And The Alchemist's Gate, and the one about the tower of babel, I forget the name at the moment.

Tower of Babylon

it's brilliant

I have only read a few stories by Ted Chiang, but I concur, they were all fantastic.

Story of your life is one of my favorite short stories.

Have you tried Arthur Clarke? I would say he is close to Asimov in many ways, being from the same time.

For others who share some similarities, though with a greater emphasis on character and adventure, perhaps Hal Clement, Larry Niven or Robert L. Forward.

It's not "sci fi" but you should read Borges' short stories, particularly from Ficciones.

You may have already read his story The Library of Babel: https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...

Try "The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury, but skip the terrible frame story. The actual short stories are beautiful literature and canonical sci-fi.

As someone who loves the Big Three (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) and have read a lot of SF, I pretty much despise Bradbury. There’s no science in his science fiction.

Not much in many of Heinlein's either. Or in Star Wars.

Or even Star Trek to be honest. I don't know why Star Wars always gets passed off as "science fantasy" when it's a more grounded universe than Trek by far - space wizards notwithstanding (which Trek has plenty of.)

Even in a lot of hard SF, a lot of the science is wonky if it fall outside of the author's special interest or area of expertise. Relevant to Asimov, the only reason robots have "positronic" brains in his stories is that positrons were a new discovery at the time and it sounded cool and futuristic to him.

As a Trekkie, fair point. I think Star Trek does fall into the "speculative fiction" category, but Star Wars doesn't. It's just "space opera".

Space opera is still a subset of speculative fiction and science fiction, saying "just" dismisses its influence on the genre as a whole.

A lot of classic science fiction is basically "x with spaceships" where x is the Napoleonic Wars, or feudal Europe or the Wild West or what have you, and the "science" is little more than set dressing.

> saying "just" dismisses its influence on the genre as a whole.

Well, it was meant to be parsed as:

Star Trek is speculative fiction and space opera.

Star Wars is just space opera.

Some space opera is also speculative fiction, but I wouldn't say it is a subset. I wouldn't call some space opera stories speculative fiction at all.

They're all classified as science fiction.

(Yes, yes - there is no consensus on these terms...typically science fiction is considered a subset of speculative fiction, and here I inverted a lot of things).

Early Heinlein e.g. Have Spacesuit - Will Travel, Farmer In The Sky, The Rolling Stones or for non-juveniles, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress have lots of science.

Later works, less so.

ted chiang if you haven't already. story of your life, exhalation, the lifecycle of software objects. same thing asimov does where the sci fi premise is really just a frame for a very human question. except chiang does it in like 30 pages and you feel it for a week

I think Brian Daley's books have a somewhat similar feel as Asimov's, particularly "Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds" and its sequels.

I also find C.J.Cherryh's books to be often quite interesting.

Asimov really did have a knack for clear, deceptively simple writing that isn't all that common.

Stanislaw Lem, if you can handle something a little more poetic and less strictly hard sci-fi.

>> But I've started wondering if maybe I just liked Asimov's writing in particular.

A less commonly mentioned Asimov book that I really enjoyed and will read again is "The End of Eternity". If you've not read it, the ending is IMHO amazing and unique.

Last Question reminds me of it because of the style.

I was also quite fond of Palimpsest by Stross. It’s a retelling of EoE but a more modern treatment (and the writing is quite a bit better, IMO)

Also worth reading, although a very different style is The Gods Themselves. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure there's a single Asimov book I haven't enjoyed and I've read almost all of them.

Becky Chambers - Wayfarer series and several enjoyable short stories/novellas. Low on blasters, high on sentient life in all its many forms.

I know you can’t comment on modding - but seriously, someone voted me down because they don’t like a literary suggestion? Tough crowd.

I mean.. a genre can't be all hits, that makes no sense :P

If you want good sci-fi a good list can be:

- Ender's Game

- The Martian + Project Hail Mary

- A Fire Upon the Deep

- Dune

A Fire Upon The Deep is a fantastic novel for programmers to read, and I think the prequel A Deepness In The Sky is even better. There are some amazing old-school coding jokes in there, like that everyone thinks the universal time counter started at the first moon landing, but programmer archaeologists know it was really 15 megaseconds later.

The Expanse series starting with Leviathan Wakes.

(I second Ender's Game, The Martian, and Project Hail Mary.)

Neal Stephenson's work is outstanding in my opinion, although some find it polarizing. My favorite of his is _Anathem_, followed closely by _Seveneves_.

Iain Banks's science fiction novels (mostly set in the Culture, but he does have others) are also great.

How can you not mention Snow Crash?

And yes to the Culture.

Though Dune is highly acclaimed for its concepts, I couldn’t quite get into it personally.

They’re just too dry for my tastes.

- Hyperion

perhaps Fredric Brown? He and Asimov were in my primary school reading anthology, and I will never thank enough the people who put the book together.

Also, I am not sure he's translated in English, but Sessanta Racconti[0] by Dino Buzzati is high on my list of fantastic short stories (not sci-fi, just.. I don't know).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessanta_racconti

Depends what you consider on his level really. Some find the writing too dry, but maybe you like that? Have you read Dune? What about The Forever War? They are different styles but definitely enjoyed by someone who also likes Asimov.

I didn't get on with Neuromancer or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at all, though. Suspect you wouldn't either.

I also find stuff like Andy Weir way too literal, like you're basically reading a film script. Asimov leaves a lot more room for imagination.

Rudy Rucker is amazing