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Self-Reference Engine by Toh Enjoe - this one stretches the limits of what a novel even is, it's not like anything else I've ever read
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The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts - the inhabitants of a generation ship rebel against the controlling computer to take charge of their lives
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Transfinite Man by Colin Kapp - starts like a cloak-and-dagger detective novel, almost tropey, then goes off the rails into speculative science fiction
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Ubik by Philip K. Dick - a classic of surrealism, often referenced directly and indirectly by other works
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Permutation City by Greg Egan - ultimately an exploration of self-determination and personal trauma in a digital world - who do we become, if we have the freedom to be and do anything?
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The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson - in my opinion the most compelling of Sanderson's work
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Einstein's Bridge - a fictional exploration of the Einstein-Rosen bridge set in a timeline where the Superconducting Super Collider was not cancelled
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Unflattening by Nick Sousanis - philosophy in a graphic novel, an exploration of identity and self-knowledge
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The science in Permutation City is truly mind-warping, if you really try to wrap your head around it. One of my favourite books.
Egan's short story collection Axiomatic is full of heavy concept scifi in a similar vein to it.
Yeah, knowing a fair bit about the way computers actually work at the hardware level, some of the details of how the virtual world functions are hand-wavy and kind of magic-disguised-as-technology. But Egan makes more of an effort to try to explain how the simulation works than most other fiction that describes similar virtual worlds - and ultimately the crux of the story is how people behave in a world of their own making.
You're the only other person I've ever encountered who believes the emperor's soul to be Sanderson's best work. I really do think he thrives with the short story / novella length fiction in general, and it's a shame he's always going for the opposite. Emperor's soul crams so much depth into such a compelling little story, I can't believe how often it's overlooked.
I enjoy Sanderson's writing, his fantasy work is good. I think the brilliance of it is the consistent, expansive world-building that extends across his book series, which he's really good at. I'm not knocking his other work at all.
But as a single work unto itself, I think The Emperor's Soul is really a perfect story. The ideas presented at the beginning of the book are masterfully executed by the end.
I think this is a rather cliche answer but since no one's mentioned him yet I'll put in a plug for Phillip K. Dick. I don't think I've ever encountered weirdness done as well as he does it. My favorites are Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but he has a lot of books and as far as I can tell, they're all weird af.
+1 for Philip K. Dick. My favorites are probably Counter-clock World and A Scanner Darkly
Another one that wasn’t mentioned yet is Stanisław Lem. The Futurological Congress totally blew my mind.
Oh, I actually forgot about A Scanner Darkly! I think that was the first PKD novel I ever read. Gonna have to give it another read. I don't remember it all that well but I distinctly remember how I felt at the end of it, which was weirded the hell out.
And the movie is very good too!!
or Spanish
Borges, if you haven't read any of his works yet.
Love Borges since late teens, actually... with Poe the author that open my curiosity to such mode/mood of literature.
Kelly Link's short stories are weird
The first story is often not that weird, but she is fantastic at magical realism. They aren't scary though. I recall for instance one story being about a cannon.
I haven't read those authors so I'm not sure if it's the same type of weird, but I recently read Hyperion which is both weird and good.
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Gideon the ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Escapeology by Ren Warom
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
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Asking around gave me this shortlist of suggestions:
- Agustina Bazterrica (in Spanish)
- Suzan Palumbo’s short fiction collection Skin Thief
- Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin’s Wax & Wane
- Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
- Kev Lambert’s You Will Love What You Have Killed
It's well-known and well-studied, but also infamous as a book few people ever actually finish because it is so weird: Gravity's Rainbow.
I finished it. I'm not sure what I gained by reading it, outside of having a better understanding of what an acid trip might feel like. Very weird.
Other mainstream but weird recommendations: Mexican Gothic (highly recommend this) and A Night in the Lonesome October
Hated hated hated this book. Not to discourage others from reading it, just seconding the sentiment that it's a book few people finish.
checked Hiron Ennes, @AbouBenAdhem seems really interesting!
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.
The story follows Hiro Protagonist—a pizza delivery driver in a fractured, hyper-capitalized future reality and an elite hacker/swordfighter in the virtual "Metaverse".
If you like that, his other books are fantastic, especially Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and Diamond Age.
It's a great novel but I wouldn't call it "weird"?
Leguin - City of Illusions …and all her other books. Check out old school The Machine Stops E.M. Forster. And Ministry for the Future- Kim Stanley Robinson and all of his other books.
House of leaves is my all time favourite mindfuck horror literature. I just recommend going hard copy over ebook as the formatting is super important. I can't really describe it except to say I can see how Backrooms could be inspired by it.
I read a lot of anthologies, one I read recently was Dark Fantasies, which was a collection of folk, domestic and urban horror, that was pretty strange and scary, worth picking up if you find it.
Beyond the Aquila Rift.
Bunch of short stories 2 of which were made into the love death and robots series.
thanks!
Ack-Ack Macaque is pretty weird.
If you like it, there are 2 more books (I haven't read the 3rd yet).
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For horror - Kathe Koja
I also think you would like How to Lose the Time War, not horror but trippy weird and so great.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet so I'll throw in my rec: the spear cuts through water. You know how they say you need to know the rules to break the rules? This book is a masterclass in that. It does so many things that novels simply aren't supposed to... And the execution is flawless. The story is compelling, but I was most engaged with the way it was written. It felt like nothing else I've ever encountered - not because the ideas were new (nesting narratives, shifts in perspective, genre twists, etc) but because I've never seen so much of it executed so well together.
The Pandora Sequence by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom. Some of the weirdest shit I've ever read, especially in The Jesus Incident where -
spoiler:
Jesus throws his enemies in a mutant sex dungeon to teach them a lesson in humility.
Frank Herbert
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My all-time favorite novel is Blindness by Jose Saramago. I have only read it in English, but it was originally published in Portuguese as "Ensaio sobre a cegueira".
From Wikipedia: "It centers on an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in a nonspecific city, and follows multiple unnamed characters as they navigate the social breakdown that swiftly follows."
I have not read those authors, but i really enjoyed Staircase in the Woods, by Chuck Wendig. It was an enthralling read.
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes. Very reminiscent of Miéville and VanderMeer.
If you just want plain weird, George Saunders was pretty weird, but haven't read much of his.
I really like Izumi Suzuki's work, which gets pretty weird also, Gibson-esque I think.
I also love Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, weird in many ways but not sure in the way you mean.
Exordia comes to mind also, though I didn't enjoy it that much.
John Dies at the End was a wonderfully weird, semi-horror book I read in high school. Wikipedia describes it as comic Lovecraftian horror. Perfectly tasteless while also having really interesting plot hooks. I still think about that book even now, 15 years later. There's also a movie adaptation but they cut so much it's almost a completely different story.
Imajica by Clive Barker
Teleportasm by Joshua Millican
Air by Geoff Ryman
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (go in blind and stick with it)
14 by Peter Clines
The Hike by Drew Magary
Break the Bodies, Haunting the Bones By Micah Dean Hicks
Where They Wait by Scott Carson
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil was a lot of fun.