7 Philosophical Science Fiction Novels You Need to Read

I love science fiction and I love philosophy so putting them together is kind of a natural fit so I wanted to come up with another list of books of philosophical science fiction novels these are the novels that will get you thinking about philosophy that will raise new questions and make you explore new possibilities the first book Is Frank Herbert's Dune it's such a classic and it's a classic for a reason I could talk about the World building I could talk about Frank Herbert's literary style and some of his techniques but I'm going to leave those out for now instead I'm going to highlight two of the more philosophical parts of Dune one is that it critically interrogates the idea of a messiah character we explore the concept and we also see how it can fall apart Under Pressure how actually being a messiah can be a very dangerous thing those who put their trust in Paul are often disappointed and in fact Paula trades ends up disappointed in himself despite being a clear hero figure in the story he learns that the choices that he makes will often have destructive consequences it's sort of the horror of being Paula trades and that ties into the second philosophical theme which is that a fate Free Will and determinism many people in the history of philosophy have debated whether or not knowledge of the future say if God knew what was going to happen in the future was compatible with human Freedom if that's a topic that interests you seeing it Illustrated it in a science fiction novel like Dune might be of interest the second book I'm recommending is Solaris by stanislaw Lim Solaris is not my favorite work of Science Fiction I'd say I like it but don't love it but I know for many people Lem is sort of the top of the top when you're thinking about philosophical science fiction in my last video a ton of comments were left saying how could you live off stanislaw limb the two authors that were mentioned the most were probably Lim and Philip K dick there's no Philip K dick on my list today but I will tell you a little bit about Solaris philosophical science fiction at its best doesn't just explore technological possibilities but sort of opens us up to consider of like what life could be or could have been or what kind of things we could find if we were to explore the universe one of the main characters of the novel is the planet Solaris itself and this opens up philosophical questions about personhood and humanity and ask us how similar can we be what can we have in common with organisms or creatures that are so different from us how do we find that common ground it also has lots of themes about memory and identity and so if you're interested in what makes a person a person what makes a person the same person over time or what is it to even constitute the person in the first place you will see difficulties raised for those Concepts in Solaris next up is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell we aren't going to talk about the movie but we can talk about this really terrific book David Mitchell is often compared to Vladimir bokov for some of his uses of language also Umberto Eco again for his prose I think and Philip K dick for his kind of wild imagination I think all of those are very fitting comparisons Cloud Atlas is a series of stories that are told in a nested format so you see the first half of Story one and then the first half of story two I believe there's seven of them and when we get to the seventh we get to read the first half and the second half and then we get the second half and so on and so on that's already an interesting form and it opens up questions about reality as we sort of are engaging with text within text within text what is real and what is fiction it's kind of an open question in Cloud Atlas And while there is a unifying theme and coherence to the stories each of the individual stories has its own topics that it wants to explore how do you convince someone that you're actually sane when should one abandon familial obligation to stand up against Injustice what makes the person so can an artificial intelligence be a person how should we survive or come back together after an apocalypse these are common science fiction questions but I really want to suggest all of those are questions of interest to philosophers as well and so if you're interested in engaging with those ideas but you're not sure where to start maybe just by reading philosophy reading the science fiction kind of gets you primed and it's gets you to think about them and maybe can get you to see it in a more human way which is going to make those ideas a little more relatable in the first place another classic science fiction book that I'm recommending this time is foundation by Isaac Asimov particularly the first three books in the trilogy I have them all in an every man's Library volume together I haven't read every Foundation novel so if I get something wrong that's maybe shown later in the books um don't tell me let me let me let me enjoy it when I get to them the Towering figure of the foundation novels is Harry Selden who seems to have devised a way to predict the future and this opens up interesting questions about psychology and history and Mathematics and the limits of human knowledge in many ways what we are seeing is Harry selden's plan enacted over centuries which again raises those questions about determinism about Free Will about what role can we play if everything has already been predicted for us and things just seem to be going according to plan but Foundation is also the story of a civilization this time in Intergalactic civilization in Decline and we get to see it go through phases of decline as knowledge is lost and only preserved by certain parts of the population and that question of preserving knowledge can seem awfully utilitarian we preserve it because it's going to allow us to do other things but there's this other question about preserving knowledge for its own sake because knowledge and the truth themselves are valuable and those are topics that philosophers debate of course let's stick with the theme about preserving knowledge for a moment and bring up A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller this is one of those books that was really important to me I'm actually surprised I didn't mention in my last video where I talked about all these books that have shaped me and changed my life A Canticle for Leibowitz is the story of monks who are preserving knowledge after an apocalypse which seems probably to be something like a nuclear war and we get to see it in three phases across many years centuries even as civilization starts to rebuild itself obviously those questions about the preservation of knowledge for its own sake the preservation of humanity for its own sake those are some of the obvious philosophical questions that are being raised by this text but also we should ask ourselves questions about perennial struggles that Humanity will face is it possible for us to transcend what look like tribal struggles will we ever be able to reach that Utopia that so many of us have dreamed about and yet another book on that same theme this is one of my favorites is Neil Stevenson's anatom I love Neil Stevenson uh I feel like I realized that I was reading his books and I was really liking them all sometimes I wouldn't love them but I would at least always really like them and I realized wow I I didn't realize it but I just become a massive Neil Stevenson fan there are many things that you could say about the philosophical nature of this particular book but one of the most obvious facts is the main characters are philosophers very rarely in a philosophical science fiction novel do you have philosophers as characters but these are like monks but they're monks who do math and they do science and they do philosophy in a world that really doesn't make a distinction between any of those subjects they're all part of this pursuit of knowledge you see actual arguments about what we would call the platonic realm what we would call this this idea that there is a realm of the forms eternally existing staple and ideal which our reality merely reflects and somehow Neil Stevenson is able to take a debate about the platonic realm and the existence of the forms and make them relevant to the plot of a really great science fiction novel and that's just so astounding other books by Stevenson could easily make this list snow crash might seem particularly relevant these days because of our worries about like a metaverse or virtual reality or something like that and 70s also has this question about the preservation of knowledge the preservation of humanity which are I think that's the philosophical underpinning of anything that's post-apocalyptic while I've read a good amount of Stevenson so far just nothing tops this one and finally let me talk about a classic of Science Fiction this is one of those books that's so well esteemed that they took it out of the science fiction section and just say that it's literature and it's also a book that if it hadn't existed I don't think any science fiction would exist and that is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley I think maybe this is one of those books people Overlook when they think about science fiction again because it's placed in the classic section it's placed in literature but Shelley is telling what has now become a classic science fiction story a scientist pushes the limits of knowledge and then what he finds backfires it scares him and he creates a monster but Shelley's also exploring those questions of personhood that have come up in several of the other books that we've discussed the monster is more human he certainly seems more human than Dr Frankenstein given their actions this is a Monster who reads Paradise Lost and is looking to love someone but all he finds is a world that rejects him I won't do another video like this for a while so let me just give some honorable mentions that you could go and explore Arcadia martine's a book A Memory called Empire has interesting stuff about personal identity I think you could say the same thing about Anne Lucky's ancillary Justice I have recently started reading works by Ian M Banks but I'm reading the first book from the culture novels people told me that those are very philosophical I don't know if I'm convinced based on this first book from the culture novels but I plan on reading more of them because I am enjoying it Philip cadek is a classic for a reason the man in the High Castle is a great novel I actually like the show quite a bit I don't remember a lot about the show but I remember enjoying it even though it is quite different than the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep also great and of course Philip K Dick's shorts stories all seem to have some kind of philosophical punch to them 1984 is science fiction but the problem is that technology caught up with Orwell so we don't think of it as science fiction anymore and I'm still planning on making a video about we by yevgnizamiaten which is a really really astounding work of Science Fiction that raises questions about human freedom and the human soul and whether or not we would want ultimately to live in sort of this fully automated kind of world but still I'm always looking for great suggestions so if you have any put them down in the comments thank you to my channel members and patreon so financially support me and help me make videos like this I couldn't do it without you alright that's all I have for you today so until next time take care

Channel: Jared Henderson

Views: 389,922

Keywords: science fiction, philosophy, classic science fiction, book recommendations

Id: P-LFuvKv_bI

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023