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What are some non-science-fiction books that are deep, insane, mind-bending, etc?
What I am really asking is, what would be fantasy's (and other related genres) equivalent to authors such as Greg Egan (Permutation City), Peter Watts (Blindsight), or Greg Bear (Blood Music)? Intense books that are about different realities, transhumanism, personal identity, etc, but from a non-sci-fi standpoint?
First thought was Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, probably my all-time favorite book. It's a sort of magic-realist travelogue where a fictional Marco Polo describes all the various fantastical cities he has visited to a fictional Kublai Khan. Each city is organized around some novel philosophical or semiotic idea -- like one where the relationships between people are represented by a vast web of colored strings that rolls through the desert like a tumbleweed long after the city is abandoned, or a city built entirely from water pipes and porcelain fixtures over a lake where nymphs play, or one built as a maze in order to trap a beautiful fugitive seen in a shared dream. The prose is incredibly rich and beautiful, and the plotless chapters are short but endlessly fascinating to explore. Highly recommended.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid comes to mind. I never finished it and would struggle to describe it even if I had, so here's from Wikipedia:
Central to his arguments is the idea of "strange loops":
It sounds very heady but it's written as alternating chapters of prose and dialogues between fictional characters (Achilles and the tortoise IIRC). Fascinating stuff.
I've probably read GEB almost ten times (maybe more), starting at around age 10-12, most recently a couple years ago. It's one of my favorite books, and made an indelible impact on how I think about formal systems, logic, and consciousness.
The first few times I struggled with the prose, but the cool pictures and diagrams, and especially the fantastic dialogues kept me going. The way Hoftstadter works his themes into the structure of the dialogues as well as their content is delightful; I remember one where Tortise and Achilles are going back and forth on a theme, their lines making a certain pattern, then Crab shows up right in the middle, says something sideways that turns the dialogue on its head, and then Tortise and Achilles reverse their pattern, ending with each of them having taken up the others original position. (Edit: I had to look it up, it's "Crab Cannon" paired with the Escher print and Bach compositions of the same name)
I'd say the book is worth it for the dialogues and illustrations alone, even if you just skim the rest, though you may find yourself drawn in anyway.
If you enjoy GEB, I can also recommend Hoftstadters Metamagical Themas, which is a collection of articles he wrote for Scientific American. It's similarly full of interesting ideas and playful explorations.
Is it possible to enjoy this book as an audiobook?
To some extent, if one exists! You'd be missing out on the Escher illustrations and other diagrams which are frequently referenced. He gets into quite a bit of "mathy" stuff that might be hard to follow in audiobook form.
The dialogues and maybe the first third or so would translate decently well, which might be enough to decide if you'd find it worth getting a physical copy to better follow along.
Old school, you can't go wrong with anything Kurt Vonnegut has written. He's beyond genre.
David Mitchell, of Cloud Atlas fame, also wrote Number9 Dream, which is mind-bending without straying too far into the fantastic.
Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is kind of horror fantastic, but the effect of the story may have the kind of sanity-twisting effects you're interested in.
Clive Barker's Books of Blood are a six-book collection (now available in two omnibus volumes) of the horror fantasy writer's short stories. There's a great deal of alternate reality, body horror, transhumanity, and other material produced with an exquisite grasp on writing craft.
Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle exists in a weird midland between science fiction and high fantasy. It's real work to get through the highly stylized Latinate vocabulary Wolfe uses to denote a neo-Dark Ages mileau where the understanding of technology has degenerated to superstition and ritual. The world-building and twists (not to mention a main character who's an Imperial torturer by trade) make it completely worthwhile.
Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country, refreshes H.P. Lovecraft's horror without the inherent racism and with much better writing. It's visceral, trippy, and satisfying. There's a sequel I haven't read yet.
China Mieville has been mentioned - another writer who'll fulfill your desire for the psychedelic, identity-questioning, big worldbuilding stories with a philosophical bent.
R.F. Kuang's Babel reflects on political power, imperialism, and nation-state academic institutions as mediators of aggression. Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I found its worldbuilding as satisfying in its own way as Permutation City.
I've got a longer list if there's nothing you're looking for among these titles - just out of time right now.
Absolutely seconding House of Leaves. It really is a book like no other. For reference, it's a book about a book about a diary about a manuscript about a documentary film (that may or may not exist) about a house that's bigger on the inside than it should be. It can be difficult to read, in a literal sense. It involves reading editor's notes, reference footnotes of dubious credibility, tangential asides by the guy who found the original manuscript as he slips into insanity, and as the words of the pages themselves begin to devolve in structure to match the labyrinthine evolution of the house. Arguably one of the most influential horror novels of the 21st century.
You might try The Library at Mount Char. For authors, maybe Meiville and Murakami.
The Just City might be good as well. I only mention it because it's more philosophy than plot like Permutation City.
The Just City is additionally interesting to read because of the provenance of LLM tech. You read the story in a completely different light from how it was intended I think, which I think is a fascinating case study in changing attitudes in spec fic given real-world technological advances.
Jorge Luis Borges is known for his short stories and his poetry, and he frequently mused over topics like labyrinths, mirrors, the infinite, recursion, repositories/archives, dreams, as well as the pantheon of "The Classical" gods, typically as a combination of some/all of the above.
A quick example, "The Book of Sand." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiyoFL0sU_U
I think books on the mechanics of language are rather mindbending. I liked I is an other (about the power of metaphors) and Through the Language Glass (about how language affects how we see the world) Like other books on language they are rather well-written, likely because the authors know how to use words.
The novel Lexicon is sci-fi, but pretty much takes place in our current society. Like the non-fiction above, it also explores the power of language, although in a way that goes beyond our current reality.
The anthology collection Machine of Death also takes place in our current society, with the sole exception that a machine can predict how you're going to die. So someones death is FLAMING MARSHMALLOW, and they can't prevent it in any way, so good luck with using that piece of info for anything! Yet, this deterministic premise results in some really good stories.
Of course, both novels are technically science-fiction. But they're not in the 'pure' science-fiction category where the main appeal is exploring the deep lore of a future world.
Wall of Kiss is a love story between a woman and a wall. I think the concept is, if not exactly mindbending, at least is moderately insane.
I'm currently reading An Immense World about how different animals use different senses to percieve the world. Good so far!
Thanks for the recommendations! I am currently reading thru Machine of Death cause it sounded intriguing, already 100 pages in :D. If anyone else wants to give it a go it's under a creative commons license so you can just read it right away here: https://archive.org/details/MachineofDeath/page/n115/mode/1up?view=theater
I think it depends how you define science-fiction. There are a lot of books/stories that take place in a science fiction setting but they use fantasy (magic) to resolve tension. Star Wars is a famous (and often debated) example of this.
There are also a great many books that don't take place in a science fiction setting but they use science to resolve tension. I think Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a good example of this. It is a good balance between funny and thought-provoking:
https://hpmor.com/
In the.. how to say it.. calibre of the books similar to HPMoR, I cant recommend enough Unsong by Scott Alexander.
Seconding Unsong as a very fun read. Shades of Good Omens and Hitchhiker's Guide bring a lot of fun twists.
TIL this is a thing that exists. Thank you! Not a fan of rationalists qua "Rationalists", but Yudkowski is always worth a read, and he can be hysterically funny.
How so?
"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation." - HPMoR
Alice in wonderland?
Roald Dahl stuff. Stuff by Umberto Eco or Samuel Taylor Coleridge, maybe Tom Robbins. Ken Kesey, also The Electric KoolAid Acid Test. The Naked Lunch.
The Vorrh by Brian Catlin touches on all of the topics you've mentioned. It centres around a jungle in German-occupied pre WWI Africa. The jungle drives the economy of the city but there are strange forces that make homes in its depths. There are 3 books with 3 main characters that are featured in the entire trilogy. Some of the passages are so beautifully written that I had to stop and read them again 3 or 4 times. It's such a strange story with twists and turns that don't sink in until you're speaking about them to someone out loud. Please try The Vorrh.
I loved the first book in the trilogy but I wanted to wait until all three were out before I dove back in.
It's cool to finally see this book mentioned. I stumble across threads like this on reddit / elsewhere and I don't think I've ever seen Catlin come up before.
Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda.
I'll second The Library at Mount Char (@hammurobbie) and Lexicon (@halfdan). There is another linguistically centered book I read around the same time as Lexicon, but I am drawing a blank on it right now
Some books that had the same kind of deep WTF feelings I got from Blindsight are Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid (I wrote more about it here, including some trigger warnings) and
Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes might be another.
Lost Boy by Christina Henry
It’s a backstory from another author (like Wicked) for Peter Pan. I am rereading it right now. It is DARK. It’s functionally a coming of age story, but the person coming of age is juxtaposed to a boy who never comes of age. It’s a really fun read, highly recommended.
The one I love is called God's Debris and it's by Scott Adams (yes, the writer for Dilbert) and it's purely a conversation between 2 people. It's not religious or preachy despite the name, but it's something the author refers to as a "thought experiment" and it's very interesting. He used to host the PDF for free on his site, but I think it's long since been removed since he got a proper publisher.
It's weird that he wrote this, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and then went off the deep end recently. At this point, I think he might actually believe he is the avatar.
Also, as an aside, I remember way back in probably 1998 or so, I had emailed him asking if Dilbert's tie was always flipped out because it was sentient and averse to his personality. He actually responded and said "hey that's not a bad idea!" Always thought that was cool as shit that a big cartoonist like him responded to my peabrained question lol
I wouldn’t say it is exactly sci fi, but not exactly fantasy either, but “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” was a pretty good read. Maybe it’s math fi? Also, the “Flatterland”, a sort of sequel, albeit written about 120 years later by a different author.
the conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory - David Chalmers
If you like philosophy and theories of consciousness, you should read this.
And also all these papers...
Phantoms in the Brain - V.S. Ramachandran.
A fascinating source of insight into how our brains do what they do.
Declare - Tim Powers
This is an "alternate view" of the history of the Cold War conflict and spy games. I don't want to say too much about it for fear of spoilers. I think it's best to go into a Tim Powers book knowing no more than the title so you can fully appreciate discovering the plot. (Note: it isn't an "alternative history" like "The Main in the High Castle"; just weaving a new narrative around already known events.)