Imagine for the moment one had to spend some period—maybe fourteen days, to pick a random example—in isolation. How on Earth could one fill all that time? Yes, yes: cat videos. Of course. But let us pretend that we might want to crack open a book or two. Let us further imagine (just to make this more difficult) that we cannot go online and grab ebooks hither and yon. If we were stockpiling physical copies of books, what books might we stockpile that would keep us amused for a long, long time?
There are so many choices. Here are five suggestions, to start:
The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The book, weighing in at a petite 560 pages, might have been much longer (and less effective) had it not been for the intervention of one Robert Heinlein, who provided authors Niven and Pournelle with editorial guidance. Perhaps this Heinlein fellow should consider writing SF himself!
The Empire of Man rose after not one but two human civilizations nuked themselves into dust. Its ruling classes place priority on unity and security, to the point that they will obliterate rebellious worlds rather than permit enemies to survive. When they learn that there is an alien race to be found at a star dubbed the Mote in God’s Eye, the empire is alarmed. Could the alien Moties be a potential enemy? A mission is dispatched posthaste to investigate. The mission soon learns that the Moties are in most respects technologically superior to the Empire of Man. What is it to be? Trade or war?
Things go well at first and then…
Buy the Book
The Mote in God’s Eye
Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
Legal scholar Austin Tappan Wright died without having finished his epic novel to his satisfaction. With the assistance of Mark Saxon, Wright’s widow Margaret set out to polish the 2300-page manuscript. She died in 1937, before the project could be finished. The couple’s daughter Sylvia finished the project and the book was published in 1942, distilled down to a sleek 1014 pages.
This cult classic tells the tale of American John Lang, consul to the nation of Islandia. His mission: open Islandia to American trade, as Perry did in Japan and Captain Page attempted to do in Korea. He sets out to learn Islandian language and culture, in the process losing his belief that trade would be good for the small nation.
Out of print for many years, the book is now available in paperback. If you want the original 1942 hardback, you’ll have to pay big bucks.
Buy the Book
Islandia
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
Clocking in at a streamlined 1120 pages, Ash tells the tale of 15th century mercenary Ash, a woman whose Europe is both very much like and very much different from our own. A natural soldier, she is drawn into the effort to defend a disunited Europe from the Visigoth army that threatens the continent. Visigoth-ruled Carthage has numbers and a seemingly magical technology the Europeans cannot match. Key to the invader’s success: the Faris, a woman guided by mysterious Voices…a woman who could be Ash’s twin.
Buy the Book
Ash: A Secret History
Crossroads by Kate Elliott
At 2233 pages, the Crossroads omnibus is almost as long as the unedited Islandia and significantly longer than the published version of Wright’s work. Given the author’s detailed worldbuilding and the three empires that clash in this book—the Qin, the Hundred, and the Sirnakian Empire—it needs to be that long.
The semidivine Guardians once ruled the land known as the Hundred, but of late they appear to take little interest in their former charges. An alarming absence, given the menaces slowly nibbling away at the Hundred. As the impressively large cast learns to their cost, there are much worse dangers than negligent demigods…such as supposed protectors who appear to have chosen to join Team Evil.
Buy the Book
The Crossroads Series
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Erikson’s epic fantasy is what might happen if you dabble in the arcane world of roleplaying games. Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, both trained as archaeologists, were drafting a background for a GURPS campaign and the background morphed into something…publishable: a series of ten dead-tree books and finally an e-omnibus (as well as novellas, prequels, and Esslemont’s separate novels set in the same universe).
In the Malazan setting, the history of the last hundred thousand years or more plays an active role in current affairs. The first half of this omnibus contains five books that work as standalones. In the last five books, the plot threads—and there are so very many threads—come together in a single tapestry. Just listing the characters would exceed my word count limits. It’s an impressive display of worldbuilding, as well as an epic adventure.
Now, booksellers will try to claim this is a ten-book series and then attempt to sell you ten separate volumes. Don’t be fooled! If you want the largest possible option, demand the one, true complete edition: the 11,927-page ebook!
Buy the Book
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen
***
Not doubt you have your own favourite massive, weighty tomes. Feel free to mention them in the comments below.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He was a finalist for the 2019 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, is one of four candidates for the 2020 Down Under Fan Fund, and is surprisingly flammable.
Has there ever been a better time to tackle all 3K pages of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle?
Ash is a terrific book. I wonder what happened to Mary Gentle, she hasn’t published anything since 2012.
Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, Jack Vance’s Complete Dying Earth, Samuel Delaney’s Dahlgren.
Reread Mote in God’s Eye a couple of years ago. Was disappointed. Some pretty clunky dialogue. And very misogynist.
Noted :)
Mote in God’s Eye is, well, it’s a Niven/Pournelle book. So you know what you’re getting there. It’s aged much better than, say, Lucifer’s Hammer (I know, low bar) and the sequel, The Gripping Hand, fixes some of the issues with it. (Gripping Hand is clearly a pre-9/11 book, BTW.) Together they’re among the better first contact novels out there.
I’ll recommend another giant Neal Stephenson tome (though this one’s just a single book):
Seveneves
I mean, if we’re gonna bring in the single-volume Malazan, we gotta bring in the single-volume Wheel of Time…
I’m currently reading through a chonker – Roadtrip Z by Lilith Saintcrow. It’s a hefty 750+ page omnibus of her zombie roadtrip serial, with some really good character work.
Weirdly enough zombies are soothing to me in these times, because… I don’t know. Things are bad, but at least I don’t have to be afraid of the living dead. And the power is staying on!
Also, there’s no more apt time to be reading Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book, which weighs in at 592 pages.
Janny Wurts Wars of Light and Shadow, the first volume being Curse of the Mistwraith. Also he Cycle of Fire Omnibus.
I decided to finish up Miles Cameron’s Traitor Son series—five big tomes. I’d read the first two and loved them, then somehow ignored the other three even though they’re sitting right here on my shelves.
I suggest reading through The Dresden Files as the new book in that series is coming out this year.
Malazan Empire.
Ian C Esslemont.
Old school:
Foundation
The Chronicles of Amber
The Julian May books (Galactic Mileu and the Many-Colored Land books)
The Gormenghast Trilogy (if anything will outlast the corona virus it’s this one) (some call it Gormenghastly but it will run out the clock)
The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer (NOT Stephanie) — Cyberpunk retelling of several fairytales, including cyborg Cinderella and Rapunzel orbiting in a satellite pod.
Otherland, Tad Williams — The world oldest, richest man creates the most advanced virtual reality playground to live forever in. Unfortunately for our heroes, they’re trapped inside and must navigate their way out of the increasingly bizarre settings, including the Trojan War, Alice’s Wonderland, and an old Merry Melodies cartoon.
“The Enderverse”, by Orson Scott Card, with Aaron Johnston — For those who missed out, there are several new additions. The First Formic War trilogy, The Second Formic Wars trilogy (2 of 3 so far), Ender’s Game, The Shadow Quartet, Ender in Exile (rewrites the last chapter of Game) and the Speaker trilogy. There’s also Shadows in Flight, but it is difficult to decide exactly where that fits into the timeline I just gave. Also, it’s kinda depressing.
The Pathfinder trilogy, also Orson Scott Card — A serious exploration of politics and the formation of social structures, aided by wacky Bill & Ted time travel hijinks.
Dune in any form isn’t recommended, as every book tends to end with a crushing realization that this is your world now, and the best you can do is try to cope with the changes. Look for happier endings, people.
The Sagas of Icelanders, in the new (1997) translation by Leifur Eiriksson Publishing is amazingly good. They are some of the greatest hard-boiled character studies of all time. I have the Penguin paperback which features just a few of the sagas in a slim 782 pages. Just the thing if you don’t have the time for the five volume complete translation.
Gaunts Ghosts omnibus’s.
Dan Abnett.
First Law novels.
Joe Abercrombie.
Would it be physically possible to create a single-volume WoT?
Let’s say you had in mind a book the size of a newspaper broadsheet (450 x 600 mm [23.5 x 29.5 inches]). Like a newspaper, each sheet would have five or six columns of text. The paper would be the onion-skin variety (basically tracing-paper, thick enough so you could print legibly on both sides). With a small-enough font, could it actually be done?
Even if it were, would there be a market for such a mad magnum opus? It would be so heavy you’d have to sit at a table to read it – definitely not a a book to read in bed!
[Sniffs, tugs braid, smooths skirt, crosses arms under my breasts]
If you enjoyed Mary Gentle’s Ash you might want to check out the massive novel Ilario (published in two parts in some editions) which is set in the same alternate universe. There’s also the novella The Logistics of Carthage, a mere palate cleanser compared to Ilario.
@2: The 2015 collection Tales from the Vatican Vaults contains a short story by Gentle so there’s that. Here’s to hoping that she’s working on the next massive tome!
If we’re counting completed series/sagas, I’d add:
The Shadowmarch quartet, by Tad Williams: Actually larger and more ambitious in some ways than his original Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, it explores a world of humans and inhumans and the echoes of ancient gods, centered loosely on a pair of royal siblings who have vastly different fates.
The Death Gate Cycle, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: A little dated now, with plenty of tropes and a few inside jokes, it nonetheless makes for an interesting and active exploration of a world sundered by ancient mages into four realms that were supposed to be perfect, but were left inherently broken and flawed by their creators… and of the mages’ enemies, who for generations were imprisoned in a Labyrinth gone mad, who have escaped and want their vengeance…
The Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik: An interesting alternate-history Earth where the existence of sapient dragons has altered nations (and the balance of power), set during Napoleon’s war of conquest and starring an English naval captain who inadvertently bonds with a rare Chinese-bred dragon. The story sorta fizzles a bit in the last book, but the worldbuilding is excellent, and nine books should last a bit.
Bernie Gunther novels.
Philip Kerr.
Kalevala.
Folklore of Finland.
Animal Money.
Michael Cisco.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon‘s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series – The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven, and The Labyrinth of Spirits. A combined total of over 2,000 pages.
@1 and @7 – I did suggest to James that he call this roundup “Five Massive SFF Books to Read While You’re Social-Distancing That Are Not By Neal Stephenson.”
Just purchased Crossroads in paperback. I’ll have to quarantine the package when it arrives, but damnit, I need SOMETHING nice to look forward to in this plaguezone.
@1: No, there’s never been a better time, and this isn’t the time either, and there never WILL be a good time to read Stephenson.
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany.[just saw it was mentioned already
I had no idea that Gentle’s full Ash was available in the US, and only $3.99 from Apple. Guess I can stop looking for the 3rd & 4th US paperback volumes.
Here are a couple of stand-alones that’ll keep you busy for a while (all north of 700 pages):
Frank Schätzing: Limit and The Swarm
Clive Barker: Imajica and Weaveworld
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
David Brin: Existence
Stephen King: It and The Stand
Stephen Baxter: Evolution
Hans Bemmann: The Stone and the Flute
Guy Gavriel Kay: Tigana
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt
Tad Williams: The War of the Flowers
Janny Wurts: To Ride Hell’s Chasm [OK, this is just a couple of pages shy of 700 in my edition but I’ll mentioned it all the same]
Where’s the comic book love? Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Gaiman et al’s Sandman, Morrison’s Invisibles, Azzarello & Risso’s 100 Bullets, Vaughan & Guera’s Y-the Last Man, Vaughan & Staples’ Saga, Hickman’s Manhattan Projects and hundreds of others are all spec-fic adjacent, lengthy (100 Bullets is something like 2500 pages), and excellent.
Plus there’s the source material for a couple of recent films to dive into if you’re so inclined.
@29 Jens
Here I thought I was about the only person who had read Stone and Flute… how did that go…?
“Seek for the light
where the glow may fall:
You have not sought aright
If you don’t find it all”…
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar
John Crowley, Little, Big 538pp.
Susanna Clarke, Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell 782pp.
@31 zdrakec: Well, I’m German as you might have guessed from my mentioning of Frank Schätzing, another compatriot.
I’ve read Bemmann’s novel quite a long time ago (I think it was quite popular in Germany for a while) and it really is something special. It deserves a wider audience. :-)
Just read Middlemarch for the first time and much enjoyed. It’s a lovely book that is also decently long. Well worth it in my opinion.
EDIT: Whoops, just realized this was for SFF books…sorry about that!!
Walter Moers’ The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.
Anything by Peter Hamilton.
Most or all of Michael Moorcock’s books are interconnected, aren’t they? The one-volume Complete Eternal Champion would certainly while away an afternoon or two.
@35 Yup. Almost did the same – I found a kindle version of the Harvard Classics (all 71 volumes) for $0.49 yesterday. LOTS of reading there!
For SF, I’ll probably just reread the Vorkosigan saga from Cordila’s Honor through to Red Queen.
If I ever get another 20% (or more) Kindle coupon, that Malazan omnibus is jumping to the top of my list.
Also, if you find yourself with a lot of time to kill, you could do much worse than C.J. Cherryh — either her Union/Alliance books (a couple dozen set in the same universe, but mostly grouped into smaller, self-contained singletons or sets) or her Foreigner books (20+ that all come in sequence but are, I believe, broken into self-contained trilogies).
Or if you want to go old school, Orlando Furioso, Amadis of Gaul, the Fairie Queen, any number of works by Alexander Dumas …
@28 – Thanks so much for pointing out that the ebook of Ash by Mary Gentle is only $3.99 right now! That’s another book I’ve wanted to reread for a while.
Oh! Or Dorothy Dunnett (I know, I know, historical fiction, not genre, but I think there’s some overlap in the fanbase). King Hereafter is a standalone doorstop, or the Lymond or House of Niccolo series will keep you occupied for rather a long time.
Crossroads is more self-assured, but I also enjoyed Kate Elliott’s previous 7-book cycle, Crown of Stars. Not sure if it’s available as a single omnibus, though.
@38
A summation of the Eternal Champion megabook:
Stormbringer NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
The Count of Monte Cristo, of course.
Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear (a single novel published in two pieces).
If you want a nice, long, complex read to completely take your mind off of your current problems you can always twist it into knots by reading “The Illuminatus Trilogy”.
Thanks for mentioning Islandia; there are also sequels by his editor that aren’t bad.
And I must mention Daniel Abraham’s wonderful Long Price Quartet: A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring — the greatest fantasy series since Earthsea in my not-very-humble opinion.
If we’re going to include series, I vote for the series of books and stories by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller: beginning with Crystal Soldier and maybe finishing Accepting the Lance (and any short stories released meanwhile) in time to read the new release this December—Trader’s Leap.
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
Admittedly depressing at times, but Stephen R. Donaldson’s First, Second, and Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant definitely qualify as massive works individually as well as in total. Mine are in storage now after the last move, but I seem to recall everything after The Power that Preserves being 750+ pages.
One other that fits the bill would be Raymond Feist’s Riftwar Saga although I prefer the side series, Daughter, Servant, and Mistress of Empire, he wrote with Janny Wurts.
@45: Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear takes place in the same universe as her early story Fire Watch, the already mentioned Doomsday Book, and the novel To Say Nothing of the Dog – so why not just read all of it? ;-)
“Loving long novels plays havoc with going to school.” – John Irving
Someone bought a copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for me in 2005 and it took me five years to start reading it, but then I couldn’t put it down. Go figure.
I’m reading Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, which is about 600 pages. I’m about a third of the way in; at this point it’s leaning towards urban-horror/psychological thriller and it may or may not have supernatural elements.
My copy of Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy is an omnibus edition, so it definitely counts! The individual books are Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold.
Seanan McGuire Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy just got released as an omnibus, and is uncomfortably prescient! If you want to read about life post-zombie plague while dealing with election-year politics from the POV of independent bloggers just scraping by, these are the books for you! First book is Feed.
Ursula Vernon’s Hugo-winning graphic novel Digger is a gorgeous doorstop, but it is also free to read online in its entirety, since it was first published as a webcomic. It’s beautiful and full of characters and the plot points sneak up on you just like they did the author.
http://diggercomic.com/
Pratchett, start to finish. Rinse repeat.
Vorkosigan, then Aubrey-Maturin, then Vorkosigan again.
Swallows and Amazons. Even all of the OZ books. Over and over and over.
My wife says ‘How can you DO that?’.
I wondered aloud why she didn’t discard her Bonnie Raitt after listening to it once.
@49 Vic
That is an admirably solid choice.
Cyteen, Regenesis, and 40,000 at Gehenna, all by C. J. Cherryh. All three of these books are interlinked, and they’re about as weighty and brain-breaking as they come. Cyteen is one of my 5 books to take to a desert island books, so…
Collected poems of Rumi.
Obsidian & Blood
Aliette De Bodard
Jack Vance’s omnibus Planet of Adventure, with City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir and The Pnume.
I’m currently doing a Man-Kzin War reread – there’s 15 books there, though a couple are hard to find and not available as ebooks. But I enjoy all the different stories.
For all it’s problems (and the author’s problems), Battlefield Earth is a guilty pleasure of mine that I like to reread every once in a while – it just goes on and on and on and on…
The 1,445 pages of the Zimiamvia Tetralogy, or (by a different reckoning) 1 book plus a trilogy, of E. R. Eddison. Helpful info here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13626.Zimiamvia
The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon. There are at least twelve thick volumes.
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar/Velgarth books. There are a gazillion of them.
Poul and Karen Anderson’s The King of Ys quadrilogy. The first book is Roma Mater. The King of Ys is a single narrative in four books. It’s a fantasy set in late in the days of the Roman empire.
You can also read Poul’s other series, such as the Polesotechnic League tales, featuring Nicholas Van Rijn and David Falkayn. Those come as a sequence of individual stories.
The same is true of the Flandry and Flandry-adjacent books. Any of Poul’s series will keep you distracted for the nonce.
The complete Vorkosigan saga isn’t as monumental as some of these suggestions, but it’s still plenty hefty. And very, very good.
David Brin’s loosely connected Uplift series.
Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.
Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune and stop right there.
Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion tetralogy is a fine read.
Does Atlas Shrugged count as SFF? The first time I read every word; I’ve re-read it a couple of times skipping the speeches.
Most of those don’t sound interesting to me, except the ones I’ve already read. But I’m grateful to have many other downloaded audiobooks, and learned about many of them through Tor.com recommendations. Thank you, Tor!!
Hard SF usually doesn’t run to big series. But if you like that you could try Greg Egan’s Orthogonal trilogy, about 1500 pages in total. It’s a space exploration story set in a universe where the time dimension is the same sign as the space dimensions, so relativity works backwards. If you want more length, add Dichronauts, set in a universe where one space dimension also behaves like time. Throw in Incandescence, which is set in our universe where a pre-industrial civilisation has to discover relativity to survive, and you get a thematically connected pentalogy.
I would second No. 29 for David Brin: Existence
This book is MASSIVE not just in number of pages, but also on idea/concept level.
I feel like including series here is just taking the piss. Of course multi-volume works are going to run long.
@50 – just because you could, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you’ve a fondness for resurrecting clench-racing among your shelter-in-place pod.
“The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova is nice and long.
And has anyone actually *read* “Jeruaslem” by Alan Moore? Almost 1300 pages. I keep looking at it on my Kindle and then backing off, feeling as if it’s some kind of dare.
Yes, CJ Cherryh. I just finished the 20th book in the Foreigner series. Immersive and fun. For a single Cherryh book, I agree with Cyteen recommended up post.
Yes, Vorkosigan.
I’d also consider the Brust Taltos books – individually short but there are more than a dozen of them, with a high level of excellence and enjoyment.
Hobb ‘sRealm of the Elderlings books have not been mentioned but should be. A half dozen interlinked trilogies in a unified fantasy world. Compelling stuff, especially those centered on royal bastard Fitzchivalry Farseer.
Counter-examples: Binti, Murderbot.
The complete Perry Rhodan series.
@60 Lynn Battlefield Earth is actually a pretty damn good story, warts and all. Just because Hubbard had – problems – doesn’t mean he couldn’t tell a good one….
I thought that this post was about door-stoppers, but it seems to have devolved to series fairly substantially. I’m doing the Vorsigian Saga in Timeline order myself (mixed with some Clive Cussler for breaks). But the idea of sitting down with a big honking book was how I came to be an ardent eReader. It was The Captain’s Table, the omnibus of Star Trek Universe novels that made me an eReader. I’d received the book as a gift (from my parents, who maybe thought I needed the physical workout), which weighs just south of a tonne and got through the first of the books contained therein. THEN I asked myself, was there an eBook version. Yes there was!! For just three bucks!! And my Palm Pilot could have the whole book in my hands for just a few ounces!! In less than three minutes!!
And what had been an experiment, reading Jeffrey Deaver’s The Empty Chair in bits while in Bank queues or McDonald’s Playlands with the l’il Gaffers, became HOW I read books.
When I was too young to have lived in an eReader universe, I often took on reading projects Christmas Eve to work off the energy of TOMORROW IS CHRISTMAS!!! Dune was a Christmas Eve discovery. Other shorter books filled in other years. Most of them I did get finished by Boxing Day. Dune? No. It took until the end of the year. Which isn’t so bad, considering the end of the year was only a week later.
Immersing one’s self in a fictional universe remains, to me, the best way to handle what is now being euphemistically called Self Isolation. Life-long readers laugh at that term.
Back to Bujold.
Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth stories should work well, Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey books also.
@64 – “Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune and stop right there” Pity there were never any more books written.
@66 – not SF but it certainly is an absolute fantasy.
I’m really surprised at the absence of one particular behemoth of a story from this list.
Otherland. Tad Williams’ 4-volume, 3000+ page tale is gripping and near-enough to our reality to be pretty credible. Great for when you don’t have plans for a month.
@20: if you’re going to posit fitting 14 books onto pages that are ~20 times the area of a paperback page, you don’t need small fonts or thin paper (what the printer I dealt with long ago called “bible paper” — “onionskin” was for typewriters). But it would flop all over the place without hardback-style covers.
@40: I second the recommendation of the Foreigner series — but note that it’s 5 trilogies and 2 duologies (plus 1 which may or may not be standalone — I haven’t read it.) This trips up people (like me) who like to read multi-book stories in one go.
@47: I wouldn’t want to argue hard rankings, but the Long Price quartet is definitely up there. More recent Abraham, also very commendable: “The Dagger and the Coin”, which builds plausible economics into the saga of a dozen or so polities. Note that the latter is one sequential story in five parts (covers a couple of years IIRC), while the Long Price books each have consequences for the ones that follow but are separated by IIRC a couple of decades each.
@50: those whose opinion of Thomas Covenant matches that of Tom Smith (whose thumbnails start with “1: everything turns to s**t. 2: everything is s**t. 3: we discover plumbing.) — or Elusis@70’s — should consider Donaldson’s “Mordant’s Need”: almost 1300 pages and way less self-commiserating even if the main viewpoint character has been squashed by a father she was never been good enough for. I picked it up because someone at Bakka Books saw my expression and said “No, this is nothing like Covenant!”, and they were mostly right.
If people are reading Willis, there’s always Blackout (sometimes listed as Blackout + All Clear) — but you have to really love England (or intensely-detailed war histories).
@62: Sturgeon was a wizard at shorter forms; did the collected stories ever come out as e-books?
@71: why stop at Cyteen? Regenesis carries the story further and disentangles the murder mystery Cyteen left hanging.
Swallows and Amazons forever!!!
If you want long series, Martha Wells has the Raksura, recently reissued, all 6 or 7 books of it, plus interstitial stories, and Murderbot. But My favorite Wells remains the Fall of Ile Rein – just so heart-wrenching and then so encouraging, and the imagery haunts me.
#35: I like Middlemarch, too — and it’s high time for a MIDDLEMARCH IN MIDDLE EARTH adaptation, like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES. Then it would be the perfect recommendation for this thread!
Middlemarch is amazing, of course — it deserves its reputation as a candidate for the greatest English novel of all time. It’s not SF, though, unless you consider Lydgate’s dreams of developing new medical techniques SF in the “Heinlein said Arrowsmith is SF” sense.”
There’s a 20 volume series that resembles to a degree David Drake’s Leary/Mundy books — so it must be SF, right? This is of course Patrick O’Brian’s incomparble Aubrey/Maturin books.
Samuel R. Delany compared Alexei Panshin’s Anthony Villiers books to Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, so I assume the latter counts as SF? That’s a 3000 page narrative (in 12 volumes), and one of my favorite series of all time.
The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, is over 1000 pages and is a tremendous evocation of a society rather more alien to us than, I dare say, most alien societies in SF. How about that?
And finally there’s Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor; which is really truly SF (set in an alternate history in which North America is mostly Russian). It’s 600+ pages of sumptuous prose. It’s also, er, problematic as heck!
@82 ecbatan I see your Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey / Maturin, and I raise you Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe.
E,g, Hec Ramsey, which the former gunman fights Old West style crime with *forensic science!*. Also Murdock Mysteries, in which the first suborbital flight happened in the early 20th century. From Canada, though, which is why nobody heard of it.
@@@@@ 79, CHip:
@@@@@62: Sturgeon was a wizard at shorter forms; did the collected stories ever come out as e-books?
They seem to have. The first four I checked on Amazon, ranging from # 1 to # 12, were available on dead tree and kindle.
Is there an equivalent of the word sesquipedalian for books? A series that takes at least eighteen inches of shelf space? Sesquicodexian maybe?
@84: Applies to both the show *and* some of the more peculiar anachronisms in it! My own theory is that Detective Murdoch is actually The Flash.
(… Although, strictly, any flight that doesn’t get to (at least) orbit is suborbital. Makes for an interesting way to describe, say, a basketball shot…)
I‘d suggest J.G. Ballard‘s comprehensive collection of short fiction, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard. Newly audiobookyfied too.
The Complete Wheel of Time Kindle omnibus edition weighs in at 12,446 pages.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Wheel-Time-Robert-Jordan-ebook/dp/B00M64A8UA/
I endorse the recommendation for “Islandia” – it’s a commitment but worth it, thoughtful. I can only think that no Hugo readers read it since it lost the retro-Hugo to works by other authors that were vastly inferior…
I agree with Elizabeth Moon’s “Deed’s” trilogy. My first thought though was David Weber’s Safehold series. Most if not all the books are over 700 pages, and are all available on kindle. I have several of the ‘dead tree’ editions but prefer reading on the kindle for weight alone. The current 10 books complete a major story arc.
Again, Dangerous Visions edited by the man who changed the direction of sci-fi literature, 700+ pages
What? No mention of David Weber’s Honorverse or Safehold series? Or how about Eric Flint’s 1632 novel which started an avalanche of novels and a series of monthly books called Grantville Gazette?
When I started this comment, there were only 88 comments.
Another vote for Vernor Vinge’s “A Deepness in the Sky”. I recently finished it and it certainly qualifies at 750+ pages.
The Books of Earthsea: The complete Cycle by Ursula K Le Guin and Charles Vess (illustrator). So surprised it has not yet been mentioned
Cities in Flight (James Blish)
Old school for sure, but Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian Tales are still a fun and easy read and there are several. Also, Isaac Asimov, The Complete Stories, volumes 1&2, Herbert’s Dune series …and finally, The Mahabharata translated by Bibek Debroy. It’s 10 volumes of 500-700 pages each. Not really sci fi, but close and you won’t find a more challenging read!
If we’re talking mega-length stories. I’ll submit a web serial, Worm by John C. “Wildbow” McCrae. It’s grouped in arcs, but is an amazing example of a story evenly progressing from neighborhood/school to all creation. It weighs in at 2 million words, which is like an 8,000 page book (or maybe 30 250-page books)
Elusis: Yes, now is the time to read Alan Moore’s Jerusalem.
I actually included it in my Hugo nominations that year.
An intricate, imaginative story, with lots of literary playfulness and deep human sympathy.
Not a bad read for the present period – it acknowledges the inevitable destruction brought on by shortsighted behavior but takes a very long view.
Adam: Baroque Cycle – nice idea. I only read Quicksilver so far. Incidentally, arguably the massive and thorough biography of Newton, Never At Rest, by Westfall, has a good deal of science fiction in it. From the point of view of contemporary science, almost everything he did (other than making telescopes) was science fiction – and some of it was still science fiction when he died, such as his idea that hypothetical tiny particles were attracted or repelled by one another by forces resembling gravity, and this would account for chemical reactions. Also, he calculated the date of the end of the world and decided, if I remember correctly, that it was still 600 years off (probably a disappointment from a religious point of view); this is perhaps still comforting.
The Priory of the Orange Tree is a nice big door stopper of a book at ~850 pages.
Since we’re on multi volume series, try the multi authored shared world series like Thieves world or if you can find them C.J.Cherryh’s Merovingian Nights. These series are awesome. How about the Wildcard series by edited by G.R.R.Martin. Long before the Dragon books came out he was breaking new ground with that series. The idea of the superhero warts and all is exploding on tv and film right now. As much as I enjoy the 1632 series I feel that the overall quality of writing is better in these series.
In science fiction, I read only SCIENCE (i.e., “hard”) fiction. None of these sound like they are in that category, so I wonder if there any?
Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart trilogy.
Kushiel’s Dart – 929 pages
Kushiel’s Chosen – 704 pages
Kushiel’s Avatar – 772 pages
Gets ya 2405 pages.
Then the sequel trilogy:
Kushiel’s Scion – 769 pages
Kushiel’s Justice – 721 pages
Kushiel’s Mercy – 684 pages
Totals 2174 pages.
Together it’s 4579 pages. :)
Or for harder science, military sci-fi, there’s the Honor Harrington series (17 I believe in that) and all adjacent series and anthologies.
What about Little Big by John Crowley? It’s a long, lovely real fantasy that I’ve re-read many times.
Also, agree with the Gormenghast trilogy, and the sequel by Mervyn Peake’s wife.
Also thank you commeters for mentioning DHALGREN. Brilliant SSF masterpiece!
Okay have to chime in again. I made the mistake of looking over my bookshelves which I quite recently finished reorganizing and I really want to share more ideas. 1st read Harry Turtledove, his oeuvre Consists of several massive series in the Historical fiction/historical fantast genre. You could easily ride out several pandemics working through his books(slight exaggeration only). In the same general genre S.M. Stirling will keep you going for a while too.
My daughter told me she has worked her way through most of Christopher Moore’s books on her Kindle. (I was very proud to introduce her to his writing) While not really shelved in the science fiction section. A strong argument could be made for classifying these as fantasy. I can’t recommend them highly enough.Although shorter than the type of reads the thread started out talking about they mostly interconnect to some degree. Their absurdist humor will be a welcome distraction. Speaking of absurd distractions I would also like to throw the works of Carl Hiaasen out there and although never shelved as science fiction or fantasy all I have to say is well, Florida ?!? Nuff said.
If we are doing series, how about Catherine Asaro’s Skolian Empire books.
The Books of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin, with lovely illustrations by Charles Vess, has only 992 pages but feels like it weighs a ton.
Funny you mentioned Heinlein, but then didn’t list “Time Enough for Love” at 600+ pages. :-)
@42 Another Dorothy Dunnet fan!!! :D YESSSSS (I adore the Lymond Chronicles and, while I know they’re not for everyone, they are AMAZING.)
Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff’s “Illuminae” trilogy (over 1200 pages in all!):
“Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01”
“Gemina: The Illuminae Files_02”
“Obsidio: The Illuminae Files_03”
It’s a YA SF series, but its appeal is much wider–it’s a real page turner.
In answer to JDNicoll’s counterexamples of short series, George Zebrowski’s Omega Point Trilogy is the slimmest omnibus I’ve ever seen. Under 300 pages.
I did not see anyone mention Philip K. Dick’s VALIS trilogy.
Also, I greatly second the Dorothy Dunnett Lymond/Niccolo books – but I would read the Niccolo books first!
And I’m a big fan of Verner Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep, Deepness in the Sky, and (not mentioned above) Children of the Sky (Zones of Thought series)
It’s always good to revisit Harry Potter
And for deep dives outside SFF I would recommend Lawrence Durrell, both the Alexandria Quartet and the Avignon Quintet (although I still have two books to go!).
@101
Verner Vinge’s Zones of Thought definitely count as hard SF. I would recommend anything by him, but that’s a great series. David Webber’s Honorverse, with the exception of the fascination with the cats, does a great job with the space battles and FTL issues.
Of the books in the original post, the only one I have read is the first – I truly enjoyed The Mote in God’s Eye, though I was about 40 years younger when I read it, so I don’t know how I would like it now. At about that same time I also read Footfall by the same authors, and quite enjoyed that as well – though weighing in as a baby elephant sized 500+ pages it isn’t quite as gargantuan.
Based on the comments I have just bought the Ash ebook so I hope I like it – sounds pretty good, and my taste in reading material is pretty omnivore – as long as it is well written the genre is of secondary consideration.
Favorited this post and subscribed to the comments – one can always use great suggestions, and I hate to let go of a growing reading list ;-)
53. brendaa Yes! Digger is amazing! I was so sad when it ended!
I own the Theodore Sturgeon Collection in hardcover – just finally got them ensconced in my newly organized wall of books ;-)
I will check back in with a notebook, adding to my wish list :-)
I must have missed references to 1Q84 because I know you all love your Murakami and want to read his delightful 1,000+ page novel if you haven’t already. Perhaps you don’t think it’s a SFF book. It certainly is, though it also has elements of noir, adventure, and a sweet love story.
The only question is whether to read 1Q84 before or after Dr Strange and Mr Norell. And then there’s the new but dreamy Starless Sea.
101: Could I get some examples of books you consider hard SF so I can use the same criteria in my answer to you?
Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies are both composed of lengthy books — but do yourself a favour and DON’T try to read her other trilogy, as it’s not complete and never will be. The Golden Key, also by her with Kate Elliott and Jennifer Roberson, is an excellent read, however.
A couple of McCaffrey’s series: Pern, The Tower & The Hive, Acorna
L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth (1066 pages in my copy)
Okay someone mentioned “Time enough for love”, by Heinlein. That took back to my youth and grade school in the seventies. I had gotten hooked on his juveniles, taking books like “Have Space Suit Will Travel”, “Citizen of the Galaxy”, and “The Star Beast” out of the library. Then I discovered “The Past Through Tomorrow”. It was the thickest paperback I had ever seen. This was the before trend for epic bloat and series run-on had overtaken the publishing industry and a paperback over 200 pages was considered substantial. Back then I had many, well loved novels that were less than 200 hundred pages. Hard to imagine them getting printed now. “The Past Through Tomorrow”, was on a whole other level from the size books that I was used to. Definitely a massive tome. Not bad even by todays standards. Consider too that it was one of the earliest examples of a cohesive universe with a shared timeline spread across many books.
I read the Vorkosigan series last year. They were a blast. I have no idea what stopped me from picking them up sooner!
I am wondering if it is the time to give Feist’s Midkemia books a go? I read the first two trilogies ages and ages ago.
No one mention Hubbard’s ”Mission Earth” 10-Volume ;) ;) ;) lolol.
Kudos to the person who mentioned Brin’s EXISTENCE. Indeed!
I give my HIGHEST of recommendations to Dan Simmons’ 4-volume Hyperion/Endymion. The BEST.
Probably get printed as novellas now. Happily, we are in something of a golden age of novellas.
I should have fit in a link to this old essay of mine on SFBC tomes.
As the Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond and Niccolo books — they are outstanding. But even though the Lymond books are set later, and the series are connected, I personally strongly recommend starting with them. For one thing, I kind of think they are better. For another, I’m sort of a “Read in published order” absolutist. Unless the author (or publisher) cheated or messed up (which does happen, of course) by default it has to be OK to read in that order, like the original readers did. And on occasion (not really in this case, definitely in the case of say Narnia!) reading the books in chronological order will actually mess with things.
And finally, the opening of the Lymond books — starting with “Lymond is back!” — hangs in my memory as one of the most thrilling starts to a new series I’ve ever read.
YMMV, of course.
@17 — To your Icelandic sagas, let me add probably the greatest Viking novel of all time, Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships (Röde Orm). The 1964 movie with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier dramatized a single episode from the novel.
In a swashbuckling vein, few people realize that Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is just the first (and shortest) volume of a massive trilogy. The final book, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, clocks in around 2000 pages, in three or four hardcover volumes depending on the edition; The Man in the Iron Mask, itself around 800 pages, is an excerpt.
At the end, only one of the Musketeers still lives.
@3, @59 — To the omnibus editions of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and Tschai (a.k.a. Planet of Adventure), add The Demon Princes, five novels published in a two-volume trade paperback edition.
To the commenter who said he’s looking for SF, let me point out that of the three works above only The Dying Earth is fantasy — though Vance’s SF usually has the color and feel of fantasy.
@35, @81, @82 — On the subject of long books set in strange and distant times that (allegedly) existed, count me as another vote for George Eliot’s Middlemarch. This book is particularly interesting in showing how a woman in the early 19th century had the option of pursuing a life of scholarship or science by marrying it. (Though our protagonist here quickly learns the “genius” she married is — oops! — a second-rater in his field.)
Much earlier — and much longer — is Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison, one of Jane Austen’s favorite novels. Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe, also around 2K pages, is more highly regarded by critics, but (judging from synopses) may have you studying the ceiling for good spots to hang a rope.
If you want long just start the Stormlight Archive… Whoo!!!
@128 — I read the 1200-page prequel, most of it. It was all I had to read during an unexpected hospital stay, a few years ago.
Here’s a curious omission: Tolkien.
John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle hasn’t been mentioned yet as far as I’ve seen. Deep and strange and beautiful. More supernatural than Fantasy or Science Fiction.
@101: If you don’t consider The Mote in God’s Eye HARD SCIENCE fiction, how about Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity and it’s sequels, starring the Mesklinites? Considered by many the pioneer of the paradigm. Or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy?
Clement tends to be rather brief by modern standards, though.
Collected Fiction.
Leena Krohn.
Time Travellers Almanac.
Ann & Jeff Vandermeer.
Structure of the World.
Steven French
A good time to re-visit Patrick Tilley’s “Fade Out” – unless it’s a little too close to home with its theme of civilisation shutting down. Might have the reverse effect though – as someone else commented, we still have the power on, and we have media and the internet. Whereas, all of them wink out in Tilley’s novel. Read it years ago, and it has stayed with me (and I still have my original paperback copy).
Byzantium Endures
The Laughter of Carthage
Jerusalem Commands
The Vengeance of Rome – what a satisfying set of titles, and a huge read!
Or how about Aldiss’ Helliconia?
@brendaa Thanks for the recommendation. I may have just spent the last 6 hours reading it all. I would recommend it as well.
136. Chris Warburton Helliconia! I knew I was trying to remember something! I just got the e-trilogy about a month ago, before the current situation was a consideration, just because I wanted to reread it!
In a completely different thematic style is the James K Morrow series starting with Towing Jehovah. I read the first one from the library many years ago, shortly after it came out, and was bemused by how it stuck with me. Then the second – Blameless in Abbadon came out, so I reread TJ first, and subsequently had both stuck in my head. Classed as fantasy, but more satire with some – occasionally unnerving – philosophical and, naturally theological elements. Not for everybody but I found them refreshing and fun, and eventually led me to the rather lighter fare of Moore’s Lamb etc
I typically read 100 paperback pages per hour..until I read Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Took me a whole summer to read because I had to keep stopping to think about what was going on. 937 pages. It was worth it.
Well, not often I see this many comments. Must reflect the level of boredom we are all feeling.
Hope you all are well, and, whatever you decide to read, stay healthy
I read all the way through Alan Moore’ JERUSALEM, though there was one section that had to be read out loud, due to Hugely Phonetic Spelling (I think I had to get out the machete to wade through that one). It worth, It was actually easier to read on my phone, since I had only bits per page to get through (I do have a very good memory for storyline, so I was able to not get lost. Well, mostly…). I don’t actually enjoy his idea of the afterlife that much, I would end up being very bored after a while. But it really was a fascinating read.
the “Outlander” series by Diana Gabaldon
Just in case anyone’s still following: @71 mentioned Brust’s Taltos series, and @125 mentioned Dumas’ Musketeer trilogy — but nobody has brought up the mashup of the two, collectively called the Khaavren Romances. Since I’d read The Phoenix Guards and recognized its origin, I almost fell over laughing when I saw that the sequel was Five Hundred Years After (playing off the relative lifespans of Dragaerans and “westerners”); I hadn’t realized that the three-part sequel-sequel The Viscount of Adrilankha also borrowed its title. Each part of the set is only about half the size of its precessor, but that still makes a substantial read — and IIRC they make a lot more sense if read from the beginning.
No mention of Harry Harrison?
There’s the Deathworld trilogy + 1 short, and the Stainless Steel Rat trilogy ia at 7 or so. Shorter books, but they add up. And the lightheartedness is a plus right now.
I won’t suggest Donaldson’s Gap series; they are mostly doorstoppers but are downers.
How is his 3rd Chronicles? I stopped at the end of the first or second.
@20:
There’s these things called ebooks now…
I’m currently reading Ash by Mary Gentle and uh, doesn’t it get bloody and disturbing. Brilliant so far, it’s an engaging historical fantasy story with a lot of military minutiae.
Just finished re-reading every one of Modesitt’s Saga of Recluse!
https://www.lemodesittjr.com/the-books/saga-recluce/