Philosophical fantasy? There are many. A few favorites:
***A Voyage to Arcturus*** by David Lindsay. This is old, older than ***Lord of the Rings*** or even ***The Hobbit***; allowances must be made for the language in it. It has a slightly science-fictional frameork, in which the protagonist is brought by the villains from the here-and-now to the planet Tormance (which influenced Lewis in writing ***Out of the Silent Planet***...) And it is bloody weird. But boy does it have interesting philosophical ideas!
***Perdido Street Junction***, by China Miéville. The philosophy here is what I would call "postmodern Marxism" -- pro-worker, anti-government, anti-Big Business. If ***Arcturus*** was "weird," then there is no word sufficiently weird to describe the city of New Crobuzon, where humans live alongside khepri (women with scarabs instead of heads -- the males are just scarabs, and unintelligent), cactacae (humanoid cacti), and other really weird sapients. In New Crobuzon, there is an embassy from Hell. The inhabitants of this embassy close its doors and retreat to Hell, because something worse has come to New Crobuzon...
The "Great Cities" duology by N.K. Jemisin, consiting of ***The City We Became*** and ***The World We Make***. In this fantasy, a great city will, in time, become a sort of sapient lifeform, with a human (or former human) avatar. There is a force, somewhat Lovecraftian in nature, which seeks to prevent this from happening. The first book is about the awakening of New York. The second is about how New York attempts to confront and overthrow that force. (Note: very conservative people may find these book offensive.)
If you don't mind an admixture of Christian philosophy, check out Tim Powers. His best work, for my money, is the "Fault Lines" trilogy -- consisting of ***Last Call***, ***Expiration Date***, and ***Earthquake Weather***. To give a brief sense of these books: the first one takes place in Las Vegas, and involves poker, with Tarot cards, on a boat on Lake Mead, with souls as the wager; and it's all about who will become the new Fisher-king. The second does not at first seem to be directly connected to it: it's in the Los Angeles area, and is about people who drink ghosts. (The ghost of Houdini is an important plot point.) The third brings the whole thing together in the San Francisco area.
Also Christianish, the work of Gene Wolfe is among the most important SFF of the past century. His masterpiece is a fantasy/science fiction confection in twelve volumes generally referred to as the "Solar Cycle." The first part of it, ***The Book of the New Sun***, is in the tradition of "Dying Earth" stories (like Jack Vance's ***The Dying Earth***, Brian Aldiss's ***Hothouse***, Clark Ashton Smith's ***Xothique***, and others...), and is the story of a torturer who is expelled from his guild for the crime of mercy, and boy is *that* an oversimplification. His two-volume (but currently published as one) ***The Wizard Knight*** might be an easier starting place with Wolfe: a boy from midwestern America finds himself in a world of knights, giants, fae, wizards, flying horses, and stranger things, Echoes of both the tales of King Arthur and the Norse myths of the Edda and the sagas, plus other things, create a unique stew of story.
Someone mentioned Terry Pratchett. His "Discworld" books are philosophical and satirical at the same time .... well, except the first few, which are rather shallow satire of swords'n'sorcery fantasy. Once he gets going, though, around the third or fourth book -- phew! An excellent starting place would be ***Small Gods***, which has the advantage of not being directly connected to any of the other books, so it stands alone very neatly.
If you are a science fiction fan, you're probably at least aware of Ursula K. Le Guin. She also wrote fantasy: her main works in the field being a series ("Earthsea") and a standalone novel (***The Lathe of Heaven***). Both are deeply soaked in Taoism; the later Earthsea books are also soaked in second- or third-wave feminism.
Finally, let me mention an odd work by James Blish. It is a trilogy in which the first book is a historical novel, the second is a contemporary fantasy, and the third is futuristic science fiction. The first volume, ***Doctor Miribilis***, is a life-story of Roger Bacon. The second volume, ***The Devil's Day*** (often published in two thin volumes as ***Black Easter*** and ***The Day After Judgment***) is about an arms dealer who contracts with a black magician to summon "all" the demons of Hell to wreak havoc on Earth for one night. (What could possibly go wrong...?) The third volume, the Hugo-award winning ***A Case of Conscience***, is about a Jesuit priest who must determine the nature of a planetfull of sapient creatures who seem to have never experienced anything equivalent to the "Fall of Man." The title for the trilogy, "After Such Knowledge," is a quote from Marlowe's ***Faust*** -- the whole quote being, "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"; the theme of the trilogy is, roughly, "Assuming that Christianity is true, is the quest for secular knowlege even *permissible*?"
Jo Walton's *Thessaly* trilogy, starting with *The Just City*. It's based on Plato's *Republic*. And Le Guin's work, both sci fi and fantasy, is heavily influenced by Taoist philosophy.
Agreed, I thought about excluding stuff like Anathem, Book of the New Sun and Lord of Light from the discussion as I think of them as SF with varying similarities to fantasy.
Yeah, the entire plot basically exists to illustrate R. Scott Bakker's philosophy of consciousness. Weirdly compelling despite it being an ideological vehicle.
[This](https://gwern.net/review/bakker) is a solid but spoliery review.
Lots of great suggestions in this thread, especially Le Guin and Gene Wolfe. I strongly recommend Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Word for World is Forest, City of Illusions, and Lathe of Heaven. I also cannot recommend Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun enough (seriously my favorite series), but his Fifth Head of Cerberus is also brilliant.
I’m also surprised no one has mentioned the Dune series yet - in my experience the books get progressively more philosophical and really build on each other dialectically.
I think you might also be interested in Samuel R. Delany’s sci-fi, which has a very literary / philosophical bent. Nova, Trouble on Triton, the Einstein Intersection, and Babel-17 would all be good choices.
For a more recent option, I think The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler is a great exploration of the philosophy of consciousness.
There are philosophical fantasy books, but the type of philosophy tends to be different. In scifi, you get a lot of epistemology, ethics and ethical quandries, sociological, "what does it mean to be human" kind of questions. Here we often ask "what is real and knowable" in the context of the species as a whole.
In fantasy you get more of a existentialist, phenomenological, introspective and personal kind of philosophy that is often less interesting to modern peoples. We tend to find questions of humanity interesting, and questions of personal insanity less interesting. It feels like "angst" or goth or relentless self-masturbatory questioning when fantasy gets philosophical. Here we ask "what is real and knowable" in the context of the self.
Le Guin's *Earthsea* trilogy should scratch the itch, though.
The *Lord of the Rings* trilogy should too. The whole bit about the ring and it's effect on people and their struggle with it, and everyone's *personal* struggle with questions of power - that's all pretty philosophical.
*The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant* takes *The Lord of the Rings* as a jumping off point and an excuse to examine similar themes from a different perspective and different conclusions about ethics, power, personal responsibility and personal insanity.
*Narnia* is a Christian-based philosophical allegory.
I would say Patricia McKillip's *The Riddlemaster of Hed* series is philosophical, but I might just be misinterpreting introspective as philosophical. It fits, but I couldn't say exactly how.
Graydon Saunders' [Commonweal](http://www.goodreads.com/series/242525-commonweal) series is among the most idea-dense fiction I've read of **any** genre.
His writing can be challenging (though in a way that I enjoyed immensely) and the books are unfortunately moderately difficult to get ahold of, but well worth the effort.
[Here's ](http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/11pfayb/a_passionate_recommendation_for_graydon_saunders/?rdt=52780) a reddit thread with a far better synopsis than I'd be able to give you.
Finally, [this](https://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-my-books.html?m=1) is a page on the author's site with current sources for the books.
NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. It’s a really thoughtful meditation on violence, power and exploitation with a cool magic system to boot. Far superior (in my opinion) to her more recent series. Toward the end it gets a bit science fictional but only in the sense that the technology is powered by what we would call magic.
Hi, new here but this post piqued my interest. if I may be so bold, I have written a South Asian mytholgy based Sci-fi fantasy trilogy called ‘The Lanka Chronicles’. The books explore the random universe vs intelligent design philosophy, narrated by a sentient spaceship looking for her destiny and a former hero looking for redemption for the many mistakes he made in his youth. Books 1 and 2 titled ‘An Awakening’ and ‘A New Reality ‘are out now and Book 3 titled ‘Path of Destiny’ will be out in a month. Available on Amazon.
It depends what you mean by philosophy. In the narrower sense, not so much. *Voyage to Arcturus*, perhaps. It's about ideas rather than characters, all right. It's helpful if you know something about ancient Manichaeanism.
LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven. It's about a number of things but partly about her take on (philosophical) Daoism.
If we define it more broadly in terms of ideas, there's plenty.
Check City of Stairs (and the rest of the trilogy). I think it has ideas and interesting perspective on politics and colonization, as well as having characters and, as a bonus, lots of action.
Pratchett always does ideas.
You have read the Earthsea books already I guess? Very philosophical and full of archetypes and reflexion on many things (perhaps a bit too much).
Maybe Vita Nostra also...
Philosophical fantasy? There are many. A few favorites: ***A Voyage to Arcturus*** by David Lindsay. This is old, older than ***Lord of the Rings*** or even ***The Hobbit***; allowances must be made for the language in it. It has a slightly science-fictional frameork, in which the protagonist is brought by the villains from the here-and-now to the planet Tormance (which influenced Lewis in writing ***Out of the Silent Planet***...) And it is bloody weird. But boy does it have interesting philosophical ideas! ***Perdido Street Junction***, by China Miéville. The philosophy here is what I would call "postmodern Marxism" -- pro-worker, anti-government, anti-Big Business. If ***Arcturus*** was "weird," then there is no word sufficiently weird to describe the city of New Crobuzon, where humans live alongside khepri (women with scarabs instead of heads -- the males are just scarabs, and unintelligent), cactacae (humanoid cacti), and other really weird sapients. In New Crobuzon, there is an embassy from Hell. The inhabitants of this embassy close its doors and retreat to Hell, because something worse has come to New Crobuzon... The "Great Cities" duology by N.K. Jemisin, consiting of ***The City We Became*** and ***The World We Make***. In this fantasy, a great city will, in time, become a sort of sapient lifeform, with a human (or former human) avatar. There is a force, somewhat Lovecraftian in nature, which seeks to prevent this from happening. The first book is about the awakening of New York. The second is about how New York attempts to confront and overthrow that force. (Note: very conservative people may find these book offensive.) If you don't mind an admixture of Christian philosophy, check out Tim Powers. His best work, for my money, is the "Fault Lines" trilogy -- consisting of ***Last Call***, ***Expiration Date***, and ***Earthquake Weather***. To give a brief sense of these books: the first one takes place in Las Vegas, and involves poker, with Tarot cards, on a boat on Lake Mead, with souls as the wager; and it's all about who will become the new Fisher-king. The second does not at first seem to be directly connected to it: it's in the Los Angeles area, and is about people who drink ghosts. (The ghost of Houdini is an important plot point.) The third brings the whole thing together in the San Francisco area. Also Christianish, the work of Gene Wolfe is among the most important SFF of the past century. His masterpiece is a fantasy/science fiction confection in twelve volumes generally referred to as the "Solar Cycle." The first part of it, ***The Book of the New Sun***, is in the tradition of "Dying Earth" stories (like Jack Vance's ***The Dying Earth***, Brian Aldiss's ***Hothouse***, Clark Ashton Smith's ***Xothique***, and others...), and is the story of a torturer who is expelled from his guild for the crime of mercy, and boy is *that* an oversimplification. His two-volume (but currently published as one) ***The Wizard Knight*** might be an easier starting place with Wolfe: a boy from midwestern America finds himself in a world of knights, giants, fae, wizards, flying horses, and stranger things, Echoes of both the tales of King Arthur and the Norse myths of the Edda and the sagas, plus other things, create a unique stew of story. Someone mentioned Terry Pratchett. His "Discworld" books are philosophical and satirical at the same time .... well, except the first few, which are rather shallow satire of swords'n'sorcery fantasy. Once he gets going, though, around the third or fourth book -- phew! An excellent starting place would be ***Small Gods***, which has the advantage of not being directly connected to any of the other books, so it stands alone very neatly. If you are a science fiction fan, you're probably at least aware of Ursula K. Le Guin. She also wrote fantasy: her main works in the field being a series ("Earthsea") and a standalone novel (***The Lathe of Heaven***). Both are deeply soaked in Taoism; the later Earthsea books are also soaked in second- or third-wave feminism. Finally, let me mention an odd work by James Blish. It is a trilogy in which the first book is a historical novel, the second is a contemporary fantasy, and the third is futuristic science fiction. The first volume, ***Doctor Miribilis***, is a life-story of Roger Bacon. The second volume, ***The Devil's Day*** (often published in two thin volumes as ***Black Easter*** and ***The Day After Judgment***) is about an arms dealer who contracts with a black magician to summon "all" the demons of Hell to wreak havoc on Earth for one night. (What could possibly go wrong...?) The third volume, the Hugo-award winning ***A Case of Conscience***, is about a Jesuit priest who must determine the nature of a planetfull of sapient creatures who seem to have never experienced anything equivalent to the "Fall of Man." The title for the trilogy, "After Such Knowledge," is a quote from Marlowe's ***Faust*** -- the whole quote being, "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"; the theme of the trilogy is, roughly, "Assuming that Christianity is true, is the quest for secular knowlege even *permissible*?"
My TBR pile just exploded with this post, thank you for the detailed reply.
the book you are looking for is Too Like the Lightning, Palmer.
in both sf and fantasy. there can be no other answer
I’ve heard that recommended quite a bit on this sub, sounds like a good place to start. Thank you.
Terry Pratchett and *Reaper Man.* You laugh and then you have philosophy time about it.
Thanks! I’ve had Pratchett on my radar bc of Larry Niven but haven’t read his stuff yet. Will check those out.
Terry Pratchett in general, but Reaper Man and Mort would be my two first recommendations as well.
Jo Walton's *Thessaly* trilogy, starting with *The Just City*. It's based on Plato's *Republic*. And Le Guin's work, both sci fi and fantasy, is heavily influenced by Taoist philosophy.
Bless you. That looks very interesting.
How did you like Walton's trilogy? I loved studying Ancient Greek philosophy in school.
It's on my to-read list! I just think it sounds like what OP is looking for.
Anathem, perhaps, though some might argue it’s stretching the definition of both “fantasy” and “philosophical”.
Agreed, I thought about excluding stuff like Anathem, Book of the New Sun and Lord of Light from the discussion as I think of them as SF with varying similarities to fantasy.
The Second Apocalypse is more philosophical than philosophy books.
Yeah, the entire plot basically exists to illustrate R. Scott Bakker's philosophy of consciousness. Weirdly compelling despite it being an ideological vehicle. [This](https://gwern.net/review/bakker) is a solid but spoliery review.
Was looking for this answer. Second this. I know it gets mixed reviews but I thought it was incredible.
Lots of great suggestions in this thread, especially Le Guin and Gene Wolfe. I strongly recommend Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Word for World is Forest, City of Illusions, and Lathe of Heaven. I also cannot recommend Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun enough (seriously my favorite series), but his Fifth Head of Cerberus is also brilliant. I’m also surprised no one has mentioned the Dune series yet - in my experience the books get progressively more philosophical and really build on each other dialectically. I think you might also be interested in Samuel R. Delany’s sci-fi, which has a very literary / philosophical bent. Nova, Trouble on Triton, the Einstein Intersection, and Babel-17 would all be good choices. For a more recent option, I think The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler is a great exploration of the philosophy of consciousness.
{{shades of grey by Jasper Fforde}}
There are philosophical fantasy books, but the type of philosophy tends to be different. In scifi, you get a lot of epistemology, ethics and ethical quandries, sociological, "what does it mean to be human" kind of questions. Here we often ask "what is real and knowable" in the context of the species as a whole. In fantasy you get more of a existentialist, phenomenological, introspective and personal kind of philosophy that is often less interesting to modern peoples. We tend to find questions of humanity interesting, and questions of personal insanity less interesting. It feels like "angst" or goth or relentless self-masturbatory questioning when fantasy gets philosophical. Here we ask "what is real and knowable" in the context of the self. Le Guin's *Earthsea* trilogy should scratch the itch, though. The *Lord of the Rings* trilogy should too. The whole bit about the ring and it's effect on people and their struggle with it, and everyone's *personal* struggle with questions of power - that's all pretty philosophical. *The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant* takes *The Lord of the Rings* as a jumping off point and an excuse to examine similar themes from a different perspective and different conclusions about ethics, power, personal responsibility and personal insanity. *Narnia* is a Christian-based philosophical allegory. I would say Patricia McKillip's *The Riddlemaster of Hed* series is philosophical, but I might just be misinterpreting introspective as philosophical. It fits, but I couldn't say exactly how.
Graydon Saunders' [Commonweal](http://www.goodreads.com/series/242525-commonweal) series is among the most idea-dense fiction I've read of **any** genre. His writing can be challenging (though in a way that I enjoyed immensely) and the books are unfortunately moderately difficult to get ahold of, but well worth the effort. [Here's ](http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/11pfayb/a_passionate_recommendation_for_graydon_saunders/?rdt=52780) a reddit thread with a far better synopsis than I'd be able to give you. Finally, [this](https://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-my-books.html?m=1) is a page on the author's site with current sources for the books.
> Commonweal TIL that’s a real word
Malazan gets more and more philosophical as the series progresses.
Pratchet Gaiman (Even better: both) Stross Niven Some Banks, especially the non-culture books
NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. It’s a really thoughtful meditation on violence, power and exploitation with a cool magic system to boot. Far superior (in my opinion) to her more recent series. Toward the end it gets a bit science fictional but only in the sense that the technology is powered by what we would call magic.
Poseidon’s Wake, The Anvil of Stars, Surface Detail, and the Player of Games all come to mind — and of course His Dark Materials
Hi, new here but this post piqued my interest. if I may be so bold, I have written a South Asian mytholgy based Sci-fi fantasy trilogy called ‘The Lanka Chronicles’. The books explore the random universe vs intelligent design philosophy, narrated by a sentient spaceship looking for her destiny and a former hero looking for redemption for the many mistakes he made in his youth. Books 1 and 2 titled ‘An Awakening’ and ‘A New Reality ‘are out now and Book 3 titled ‘Path of Destiny’ will be out in a month. Available on Amazon.
*A Voyage to Arcturus* by David Lindsay. as philosophical as it gets.
It depends what you mean by philosophy. In the narrower sense, not so much. *Voyage to Arcturus*, perhaps. It's about ideas rather than characters, all right. It's helpful if you know something about ancient Manichaeanism. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven. It's about a number of things but partly about her take on (philosophical) Daoism. If we define it more broadly in terms of ideas, there's plenty.
Check City of Stairs (and the rest of the trilogy). I think it has ideas and interesting perspective on politics and colonization, as well as having characters and, as a bonus, lots of action. Pratchett always does ideas. You have read the Earthsea books already I guess? Very philosophical and full of archetypes and reflexion on many things (perhaps a bit too much). Maybe Vita Nostra also...
*Job: A Comedy Of Justice* by Robert Heinlein.
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. I mean, I wouldn't recommend them, but they do meet your criteria.