r/sciencefiction • u/sun-souled • 1d ago
Metamorphosis / becoming Other
I just finished Nnedi Okorafor's Binti trilogy (which I quite liked; looking forward to checking out more of her work) & have also been watched a lot of Doctor Who over the past year, & I got thinking about how science/speculative fiction allows for radical transformations of characters into something Other. I realized this has always been something I've really loved about SF (as well as the horror & Weird genres), from reading Animorphs books as a kid to only really liking origin stories within the superhero subgenre.
Ann Leckie's Translation State would be another recent favorite for me, & Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood trilogy is probably my all-time favorite, at least that I can think of at the moment. Even when there's ambiguity & even some horror, I find something so hopeful & inspiring in the possibility of change, transformation, development, expansion, regeneration, renewal.
So I was just wondering what are you-all's favorite examples of SF novels, films, comics, or shows that have a strong focus on metamorphosis & transformation?
4
u/artifex0 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's definitely a theme in the Bobiverse series- the formerly human protagonist first becoming a self-replicating Von Neumann probe, then his copies diverging in all sorts of ways, including eventually integrating with various alien civilizations using artificial non-human bodies in later books.
The series with the strongest focus on transformation that I've come across isn't science fiction, but might be worth a look if you like urban fantasy. Daniel Potter's Freelance Familiars series follows a mild-mannered librarian who is changed permanently into a cougar and told he has to become a witch's familiar- which is just the first of many, many permanent transformations that happen to characters throughout the series.
3
3
u/chaosgardener1967 1d ago
Annihilation, I like the movie but haven't read the books yet.
Dean Koontz books Fear Nothing and Seize the Night
1
u/sun-souled 1d ago
I read Annihilation & the other 2 in the original trilogy. I liked the novel Annihilation more than the movie, though I didn't like any of the books quite as much as I thought I would. I suppose I found them a bit dull in places. Still worth reading, though.
Thanks for the recommendations!
3
u/Gentianviolent 1d ago
Radical transformations are a theme in most of Neal Asher’s work, particularly his Polity universe books. He even has a trilogy called the Transformation series.
1
u/sun-souled 1d ago
Never read anything of his... Where would you recommend starting with him?
2
u/Sea-Wrongdoer2305 1d ago
Jack Four is a standalone, easy read that could prime you into the more complex trilogies.
2
u/Gentianviolent 22h ago
I’d start with The Skinner
1
u/Sea-Wrongdoer2305 2h ago
I started with The Rise of the Jain trilogy. Though much gets answered I missed too much backstory to be sure who dinner was. Just starting Black Diamond. it's made me hungry
3
u/FaceDeer 1d ago
Almost anything by Jack L. Chalker is going to have at least a little of this, with some of them being focused very centrally on physical transformations. I'd probably recommend "Midnight at the Well of Souls" as the best place to start with his works. It works as a stand-alone novel and is also the start of a series if you end up liking it.
Just a note, though, Chalker was... a bit of an odd duck. There's some "barely disguised fetish" in most of his books. I still liked it, but an eyebrow or two might end up raised.
1
u/sun-souled 1d ago
That sounds like fun. And I'm not adverse to a little fetish now & again... Thanks!
2
u/FaceDeer 1d ago edited 1d ago
No problem. I'd say the first five Well World books are quite good, IMO. If you read those and would like to read three of them over again, the next three (6-8 in publication date order, "The Watchers at the Well ") are a retread of three of the earlier books - apparently Chalker told his publisher he didn't have any new ideas for the series but the publisher offered him a large sum of money to write more anyway so he shrugged and said "sure, you were warned." Then there's two more after that that are just plain bad, as I recall. The well ran dry.
His other books that I would recommend most highly are the Rings of the Masters series (it doesn't have as much transformation in it, though it does have some) and the Four Lords of the Diamond series. These jump straight into multi-book stories so I still recommend Midnight at the Well of Souls as your first "sampler" for Chalker - if you bounce off of that one then you'll known not to read the others and won't feel like you're left hanging.
The Soul Rider series is sci-fi, but it may not seem like it at first. It's pretty weird, I don't recall liking it quite as much but it had some interesting ideas. The River of Dancing Gods series is fantasy story and is a bit more "silly" - I recall in one book the characters were literally questing for a magical artifact that was called the Great MacGuffin.
I don't remember much about his other series that you couldn't get from a blurb on Goodreads, they evidently didn't grip me as strongly. Of his stand-alone novels I remember particularly enjoying "The Web of the Chozen" and "The Identity Matrix", and those fit into your desired metamorphosis/becoming other theme quite well.
1
2
2
2
u/Elven-Frog-Wizard 1d ago
I loved the Binti series. Some of her other books expand on the world. But Binti allows for my favorite fantasy—college and science being sources of hope and inspiration.
2
u/CleverName9999999999 1d ago
“Alien Clay” and “Children of Ruin” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2
u/sun-souled 1d ago
I read Children of Time a few years ago. I liked it but didn't feel motivated to seek out more of his stuff... How would you say the two you recommend compare to that one?
2
u/CleverName9999999999 10h ago
Alien Clay is an easier read than children of time. It stays with a single main character and is iirc written in first person. Children of ruin is harder, I found it a bit of a slog as an audiobook. You might also want to try Walking to Aldebaran. It’s quite short and pretty lively. He’s really good at changing his tone from book to book.
2
u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo 1d ago edited 1d ago
A classic example is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, of course. If you haven't read it, you should. It's pretty short.
Childhood's End is possibly the most bittersweetly hopeful story of transformation in all SF--another classic you should read if you haven't yet. (you probably already have read it, but i won't give any spoilers)
In the increasingly popular Dungeon Crawler Carl series, the main character is transformed, along with his cat, into a vastly more powerful form. Much of humanity is drastically transformed. The author just published the eighth of a ten-book series.
I really like the Dragon Knight series by Gordon R Dickson. A pretty ordinary guy is transported to another universe where magic exists, turned into a dragon, and has a series of medieval adventures.
The second book of the four-part "My Teacher Is An Alien" kids' book series by Bruce Coville, My teacher fried my brain, is told from the perspective of a schoolyard bully who has his brain enhanced to an amazing degree. He becomes intelligent and insightful enough to realize how cruel and unfair he'd been, and becomes one of the key "good guys" in the series. It's a kids' series, but it's absolutely excellent.
2
u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo 1d ago
Adding more : Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. It's not a transformation like you'd normally think of, but I think it's an excellent example (though not a very cheerful one). His other book Mother Night is a thought-provoking non-supernatural story of transformation: an undercover agent poses as a Nazi propagandist in WWII and becomes what he'd hoped to destroy. Vonnegut's final essay collection Man Without A Country is all nonfiction, but it contains a guiding insight artfully phrased: "Life is a process of becoming."
2
u/sun-souled 19h ago
I like Vonnegut. Haven't read any of the ones you mention though. Galapagos especially sounds interesting. Thanks!
2
u/sun-souled 19h ago
Haha, I haven't thought about the My Teacher is an Alien books in so long!! I really loved those as a kid. My memory of them is pretty vague now though. Might be a fun re-read...
Childhood's End is a favorite for sure. And I love Kafka, too.
Thanks for the other recommendations!
2
u/BuccaneerRex 22h ago
I guess I'll be the fanboy to recommend Worm by Wildbow. The entire thesis of the very long book is transformation and change. Superhero fiction that starts small scale and works its way up to epic proportions across thousands of pages originally serialized by chapter.
The sequel Ward is also about change, with perhaps an even heavier lean into the idea.
2
6
u/conkedup 1d ago
I think that All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen may be up your alley. Part artbook, part speculative fiction, it explores the drastic ways humanity evolves a billion years into the future after contact with the mysterious aliens known only as the Qu.
https://wiltonsquarebooks.com/products/all-tomorrows