a16z Infra Reading List

Curator: the infrastructure team at a16z, published as a standing web page rather than a post — “heavy on sci-fi,” in their own description. 33 entries spanning 130 individual titles, graded into tiers.

Source: a16z-infra.github.io/reading-list, shared by @a16z on November 18, 2025 with a tier-list graphic of author names. The page carries every title, author and year, and the team’s reasoning.

Most entries are not single books — 18 are series (The Expanse runs 9 volumes, Banks’s Culture 10) and 11 are an author with selected works.

Errors in the source, recorded rather than silently corrected. a16z’s page dates Heretics of Dune to 1982; it was published in 1984, which is also the only year that fits between God Emperor (1981) and Chapterhouse (1985). Inhibitor Phase (2021) is the one title on the page with no Wikipedia link. The Culture volumes are listed slightly out of chronological order (Use of Weapons 1990 before The State of the Art 1989), and Chasm City (2001) is listed last in the Revelation Space entry rather than in sequence.

The entry shapes matter for reading this list. A [series] line is followed by its volumes in publication order. An [author] line has no title of its own — the list is recommending the writer, and the works beneath are the page’s own selection, not a complete bibliography.

Sci-fi — Must reads (S tier)

a16z’s own framing: where to start if you haven’t read much science fiction.

Dune series — Frank Herbert (6 volumes)

• Dune (1965)
• Dune Messiah (1969)
• Children of Dune (1976)
• God Emperor of Dune (1981)
• Heretics of Dune (1982 as the list prints it — the book is actually 1984)
• Chapterhouse: Dune (1985)

Philip K Dick — selected works (6)

• The Minority Report (1956)
• The Man in the High Castle (1962)
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (1966)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
• Ubik (1969)

Culture series — Iain M. Banks (10 volumes)

• Consider Phlebas (1987)
• The Player of Games (1988)
• Use of Weapons (1990)
• The State of the Art (1989)
• Excession (1996)
• Inversions (1998)
• Look to Windward (2000)
• Matter (2008)
• Surface Detail (2010)
• The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)

Sprawl trilogy — William Gibson (3 volumes)

• Neuromancer (1984)
• Count Zero (1986)
• Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series — Douglas Adams (5 volumes)

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
• Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984)
• Mostly Harmless (1992)

Ender’s Saga series — Orson Scott Card (4 volumes)

• Ender’s Game (1985)
• Speaker for the Dead (1986)
• Xenocide (1991)
• Children of the Mind (1996)

Sci-fi — Classics (A tier)

The field’s founders, listed by AUTHOR rather than by title — the page names selected works under each.

Isaac Asimov — selected works (3)

• Foundation series (1942-1953)
• Robot series (1940-1995)
• Galactic Empire series (1945-1952)

Robert Heinlein — selected works (3)

• Starship Troopers (1959)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

HG Wells — selected works (4)

• The Time Machine (1895)
• The War of the Worlds (1898)
• The Invisible Man (1897)
• The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

Jules Verne — selected works (4)

• Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
• From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Ursula K. Le Guin — selected works (3)

• A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
• The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
• The Dispossessed (1974)

Arthur C. Clarke — selected works (3)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Rendezvous with Rama (1973)
• The Fountains of Paradise (1979)

Sci-fi — Very good books (A tier)

Modern heavyweights.

Neal Stephenson — selected works (5)

• Snow Crash (1992)
• The Diamond Age (1995)
• Cryptonomicon (1999)
• Anathem (2008)
• Seveneves (2015)

Remembrance of Earth’s Past series — Liu Cixin (3 volumes)

• The Three-Body Problem (2008)
• The Dark Forest (2008)
• Death’s End (2010)

Zones of Thought series — Vernor Vinge (3 volumes)

• A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
• A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
• The Children of the Sky (2011)

Takeshi Kovacs series — Richard K. Morgan (3 volumes)

• Altered Carbon (2002)
• Broken Angels (2003)
• Woken Furies (2005)

The Expanse series — James S.A. Corey (9 volumes)

• Leviathan Wakes (2011)
• Caliban’s War (2012)
• Abaddon’s Gate (2013)
• Cibola Burn (2014)
• Nemesis Games (2015)
• Babylon’s Ashes (2016)
• Persepolis Rising (2017)
• Tiamat’s Wrath (2019)
• Leviathan Falls (2021)

Sci-fi — Also worth reading (B tier)

Recent series worth the time without being canon.

Red Rising series — Pierce Brown (6 volumes)

• Red Rising (2014)
• Golden Son (2015)
• Morning Star (2016)
• Iron Gold (2018)
• Dark Age (2019)
• Light Bringer (2023)

Revelation Space series — Alastair Reynolds (8 volumes, in two sub-series plus a standalone)

The Inhibitor Sequence:

• Revelation Space (2000)
• Redemption Ark (2002)
• Absolution Gap (2003)
• Inhibitor Phase (2021) — the only title on the whole list with no Wikipedia link of its own

The Dreyfus Emergencies:

• The Prefect (2007) — retitled Aurora Rising in 2017
• Elysium Fire (2018)
• Machine Vendetta (2024)

Standalone, same universe:

• Chasm City (2001) — the list places it last, not in publication order

Imperial Radch series — Ann Leckie (3 volumes)

• Ancillary Justice (2013)
• Ancillary Sword (2014)
• Ancillary Mercy (2015)

Children of Time series — Adrian Tchaikovsky (3 volumes)

• Children of Time (2015)
• Children of Ruin (2019)
• Children of Memory (2022)

Teixcalaan series — Arkady Martine (2 volumes)

• A Memory Called Empire (2019)
• A Desolation Called Peace (2021)

Permutation City — Greg Egan

Fantasy

The Lord of the Rings series — J.R.R. Tolkien (3 volumes)

• The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
• The Two Towers (1954)
• The Return of the King (1955)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez — selected works (5)

• One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
• The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
• Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
• The General in His Labyrinth (1989)
• Of Love and Other Demons (1994)

Haruki Murakami — selected works (4)

• Norwegian Wood (1987)
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994)
• Kafka on the Shore (2002)
• 1Q84 (2009)

The Book of the New Sun series — Gene Wolfe (4 volumes)

• The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)
• The Claw of the Conciliator (1981)
• The Sword of the Lictor (1982)
• The Citadel of the Autarch (1983)

Hyperion Cantos — Dan Simmons (4 volumes)

• Hyperion (1989)
• The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
• Endymion (1996)
• The Rise of Endymion (1997)

The Baroque Cycle — Neal Stephenson (3 volumes)

• Quicksilver (2003)
• The Confusion (2004)
• The System of the World (2004)

UNSONG — Scott Alexander

Neil Gaiman — selected works (4)

• Good Omens (1990)
• Stardust (2000)
• American Gods (2001)
• Anansi Boys (2005)

Non-fiction

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI — Fei-Fei Li

Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO — Satoru Iwata

Every book on this list

18 books; ✓ marks the ones Kyle has read.

Fantasy

• 1Q84 — Haruki Murakami
• Endymion (Simmons novel) — Dan Simmons
• Hyperion (Simmons novel) — Dan Simmons
• Stardust — Neil Gaiman

Sci-fi / Very good books

• Tiamat’s Wrath — James S.A. Corey

Sci-fi — Must reads

• Excession — Iain M. Banks
• Inversions — Iain M. Banks
• Matter (Banks) — Iain M. Banks
• Neuromancer — William Gibson
• Ubik — Philip K. Dick
• Xenocide — Orson Scott Card

Sci-fi — Very good books

• Abaddon’s Gate — James S.A. Corey
• Anathem — Neal Stephenson
• Babylon’s Ashes — James S.A. Corey
• Caliban’s War — James S.A. Corey
• Death’s End — Liu Cixin
• Seveneves — Neal Stephenson

Sci-fi, Very good books (A tier)

• Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson

Connections

• a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates the list.