Maybe Iain M. Banks' Culture series, if you're not familiar with his work already. The books are generally standalobe stories, but there are some recurring side characters and references to earlier books. Consider Phlebas is the first one I think.

I suggest the Commonwealth's saga by Peter F. Hamilton (Pandora's star, Judas unchained).

Simmons' books "Illum" and "Odessey" are pretty great and feel like the same universe

• Octavia Butler
• Ursula K Le Guin

E: Markdown

I didn't really like the Hyperion series much myself, but both Dune and Hyperion are sci-fi with religious elements. Maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Blindsight by Peter watts.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,” recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist – an informational topologist with half his mind gone – as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. --Wikipedia

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. If you like it (and I think you will) there are more in the series.

If you're looking for something epic but self-contained I really liked "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson. If you want something that's got a similar level of art to Hyperion I'd suggest "This is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

I believe the most popular PKD is Man in the High Castle, my favorite is Ubik. But to be honest, if you disliked Do Androids, PKD may just not be your thing.

Hmmm… maybe next go for something a little less ponderous, try some Neal Stephenson, maybe Diamond Age.

Dang are you me? Galapagos is one of my favorite Vonneguts. I recently finished Hyperion cantos too, and am now on book three of the Xeelee sequence which so far have been very good and give similar vibes as Hyperion.

Someone else mentioned Blindsight which is maybe a top three for me. Different tonally than the Hyperion Cantos but still excellent. Same goes for Children of Time.

Thanks y'all, I'm saving this post for all the good recommendations in there :)

Some of my suggestions:

• Forever War - due to time dilation this story follows combatants that spend decades at war while on earth hundreds of years pass (inspired by the Vietnam War).
• Stanger in a Strange Land - Story of a human raised by Martians coming to earth. Has similar religious notes as dune and hyperion, but also has a weird Ayn Rand vibe (in my opinion, also not necessarily in a bad way).

Give Philip K Dick a chance: Start with 'Ubik'. I think we all need a little bit of Dick in our lives, to broaden our horizons.

The Aubrey-Maturin series, not sci-fi but just about the best novels there are.

Maybe Foundation series, original 3.

Against The Day

Inherent Vice

When Women Were Dragons

Circe

Annihilation

Sue Burke's Semiosis was an interesting read (go in blind is my recommendation)

Dogs of war

To sleep in a sea of stars

Expeditionary Force

Three body problem

In the same sort of vain like Hyperion are the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. He does the same sort of excellent work of world building and I found both series very comparable and intriguing. Also would recommend the Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen, very much a similar feel.

Haven't seen these mentioned here, but the "Old Man's War" series by John Scalzi is great as are "The Expanse" books by James SA Corey. I'd highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn't lose the reader or become overly technical.

I highly highly recommend Old Man's War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you've seen the TV series... the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she's an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).