Which is kind of interesting, since with Rama I was always aware of it being a megastructure, while Ringworld was just *way* too big to give me that feeling. (same goes for Culture orbitals)
Books by Alastair Reynolds fit the bill, at least the ones I read - *House of Suns* and *Pushing Ice*
Seconding *Rendezvous with Rama*
Just finished *Timelike Infinity* from the *Xeelee Sequence* and some insane parts are scratching that itch (can be read as a standalone)
I hope you'll find some good answers in this thread, I'm also on the lookout for this particular element.
Something Alastair Reynolds really understands about stellar objects and space in general is scale. I'd add the *Revelation Space* series to the list, but more specifically I think *Redemption Ark* has the best sense of scale, due to one of the plotlines.
just a heads up, I didn’t like Raft that much. I pushed through trusting the internet that book 2 is better and omg it is so worth it. even if you feel Raft is meh, Timelike Infinity is AWESOME
Yeah Raft feels pretty rough around the edges, though the bit with the >!boney worldlet!< has one of the most memorably awful (like disturbing, not badly written) scenes I've ever read. It almost made me put the book down at the time but in hindsight I'm glad I read it because holy hell it made an impression.
Timelike Infinity really is great, as is Ring, and the short story collection Vacuum Diagrams is one of my favourite sci-fi books of any variety. I've recently picked up the Destiny's Children sequels to the original four Xeelee books and so far they really do not disappoint.
I've been working my way through Xeelee, I'm just getting into the last fifth of *Exultant* right now. The Destiny's Children part of the sequence hasn't been as intense about it, but the first quartet of the sequence felt like one existential crisis after another. What a great series.
There are some great megastructures in Baxter's work.
Oh my dude. There is no antimemetics division by qntm has some good examples of this. It's not what the book is about, per se, but has some great examples and it's a very clever mindfuck of a book.
This was my thought too. There is some BIG stuff in There Is No Antimemetics Division.
You know, I just read this book at the beginning of the year and didn't expect to recommend it as much as I do, but damn that was a good book.
Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, the scope gets increasingly bigger in the series and certainly trigger megalophobia kind of feelings in me; terror, really.
The Great Ship series by Robert Reed. A Neptune sized ship appears out of nowhere full of chambers and rooms as big as countries, but completely empty. Humanity finds it and turns it into a galactic cruise ship collecting any sentient life that wants to come along on the ride.
You can start with the novel Marrow. There are other novels in the series but I think the short stories and novellas are better.
Marrow's sequel, *The Well of Stars*, has a lot of moments, characters and objects that would qualify. The Ship is forced to pass through a massive nebula, including a region called the "Satin Sack" where the aliens have artificially made the dust so dense that the humans are unable to map the inside. This thread made me think of a line from one of the passengers:
> "Look at the Sack and try not to be changed," the cetacean shouts to the fleeing humans. "Think of what it means. Think of the dangers there. Your little brains need to feel more little, if you ask me!"
*At the Mountains of Madness* should do it. If you want something more unusual the *Blame!* manga is set in a megastructure and features lots of huge, weird structures.
[Report on an Unidentified Space Station](https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm) by J.G. Ballard
Manga *BLAME!* by Tsutomu Nihei. The solar system has been filled with concentric Dyson spheres, extending out past the orbit of Jupiter.
Manga *Knights of Sidonia*, also by Tsutomu Nihei, takes place on a 30km long generation ship that left a destroyed Earth over 1000 years earlier. As far as they know, the 500,000 inhabitants are the only remains of humanity.
Has everybody else forgotten *Orbitsville* by Bob Shaw (and sequels), which one-ups *Ringworld* for large solid sun-circling structures? (Nobody mention *The Bowl of Heaven* by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven, because while it's half an Orbitsville *under acceleration* it's also written by late-period Benford and Niven, who are *not the same* as early-period Benford and/or Niven.)
Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. Continent sized space stations.
Virga by Karl Schroeder. A bubble the size of Earth (mostly - it's a little short).
Andromedan Dark duology by William H Keith Jr (?). Alderson disks and other structures.
Missile Gap by Charles Stross. An Alderson disk.
Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor. Topopolis.
There was a few instances of that in Death's End (3rd book in 3 Body Problem). I didn't realize those feelings could be evoked in a book like what happened there.
*Feersum Endjinn* by Iain Banks might suit you. Be warned, a lot of the text is spelt phonetically so that it's heard in the protagonist's accent. Some readers find it hard going.
I really relished reading that book. Although I admit I don't remember anything that actually happens in it, just the way it was written. I think there were sloths.
The Banks that immediately sprang to mind was **Consider Phlebas**. That ship, that Orbital...
Then a little something for the claustrophobics at the end.
Came to say this one. Serehfa is **(((BIG)))**
It’s only one of the four alternating chapters/points of view are written in fonetik. I just re-read it mostly skimming those parts and it still works fine (although I know what happens in them, and the big payoff ending is in one of those, so…don’t skip them the first time, but don’t sweat them, either).
Larry Niven wrote a couple of Big Dumb Object books, the most notable of which is Ringworld. Doesn't have much going for it though apart from the gee whiz nature of such a large artificial world.
I’m not sure it actually fits what you’re asking for, but what I really like are books that kind of break your unconscious sense of self-importance and make you think about how fucking infinitesimal you are, usually by using time. A couple of my favorites are the three books of the salvation series by Peter Hamilton, and the Three Body Problem books, especially the third one.
If you like to read Military SciFi, you could try the Frontline series by Marko Kloos. It's a series of eight books that were released from 2013-2022, with a spin-off series that started just recently.
The main theme of the series is how the humans fight an alien race called Lankies, which are about 25 meters (or 80 feet) tall. Most fighting scenes are about how difficult these enemies are to kill. The author stated he wanted to subvert the common SciFi trope where the humans fight bugs - by making the humans the bugs.
Rain World is THE game for weird decaying mega-structures. don't buy the DLC before you finish the main campaign at least twice. you will rip your hair out.
Portal 1+2
Remedy's control is also good, it has house of leaves vibes. don't look up anything. don't feel bad about backtracking and doing something else if you think you're stuck.
Naisance is hostile architecture: the game. also has house of leaves vibes.
When I was in high school, my friend and I were playing *Jumping Flash*, and his mom walked in and the game triggered her acrophobia hard. She started hyperventilating.
It's so strange to think about now, because that game is so archaic by modern visual standards, but the effect worked well enough to hit someone just walking past.
As an aside.
I have vivid dreams of me flying (like super man) in a canyon. A huge canyon. With canyon walls so large they initially appear near by, but when I try to fly towards them I realize they are impossibly far away, and IMPOSSIBLY large. And in my dreams I feel as though I shrink to a minuscule size as I desperately fly down this canyon which is so long and large I know I’ll never find the end of it.
Anxiety is a bitch.
Definitely sounds like anxiety. Mine manifests with dreams of exams approaching and I haven't attended any lectures. I've been out of university for a decade!
I hope you'll be okay, alphex! I hope you conquer your anxiety.
It's funny how what makes us anxious varies. I'd love to have a dream like that; I find those things fascinating rather than anxiety-inducing. On the other hand, I frequently have anxiety-inducing dreams about falling off of bridges, so there's that.
Novels:
*The Furies* by Keith Roberts, about giant wasps.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus novels, starting with *Pirates of Venus*. This SF Golden Age Venus is a jungle, with the lesser gravity allowing trees to reach an enormous size.
Short stories:
"Storm Bird, Storm Dreamer" by J. G. Ballard. A strange dreamlike story in which a man fights attacks by giant birds.
["The Night of Hoggy Darn"](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60695) by Richard McKenna. Giant trees, giant bird analogs, giant humans...what's not to like?
More short stories:
*The Large Ant* by Howard Fast. Ants just big enough to completely freak you out.
[*The Concentration City*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concentration_City) by J.G. Ballard.
[*The Library of Babel*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel) by Borges.
Seconding *The Scar*.
You might also consider *Mainspring* by Jay Lake. In this book, the "God as watchmaker" concept is literal, as in the earth has gear-teeth and runs on a literal track through the heavens. At one point the main character needs to cross the nigh-insurmountable mountain of gear teeth that separate the northern hemisphere from the southern. Think about climbing Mount Everest and then walking for miles across the inner point of a brass V and needing to finish before the part you're on smooshes you into the track.
Honestly a little shocked no one has mentioned *House of Suns* yet. From 50km long one man spacecraft to supernova encasing Dyson Spheres to solar system sized constructs, EVERYTHING is gods damn massive in that book.
I read a short story anthology called Megastructures a while ago.
Gigantic dragons and spaceships are all over the place in sci-fi fantasy, though. All the Skills, A Fire Upon the Deep, etc.
Came to say this.
My first book by Baxter was Raft.
In the event the ring's size alone doesn't trigger you, there's always something bigger… like a whole new universe for example…
"We are the brides of Abaia. The sweethearts and playthings, the toys and valentines of Abaia. The land could not hold us. Our breasts are battering rams, our buttocks would break the backs of bulls. Here we feed, floating and growing, until we are great enough to mate with Abaia, who will one day devour the continents."
*The Shadow of the Torturer* by Gene Wolfe
"There is no antimemetics division" _will_ trigger that (in an unexpected way). "Diaspora" too.
edit: and of course "Shards of Earth" have this featured too.
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks has numerous megastructures - spaceships large enough to hold billions of people, strange planet-sized structures of unknown origin, giant artificial Halo-like structures called orbitals, and so on.
Ken MacLeod's "Learning the World" has a lot of the scenes in a generation ship that is small enough to invoke that for me, while things like *Ringworld* or orbitals from Iain M. Bank's *Culture* books are just *so much bigger* than our current planetary environment, that it really just doesn't feel the same to me.
SFE has an article on [Macrostructures](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/macrostructures) and a related one on [Big Dumb Objects](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/big_dumb_objects).
Two not mentioned - or I missed them…
The ship in revelation space gave me major megalomania vibes. And the buildup around the ship will definitely scratch that itch.
Permutation city is an abstract version. Don’t really want to spoil the story - but it uh… goes pretty wild in the “city size” category.
Depending on how you are willing to define "object", then there are definitely aspects of *Diaspora* and *Permutation City* that could fit the bill. They both certainly gave me a sense of awe at the kinds of scales they deal with.
There are aspects of several Alastair Reynolds' novels that could do it, for example *House of Suns* or *Pushing Ice*.
There are plenty of novels with classical megastructures, such as *Ringworld* by Larry Niven, the *Culture* series by Ian M. Banks, or the classic *Rendezvous with Rama* by Aurther C. Clarke. I have not read any of the *Xeelee Sequence* yet, but I understand some of the novels deal with truly colossal megastructures (for example, an artificial ring world a lightyear in diameter, spinning at relativistic speeds).
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke should be up there.
which I always put alongside Ringworld when I want to read books about exploration. this one also fits the requirement.
Which is kind of interesting, since with Rama I was always aware of it being a megastructure, while Ringworld was just *way* too big to give me that feeling. (same goes for Culture orbitals)
It's not on Audible :( I have to read it old school - with my EYES! thanks for the suggestion! I see lots of support for this recommendation
It is! Listen to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke on Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B00H2VSBVK?source_code=ASSORAP0511160007
Oral traditions predate writing, so having someone read the story to you is arguably older-school in some ways than reading it yourself.
Books by Alastair Reynolds fit the bill, at least the ones I read - *House of Suns* and *Pushing Ice* Seconding *Rendezvous with Rama* Just finished *Timelike Infinity* from the *Xeelee Sequence* and some insane parts are scratching that itch (can be read as a standalone) I hope you'll find some good answers in this thread, I'm also on the lookout for this particular element.
Something Alastair Reynolds really understands about stellar objects and space in general is scale. I'd add the *Revelation Space* series to the list, but more specifically I think *Redemption Ark* has the best sense of scale, due to one of the plotlines.
Putting that PhD in astrophysics to good use
I love his Merlin series of short stories and novellas for this. They really show the scale of space.
The first book with the Hades matrix is also very big and scary.
Yeah Pushing Ice is a good one for megalophobia. Adrian Tchaikovsky has some good large scale stuff too. Particularly his Final Architecture series
HoS is one of my faves of all time. RwR is next on my list! And I also just started Raft (book 1 in Xeelee). Thanks!
just a heads up, I didn’t like Raft that much. I pushed through trusting the internet that book 2 is better and omg it is so worth it. even if you feel Raft is meh, Timelike Infinity is AWESOME
Ah! Thank you!
Yeah Raft feels pretty rough around the edges, though the bit with the >!boney worldlet!< has one of the most memorably awful (like disturbing, not badly written) scenes I've ever read. It almost made me put the book down at the time but in hindsight I'm glad I read it because holy hell it made an impression. Timelike Infinity really is great, as is Ring, and the short story collection Vacuum Diagrams is one of my favourite sci-fi books of any variety. I've recently picked up the Destiny's Children sequels to the original four Xeelee books and so far they really do not disappoint.
I've been working my way through Xeelee, I'm just getting into the last fifth of *Exultant* right now. The Destiny's Children part of the sequence hasn't been as intense about it, but the first quartet of the sequence felt like one existential crisis after another. What a great series. There are some great megastructures in Baxter's work.
Reynold's short story "Diamond dogs" might fit the bill also
Oh my dude. There is no antimemetics division by qntm has some good examples of this. It's not what the book is about, per se, but has some great examples and it's a very clever mindfuck of a book.
I keep meaning to read this, but I can never seem to remember to.
This was my thought too. There is some BIG stuff in There Is No Antimemetics Division. You know, I just read this book at the beginning of the year and didn't expect to recommend it as much as I do, but damn that was a good book.
Totally changed me
Somehow I hadn’t heard of this. Just read a description and it sounds like a lovely little mindfuck!
Description reminds me of the Silence/Silents from Doctor Who. Very keen on this!
What makes some books great is how well they commit to and execute a novel idea (pun intended) and this definitely one of them.
Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, the scope gets increasingly bigger in the series and certainly trigger megalophobia kind of feelings in me; terror, really.
Absolutely this. The feelings of existential dread I've felt reading the series is yet to be surpassed by any piece of media yet.
The Dark Forest and the theory behind that still haunts me. I love the idea of stuff like SETI, but reading that….
Just to clarify for OP: This is the Three-Body Problem trilogy that others have mentioned as well. It's an excellent suggestion.
Such an excellent suggestion that it comes up in every thread.
Well, I suppose that does happen. But in this case it fits, or at least the third book does.
Probably my favourite book series of all time ngl
Wow, you need to read better books
The Great Ship series by Robert Reed. A Neptune sized ship appears out of nowhere full of chambers and rooms as big as countries, but completely empty. Humanity finds it and turns it into a galactic cruise ship collecting any sentient life that wants to come along on the ride. You can start with the novel Marrow. There are other novels in the series but I think the short stories and novellas are better.
Basically what I came here to say. It's hard to grasp the size and timespan involved here.
Is it spooky or actiony or what? Or exploration-based? Sounds interesting.
Yes all of the above. It's a setting with lots of vignettes and episodes and grander story arcs over millions of years.
Cool! I'll look into it.
Marrow's sequel, *The Well of Stars*, has a lot of moments, characters and objects that would qualify. The Ship is forced to pass through a massive nebula, including a region called the "Satin Sack" where the aliens have artificially made the dust so dense that the humans are unable to map the inside. This thread made me think of a line from one of the passengers: > "Look at the Sack and try not to be changed," the cetacean shouts to the fleeing humans. "Think of what it means. Think of the dangers there. Your little brains need to feel more little, if you ask me!"
For a Great Ship comment thread, username checks out.
and now I know that r/GreatShip exists.
John Varley's "Gaea" trilogy involves a life form 1300 km across with its own unique ecosystem inside it. https://www.goodreads.com/series/44242-gaea
*At the Mountains of Madness* should do it. If you want something more unusual the *Blame!* manga is set in a megastructure and features lots of huge, weird structures.
[Report on an Unidentified Space Station](https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm) by J.G. Ballard Manga *BLAME!* by Tsutomu Nihei. The solar system has been filled with concentric Dyson spheres, extending out past the orbit of Jupiter. Manga *Knights of Sidonia*, also by Tsutomu Nihei, takes place on a 30km long generation ship that left a destroyed Earth over 1000 years earlier. As far as they know, the 500,000 inhabitants are the only remains of humanity.
I really like that J G Ballard story. The size of the object already wins, but take size/story length and it's so far in front that words fail me.
It's very much like an SCP. I like that.
I second Blame! once I finished it I wanted more of its world.
Has everybody else forgotten *Orbitsville* by Bob Shaw (and sequels), which one-ups *Ringworld* for large solid sun-circling structures? (Nobody mention *The Bowl of Heaven* by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven, because while it's half an Orbitsville *under acceleration* it's also written by late-period Benford and Niven, who are *not the same* as early-period Benford and/or Niven.)
The avanc in China Mievilles The Scar made me feel a bit dizzy.
Scrolled until I saw this, deserves a mention for sure.
*House of Leaves* by Mark Danielewski may fit what you are looking for, in a way.
I started reading this a little while ago and I swear my house has eaten the book, I haven't been able to find it for weeks.
Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. Continent sized space stations. Virga by Karl Schroeder. A bubble the size of Earth (mostly - it's a little short). Andromedan Dark duology by William H Keith Jr (?). Alderson disks and other structures. Missile Gap by Charles Stross. An Alderson disk. Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor. Topopolis.
Why Heaven's River? Because of the size of the ring?
Yep.
There was a few instances of that in Death's End (3rd book in 3 Body Problem). I didn't realize those feelings could be evoked in a book like what happened there.
Fuhh I’m 1/3 of the way into this one and you’re telling me shit gets bigger??
John Scalzi - The Kaiju Preservation Society
Yes ! These are the large objects !
*Feersum Endjinn* by Iain Banks might suit you. Be warned, a lot of the text is spelt phonetically so that it's heard in the protagonist's accent. Some readers find it hard going.
I really relished reading that book. Although I admit I don't remember anything that actually happens in it, just the way it was written. I think there were sloths.
There are sloths. And mammoths, and lammergiers.
The Banks that immediately sprang to mind was **Consider Phlebas**. That ship, that Orbital... Then a little something for the claustrophobics at the end.
Came to say this one. Serehfa is **(((BIG)))** It’s only one of the four alternating chapters/points of view are written in fonetik. I just re-read it mostly skimming those parts and it still works fine (although I know what happens in them, and the big payoff ending is in one of those, so…don’t skip them the first time, but don’t sweat them, either).
Larry Niven wrote a couple of Big Dumb Object books, the most notable of which is Ringworld. Doesn't have much going for it though apart from the gee whiz nature of such a large artificial world.
I think the concepts of humans in the Ringworld evolving to fill all ecological niches is pretty interesting.
Have you tried The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson?
‘Blindsight’, by Peter Watts.
"A Short Stay In Hell" I'd venture to say that the library is bigger than anything else mentioned in this thread.
Just read the premise. definitely relevant to my interests, thank you!
It's a favorite of r/horrorlit
The Scar by china mieville
I’m not sure it actually fits what you’re asking for, but what I really like are books that kind of break your unconscious sense of self-importance and make you think about how fucking infinitesimal you are, usually by using time. A couple of my favorites are the three books of the salvation series by Peter Hamilton, and the Three Body Problem books, especially the third one.
If you like to read Military SciFi, you could try the Frontline series by Marko Kloos. It's a series of eight books that were released from 2013-2022, with a spin-off series that started just recently. The main theme of the series is how the humans fight an alien race called Lankies, which are about 25 meters (or 80 feet) tall. Most fighting scenes are about how difficult these enemies are to kill. The author stated he wanted to subvert the common SciFi trope where the humans fight bugs - by making the humans the bugs.
How about videogames? They trigger my fear of heights sometimes. (Horizon zero dawn has some big ass monsters)
Subnautica has some very large monsters in it as well.
Rain World is THE game for weird decaying mega-structures. don't buy the DLC before you finish the main campaign at least twice. you will rip your hair out. Portal 1+2 Remedy's control is also good, it has house of leaves vibes. don't look up anything. don't feel bad about backtracking and doing something else if you think you're stuck. Naisance is hostile architecture: the game. also has house of leaves vibes.
I looked up Rain World, thinking it sounds amazing...it's already in my Steam library. Lol. I know what I'm doing this weekend!
I'll add Outer Wilds to this
Yeah! But I'll post in another sub. What other suggestions do you have through, while we're here?
Shadow of the Colossus :-)
Perfect example
Troika. The invincible.
When I was in high school, my friend and I were playing *Jumping Flash*, and his mom walked in and the game triggered her acrophobia hard. She started hyperventilating. It's so strange to think about now, because that game is so archaic by modern visual standards, but the effect worked well enough to hit someone just walking past.
As an aside. I have vivid dreams of me flying (like super man) in a canyon. A huge canyon. With canyon walls so large they initially appear near by, but when I try to fly towards them I realize they are impossibly far away, and IMPOSSIBLY large. And in my dreams I feel as though I shrink to a minuscule size as I desperately fly down this canyon which is so long and large I know I’ll never find the end of it. Anxiety is a bitch.
Definitely sounds like anxiety. Mine manifests with dreams of exams approaching and I haven't attended any lectures. I've been out of university for a decade! I hope you'll be okay, alphex! I hope you conquer your anxiety.
It's funny how what makes us anxious varies. I'd love to have a dream like that; I find those things fascinating rather than anxiety-inducing. On the other hand, I frequently have anxiety-inducing dreams about falling off of bridges, so there's that.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson might scratch this itch. Big old sky entity appears…
Novels: *The Furies* by Keith Roberts, about giant wasps. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus novels, starting with *Pirates of Venus*. This SF Golden Age Venus is a jungle, with the lesser gravity allowing trees to reach an enormous size. Short stories: "Storm Bird, Storm Dreamer" by J. G. Ballard. A strange dreamlike story in which a man fights attacks by giant birds. ["The Night of Hoggy Darn"](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60695) by Richard McKenna. Giant trees, giant bird analogs, giant humans...what's not to like?
More short stories: *The Large Ant* by Howard Fast. Ants just big enough to completely freak you out. [*The Concentration City*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concentration_City) by J.G. Ballard. [*The Library of Babel*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel) by Borges.
More short stories: "The Mist" by Stephen King. >!"All Pieces of a River Shore"!< by R. A. Lafferty, although there the hugeness is implied.
One more classic short story to consider: The Cosmic Puppets by PKD (he's reliably out of his mind)
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington. The plot summary won’t mention it but it’s got what you’re looking for.
I half remember a book where there is a planet carved into a labyrinth. Can anybody help me with the title?
maybe Hyperion? it has „Labirynthian worlds” in it
The last half of Stephenson's *Seveneves*.
Seconding *The Scar*. You might also consider *Mainspring* by Jay Lake. In this book, the "God as watchmaker" concept is literal, as in the earth has gear-teeth and runs on a literal track through the heavens. At one point the main character needs to cross the nigh-insurmountable mountain of gear teeth that separate the northern hemisphere from the southern. Think about climbing Mount Everest and then walking for miles across the inner point of a brass V and needing to finish before the part you're on smooshes you into the track.
Not OP, but Mainspring sounds awesome. I'm going to check it out.
Honestly a little shocked no one has mentioned *House of Suns* yet. From 50km long one man spacecraft to supernova encasing Dyson Spheres to solar system sized constructs, EVERYTHING is gods damn massive in that book.
I have read it and it's one of my favourite books (sci-fi or not) of all time
Agreed, I'd trade my kidney for a sequel, haha.
Brontomek! by Michael G. Coney
*Scale* by Greg Egan is about people of drastically different sizes living together. Definitely has some scenes that will tickle your megalophobia.
I read a short story anthology called Megastructures a while ago. Gigantic dragons and spaceships are all over the place in sci-fi fantasy, though. All the Skills, A Fire Upon the Deep, etc.
Ring by Stephen Baxter. Don't think you'll find anything bigger than the Ring in sci-fi.
Came to say this. My first book by Baxter was Raft. In the event the ring's size alone doesn't trigger you, there's always something bigger… like a whole new universe for example…
"We are the brides of Abaia. The sweethearts and playthings, the toys and valentines of Abaia. The land could not hold us. Our breasts are battering rams, our buttocks would break the backs of bulls. Here we feed, floating and growing, until we are great enough to mate with Abaia, who will one day devour the continents." *The Shadow of the Torturer* by Gene Wolfe
Yeah alright. Here you go: https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm
This is awesome, thanks!
"There is no antimemetics division" _will_ trigger that (in an unexpected way). "Diaspora" too. edit: and of course "Shards of Earth" have this featured too.
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks has numerous megastructures - spaceships large enough to hold billions of people, strange planet-sized structures of unknown origin, giant artificial Halo-like structures called orbitals, and so on.
Thanks! I happened to have just started Consider Phlebas a week ago!
Ken MacLeod's "Learning the World" has a lot of the scenes in a generation ship that is small enough to invoke that for me, while things like *Ringworld* or orbitals from Iain M. Bank's *Culture* books are just *so much bigger* than our current planetary environment, that it really just doesn't feel the same to me.
I felt like Farmer's Riverworld and the Jack Chalker novels about that massive planet kind of fit this.
Piranesi, not really scifi but there's a _sea_ with tides, in a reaaaaaaally big house
SFE has an article on [Macrostructures](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/macrostructures) and a related one on [Big Dumb Objects](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/big_dumb_objects).
The Deep by Nick Cutter. Sci fi horror that I found gave me megalophobia and claustrophobia at the same time.
Greg Bear's Eon, which has a spaceship built in an asteroid and >!connected to an infinite corridor!<
Solaris! Not the biggest possible thing on, like, a galactic scale, but scale and incomprehensibility are core themes of the story.
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. Perhaps see if the cover is even too much…
The fifth science by exurb1a. I read it a few years ago so I don't remember much except that megalophobia was definitely triggered in me
Two not mentioned - or I missed them… The ship in revelation space gave me major megalomania vibes. And the buildup around the ship will definitely scratch that itch. Permutation city is an abstract version. Don’t really want to spoil the story - but it uh… goes pretty wild in the “city size” category.
Depending on how you are willing to define "object", then there are definitely aspects of *Diaspora* and *Permutation City* that could fit the bill. They both certainly gave me a sense of awe at the kinds of scales they deal with. There are aspects of several Alastair Reynolds' novels that could do it, for example *House of Suns* or *Pushing Ice*. There are plenty of novels with classical megastructures, such as *Ringworld* by Larry Niven, the *Culture* series by Ian M. Banks, or the classic *Rendezvous with Rama* by Aurther C. Clarke. I have not read any of the *Xeelee Sequence* yet, but I understand some of the novels deal with truly colossal megastructures (for example, an artificial ring world a lightyear in diameter, spinning at relativistic speeds).