There are some great novel recommendations here, but I wouldn’t say that most of them are lesser-known.
What are your recommendations?
As for me, I’ve exclusively read well-known novels, except if you consider someone like Alfred Bester obscure, for example.
One exception: Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer: Twelve Strange Tales of Mankind’s Future. It’s a collection of exceptionnaly well-crafted stories. It ain’t a novel, though.



I feel like stepping outside native English works is a bit like cheating. 😃 There’s a lot of super interesting European scifi. During the USSR it was a major form of escapism and veiled criticism all over Eastern Europe so that area alone yielded a massive amount of scifi, but there’s a rich history of the genre all over Europe. Mostly it got translated to neighboring European languages, seldom to English, and even if it did most likely never reached other continents.
To fit the theme I will give some French examples because French scifi has some major wierdos:
If you manage to read any of them I don’t think you’ll be dissapointed.