They have something like 2 stars on Goodreads. Imagine that as a fairly accurate product review score - if they were Amazon products, they'd be somewhere between "obviously counterfeit" and "burned my house down."

There's a sequel to Andromeda Strain? ... Yeah, better off forgetting this information.

A mere month after Pretenders to the Throne of God. You have to admire his output.

DO NOT READ THE SEQUELS

One of the few cases where they actively ruin the first book, to the extent you take them as true sequels. Clarke basically licensed his name and plot to Gentry Lee, who proceeded to ruin the sense of wonder by explaining everything, often in deeply unsatisfactory ways. They would have been reasonable scifi books (for their time) if they hadn't attempted to follow up the classics.

Star Wars prequel/sequel situation.

"Wonder" might be the wrong way to describe it, but Blindsight by Peter Watts gave me the same feeling of "this is incredibly alien and I have no idea what will happen next".

Other books with a similar plot structure and deeply alien vibe:

- Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (recommended elsewhere in this thread)

- Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

I know there's one I'm forgetting.