I tried to get into 1491 but... it rubbed me the wrong way. I think it flew in the face of a lot of stuff I already knew, and generally minimized anything that didn't suit their cozy theories. kind of like The Big Fix, which I'm halfway through because of dublinben's recommendation. Yeah it's kind of hopeful but it also relies on things like "nuclear accidents really aren't that bad if you take Soviet statistics at face value" and "we'd all be better off if we trusted oil oligarchs to audit their own environmental impact statements." It is neither as dire as the uninhabitable earth nor as imaginative as Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

Where are you that only the last four books of the Vorkosigan saga are available? I gave it a run again a few years back in storyworld order and made it to, I think, "Memory" where Bujold just straight up throws away Miles' mercenary fleet in order to write cozy bullshit. Which, I guess, is what you do when you get old? Anyway I read "The Warrior's Apprentice" when it was still a ratty first-edition paperback you buy at grocery stores and it was pretty good as far as sixth-grade me was concerned but I put that series away with no regrets at uhhh thirteen years in.

Also holy shit you made it through all of Amber. I stopped at Book 4 and I don't think I'm alone.

Now read Earth Abides. The world is divided into two camps: those who have read Earth Abides and those who haven't.