Aha, I have got two people interested in reading Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota books now~
They are very, very good near-future-ish SF, written as a chronicle of then-recent events by an unreliable narrator. A lot more focus on the social and cultural aspects than a lotta SF.
There is shiny technology, but there's far more well-written radical changes to things like government/state structure, standards of living, taboos and gender, and how the people percieve the past.
(also um, All The CWs)