Best Modern Sci Fi Books

1981: The Shadow Of The Torturer (The Book Of The New Sun) Start here

by Wolfe, Gene

The sun has dimmed, the Earth is cooler and has been transformed in wondrous ways.

'The Shadow of the Torturer' is the first book in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun tetralogy. Narrated by Severian, a member of the Guild of Torturers, the story follows his adventures as he is cast out for showing m...

Red Mars (1994) (Mars Trilogy) Start here

by Robinson, Kim Stanley

A mission is launched to terraform Mars in this scientific epic.

In 2026, a hundred colonists set off on the first long voyage to Mars. Among them are John Boone, the first man to walk on the planet, and his rival Frank Chalmers, a schemer who prefers to work behind the scenes.On arri...

Neuromancer (1985) (The Sprawl) Start here

by Gibson, William

Gibson is the father of Cyberpunk and this novel in particular is significant. In this novel the term cyberspace is coined.

Case was the best hacker in the Sprawl until his employers damaged his nervous system, and now he can no longer reach cyberspace. He drifts through the criminal underworld of Chiba City, looking for a cure and a way to d...

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

An award winning, Canadian novel that explores themes of women in subjugation and agency in a futuristic theocracy.

Throughout its history, one of the strongest and most interesting aspects of science fiction has been its use in satire. And this is just about the most stunning of contemporary satires, one that is still remarkable appo...

Use Of Weapons (Culture)

by Iain M. Banks

Features a Utopian society (culture) that's post scarcity, controlled by benevolent A. I.'s who act for the good of the society. When Culture encounters less enlightened societies, the fun begins.

Iain Banks burst onto the literary scene with his controversial first novel, The Wasp Factory, the violent story of a girl who had been brought up as an emasculated boy. He followed this with two novels that both display...

Blood Music

by Bear, Greg

A biotechnologist hides his biological computer creation in his body, but then they multiply and evolve. One of the first Sci Fi stories to treat DNA as a computational system that can be modified.

If Xenogenesis explores the emergence of posthumanity through exogamy, Blood Music explores it through infection. A renegade biotechnologist faces having his research shut down, so he injects himself with the “noocytes...

Snow Crash

by Stephenson, Neal

Considered by some as a parody of Cyberpunk. This novel popularized and cemented its use of the term avatar to describe online virtual bodies

Meet Hiro Protagonist: hacker, samurai swinging swordsman and pizza delivery boy. When his best friend dies of a brain fry and his ex girlfriend asks for his help, Hiro switches from part- time pizza boy to full-time her...

The Aleutian Trilogy (The Aleutian Trilogy)

by Gwyneth Jones

Gwyneth Jones's first novel for adults, Divine Endurance, set in a richly imagined South East Asia, marked the arrival of a novelist intent on using science fiction to explore the effects of colonialism. Later no...

The Affirmation

by Priest, Christopher

In contemporary Britain, a young man called Peter Sinclair loses his job and his girlfriend, and retreats to a remote cottage where he sets out to write his life story. But the story he writes is set in a place...

Timescape (1981)

by Benford, Gregory

A novel about ecological issues and scientific experiments that address current events at the time of writing.

In 1998 an ecological catastrophe is poisoning the oceans and the atmosphere. A group of scientists in Cambridge try to send a message back in time using tachyons, particles that travel faster than light, hoping to warn...

Synners

by Pat Cadigan

Synners are jacked-in outlaws, hooked on the astonishing worlds of virtual space as an escape from the grim, depressing industrial reality around them. But, hot-wired in to cyberspace, they have unleashed a wildfire v...

The Sparrow (The Sparrow) Start here

by Mary Doria Russell

Few debut novels since Neuromancer have had the impact that Mary Doria Russell achieved with The Sparrow. After this novel and its sequel, Children of God, she turned to writing historical fiction, which has led some to...

The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter

1995 was the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and in celebration Stephen Baxter produced one of the best novels in his long and distinguished career. Written as a direct sequ...

A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones Of Thought) Start here

by Vernor Vinge

The first book in the Zones of Thought series and tells the tale of a galactic war. In the story the mind's potential is determined by its location in space.

Set thousands of years into the future, the universe is inhabited by various races, including super-intelligent entities in the Transcend and the simple creatures and technology of the Unthinking Depths. Space has been d...

Doomsday Book (1993) (Oxford Time Travel) Start here

by Willis, Connie

In 2054, Oxford historians send students back in time to study the past. Kivrin Engle, a young historian, is sent to the English countryside in 1320. But a technician falls ill while setting up the drop, and she arrives...

The Star Fraction (Fall Revolution) Start here

by Ken Macleod

Ken MacLeod was a lifelong friend of Iain Banks, and their interest in science fiction was parallel, though MacLeod's interest in Trotskyist politics gave his work a harder political edge than Banks's. This is m...

Downbelow Station (The Company Wars)

by Cherryh, C. J.

A space opera about a rebellion between Earth and its colonies.

Downbelow Station is well known among science fiction readers. It's part of a sprawling set of novels - though each reads as a standalone, it's worth reading a few should you find out that it really is your thing....

Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

Back in the 1950s, a young Alasdair Gray entered a short story in a competition. It came second. That story was part of what would become, nearly 30 years later, the most significant novel in contemporary Scottish litera...

Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

by Russell Hoban

Hoban first made his name with books for children, such as the wonderful The Mouse and His Child. When he turned to writing novels for adults, although they seemed to take place in our normal world, there was always so...

The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

Imagine a London that has become semi-tropical, where people photosynthesise, where cancer has been cured but the human lifespan has been cut in half. Imagine a place where viruses are used to educate, to inform, to cont...

Beggars In Spain (Sleepless) Start here

by Nancy Kress

How much more could you do if you didn't have to sleep? That's the simple question that starts this superb trilogy.In this near future world, a philosophy that is becoming ever more dominant is known as Yagaiism, aft...