Best Sci Fi Books

Dune (Dune Chronicles) Start here

by Herbert, Frank

The whole series over time shows the colonization and taming of the wild planet Dune over thousands of years.

A blend of sci-fi and fantasy, Frank Herbert's Dune created a foundation for many of the themes in modern genre fiction. Its exploration of ecology, pacifism, and mysticism pairs with a story of destiny to remain rel...

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...

To The Moon

by Heinlein, Robert A.

An award winning novel about a colony that rebels against the Lunar Authority that controls it.

Science fiction-roman.

The Left Hand Of Darkness (1970) (Hainish Cycle)

by Guin, Ursula K. Le

Pacifism and a anarchy—both have merits.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin won the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel.One of the best examples of science fiction in the genre.

Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos) Start here

by Simmons, Dan

So most of this series is in fact, not Dying Earth but it is a pinnacle of science fiction. The Poet's Tale: Hyperion Cantos in the first novel of Hyperion is a part of the Dying Earth sub-genre and it is the connection the readers have from Earth to the strange new universe of Hyperion.

A grand intelligent space opera tale that also tells a series of very personal tales. This juxtaposition between epic and the personal gives real life to the story. The whole thing is also told with an interesting narrat...

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 Stars My Destination

by Alfred Bester

A mechanic is the sole survivor on a ship that is just a wreck.

He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead. Gully Foyle is a shipwrecked sailor abandoned out in space, and when ships pass him by without stopping to pick him up he vows to exact revenge. He manages...

The Man In The High Castle

by Dick, Philip K.

A novel where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan win WWII.

Philip K. Dick was one of the most idiosyncratic and successful writers in science fiction. Okay, he's probably better known these days for all the films that have been based on his work, including Blade Runner, Total...

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...

Foundation (Foundation)

by Asimov, Isaac

Some softer elements, like FTL and antigrav cars, but otherwise a rational series.

Book Flap Description  One of the great masterworks of science fiction, the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building. The sto...

2001 A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey) Start here

by Clarke, Arthur C.

This novel is an epic story, a story in which two astronauts must fight for their lives, against an extraordinary computer named HAL.

The classic science fiction novel that captures and expands on the vision of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal film—and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to t...

The Forever War (1976) (The Forever War) Start here

by Haldeman, Joe

In this novel, time travel is a kind of side effect of space travel at near light speeds.

William Mandella is a physics student drafted into an elite force to fight an alien enemy on the far side of the galaxy. Travel between the front lines takes a few subjective months, but years pass at home, and each time...

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...

The New World (The Age Of Discovery)

by Stackpole, Micheal A.

A startling look at the role of government, including eugenics.

The three grandchildren of the royal cartographer Qiro Anturasi, a mapmaker whose magic can reshape reality, must save their world from destruction. Nalenyr is besieged on all sides by those who would save the fabled lan...

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...

Solaris

by Lem, Stanislaw

A trek across an alien planet is also a coming of age story.

Psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at a research station hovering over the ocean-covered planet Solaris and finds it nearly deserted: his mentor is dead, and the two surviving scientists seem to be hiding something. Then K...

Falling Free (1989) (Vorkosigan Saga)

by Bujold, Lois Mcmaster

A long running and award winning series that mixes politics, romance, medical ethics, personal identity, and hierarchies.

The quaddies are a generation of people engineered by the corporation GalacTech to work in zero gravity, with four arms and no legs, and they are treated as company property. Leo Graf, an engineer sent to teach them weld...

The Time Machine

by Wells, H. G.

Follow a time traveller into an alien-like future Earth to witness the consequences of humanity's social and biological choices and evolution.

A mechanical contraption that lets you travel back in time. Classic steampunk from a classic author.

Bring The Jubilee

by Ward Moore

Science fiction likes to play with history. Look how fragile our world is, just one small change there, or there, or there, and things would be ever so much worse. Of course, because we like doing it doesn't always me...

The Martian Chronicles

by Bradbury, Ray

A chronology of the human colonization of Mars, after fleeing an atomically devastated Earth, including the conflicts between humans and the native Martians.

Ray Bradbury's science fiction is unlike anything else being written at the time, and that is particularly true of The Martian Chronicles. A collection of linked stories that tell of the human conquest of Mars, it is f...

The Female Man

by Joanna Russ

The book intertwines the lives of four women who live in parallel worlds—when they meet it is their views on gender roles that startle one another.

It is the 1970s. Joanna lives in a world much like our own, where the feminist movement is just beginning. In Jeannine's world, however, there was no Second World War because Hitler had been assassinated, but the Grea...