Best Science Fiction Books of 2016

The Science Fiction Novels of 2016 That Won Awards and Readers' Votes

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Which science fiction novels defined 2016? This list ranks the year's books by how many independent signals back them: the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards, and the Goodreads Choice Awards science fiction vote.

Books that won or were shortlisted for several awards come first, followed by the books readers voted for most.

The ranking

1

Ninefox Gambit

Ninefox Gambit

Yoon Ha Lee is a name that science fiction fans will want to keep in mind for decades to come. Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, is exactly the kind of military science fiction that will be defining the sub-genre thr...

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2

A Closed and Common Orbit (cover not available)

A Closed and Common Orbit

by Becky Chambers

Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - possessing a personality and very human emotions. But when her ship was badly damaged, Lovelace was forced to reboot and rese...

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3

All the Birds in the Sky (cover not available)

All the Birds in the Sky

by Charlie Jane Anders

An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go war as the world from tearing itself. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laure...

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4

The Obelisk Gate (cover not available)

The Obelisk Gate

by N. K. Jemisin

""Intricate and extraordinary."--New York Times on The Fifth Season (A New York Times Notable Book of 2015) The second novel in a new fantasy trilogy by Hugo, Nebula & World Fantasy Award nominated author N.K. Jemisin. T...

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5

Death's End (cover not available)

Death's End

The third Remembrance of Earth's Past novel opens with a young engineer, Cheng Xin, who is sent into the future in suspended animation and awakens in a world changed by an alien threat. The war between Earth and the Tris...

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6

Too Like the Lightning (cover not available)

Too Like the Lightning

"The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on...

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7

The Underground Railroad (cover not available)

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. Whe...

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8

Morning Star

by Pierce Brown

Born a lowly Red in the mines of Mars, Darrow lost his beloved wife to the treacherous Gold overlords. Vowing to fight for the future that his wife believed in, Darrow joins a secret revolutionary group and is remade int...

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9

Dark Matter (cover not available)

Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a...

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10

After Atlas (cover not available)

After Atlas

"Acclaimed author Emma Newman returns to the captivating universe she created in Planetfall with a stunning science fiction mystery where one man's murder is much more than it seems... Govcorp detective Carlos Moreno was...

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11

Central Station (cover not available)

Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and d...

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12

Occupy Me (cover not available)

Occupy Me

by Tricia Sullivan

Pearl is an angel with wings and no clear memory of her origins, who works as a flight attendant and for a Resistance that tries to improve the world through small acts of kindness. She chases a killer living in another...

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13

Everfair (cover not available)

Everfair

An "alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's ... colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier"--Amazon.com.

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14

Sleeping Giants (cover not available)

Sleeping Giants

by Sylvain Neuvel

"17 years ago: A girl in South Dakota falls through the earth, then wakes up dozens of feet below ground on the palm of what seems to be a giant metal hand. Today: She is a top-level physicist leading a team of people to...

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15

The Long Cosmos (cover not available)

The Long Cosmos

by Terry Pratchett

The Next--the hyper-intelligent post-humans--realize that the missive they received from the center of the galaxy contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence knows as The...

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16

A Murder in Time (cover not available)

A Murder in Time

by Julie McElwain

Kendra Donovan is an FBI profiler who, while chasing a killer, is thrown back to 1815 England. There she has to investigate a murder in a country house without the tools she knows. A time-travel mystery that mixes the mo...

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17

The Last One (cover not available)

The Last One

by Alexandra Oliva

A woman known as Zoo joins a twelve-person reality show, In the Dark, that sends contestants into the woods for a million-dollar prize. While they are out of contact, something catastrophic happens, but Zoo has no idea;...

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18

Underground Airlines (cover not available)

Underground Airlines

by Ben H. Winters

"It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred. A gifted young Black man calling himself Victor has struck a barga...

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19

Crosstalk (cover not available)

Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

Science fiction icon Connie Willis brilliantly mixes a speculative plot, the wit of Nora Ephron, and the comedic flair of P. G. Wodehouse in Crosstalk-- a genre-bending novel that pushes social media, Smartphone technolo...

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20

Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen

Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen

by Lois Mcmaster Bujold

The last volume of Bujold's award winning Vorkosigan saga, Cordelia needs to find a new direction for her life.

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Trending Books in Best Science Fiction Books of 2016

Ninefox Gambit

Ninefox Gambit

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Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen

Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen

Lois Mcmaster Bujold

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The Long Cosmos (cover not available)

The Long Cosmos

Terry Pratchett

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Everfair (cover not available)

Everfair

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Death's End (cover not available)

Death's End

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Too Like the Lightning (cover not available)

Too Like the Lightning

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The Underground Railroad (cover not available)

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

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Morning Star

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Dark Matter (cover not available)

Dark Matter

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A Murder in Time (cover not available)

A Murder in Time

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