Best Stand Alone Science Fiction Books

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...

Stranger In A Strange Land

by Heinlein, Robert A.

A Martian visits Earth and teaches humanity a few things--some believe it to be a guide to social change.

An expedition to Mars is lost. Twenty five years later, a second expedition finds there is one survivor of the first expedition, Valentine Michael Smith, who was raised by Martians. Returning reluctantly to Earth, Smith...

The Demolished Man

by Alfred Bester

Psychic police chase down criminals.

In a future society, extrasensory perception exists in a fraction of the world’s population. There are 3 levels of ESP (or espers as they are called in the book.) They go from mild to those who can intuit future actions...

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...

Ender's Game (1986) (The Ender Quintet) Start here

by Card, Orson Scott

The first in a famous series that seems to become more literary as its characters age. Follows a child prodigy and in the process makes the reader think about war, the means to war, and even loneliness.

Earth has survived two invasions by an insect-like alien race, and the International Fleet is training the most gifted children to lead the next defence. Six-year-old Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is taken from his family and se...

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...

1984

by George Orwell

A classic novel that is definitively a dystopia.

The words have become so commonplace we hardly realise we are using them: Big Brother is watching you, the Ministry of Truth, Room 101, Newspeak, thoughtcrime. George Orwell gave us a language for describing our fear...

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...

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.

2010: The City & The City

by Miéville, China

Imagine two cities that share the exact same geographic space, but do not interact with one another under any circumstances. Unless the government authorities grant permission, that is. If citizens of one city interact w...

Childhood S End

by Clarke, Arthur C.

An alien race invades Earth, but they are benevolent and a golden age begins on Earth.

You're going to hate me for this. Really. See, Clarke is one of the three giants of science fiction, old-school science fiction. He was writing this novel in 1953 at a time when the genre was read almost exclusivel...

A Canticle For Leibowitz

by Jr., Walter M. Miller

After a nuclear war monks preserve civilization.

A Canticle for Leibowitz follows the rejuvenation of "civilization" after a devastating nuclear holocaust. It has three distinctive chapters, each one disconnected by centuries, focusing on life at a desert monastery nam...

A Wrinkle In Time (Time Quintet) Start here

by L'engle, Madeleine

An award winning, YA series of books that present, at least in part, a Christian world-view.

With a foot in both Science Fiction and Fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time is a bridge between reality and fantasy, a meeting place for adult and child readers alike.  Meg leads the adventure with her younger, gifted brother a...

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...

Mote Series (Moties)

by Niven, Larry

and Jerry Pournelle. A far future story of first contact after human societies already span hundreds of star systems. This story explores alien biology, society, art and impacts on humanity's economics, politics, and religions.

Starts with A Mote in God's Eye, the award winning first book in the series of 2 with the 3rd book written by one of the authors. Nothing will prepare you for this book. You will find this book on every damn list of...

Fahrenheit 451

by Bradbury, Ray

A classic "What if?" story about book banning, happiness, and knowledge.

Everyone loves the idea of the thinking man's fireman (particularly middle aged women who read Fifty Shades of Grey), but that's not why Fahrenheit 451 made it to second on this list. Bradbury made his bread and butter w...

More Than Human

by Theodore Sturgeon

There was a period when science fiction tended to refer to the next stage in human evolution as homo superior, and one of the ways of achieving this state was through a gestalt, a number of individuals working as one. Th...

Slaughterhouse-five

by Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. It sounds like a fairly conventional time travel story. But this is Kurt Vonnegut, and nothing he wrote was ever conventional. In fact, the novel opens with a chapter that lays out h...

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang: A Novel

by Kate Wilhelm

There was a time when stories of isolated communities surviving after the apocalypse were all over the place. There was also a time when stories of clones were everywhere, driven by the curious uncanny interest in wha...

The Windup Girl (2010)

by Bacigalupi, Paolo

In a future Bangkok, walled in against rising seas and kept alive by a ruthless seed bank, the world's calories are controlled by a few giant corporations. Anderson Lake poses as a factory manager while he hunts for lost...