Best Science Fiction Books

In a future Chicago divided into five virtue-based factions, sixteen-year-old Tris Prior must choose where she belongs — and discovers she may not belong anywhere.

An Artificial Friend named Klara, powered by sunlight and possessed of extraordinary observational gifts, narrates her life alongside a sickly teenage girl and her mother in a near-future America.

Katniss Everdeen becomes the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion against the Capitol, as all-out war engulfs Panem and extracts a devastating personal cost.

A human raised by Martians returns to Earth and, unable to comprehend human society, begins to transform it from within.

Thomas wakes up in a box with no memory, arriving in a community of boys trapped inside a massive, deadly maze — and his arrival immediately begins changing everything they thought they knew.

A physics professor is kidnapped, wakes up in a version of his life where he made different choices, and must navigate a multiverse of parallel worlds to find his way back to the family he loves.

In the aftermath of the Erudite attack, Tris navigates shifting faction alliances, survivor's guilt, and a massive revelation about the true purpose of the faction system.

In a fractured future Republic of America, June — the regime's most gifted military prodigy — is tasked with hunting down Day, a wanted fugitive and folk hero from the slums, and the dual first-person structure places them on a collision course before forcing both to question everything they believed about the world they serve.

A prequel following eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow as he mentors a District 12 tribute in the 10th Hunger Games, charting his transformation into Panem's future tyrant.

The Gladers escape the Maze only to face another WICKED trial — a scorched, sun-devastated wasteland they must cross while battling crazed Cranks and uncovering deeper layers of manipulation.

Henry DeTamble has a genetic condition that causes him to involuntarily time travel, always to times and places connected to his own life — including the childhood of the woman he will one day marry.

The twelfth expedition into the mysterious Area X sends four unnamed women scientists into an environment that defies biological and physical understanding.

An alien soul inhabits a human body and must navigate two sets of memories, loyalties, and loves in a world occupied by a parasitic alien race.

Tris and Four escape the city to discover the truth about their world's genetic experiments, leading to a final sacrifice that divided readers and defined the trilogy's legacy.

In a future America where love has been classified as a disease called amor deliria nervosa, eighteen-year-old Lena counts the days until her cure — until she meets Alex.

In the Society where every choice is made by Officials — including who you will marry — seventeen-year-old Cassia is Matched with her best friend Xander but briefly sees the face of another boy, setting off a chain of doubt she cannot suppress.

Juliette Ferrars has been locked in isolation for 264 days because her touch is lethal. When the dystopian Reestablishment decides to weaponize her, she must navigate a world of power, control, and an unexpected connection with someone who can survive her touch.

Mae Holland lands her dream job at the Circle — a technology company that has combined Google, Facebook, and Apple into one dominant platform — and becomes a true believer as the company pushes toward universal transparency and the erosion of all private life.

In the aftermath of the Dark Age, the survivors must rebuild or die. Darrow fights to hold what remains of the Republic. Lysander takes the final steps toward the destiny he was born into. And revelations about the origins of the Society recast everything that has come before.

A Martian marine survives an impossible attack on Ganymede; a UN politician navigates Earth's political response to the expanding protomolecule crisis. Both storylines converge on the Rocinante crew as the solar system inches toward full-scale war.

Cheradenine Zakalwe is a man the Culture's covert operations division Special Circumstances keeps pulling out of retirement for impossible missions. Told in two interlocking timelines — one moving forward, one backward — Use of Weapons is a devastating character study disguised as space opera.

Spensa returns from the Nowhere with new understanding of her cytonic abilities as humanity makes its final stand against the Superiority, and the truth about the Delvers and the nature of consciousness itself must be resolved.

Spensa dreams of becoming a pilot in humanity's fight against the alien Krell, but her father's disgrace as a supposed coward has barred her from flight school. When she discovers a crashed, ancient starfighter with an unlikely AI, she finds a path to the sky — and to truths about the war her society would rather keep buried.

Three thousand years after Ender's Game, the now-ancient Ender Wiggin becomes a Speaker for the Dead on a world where a second contact with aliens threatens to become the second genocide.