Best Science Fiction Books

A physicist from an anarchist moon travels to its capitalist twin planet in this dual-narrative exploration of two radically different societies and the meaning of freedom.

A series of linked stories following the colonisation of Mars by humans fleeing an increasingly troubled Earth — a work less concerned with the science of space travel than with what humanity brings with it, and what it destroys in the process.

The direct sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Sibling Dex and the robot Mosscap leave the wilderness and enter the human world, where Mosscap asks its central question: what do people need?

The protomolecule has constructed a massive ring gate beyond Uranus. A fleet of ships from all three factions converges on it, and inside the ring is something that will change humanity's relationship with the universe permanently.

The conclusion of the Imperial Radch trilogy: Breq faces a choice between the survival of her ship and crew and the larger question of what kind of empire the Radch should become.

Twelve years after his jihad swept across the known universe, Paul Muad'Dib sits on the throne of an empire built on ten billion dead. His prescience is a prison, his legend a weapon turned against him, and a conspiracy is forming to finally bring him down.

The Reckoners take their fight to Babylon Restored — the flooded ruins of Manhattan — pursuing the Epic known as Regalia while David confronts the possibility that not all Epics are irredeemably corrupt.

A decade after the revolution, Darrow has won — but peace has not followed. He defies the Republic he helped build to launch an unauthorized assault on Luna, fracturing the government from within. Three new POV characters — Lysander au Lune, Lyria, and Ephraim — reveal the cost of revolution across all levels of the Society.

The conclusion of the MaddAddam Trilogy — survivors of the waterless flood, including the Crakers (Crake's genetically engineered humans), form an uneasy community. Toby must tell the Crakers stories about the old world as they all try to build something new.

On his 75th birthday, John Perry enlists in an interstellar military that promises old soldiers a new young body — but at a cost he couldn't have imagined.

Spensa goes undercover among the alien Superiority to discover the truth behind their war against humanity, only to find that the conflict — and her own abilities — are far more complicated than she was told.

Ten years after a cosmic event granted ordinary people superhuman abilities, the Epics have taken over as tyrants rather than heroes. David Charleston joins the Reckoners — ordinary humans who hunt Epics — to kill Steelheart, the most powerful Epic alive.

A soldier fighting an interstellar war discovers that time dilation means each tour of duty lasts years, while centuries pass at home — making Earth progressively unrecognisable.

Luna's penal colony population, assisted by a self-aware computer, organises a revolution against Earth's authority in this Hugo Award-winning political science fiction novel.

The second MaddAddam Trilogy novel — Toby and Ren, former members of the God's Gardeners environmental cult, survive the waterless flood that destroyed civilization. Their stories run parallel to the events of Oryx and Crake, seen from a different angle.

The third Wayfarers novel — set in the Exodus Fleet, a convoy of generation ships that left Earth centuries ago. A meditation on tradition, mortality, and what communities do when they are no longer necessary.

An undercover narc in near-future California becomes addicted to the drug he's surveilling, losing his grip on his own identity in this partly autobiographical novel by Philip K. Dick.

The sequel to Ancillary Justice: Breq, now a Ship Captain, is sent to a remote station to maintain order while the Radch empire tears itself apart over its ruler's divided consciousness.

The Reckoners track the source of Epic powers to Ildithia — the former Atlanta — and David confronts the cosmic force behind Calamity itself, with the future of both Epics and ordinary humans at stake.

A writer researching the life of the atomic bomb's inventor discovers ice-nine — a form of water that freezes solid at room temperature — in the hands of dangerous and careless people. Vonnegut's darkest comedy.

Alien Overlords arrive over Earth and usher in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity — but the price is humanity's future.

The first human colony on an exoplanet beyond the ring gates faces a conflict between Belter settlers who arrived first and a corporate expedition claiming legal authority — while the planet itself wakes up.

Spensa enters the Nowhere — a dimension outside normal space-time — to master her cytonic abilities and find a way to save humanity from the Superiority, encountering fragments of ancient civilizations and the truth about why cytonics are feared.

When a colonisation vessel suffers critical damage to its deceleration system, its crew of fifty find themselves unable to slow down — accelerating ever closer to the speed of light, watching millennia pass outside while they age normally within. A masterpiece of hard science fiction that takes Einstein's equations to their most terrifying logical conclusion.