WHERE THE STARS RISE has now become an audiobook. So I’m really happy to share 35 of the best science fiction novels. You can expand the list since there are so many great books out there.
I’ve read many lists out there and they all come with a mishmash of fantasy and magical realism. To me science fiction has definite rules. As a science lover, its’ rules and cause and effect principles are what attracts me to the genre. When I wrote Joseon Fringe for Where The Stars Rise, research that went into my tiny story on quantum physics was astonishing. I can only admire science fiction authors that craft entire worlds and stories over 80,000 words.
It was hard to come up with a list. I’m sure there are a ton of science fiction books out there that I haven’t read and should be on the list. Here are a few.
35 Best Science Fiction Novels
DUNE
Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides. The heir to a noble family is tasked with ruling an inhospitable world. Here the only thing of value is the “spice” melange. A drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for….
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey. A journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. As he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most unattainable dream.
A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award. It shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
I Robot
I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series. It forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-reading robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction. It has become Asimov’s trademark.
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings. Except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence. As long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov formulated the laws governing robots’ behavior. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot. From its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future. A future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.
Dawn
When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali—a seemingly benevolent alien race—intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago. They saved everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Eart. then put them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength. Now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth—but salvation comes at a price.
Hopeful and thought-provoking. this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.
The Three-Body Problem
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists. This is after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game. It immerses him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything. The key to the scientists’ deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years. And the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
The Day of the Triffids
A freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth’s population blind. Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. The London he walks is crammed with men and women needing help. Some ready to prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop the Triffids, mobile plants with carnivorous appetites, seem set to take control.
The Day of the Triffids is perhaps the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century. Its startling imagery of desolate streets and lurching, lethal plant life retains its power to haunt today.
Past Master
Plucked from time, Sir Thomas More arrives on the human colony of Astrobe in the year 2535 A.D. Can he and his motley followers save this golden world from the Programmed Persons? And the soulless perfection they have engineered?
The survival of faith itself is at stake. This is a thrilling, uncategorizable, wildly inventive first novel—but the adventure is more than one of ideas. As astonishingly as Philip K. Dick and other visionaries of the 1960s new wave, Lafferty turns the conventions of space-opera science fiction upside-down and inside-out. Here are fractured allegories, tales-within-tales, twinkle-in-the-eye surprises, fantastic byways, and alien subjectivities that take one’s breath away. Neil Gaiman has described Lafferty “a genius, an oddball, a madman”; Gene Wolfe calls him “our most original writer.”
The Doomsday Book
For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was simple. Just as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the 21st century, meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age. Her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.
The Left Hand of Darkness
‘Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new’
Two people, until recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other is fleeing from a different kind of persecution. What they have in common is curiosity. About others and themselves, and an almost unshakeable belief that the world can be a better place.
They journey for over 800 miles. Across the harshest, most inhospitable landscape, they discover the true meaning of friendship, and of love.
The City & The City
The body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel. Somewhere at the edge of Europe. It looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. As he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger. And more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.
The Demolished Man
In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime. It hasn’t been heard of in 70 years: murder. That’s the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D’Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face. And driven to the edge after D’Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival. H bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath’s knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence.
Roadside Picnic
Red Schuhart is a stalker. one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the Zone and the thriving black market in the alien products. Even the nature of his daughter has been determined by the Zone. And it is for her that Red makes his last, tragic foray into the hazardous and hostile depths.
Battlefield Earth
Sadistic Aliens…
…Man is an endangered species.
Is it the end of the world or the rebirth of a new one?
In the year A.D. 3000, Earth is a dystopian wasteland. The great cities stand crumbling as a brutal reminder of what we once were. When the Psychlos invaded, all the world’s armies mustered little resistance against the advanced alien weapons.
Now, the man animals serve one purpose.
Do the Psychlos’ bidding or face extinction.
One man, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, has a plan. They must learn about the Psychlos and their weapons. He needs the other humans to follow him. And that may not be enough.
Can he outwit his Psychlo captor, Terl?
The fate of the Galaxy lies on the Battlefield of Earth.
Stand On Zanzibar
There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes … all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1969
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1969
The Unreasoning Mask
Captain Ramstan commands the crew of one of the only alaraf-drive vessels capable of instantaneous travel between two points of space. While on an official scientific surveillance expedition, he revises their mission to join the search for a missing ship. However instead of the spacecraft, they discover a planet in its death throes. Meteors launched with extreme velocity from just outside of its atmosphere decimate it. The ultimate source of the destruction, however, is beyond anyone’s imagination . . .
Ramstan may be the only man who can stop the world-destroying entity known as the “Chaos-Monster.” A stolen alien idol offers aid—though at a price. There are those who hear his warnings as nothing but the rantings of a delusional madman. Ramstan will have to put his career—and life—on the line to prove that, though he might not be the savior the universe wants, he’s exactly the one it needs.
Cities In Flight
James Blish’s galaxy-spanning masterwork, originally published in four volumes. It explores a future in which two crucial discoveries – antigravity devices which enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs which enable their inhabitants to live for thousands of years – lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.
John Carter
John Carter, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, goes prospecting in Arizona immediately after the war’s end. Having struck a rich vein of gold, he runs afoul of the Apaches. He evades pursuit by hiding in a sacred cave, he is mysteriously transported to Mars. Inhiabitants call it Barsoom. Carter finds that he has great strength and superhuman agility in this new environment. As a result of its lesser gravity. He soon falls in with a nomadic tribe of Green Martians. Or Tharks, as the planet’s warlike, six-limbed, green-skinned inhabitants are known. Thanks to his strength and martial prowess, Carter rises to a high position in the tribe and earns their respect. Eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas, one of the Thark chiefs.
Winning Dejah Thoris’ hand, he becomes Prince of Helium, and the two live happily together for nine years. However, the sudden breakdown of the Atmosphere Plant that sustains the planet’s waning air supply endangers all life on Barsoom. In a desperate attempt to save the planet’s inhabitants, Carter uses a secret telepathic code to enter the factor. He brings an engineer along who can restore its functionality. Carter then succumbs to asphyxiation. Only to awaken back on Earth, left to wonder what has become of Barsoom and his beloved.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Widely acknowledged as one of Robert A. Heinlein’s greatest works. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress rose from the golden age of science fiction to become an undisputed classic. A touchstone for the philosophy of personal responsibility and political freedom. A revolution on a lunar penal colony—aided by a self-aware supercomputer. It provides the framework for a diverse group of people grappling with ever-changing definitions of humanity, technology, and free will.
Solaris
Psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface. He finds himself confronting a painful memory embodied in the physical likeness of a past lover. Kelvin learns that he is not alone in this. Other crews examining the planet are plagued with their own repressed and newly real memories. Could it be, as Solaris scientists speculate? That the ocean may be a massive neural center creating these memories, for a reason no one can identify?
Long considered a classic, Solaris asks a question. Can we understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?
Ringworld
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, RINGWORLD remains a favorite among science fiction readers.
Louis Wu, accompanied by a young woman with genes for luck. And a captured kzin – a warlike species resembling 8-foot-tall cats. They are taken on a space ship run by a brilliant 2-headed alien called Nessus. Their destination is the Ringworld. An artificially constructed ring with high walls that hold 3 million times the area of Earth. Its origins are shrouded in mystery.
The adventures of Louis and his companions on the Ringworld are unforgettable . . .
Tau Zero
The epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine. It takes her and her fifty-strong crew to a planet some thirty light-years distant. Because the ship will accelerate to close to the speed of light, for those on board subjective time will slow. The journey will be of only a few years’ duration.
Then a buffeting by an interstellar dustcloud changes everything. The ship’s deceleration system is damaged irreperably and soon she is gaining velocity. When she attains light-speed, tau zero itself, the disparity between ship-time and external time becomes almost impossibly great. Eons and galaxies hurtle by, and the crew of the Leonora Christine speeds into the unknown.
Blood Music
This Hugo and Nebula Award finalist follows present-day events in which the fears concerning the nuclear annihilation of the world subsided after the Cold War. The fear of chemical warfare spilled over into the empty void it left behind. An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research. Rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware just how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear’s treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is suspenseful. It is a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.
Riddley Walker
O what we ben! And what we come to…’ Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization. Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.
‘Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece’ Observer
‘A timeless portrayal of the human condition … frightening and uncanny’ Will Self
‘A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things’ Max Porter
Red Rising
Darrow is a Helldiver. A pioneer of Mars.
Born to slave beneath the earth so that one day, future generations might live above it.
He is a Red – humankind’s lowest caste. But he has something the Golds – the ruthless ruling class – will never understand.
He has a wife he worships, a family who give him strength. He has love.
And when they take that from him, all that remains is revenge . . .
Revelation Space
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld Resurgam, it’s of little more than academic interest. Even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin. For brilliant but ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it’s more than merelty intellectual curiosity. He will stop at nothing to get at the truth. Even if the truth costs him everything. But the Amarantin were wiped out for a reason, and that danger is closer and greater than even Syveste imagines …
REVELATION SPACE: a huge, magnificent space opera that ranges across the known and unknown universe … towards the most terrifying of destinations.
Flowers For Algernon
The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence
Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the gentle butt of everyone’s jokes. Until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius.
But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental transformation preceded his, fades and dies. Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.
Slan
From its first publication as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1940, Slan was acclaimed by readers. Considered as one of, if not THE, novel of Golden Age science fiction. Telling the story of Jommy Cross, a young slan, and his quest to discover his father’s legacy. And to find others like him, while fleeing from a repressive dictatorship. Slan was both a ground-breaking SF novel, and perhaps the first Young Adult paranormal adventure.
At the opening of the novel, Jommy is just a kid, but, like all slans, can read minds. It helps Jommy survive when slans are hunted and killed by the government. A novel of racial conflict set in a disrupted culture that delivers relentless action, super science, and high adventure.
Invader
The second novel in Cherryh’s Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequences…
2 centuries after the starship Phoenix disappeared, an isolated colony of humans on the world of the atevi remain. It unexpectedly returns to orbit overhead, threatening the stability of both atevi and human governments.
With the situation fast becoming critical, Bren Cameron, the brilliant, youngpaidhi to the court of the atevi is recalled. But his sudden and premature return to the mainland is cause for more than mere physical discomfort. During his brief absence, his government sent his successor, Deana Hanks—representative of a dangerous archconservative faction who hate the atevi. And though she should depart when Bren is once again able to fill his post, no recall order comes.
The Baroque Cycle
Get all three novels in Neal Stephenson’s New York Times bestselling “Baroque Cycle” in one e-book. This includes: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. This three-volume historical epic delivers intrigue, adventure, and excitement set against the political upheaval of the early 18th century.
Footfall
An alien craft is approaching Earth. Attempts to communicate go unanswered. The welcoming committee of Americans and Russians at a space station is blasted, its occupants killed or captured. Soon the entire Earth, with special emphasis on the United States, is bombarded by asteroids, destroying dams, highways, and infrastructure. The message to humans: total surrender or death to all. They launch a a giant rock, the “footfall”, towards Earth. The aliens land, determined to conquer or utterly eliminate the human race.
The Many Colored Land
A one-way time tunnel to Earth’s distant past, specifically six million B.C., was discovered by folks on the Galactic Milieu. Every misfit for light-years around hurried to pass through it. Each sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years….
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovksy’s award-winning novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age. A world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
Cold Allies
In a greenhouse effect-altered world, the United States and its European allies fight a losing battle. They fight against the Arab National Army, only to receive apparent help from enigmatic UFOs.
The Vor Game
Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command. He is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to Lazkowski Base, an arctic training camp. His tenure in the windy, snow-covered north is cut short when Miles narrowly averts a massacre. After a brief stay under ‘house arrest’, Miles is re-assigned to investigate a suspicious military build-up near a wormhole nexus. Reviving his undercover persona as mercenary Admiral Miles Naismith, his routine information-gathering duty expands to a rescue mission. The Emperor of Barrayar disappears during a political conference on a nearby space station. Miles must use his considerable negotiating skills to avoid a showdown between competing powers for control of the wormhole. He must find the Emperor, and watch his back for the arctic base commander seeking bloody vengeance.
Time and Again
Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton vanished somewhere in the star system 61 Cygni. An inaccessible corner of the universe that humankind has thus far been unable to explore. Now Asher has returned to Earth, having impossibly survived catastrophic damage to his spacecraft. But the star-traveler is not the same man he was when he began his journey two decades earlier. He is, in fact, no longer completely human. And he is not alone. But he has a message to convey that could have reality-altering consequences for the human galaxy-conquerors. And for the nearly human androids they create, enslave, and oppress. It is Asher’s destiny to change everything. His mission has made him a hero to some, a pariah to others. And a target for determined time-traveling assassins from the future to silence him before everything they cherish is obliterated.
Where The Stars Rise
Take a journey through Asia with 23 original thought-provoking and moving stories. They are about identities, belonging, and choices–stories about where we come from and where we are going.
ALL EMOTIONS ARE UNIVERSAL. WE LIVE, WE DREAM, WE STRIVE, WE DIE…
Stories that explore magic and science. Some about love, revenge, and choices. Stories that challenge ideas about race, belonging, and politics. Each wrestling between ghostly pasts and uncertain future. Each trying to find a voice in history.
Orphans and drug-smuggling in deep space. Mechanical arms in steampunk Vancouver. Djinns and espionage in futuristic Istanbul. Humanoid robot in steamy Kerala. Monsters in the jungles of Cebu. Historic time travel in Gyeongbok Palace. A rocket launch in post-apocalyptic Tokyo. A drunken ghost in Song Dynasty China. A displaced refugee skating on an ice planet. And much more.
Embrace them as you take on their journeys. And don’t look back . . .
This is not a novel but I’m a co-author here. I would love for you to read this science fiction book by Laksa Media. And introduce you to some new authors including Fonda Lee.
Your Favorite Science Fiction Novel?
There are tons of science fictions books out there. It’s difficult sometimes to separate science fiction from fantasy. Take NK Jemisin and Charlie Jane Anders. They have a good mix of science but also fantasy added to them.
While compiling the list, I read plenty of comments on various forums. Especially, what people have liked and enjoyed reading. This list has probably left out some older books like The Time Machine and Frankenstein. I just hoped to catch something that was not on every other list out there.
I honestly feel that readers of science fiction are an erudite group. Science in length and breadth is wide and deep. I love physics, genetics and biology but others may prefer chemistry and nanotech. Additionally, I love outer space and dinosaurs but cannot process dragons. I know others love them. So if I’ve left out any book or flavor of science fiction, forgive me.
Do you have a favorite science fiction novel? Let me know which one and why.