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Recommended Science Fiction Books
Science fiction is an incredibly diverse field, and I tried to include at least one example from each of the top authors and the important sub-genres. Though sf is no exception to the rule that "90% of everything is crud" (a rule actually invented for sf by Theodore Sturgeon), there's still a LOT of great sf out there and I apologize in advance to fans of any author or work which got left out. I should also warn you that I did not include short stories and novellas, other than those which have been collected into cohesive books (not simply themed anthologies). Science fiction is one of the few genres with an active market for good short fiction, but I simply don't know enough of it to make a decent recommendation list.
- Scott Martin, Enigma Librarian Emeritus
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov (includes Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation)
Asimov at his best. The story of the fall of the Galactic Empire and one man's legacy which attempts to save civilization through the use of "psychohistory". Originally serialized in magazines, the first book consists of a number of short stories, the second and third of two novellas each, the whole covering a story arc of a few hundred years. Don't expect action and adventure. Asimov's unique mastery is to tell a gripping story which somehow consists primarily of a few people talking to each other in small rooms; most readers don't even notice that much of the "action" happens off stage! However, for great dialogue, engaging plots, epic sweep, and asbolutlely flawless prose you can't beat the early works of Asimov. (Note: Unless you're a huge Foundation fan, I don't really recommend the later Foundation books.)
Isaac Asimov Home Page
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
There's a reason Asimov is the only author to make this list twice! Just as the Foundation books are the enduring epitome of galactic empire novels, Asimov's robot stories set the same level for robots in science fiction, introducing the famous Three Laws of Robotics. I, Robot collects some of the best of Asimov's robot short stories and frames them to provide a historical narrative about robots in Asimov's near future history. Otherwise it's an eclectic mixture of classic hard sf problem-solving stories (guy-next-door heroes discover a technical problem and use their scientific knowledge and common sense know-how to fix things) with extraordinarily poignant emotional pieces.
Isaac Asimov Home Page
The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
These two books from the 50's haven't survived the test of time as well as many other classics. Some of the themes, settings, and devices seem old or cliched. But when you remember that Bester is one of the first authors to explore these concepts you can realize how amazing they were, and they're still really good stories. The Stars My Destination deals with mental teleportation, The Demolished Man with telepathy. Both have more or less sociopathic anti-heroes as protagonists and provide fascinating studies of a criminal mind.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This book could just as easily have been listed under fantasy, and really belongs under a separate category of "science fantasy". Bradbury's Mars has a definite magical feel to it, a place of mystery and wonder where anything can happen. The Chronicles are a collection of short stories which together tell in an episodic fashion the story of the human occupation of Mars and the displacement of the native Martians. Disparate in tone, the individual stories share only the loose setting and Bradbury's concise, poetic style. I think the single adjective which best sums up this book is "beautiful".
Study guide for Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
It was hard to pick which of Clarke's books to include in this list. There are a lot of good ones, and few stand out from the rest, but I think Rendezvous with Rama best captures Clarke's style. Don't expect much of a plot, or even strong characterization. Like most Clarke works, Rendezvous is a tour of a place and time, in this case an alien space ship passing quickly through our own solar system. But oh, does he make that tour exciting!
Arthur C. Clarke Unauthorized Homepage
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
What happens when a human infant is raised among Martians and then brought back to Earth as an adult? You end up with classic Heinlein ("the Dean of Science Fiction"), complete with the curmudgeonly old man who is the true main character and who provides a near endless stream of social/political/philosophical commentary. This turns off some people, but if you can put up with (or even enjoy) that kind of thing, you'll also discover a powerful story about what it is to be human. Note that the book is available in two versions: the version published in 1961, and the "original uncut version" published post-humously in 1991. I've read both and have to say there's little difference other than length. The material that was cut consists of hundreds of short passages and snippets scattered throughout the text. There were no substantial plot elements removed and, with one minor exception, the implied sex scenes in the edited version (there's a lot of "free love" going on in this 60's cult classic) still occur offstage in the uncut version. Oh, one final note. This is the book that introduced the word "grok".
Robert A. Heinlein, Dean of SF Writers
Dune by Frank Herbert
What can you say about Dune? It's a space opera epic, a study of desert ecologies and cultures, a bizarre mix of hard science and unfettered mysticism, a vision of man's future, an exploration of religion and politics, a myth, and a coming-of-age tale, all rolled into one really long book. Though the prose and dialogue can be, well, turgid, it's worth the investment. I suggest reading the first few chapters. If you enjoy them, keep going, you'll love the book. If you're turned off, stop there -- it doesn't get any better.
The Official Dune Website
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
Though her "feminist" novel The Left Hand of Darkness tends to get more credit (and that oft-used adjective provides a wholly inadequate description for a novel that includes absolutely no female characters), I definitely prefer her experimental work Always Coming Home. Self-described as an "archaeology of the future", Always Coming Home is a collection of short stories, essays, poems, plays, maps, and even recipes describing a society of villagers living in a far-future post-civilization Napa Valley. Some editions even include an audio cassette of songs, stories, and chants to accompany the book. It's not so much a story as an immersion into a new culture, albeit a culture that's entirely ficitious. Fascinating!
Ringworld by Larry Niven
A mixed crew of humans and aliens explore an artificial world shaped like a ring which completely encircles a star. This is one of the core works in Niven's Known Space series of novels and stories. Personally I think that Niven's short stories are better than his novels, but Ringworld certainly gets all the hype and deserves much of it. Though not profound, it's a rip-roaring high-tech adventure that I heartily recommend on that basis.
"Known Space" : The Unoffical Larry Niven Home Page
The Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy by Douglas Adams (includes The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything)
Funny, funny, funny! By far the funniest works of science fiction ever written. Based on a radio play and also made into an album and a BBC television series, The Hitchhiker's Guide stories have thus appeared in a lot of media, been a hit in all, and proven that even in science fiction British comedy is king. There's really no way to describe these books other than to say that they start with the destruction of the Earth and go on from there. Adams varied the story and presentation sufficiently in the different media that you really need to read/watch/hear all of them if possible. One caveat: Do not, under any circumstances, read the fourth and fifth books in the "trilogy". Seriously not funny.
Douglas Adams
Startide Rising by David Brin
A few hundred years from now, mankind has discovered that there's a whole lot of aliens out there, and Earthclan (humans and their "uplifted" dolphin and chimpanzee clients) is very small potatoes in their inter-galactic, billion-year-old civilization. When the first dolphin-commanded Earth survey ship stumbles upon what may be one of the great secrets of galactic civilization, the dolphins, humans, and sole chimp aboard the Streaker find themselves the prize in an interstellar war whose motives they can barely understand. This novel is both a fascinating exploration of dolphin psychology and culture and a serious look at the place of humans and civilization in the universe, all set amidst a fun and exiciting fight for survival against fantastic odds.
David Brin
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Card is the master of character and emotional manipulation. He creates fascinating, believable, and above all sympathetic characters, and then puts them through emotional hell and impossible ethical dilemmas, dragging the reader along with them. In Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin is a child prodigy with a most unique gift, military strategy, for which he's been bred by the government. Tossed into battle school, he and the other child soldiers must survive a brutal training regimen which may provide humanity's only hope to survive total war with an alien race. In Speaker for the Dead, the now adult Ender travels to a world where humanity has discovered a second alien species and becomes involved with the dysfunctional family which provides the small planet's chief scientists. Though dealing with big concepts of inter-stellar, inter-species relations, both novels work primarily on an intensely personal level, detailing the day-to-day lives, hopes, and dreams of very human characters who are disturbingly easy to identify with. Moving.
Beans Ender's Game WebPage
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Watchmen is the ultimate deconstruction of the superhero. It asks the questions: What would the world really be like if we had superheroes? Who would become a superhero? What types of lives would they lead? While answering these questions, Watchmen also becomes one of the most tightly plotted and drawn graphic novels out there -- every panel of the comic contains crucial thematic or plot elements. I've seen people spend hours discussing the various artistic details and clues spread throughout the book, and more hours arguing about the ultimate intent of the morally ambiguous final page. Definitely one of those books you want to go back and read again as soon as you finish!
The Annotated Watchmen
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (includes Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion)
Set amidst a beautifully realized interstellar milieu which is only revealed slowly in small pieces, Hyperion contains the Chaucer-esque tales of six pilgrims whose only common background is the planet Hyperion and the ageless killing machine known as the Shrike toward which they are all journeying. Though each tale is in a completely different style, each is a masterpiece of its type: a horror story told through the diary entries of a Catholic priest, a violent and erotic war adventure, the epic yet satiric autobiography of a great poet, a poignant tale of family tragedy, a quirky crossover between Raymond Chandler and cyberpunk, and a beautiful romance story of (almost literally) star-crossed lovers. Fall of Hyperion manages to weave these disparate themes into a single space opera plot of awe-inspiring magnitude and complexity. Simmons somehow managed to combine the best of almost every sub-genre of science fiction; this work left me absolutely stunned.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
While William Gibson deservedly gets credit for epitomizing the cyberpunk genre, Neal Stephenson took it even a step further with Snow Crash. This frantic near-future tale combines a post-national civilization, online samurai, ancient linguistics, high-tech skateboards, memes, an eskimo assassin, Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness, cybernetic guard dogs, and a main character named Hiro Protagonist, who works for the mafia as the ultimate pizza delivery man - the Deliverator. Simultaneously thought-provoking and outright silly, I dare you to put it down once you've started.
Web Page of Neal Stephenson
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Another high-concept epic space opera (I like high-concept epic space operas!), A Fire Upon the Deep relies more on hard sf prediction than on mythic resonances, providing a gritty yet very alien far-future universe in which multi-species civilizations rise and fall across swaths of interstellar space, all in the shadow of the transcendent Powers, near omnipotent beings/AIs/civlizations/who-knows-whats that live beyond the edges of the galaxy. In this setting a small group of humans get caught between both the star-spanning plots of the Powers and the medieval intrigues of the Tines, primitive aliens on whose world two children have crash-landed. Vinge's fascinating depiction of the Tines, hypothetical "pack mind" sentients, is just an added bonus.
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
One of the best-written time travel novels, Doomsday is hard to describe without giving away a lot of surprises, but you should be warned that the Black Plague features prominently. Despite lots of light-hearted scenes (Willis is a fantastic comedic writer) this is not a happy book. But if you want a gripping story about human adversity in the 14th and 21st centuries, this is the place to get it.
Main Recommendations Page
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