Awesome Sci-Fi

Sci-Fi worth consuming

I asked on Twitter for recommendations as I want to get into reading Sci-Fi novels. The below is the result. Thanks everyone for recommending your favorites! :)

For fantasy books, see awesome-fantasy.

Contents

• Novels
  • Science Fiction
  • Hard Science Fiction
  • Cyberpunk
  • Utopia
  • Dystopia
  • Space Opera
  • Post Apocalyptic
  • Military Science Fiction
  • Police Procedural Science Fiction
  • Techno Thriller
  • Fantasy
  • Drama
  • Biopunk
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Time Travel
  • Comedy
  • Horror
• Short Story Collections
• Movies
• Movie Series
• TV Series
• Comic Books
• Links

Novels

🌟 means that it's a classic.

🔥 means that it has more than 100 000 ratings on Goodreads.

The [number] at the end is the rounded version of the rating on Goodreads.

Science Fiction

Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross [3.9]

Accelerando is an excellent exploration of Posthumanism. It's my go to recommendation for people wanting to read about that stuff. - @erbridge

It's also worth mentioning that the ebook is available for free in a variety of formats on Stross's website. - @AlexKeyes

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.

For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form.

</details>

Babel-17 (1966) by Samuel R. Delany [3.8]

This intense linguistic thriller will change the way you think about language. - @helderroem

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Babel-17 is all about the power of language. Humanity, which has spread throughout the universe, is involved in a war with the Invaders, who have been covertly assassinating officials and sabotaging spaceships. The only clues humanity has to go on are strange alien messages that have been intercepted in space. Poet and linguist Rydra Wong is determined to understand the language and stop the alien threat.

</details>

Barsoom series (1912-1927) by Edgar Rice Burroughs [3.8] 🌟

Now more than a century old, has that unique writing style you can only find in adventure classics. - @uraimo

Books:

• A Princess of Mars [3.8]
• The Gods of Mars [3.8]
• The Warlord of Mars [3.8]
• Thuvia, Maid of Mars [3.7]
• The Chessmen of Mars [3.7]
• The Master Mind of Mars [3.8]
• A Fighting Man of Mars [3.8]
• Swords of Mars [4.0]
• Synthetic Men of Mars [3.8]
• Llana of Gathol [3.7]
• John Carter of Mars [3.8]

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Barsoom is planet Mars from American Edgar Rice Burroughs. First serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in 1912, published as A Princess of Mars in 1917. Dying Mars was based on outdated scientific ideas of canals. The savage, frontier world has honor, noble sacrifice and constant struggle, where martial prowess is paramount and races fight over dwindling resources.

</details>

Bobiverse Series (2016) by Dennis E. Taylor [4.35]

Like Accelerando, this series is an excellent exploration of posthumanism. It also has themes of space exploration, references to various other series, and is all around a great amount of fun to read. It's also free if you have kindle unlimited. - @AlexKeyes

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.

The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

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Childhood’s End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke [4.0]

This book is interesting for its view of what a golden age of mankind would look like, and what would the shortcomings of that be. It also has a very interesting take on mass psychology - I don't want to give away too much, but the Overlords are a nifty bunch. This is a good early Clarke, and has two of his favorite themes; the first that remote work will be possible with technology, and the second that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - @RichardLitt

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Without warning, giant silver ships from deep space appear in the skies above every major city on Earth. Manned by the Overlords, in fifty years, they eliminate ignorance, disease, and poverty. Then this golden age ends—and then the age of Mankind begins…

</details>

Cities in Flight (1970) by James Blish [4.0]

This is a long book, but absolutely fantastic. It redefined for me the scale at which science fiction was possible, especially given the human elements are very fleshed out (as opposed to other massive space epics, like Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men'). A brilliant look at the future, going off of only two small changes - what if we had drugs to defeat death, and cities could fly. - @RichardLitt

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Originally published in four volumes nearly fifty years ago, Cities in Flight brings together the famed “Okie novels” of science fiction master James Blish. Named after the migrant workers of America’s Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish’s “history of the future,” a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.

In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and antigravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction’s most inimitable writers.

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Contact (1985) by Carl Sagan [4.1]

Based on Sagan's own studies as an astrophysicist and philosopher, Contact provides a possible glimpse of the world's reaction to extraterrestrial life - @augustopedro

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

At first it seemed impossible - a radio signal that came not from Earth but from far beyond the nearest stars. But then the signal was translated, and what had been impossible became terrifying. For the signal contains the information to build a Machine that can travel to the stars. A Machine that can take a human to meet those that sent the message. They are eager to meet us: they have been watching and waiting for a long time. And now they will judge.

</details>

Dark Matter (2016) by Blake Crouch [4.1] 🔥

An interesting take on the possibility of the multiverse, Schrödinger's cat, and how every choice, big or small, has led to this exact moment. - @thedeany

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

It starts with a man in a mask kidnapping him at gunpoint, for reasons Jason can’t begin to fathom—what would anyone want with an ordinary physics professor?—and grows even more terrifying from there, as Jason’s abductor injects him with some unknown drug and watches while he loses consciousness.

When Jason awakes, he’s in a lab, strapped to a gurney—and a man he’s never seen before is cheerily telling him “welcome back!”

Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born.

And someone is hunting him.

</details>

Doorways in the Sand (1976) by Roger Zelazny [4.0]

What a weird, funny and lovely little book. - @RichardLitt

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Fred Cassidy, a perpetual student, scrounger, and acrophile, is the last known person to have seen an important stone that his friend had. Various criminals, Anglophile zealots, government agents and aliens torture, shoot, beat, trick, chase, terrorize, assault telepathically, stalk, and importune Fred in attempts to get him to tell them the location of the stone. He denies any knowledge of its whereabouts, and decides to make his own investigation.

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Dune Chronicles (1963-1994) by Frank Herbert [4.1] 🌟 🔥

I think what is most fascinating about Dune isn't that it is so commonly read, but the ubiquity with which it is referenced. Once you read this, you start seeing Dune quotes everywhere. Dune is monumental in scope, and the cautionary tone in which it was written - this is what happens when you put faith in a single person trained scientifically - almost completely backfires in an amazing story of heroism, revenge, and reconciliation. A book worth reading multiple times. Of course, it is also a series - the first stands alone, and I haven't read beyond the first two. There almost isn't a need. Dune alone is that good. - @RichardLitt

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

Set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary dynasties are controlled by noble houses that owe an allegiance to the imperial House Corrino, Dune tells the story of young Paul Atreides (the heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and heir of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the “spice” melange, the most important and valuable substance in the cosmos. The story explores the complex, multilayered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology and human emotion, as the forces of the empire confront each other for control of Arrakis.

Published in 1965, it won the Hugo Award in 1966 and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is frequently cited as the world’s best-selling SF novel.

</details>

Embassytown (2011) by China Miéville [3.8]

<details> <summary>Description</summary>

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

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