Science Fiction

I recently received a request for my recommendations for science fiction books. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I actually love science fiction.  It was pretty much the bulk of what I read as a teenager, but now science fiction represents a relatively small fraction of the books I read.  But I am always on the hunt for good new science fiction, and I definitely have some good ones to recommend!  

I have written posts before on dystopian books and contemporary books with a science fiction edge (so I’ll refer you to those for some more really great suggestions, and for today’s post I’ll skip books I’ve already discussed there and focus on modern science fiction books in the classic mode about space travel.  And as a bonus at the end I’ll recommend some of my favorite older science fiction too.

The Martian by Andy Weir - A modern classic, this is a science fiction book liked even by people who don’t like science fiction. It’s a realistic feeling novel about an astronaut accidentally left for dead on Mars by the rest of his crew, and must figure out how to survive.  When I first read it, I described it as “Castaway meets Apollo 13, on Mars.”  There's also a great movie adaptation starring Matt Damon! This book made my 2014 ten favorites list, and was also a very memorable vacation read for me.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - This book is long but so good, cutting back and forth between an ark ship bearing the last of humanity, and a terraformed planet where the attempt to uplift intelligent life has not gone as planned.   While the ideas of ark ships, terraforming, uplift, and artificial intelligence gone awry are not new, Tchaikovsky skillfully combines them into a thoroughly original and compelling book.  Indeed, the non-human characters were perhaps even more interesting than the humans.   A book of epic scale yet also intimate and personal.  The sequel was great too.

Light From Other Stars by Erika Swyler - A beautiful, moving, literary science fiction novel.  This book alternates between two time periods - 1986, when Nedda is an 11 year old dreaming of becoming an astronaut some day, and the future when she is actually an astronaut on a deep space mission.  But the book is about so much more than that.  The rest of the plot can't really be described both because it would spoil the book, but beyond that, because the book is also about so much more than the science fiction aspects - a real character book, about families and relationships and love, not just a book set in space.  This is another one I think even non-science fiction fans would enjoy.  Intellectual and emotional and just lovely to read.

The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt - Enjoyable space opera.  It’s set pretty far in the future, where humans have outposts around the solar system, but also elsewhere in the universe thanks to wormhole technology from the one species of aliens they’ve encountered.  A small ship of the scavenger/freelance security variety with a ragtag crew of 5 encounters a 500 year old ship with just one person on it in cryosleep who wakes up and screams that her ship encountered alien life.  Great, interesting, diverse characters; interesting aliens; lots of action and a good plot that kept me up late at night reading; and a story that felt simultaneously unique and familiar (in a good way).  The other two books in the trilogy are good as well.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - Another series about a ragtag spaceship with oddball human/alien crew.  This one is set in a far future world where humanity is part of a collective of all different alien species.  Despite this setting, it is a largely character-based novel as we see the crew deal with different things both on- and off-board, but very interesting as we learn more about the characters, their world, and the different types of aliens.  I just read this recently, so I haven’t read the rest of the books in the series yet but am looking forward to doing so.

Artemis by Andy Weir - Andy Weir is good enough that I’m going to include him on this list twice!  An enjoyable science fiction novel set in a future where there is a small colony on the moon, and the protagonist is a young Arabic woman smuggler raised on the moon who gets caught up in a bigger plot.  Standard space caper but well done with interesting characters.  Not nearly as amazing as The Martian, but still a very enjoyable science fiction read.

Redshirts by John Scalzi - In this comic science fiction novel, a group of newly assigned crewmembers on a spaceship in the future slowly come to realize that their ship has an unusually high mortality rate, and that everyone on the ship tries to avoid interacting with the major officers on the ship or getting picked to go on away missions.  The title of this novel is a nod to the original "Star Trek" series, as on that show, random anonymous characters of the week on the mission away from the ship, who almost always were wearing a red uniform, seemed to always die.  Some fan somewhere took to calling them "redshirts" (and often refer to characters like that on other shows who die the same way).  Things only get more strange, and more meta, from there.  But not unlike the movie "Galaxy Quest," in addition to being a parody of "Star Trek" and other science fiction shows, the book is also a really good adventure story in its own right.  Well done and very enjoyable, a must read for any Star Trek fan.

Classics:

And as promised, some bonus classics that I recommend.  These are books published in the twentieth century, and for the most part books I read in my teens or early 20s but that have stuck with me ever since.  So if you decide to check them out, hopefully they still stand the test of time!

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (and its sequel Children of God)

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (and its sequels)

Sundiver by David Brin (and the rest of the series, called The Uplift Saga)

Foundation by Isaac Asimov and The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (and their respective sequels)

Robert Heinlein (from around 6th through 8th grade I think I read every single book he wrote!)

Dune by Frank Herbert (some of its sequels were better than others)

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernon Vinge (and its sequel, A Deepness in the Sky)