Best authors in SF sampler
Explore the best authors in science fiction with our curated sampler of top-tier books. Discover must-read samples from legendary SF writers and find your next favorite read today!
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The Guns of the South
by Harry Turtledove
"It is absolutely unique--without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read." Professor James M. McPherson Pultizer Prize-winning BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM January 1864--General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower. Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: Its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantitites to the Confederates. The name of the weapon is the AK-47.... Selected by the Science Fiction Book Club A Main Selection of the Military Book Club
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller (Jr.)
The winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel, Miller's bestselling work is a true landmark of 20th-century literature--a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.
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Brothers in Arms
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Another adventure with brothers Mark and Miles in The Vorkosigan series.
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A Fire Upon The Deep
by Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization. A Fire Upon The Deep is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
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Downbelow Station
by C. J. Cherryh
A powerful, complex and enthralling novel of interstellar conflict and ambitions, Downbelow Station teems with vivid characters, both human and non-human, whose futures hinge on the outcome of the titanic struggle to control a key strategic point in the Earth's defense against rebellion.
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Way Station
by Clifford D. Simak
The long talks Enoch Wallace, a Civil War veteran, enjoys with interstellar travelers may cease when war threatens the earth and his way station may be closed
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The Player of Games
by Iain Banks
The Culture-a human/machine symbiotic society-has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game-a game so complex, so like life itself that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life-and very possibly his death.