Best Fantasy and Science Fiction of the last 25 years
Discover the best fantasy and science fiction books of the last 25 years! Explore our curated list of top-rated novels, must-read classics, and award-winning tales in sci-fi and fantasy genres.
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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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Neverness
by David Zindell
In a cosmos of prolific evolutionary diversity and complexity, Mallory Ringess, headstrong novice of the Order of Pilots, sets out to penetrate the Solid State Entity and to track down the secret of immortality
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Game of Universe
by Eric S. Nylund
One of thirteen people challenged to find the Holy Grail and be rewarded with a planetary system, Germain, an assassin, can absorb the consciousness of his victims, giving him an advantage in the contest until his inner personalities begin to battle for control of his body. Original.
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Startide Rising
by David Brin
David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written. Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War--a New York Times bestseller--together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time. Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind? The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret--the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.
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Tigana
by Guy Gavriel Kay
A masterful epic of magic, politics, war, and the power of love and hate—from the renowned author of The Fionavar Tapestry and Children of Earth and Sky. Tigana is the magical story of a beleaguered land struggling to be free. It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel despotic king that even the name of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered... But years after the devastation, a handful of courageous men and women embark upon a dangerous crusade to overthrow their conquerors and bring back to the dark world the brilliance of a long-lost name...Tigana. Against the magnificently rendered background of a world both sensuous and barbaric, this sweeping epic of a passionate people pursuing their dream is breathtaking in its vision, changing forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction.
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The Far Kingdoms
by Allan Cole
"A thoughtful and well-crafted epic fantasy." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Young, pampered Amalric Antero cared only for real places and possible dreams. But then he met Janos Greycloak, a dashing soldier who dabbled in forbidden magic and who carried, hidden, proof of riches and mysteries beyond imagination. And suddenly Amalric found himself setting out on the adventure of a lifetime, a daring and perilous quest through unknown lands peopled by nightmares, to seek the ultimate in fables...THE FAR KINGDOMS!
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The Iron Dragon's Daughter
by Michael Swanwick
Named a NEW YORK TIMES notable book of 1994, THE IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.
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Songs of Earth & Power
by Greg Bear
Slipping into the Realm of the Sidhe, young Michael Perrin faces years of captivity and deadly struggles for the future of the Realm and of Earth that culminate in a terrible confrontation on the streets of Los Angeles.
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Gatherer of Clouds
by Sean Russell
A young monk with extraordinary powers must save his empire from barabarian hordes poised at the border and ready to invade.
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The High House
by James Stoddard
When, as a child, Carter Anderson loses his father's key ring which holds the keys to doors in the High House--a place which controls the balance of the universe--it has disastrous effects when a sinister group of anarchists gain access to the House