Eclectic Really Good Science Fiction
Explore an eclectic collection of really good science fiction books! Discover diverse and captivating reads that span unique subgenres, themes, and authors in this curated list of must-read sci-fi fiction.
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Cyteen
by C.J. Cherryh
The Hugo Award-winning SF saga is now available in one complete trade paperback edition, containing Cyteen: The Betrayal, The Rebirth and The Vindication. "A psychological novel, a murder mystery and an examination of power on a grand scale, encompassing light years and outsize lifetimes".--Locus.
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Borgel
by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
Melvin recounts his extraordinary adventures in time and space with his 111-year-old sort of great-Uncle Borgel.
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Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls
by Jane Lindskold
The Magic That Doesn't Go Away Cutbacks have forced Sarah out of the asylum in which she was raised--and into a strange new place where the Head Wolf rules the beautiful and the doomed. But Sarah can never truly assimilate, for she possesses wild talents. Walls tell her their secrets. Safes tell her their combinations. And a favorite toy dragon whispers dire warnings about those who would exploit her for their own malevolent purposes. There's no place Sarah can hide, from her pursuers or from her past...
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A Tale of Time City
by Diana Wynne Jones
In 1939 an eleven-year-old London girl is kidnapped to Time City, a place existing outside the stream of time and manipulating the history of humanity, where she finds the inhabitants facing their worst hour of crisis.
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The Ordinary
by Jim Grimsley
The Ordinary is a powerful and entrancing tale of magic, science, and the mysterious truth that binds them together. Jim Grimsley's novels and short stories have been favorably compared to the works of Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Now he unleashes an ambitious and audacious collision between science and magic. The Twil Gate links two very different realms. On one side of the portal is Senal, an advanced technological civilization of some thirty billion inhabitants, all cybernetically linked and at war with machine intelligences many light-years away. On the other side is Irion, a land of myth and legend, where the world is flat and mighty wizards once ruled. Jedda Martele is a linguist and trader from Senal. Although fascinated by the languages and cultures of Irion, she shares her people's assumption that Irion is backward and superstitious and no match for her homeland's superior numbers and technology. But as the two realms march inevitably toward war, Jedda finds herself at the center of historic, unimaginable events that will challenge everything she has ever believed about the world--and herself.
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Catalyst
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
While running from a bully, Kaslin leaps into a cave, slides down a slippery slope, and enters a world ruled by an alien intelligence.
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Major Ingredients
by Eric Frank Russell
Cordelia Naismith, Betan Survey Captain, was expecting the unexpected: hexapods, floating creatures, odd parasites ... She was not, however, expecting to find hostile humans on an uninhabited planet. And she wasn't really expecting to fall in love with a 40-plus barbarian known to cosmopolitan galactics as the Butcher of Komarr.--From source other than Library of Congress.
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Butterfly and Hellflower
by Eluki Bes Shahar
A librarian and an illegal artificial intelligence struggle against the evil "cataloging bureaucracy".
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Hellspark
by Janet Kagan
Tocohl, a Hellspark trader, goes to the new planet of Lassti, where she is embroiled in the intrigue and mysteries surrounding the death of a survey team member and the question of the sentience of the planet's native Sprookjes.
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Rats, Bats & Vats
by Eric Flint
Chip Connolly was a conscripted grunt in trouble: stuck behind enemy lines with a bunch of cyber-uplifted rats and bats. Rats with human speech, but with rat priorities: sex, food and strong drink. And the bats were revolutionaries planning to throw off the human yoke -- with high explosive. Then there was the girl they'd rescued. Rich. Beautiful. With a passionate crush on her "heroic" rescuer. Her entourage was a screwball Alien tutor, and a cyber-uplifted lemurlike pet galago with delusions of being the world's greatest lover. Of course things only got worse. Seven rats, five bats, a galago, two humans, a sea-urchin-like alien and an elderly vineyard tractor without brakes...against several million inimical aliens. He was going to die. Mind you, not dying could be even more terrible. That girl might get him.
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City of Diamond
by Jane Emerson
The newly appointed Protector of an intergalactic city-ship, Adrian Mercati is urged by his predecessor to strengthen his position by locating the Sawyer Crown, an alien artifact that will give him superiority over his enemies. Original.
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Xenogenesis
by Octavia E. Butler
In the aftermath of Earth's final war, Lilith awakens to see a shadowy figure -- Jdahya, one of the Oankali, a race that has decided to save the human race from itself. Lilith learns that the Oankali are gene traders who interbreed with failing species so that both races can survive. Jdahya proposes that Lilith mate with a third sex in their culture, creating human-alien hybrids who do not have humanity's weaknesses. As her new world beckons, Lilith must decide if survival is worth the price.
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The City, Not Long After
by Pat Murphy
An army of power-hungry men are descending on San Francisco. Jax and danny-boy must lead the fight for freedom using the only weapons they have-art, magic and the soul of the city itself.
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Bone Dance
by Emma Bull
Fifty years after nuclear Armageddon, Sparrow, a trader of pre-war CDs and videotapes, unwittingly possesses the secret to the Earth's destruction, and he is soon drawn into the mystery of the Horsemen, the Pentagon's telepathically trained soldiers
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Dreamspy
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Kyllikki must end a deep space war between the Teleod and the Metaji, two divergent factions whose disagreements threaten the time-space continuum
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The Princess of Neptune
by Quentin Dodd
Middle-schooler Theora Theremin and her brother Verbert find themselves whisked from the shores of hometown Lake Philodendron to an intergalactic beauty contest on Neptune.
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The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester
In 2301, a psychopathic business magnate comes up with the ultimate plan to eliminate his competition and destroy the order of society.
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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
by Douglas Adams
Detective Gently whizzes about the world, the universe, and time itself as a group of eccentric characters help him find an eccentric cat, solve a murder, and save the human race.
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Escape From Kathmandu
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson's Escape From Kathmandu is a light-hearted fantasy tribute to the world of extreme mountain climbing follows the adventures of two American expatriates living in Nepal. Living in the city of Kathmandu in the Kingdom of Nepal are dozens of American and British expatriates who are in love with the Himalayas. George Fergusson is one of them--he works as a trek guide for "Take You Higher, Ltd.", leading groups of tourists into the back country and occasionally assisting on serious climbs. George "Freds" Fredericks is another--a tall, easy-going American who converted to Buddhism while in college. He visited Nepal one year and never went home. The adventures started when George and Freds got together over the capture of a Yeti--an abominable snowman--by a scientific expedition. The thought of such a wild and mysterious creature in captivity--in prison--was too much for them to bear. And in freeing the Yeti, a great partnership was born. George and Freds will go on to greater heights as they explore the mysteries of Nepal, from Shangri-La to Kathmandu's governmental bureaucracy.
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Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages
by Diane Duane
THE HISTORIC SAGA BEGINS Born in the twilight years of Vulcan's violent and passionate past, those who declared themselves Rihannsu chose to reign free in the unknown reaches of space rather than to serve under the new tyranny of logic. Having severed themselves from their homeworld, they survived the perilous voyage across the stars to wash ashore on a distant planet, there to begin the civilization that would one day flower into the Romulan Star Empire. Now, after millennia of wars and conquests, that empire is decaying from within, surrendering its noble heritage to reckless ambition, abandoning honor for kidnapping and murder. The corruption is so great that the Rihannsu's finest military officer -- Commander Ael t'Rllaillieu of the warbird Bloodwing -- believes she can save her people only by joining forces with her greatest enemy: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterpriseâ„¢. Meanwhile, on the Romulan homeworld, a Federation deep-cover agent has been posing as a household servant named Arrhae i-Khellian -- but her operation takes a strange turn when a captured Starfleet officer is brought to her home . . . The lives of Ael, Arrhae, and the crew of the Enterprise come together in these astonishing adventures -- originally published in four volumes: My Enemy, My Ally; The Romulan Way; Swordhunt; and Honor Blade -- that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the Romulans.
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Uhura's Song
by Janet Kagan
ADF syndrome, a deadly plague, threatens the planet Eeiauo, and an oath to a friend prevents Uhura from revealing a forbidden song which may contain a clue to prevention of the disease.
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The Star Trek: The Original Series: The Final Reflection
by John M. Ford
Klingon Captain Krenn fights a covert plan to shatter the Federation at the risk of his own life.
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Dark Genesis
by J. Gregory Keyes
Long before the Babylon 5 space station brought Humans face-to-facewith alien races, they discovered an extraordinary breed among their very own . . . The year is 2115. Shock waves follow in the wake of astonishing news: science has proven the existence of telepaths. Amid media frenzy, panic, and bloodshed, Earth's government steps in to restore order--and establish tight control over the newfound special population . . . by any means necessary. Ambitious senator Lee Crawford spearheads the effort, overseeing the creation of the Psi Corps--an elite unit charged with tagging and monitoring all telepaths "for their own protection." But the real agenda behind the crackdown is one of government control. Many question the telepaths' origins, while others view them as a coveted weapon. As the Corps tightens its iron grip, the stage is set for a cataclysmic confrontation--one in which the future of Earth will be decided.
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Broken Time
by Maggy Thomas
In this debut book, which author Michael Stackpole calls "a stunner of a novel, " two dangerous inmates take a twisted interest in a janitor named Siggy. She becomes caught in a potential war between two races--a war that only a forgotten secret from her past can prevent.