Favorite science fiction novels by favorite SF authors
Discover top science fiction novels by renowned SF authors! Explore must-read favorites from the best in the genre for your next great adventure.
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The Futurological Congress (from the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy)
by Stanisław Lem
Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure. Translated by Michael Kandel.
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Count Zero
by William Gibson
In the future world of the Sprawl, an urban complex that extends from Boston to Houston, a sentient computer data base known as the Cyberspace matrix dominates humanity's fate
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Islands in the Net
by Bruce Sterling
Information is power, and even in the peaceful post-millenial age, power corrupts. Data pirates, new-age mercenaries, high-tech shamans, and murder stalk a brutal netherworld of deregulated havens in the Global Communications Network--Islands in the Net.
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Pacific Edge
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Set at the end of the 21st century in California, this story revolves around a seemingly perfect society. At first, bio-architect Kevin Claiborne thinks he has indeed found Utopia, but gradually events lead him to discover the corruption beneath the surface.
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The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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Babel-17
by Samuel R. Delany
In the far future, after human civilization has spread through the galaxy, communications begin to arrive in an apparently alien language. They appear to threaten invasion, but in order to counter the threat, the messages must first be understood.
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Blood Music
by Greg Bear
The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Moving Mars presents the book that launched his career, featuring a scientist who conducts an experiment in cell restructuring that takes on a threatening life of its own. Reprint.
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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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Janus
by Andre Norton
Previously published in two separate volumes--Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus--the jungle world of Janus is where Naill Renfro hopes to begin his life again. But he remembers another life in another time when he was not human. Soon Niall discovers the source of his new memory, and the fate of others of his kind.