Five Star Science Fiction Novels I Have Read
Explore top-rated science fiction novels I've read, featuring must-read five-star books for sci-fi fans. Discover thrilling plots, epic adventures, and groundbreaking ideas in this curated list.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition
by Douglas Adams
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of the original radio show on which the book was based. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together, this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox—the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he’s bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars! Praise for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “A whimsical oddyssey . . . Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy.”—Publishers Weekly “Irresistable!”—The Boston Globe
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The Windup Girl
by Paolo Bacigalupi
Living in a future where food is scarce, Anderson Lake tries to find ways to exploit this need, as he comes into conflict with Jaidee, an official of the Environmental Ministry, and encounters Emiko, a engineered windup girl who has been discarded by her creator.
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Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game—adapted to film in 2013 starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford—is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war. In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel. THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender series Ender’s Game / Ender in Exile / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind Ender’s Shadow series Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight Children of the Fleet The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) The Swarm /The Hive Ender novellas A War of Gifts /First Meetings
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Neuromancer
by William Gibson
Case, a nerve-damaged data thief, is recruited by a new employer for a last-chance run against a powerful artificial intelligence.
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Dune
by Frank Herbert
• DUNE: PART TWO • THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Directed by Denis Villeneuve, screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert • Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Léa Seydoux, with Stellan Skarsgård, with Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad'Dib—and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition mankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
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The Many-colored Land
by Julian May
When a one-way time tunnel to Earth's distant past, specifically six million B.C., was discovered by folks on the Galactic Milieu, every misfit for light-years around hurried to pass through it. Each sought his own brand of happiness. But none could have guessed what awaited them. Not even in a million years.... THE SAGA OF PLIOCENE EXILE Volume I:THE MANY-COLORED LAND Volume II:THE GOLDEN TORC Volume III:THE NONBORN KING Volume IV:THE ADVERSARY . . . and don't miss A PLIOCENE COMPANION
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The Golden Torc
by Julian May
By A.D. 2110 nearly 100,000 humans had fled the civilized strictures of the Galactic Milieu for the freedom they thought existed at the end of the one-way time tunnel to Earth, six million B.C. But all of them had fallen into the hands of the Tanu, a humanoid race who'd fled their own galaxy to avoid punishment for their barbarous ways. And now the humans had made the Tanu stronger than the Firvulag, their degenerate brethren and ritual antagonists. Soon the Tanu would reign supreme. Or so they thought . . . .
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The Nonborn King
by Julian May
On Earth, six million B.C., two species of alien ruled, the graceful humanoid Tanu and their twisted brethren, the Firvulag. Then men from twenty-second century Earth arrived through a one-way time tunnel -- and soon the aliens were locked in a battle to the death, for the humans had upset the precarious balance of power that existed between them. But when the tides of combat had receded, no one group held firm control, though Aiken Drum, man of no woman born, had declared himself the Nonborn King . . . .
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Altered Carbon
by Richard K. Morgan
In a twenty-fifth-century world in which death is nearly obsolete, thanks to a technology that allows a person's consciousness to be downloaded into a new body, former U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs, re-sleeved into a new body after a brutal death, finds himself caught in the middle of a deadly far-reaching conspiracy that could have horrifying repercussions. Reprint.
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Broken Angels
by Richard K. Morgan
Welcome back to the brash, brutal new world of the twenty-fifth century: where global politics isn’t just for planet Earth anymore; and where death is just a break in the action, thanks to the techno-miracle that can preserve human consciousness and download it into one new body after another. Cynical, quick-on-the-trigger Takeshi Kovacs, the ex-U.N. envoy turned private eye, has changed careers, and bodies, once more . . . trading sleuthing for soldiering as a warrior-for-hire, and helping a far-flung planet’s government put down a bloody revolution. But when it comes to taking sides, the only one Kovacs is ever really on is his own. So when a rogue pilot and a sleazy corporate fat cat offer him a lucrative role in a treacherous treasure hunt, he’s only too happy to go AWOL with a band of resurrected soldiers of fortune. All that stands between them and the ancient alien spacecraft they mean to salvage are a massacred city bathed in deadly radiation, unleashed nanotechnolgy with a million ways to kill, and whatever surprises the highly advanced Martian race may have in store. But armed with his genetically engineered instincts, and his trusty twin Kalashnikovs, Takeshi is ready to take on anything—and let the devil take whoever’s left behind.
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion “Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World “An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review “Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post “An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist
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The Fall of Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
“State of the art science fiction . . . a landmark novel.”—Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Now, in the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same. Praise for The Fall of Hyperion “One of the finest SF novels published in the past few years.”—Science Fiction Eye “A magnificently original blend of themes and styles.”—The Denver Post
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Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.
