Ultimate Thriller Sci-Fi Books

Dive into the ultimate collection of thriller sci-fi books! Explore gripping tales of suspense, futuristic adventures, and mind-bending plots in our curated list of must-read novels.

The Fall of Hyperion Cover
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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
Ringworld Cover
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Ringworld

by Larry Niven

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel Four travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world. Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy. Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?
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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.
Nineteen Eighty-four Cover
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Nineteen Eighty-four

by George Orwell

Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
Altered Carbon Cover
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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.
Foundation and Empire Cover
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Foundation and Empire

by Isaac Asimov

Publisher Description
The Caves of Steel Cover
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The Caves of Steel

by Isaac Asimov

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot—and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!
Ender's Game Cover
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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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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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Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

Huxley's story shows a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous warning to the world's population, this literary classic is a must-read.
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Foundation's Edge

by Isaac Asimov

The fourth novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations has come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation have proved victorious, and now they return to Hari Seldon’s long established plan to build a new Empire on the ruins of the old. But rumors persist that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all—and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now two exiled citizens of the Foundation—a renegade Councilman and a doddering historian—set out in search of the mythical planet Earth . . . and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile someone—or something—outside of both Foundations seems to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final, shocking destiny at the very end of the universe.
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Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

This is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with "psi" powers--telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others--and yet with complete innocence regarding the mores of man.
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Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

Without warning, giant silver ships from deep space appear in the skies above every major city on Earth. Manned by the Overlords, in fifty years, they eliminate ignorance, disease, and poverty. Then this golden age ends--and then the age of Mankind begins....
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Robots and Empire

by Isaac Asimov

Science fiction-roman.
Fahrenheit 451 Cover
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Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman, his job is to burn books, which are forbidden.
Endymion Cover
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Endymion

by Dan Simmons

The multiple-award-winning science fiction master returns to the universe that is his greatest triumph--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion --with a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors. Dan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel (Song of Kali) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort. Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion, took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics. Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.
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Rise of Endymion

by Dan Simmons

The magnificent conclusion to one of the greatest science fiction sagas of our time The time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples. But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered--an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.
Ringworld Engineers Cover
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Ringworld Engineers

by Larry Niven

A return voyage to the astonishing world of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, with even more remarkable adventures and surprises, and a solution to that tantalizing question left from the earlier book: how was Ringworld built and by whom? It’s been twenty years since the quixotic and worldsweary Louis Wu discovered the Ringworld. Now he and Speaker-To-Animals are going back, captives of the Hindmost, a deposed puppeteer leader. With Louis’ help, the Hindmost intends to regain his status by bringing back such extraordinary treasures from the Ringworld that his fellow puppeteers will have to be impressed. But when they arrive, Louis discovers that the Ringworld is no longer stable . . . and will destroy itself within months. To survive he must locate the control center of the legendary engineers who built the planet. His quest becomes a wild and gripping venture, blended with the mysteries and spectacular technologies that only Larry Niven can conjure! Praise for Ringworld Engineers “For new readers, there’s fascinating adventure in plenitude. For old fans of Niven’s Known Space series, or of the original volume, there are all the fine, characteristic touches that delight us Niven fans, and which support his reputation for uncommon wittiness and fast narrative pace.”—Chicago Sun-Times “The Ringworld Engineers has all the imaginativeness, convincing detail, and narrative vivacity that have come to be associated with the works of Larry Niven. Furthermore, it answers a lot of questions that have been tantalizing his readers for a long time. Most highly recommended!”—Paul Anderson “When I finished The Ringworld Engineers, I cleared my calendar for a week, sat down, and reread every word of the Known Space cycle from scratch, then reread The Ringworld Engineers. It was worth the effort, and left me staggered by the breadth and scope of Larry’s vision. . . . If you count yourself as a true friend of Larry Niven, race right out and get this one.”—Analog Science Fiction Magazine “Another fine masterpiece from the master of science fiction . . . The coming conquest of space has always been a central myth of science fiction, and Larry Niven’s future worlds have made the most of it. The Ringworld itself is a dazzling notion, carrying the future evolution of technology about as far as possible.”—Jack Williamson “Adventurous exploration of a mind-boggling landscape.”—Publishers Weekly
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Rendezvous with Rama

by Arthur Charles Clarke

In the year 2130, a mysterious and apparently untenanted alien spaceship, Rama, enters our solar system. The first product of an alien civilisation to be encountered by man, it reveals a world of technological marvels and an unparalleled artificial ecology.But what is its purpose in 2131?Who is inside it?And why?