Science Fiction

This intense linguistic thriller will change the way you think about language. - @helderroem

Now more than a century old, has that unique writing style you can only find in adventure classics. - @uraimo

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Like Accelerando, this series is an excellent exploration of posthumanism. It also has themes of space exploration, references to various other series, and is all around a great amount of fun to read. It's also free if you have kindle unlimited. - @AlexKeyes

This is one of Arthur C. Clarke's novels that is less about space and more about humanity, and the oceans. Clarke lived for a large part of his later life in Sri Lanka, and always loved the sea; in this book, that sentiment really comes out. I love it for that. It also has a nice view of ocean management, which is rare for books set in the future. - @RichardLitt

This is a long book, but absolutely fantastic. It redefined for me the scale at which science fiction was possible, especially given the human elements are very fleshed out (as opposed to other massive space epics, like Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men'). A brilliant look at the future, going off of only two small changes - what if we had drugs to defeat death, and cities could fly. - @RichardLitt

Based on Sagan's own studies as an astrophysicist and philosopher, Contact provides a possible glimpse of the world's reaction to extraterrestrial life - @augustopedro

An interesting take on the possibility of the multiverse, Schrödinger's cat, and how every choice, big or small, has led to this exact moment. - @thedeany

This was like if Hermann Hesse decided he was tired of writing Steppenwolf and Siddhartha and wanted to do something interesting for a change. What a weird book. - @RichardLitt

I think what is most fascinating about Dune isn't that it is so commonly read, but the ubiquity with which it is referenced. Once you read this, you start seeing Dune quotes everywhere. Dune is monumental in scope, and the cautionary tone in which it was written - this is what happens when you put faith in a single person trained scientifically - almost completely backfires in an amazing story of heroism, revenge, and reconciliation. A book worth reading multiple times. Of course, it is also a …

A series comprised (as of 2019) of eight full-length novels with a total of nine entries planned. Several shorts not relevant to the main plot also exist. Notable for this series is the attention to detail regarding the actual physics involved in space travel and the challenges of daily life outside a friendly biosphere. The narrative, which is told from the changing perspectives of a cast of diverse characters, offers a healthy mix of humor and suspension, making it an entertaining read. - [@j…

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This book will teach you to stretch your imagination and see things in a different way. - @elssar

This book is often given to high school students, but stands up well as an adult read. I think the best part about it is what Charlie does once he starts being intelligent; he suddenly likes art and making things and scientific theory. I think the altruism and openness of that time shows that the experiment, such as it was, didn't change everything. It's fun to think about. Also, this book made me cry the first time I read it. I was 25. - @RichardLitt

Archetypal tale of mad science with the theme of 'how far can Science go' that arguably spawned the modern genre of Science Fiction. - @katamaritaco

This is an incredible book. Absolutely incredible. The first section, about a son of a scientist, is a great example of Wolfe's ability to make the future sound like the Victorian past, and to add decay to what, to our eyes, seems incredibly futuristic. The story about the traveler and the aborigines on Saint Croix is something I think about a lot - "old men think long thoughts", in particular, is a thought that I love, especially given its context. Gene Wolfe also uses the epistolary novel tec…

This book has a few beautiful passages. It deals mainly with the ethics of using alien species for nationalistic purposes, and for that alone was an interesting read. Like a lot of science fiction, I found it a bit hard to empathize with any particular characters, but it's a short read and worth it anyway. The politics are a bit dated. - @RichardLitt

One of the weirdest books I have read and enjoyed. - @RichardLitt

Actually four books by two authors. It was made into a TV series but the books should be consumed instead. Very high quality over the top deep space trouble with anti-hero Lister and his crew. - @montao

Although each part can be read independently, the whole trilogy has a consistent story line which happens in a very huge time-space context and the first just a beginning. The later two are especially much more hardcore and dramatical, however, gloomy as well. While the first one got the Hugo Award, I'd like to say that it really worth a try for the whole trilogy, don't miss the later two. - @cp4

This book is not just filled to the brim with interesting and novel ideas about technology and civilization, it also offers some really great insights into China and its recent history.

Twitter user: One of the best books I have ever read.

I had been putting off reading this book for years, after reading Ender's Game and not knowing wanting to belittle it with a bad sequel (like I thought Ender's Shadow had been). I regret that immensely, having now read this book; it is deep, insightful, and brilliantly written. - @RichardLitt

This book was written about 2010, and what the world would be like when the world is over populated. It is still very pertinent today, especially given the style of writing, which seems to have too much information packed in than needed. 'Muckers', the idea of people who go crazy without reason due to overcrowdedness, are a really interesting concept given the rise in anti-terrorist rhetoric in recent years. - @RichardLitt

If you're going to read one Science Fiction book to get a broader perspective on what it means to be human and the size of space and time, read this one. It blew me away. - @RichardLitt

An awesome book. Intriguing ,funny and moving. Never mind the negative reviews...I would have given it a 6th star if I could. - @naz2001

A really good book. Many people have described it as "the best book of Sci-Fi / romance". I would like to see it, one day, as a movie. - @Gibet

This is always fun; it's a classic, and it is fun remembering what science fiction was like before there were tropes. - @RichardLitt

Ursula Le Guin is an amazing writer, and this is one of her seminal works. It explores sexuality and humanity in ways that I didn't know were possible. I loved it. - @RichardLitt

Funny, touching, and full of unexpected details. - @lgierth

The Murderbot Diaries is a series of novellas, each one around 150 pages starring a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk and watch tv series. If you enjoy Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, this series of novellas might be for you. They are light, fun to read but yet still engaging enough to get your synapses fired up. - [@oschrenk](https:…

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Neal Asher has written almost 20 books (if you include short story compilations) set within the universe of the Polity, an interstellar human civilization ruled by (mostly) benevolent AIs, all overseen by the most powerful AI of all: Earth Central. There are several distinct series within the larger Polity collection, as well as several standalone novels and short story collections. The Ian Cormac series follows a human agent of Earth Central as he investigates threats towards the Polity. The…

This space opera novel reminds me of a series of Star Trek episodes, if Roddenberry's final frontier had been a Machiavellian rather than a utopian vision of the future. Unlike the crew of Trek's Enterprise, the Beagle crew engage in power struggles between its civilian and military leaders. The plot of the third section is very reminiscent of the Alien movie. - @neontapir

Very interesting exploration of what happens when aliens arrive on earth, after the planet has been ravaged by war, with their own ideas of a path forward. Humans must learn to coexist with the Oankali, genetic colonizers of the cosmos, and confront what this means for their future — deciding whether to give up an essential part of their identity in order to survive. I enjoyed the first book the most, for the worldbuilding and the way it introduces the Oankali and key concepts, but the series h…

An interesting take on the near-future colonization of Mars by one hundred of the world's greatest scientists, filled with political intrigue and "hard science" alike. Admittedly some parts can be a slog, think A Song of Ice and Fire: awesome narrative in the grand scheme, with perhaps a bit too much description of Martian landscape/house sigils. - @rubzo

Stephen Baxter explores the Fermi Paradox in different ways over the course of three books (and a collection of novellas), in a gloriously hard scifi style. It is very thought provoking, and also utterly brutal and bleak. Space and time is cold and uncaring. - @nahkampf

Near-future hard Sci-Fi at its best. Lots of awards and endorsements, even a thumbs up from John Carmack. Can't go wrong. - @christianboyle

This is a fun read; Weir manages to write an evocative techno-thriller without having his characters stoop to constant navel gazing and lonesome pining. This could be described as Robinson Crusoe - in Space. The characters on the earth side aren't the greatest, but the humor throughout the book really pulls it together, and watching a master at work as far as mechanical engineering goes was fascinating. Loved it. - @RichardLitt

This book is most interesting for its pretty cool take on terraforming a planet, and how that goes both for the inhabitants and what it means for nationalism (or planetism, as it were). - @RichardLitt

Modernized cyberpunk with the noir grit dialled up to eleven. - @nahkampf

My favorite of Murakami's. Great mix of quirky, mundane, and fascinating ideas. Short read too. - @desandro

This book had me looking up more words than any book had me do for a long time. A mildly interesting story, with cunning turns and twists, in a very interesting world. What surprised me most was that the book already foresaw cryptocurrencies, 3d-printers and fleets of UAV's while already being 20+ years old. - @fritzvd

This book is fantastic not for the novelty of non-technological teleportation, but because of the main character. What happens when someone who has been ignored by society finds himself in a position of power? This book reminds me a tiny bit of Ender's Game - imagine what would happen if Mazer Rackham, another tattooed Maori hero, wanted more than to be a military genius. I loved it. I quote the poem to myself all the time, and have set a variant of it as my twitter bio for years now. - [@Richa…

Idea-driven scifi about a tech-savvy movement of "walkaways", disenchanted people walking away from an increasingly oppressive capitalist society and creating their own ad-hoc societies. Doctorow manages to combine cyberpunk "high tech, low life" with a bit of utopian science fiction which feels very refreshing. - nahkampf

My first Arthur C. Clarke Sci-fi book that introduced me to the world of Arthur C. Clarke. The book deals with the utopian society where the aliens are human beings from the old earth. -@DibeshMSShrestha

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This book is insidiously horrifying in its applicability, more so than 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. Here's a comic that sums up the difference. Well worth the read. - @RichardLitt

The debut novel from the guy who would go on to write Half-Life and Portal. A dizzyingly funny dystopia straight from the heart of the 80s. Deftly manages the tightrope walk of absurdity without the world crumbling underneath it. Philip K. Dick would be proud. - @jackflips

One of my favorite trilogies! Divergent is a young adult science fiction trilogy. This book is about a dystopian Chicago society divided by five factions: Abnegation, Erudite, Dauntless, Amity, and Candor. Factions that were created to maintain peace within the society. In this book you follow the story of Beatrice, who's decisions leads her to discover who she really is and what is really happening. Through the trilogy you are able to see how the character evolves and becomes more mature with …

A classic, beautiful book. A short read that does a good job of making the reader think about the ramifications of censorship, and is still entertaining and beautiful in its own way. - @RichardLitt

This book is a wonderfully constructed tale that can be seen as warning for an age where genetic engineering is up and coming and we haven't the faintest clue where this might lead us. I loved it to bits and only found out there was a sequel by reading about the final episode coming out when I was well done with the first part and devoured the other two as eagerly as the first. That said, I find the first the best of the three books. - @fritzvd

This is easily in one of my top 5 favorite books I've ever read. It's SO fun to read, and every single person I've recommended it to has loved it. Even if you don't understand every single reference, it's still a great story to follow. It has an excellent amount of humor, adventure, and nostalgia. It also has one of the best endings I've ever read, which any reader knows is a hard thing to nail. Ernest Cline really hit it out of the park with this one. Highly recommend it. - [cassidoo](https://…

Sci-Fi, sociology and philosophy. - @NaxYoMizmo

A bleak and haunting tale, easy to picture playing out in today's political climate. There's a reason the TV series adaptation is popular. - @neontapir

Great dystopian work shows the impact of Universal basic income to society. - @4ndrej

My favourite of all Philip K. Dick's novels, the I Ching and the alternate history within an alternate history novel being interesting elements. - @roryrjb

An interesting take on the possibly negative consequences of the singularity. A little more vulgar than the average Sci-Fi novel. - @sylvarant

Set in the near future, the story follows a number of characters as their lives unfold living in an underground silo. Life underground seems quite grim, people have obviously been down there quite a while, and even though they seem to have quite advanced technology, it's old and decaying. The engineers and mechanics do their best to keep the electricity throughout the 100 levels of the silo, it's a lottery to see who gets to start a family as the population needs to be strictly controlled.

(And all the following Ancillary Sword)

Peter Hamilton is back with another story featuring a wormhole-based multi-planetary society, and this one has elements of both space opera and cyberpunk. The perspective shifts between 2204 and several thousand years into the future. Starts slow but when the shit hits the fan it hits with a vengeance. Three books in total, a very good read. - @nahkampf

Alastair Reynolds' take on the Fermi Paradox is a vast and brutal epic, consisting of the three "main" books (forming the "Inhibitor Trilogy") and a few other books and novellas set in the same universe. Revelation Space is page-turning "hard space opera" - believable but fantastic, and delightfully bizarre at times. - @nahkampf

This has a particularly arid and inspired view of humanity after a nuclear holocaust. The discovery of small things and their new importance down the line is well done here. - @RichardLitt

A weird, beautiful book, reminiscent of Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Brautigan's Watermelon Sugar all wrapped up in a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by poisonous fire-breathing bears and deprecated biotech. This book is a survival story - how to hang on to the edges of civilization, and what that means for humanity. It also questions identity, love, mothering, and meaning itself. Some of the passages were astoundingly beautiful, and as much as the world would be an awful place to live i…

Highly plausible outcome after a near-extinction event, the human race will hopelessly go down the path of least resistance. Great and somewhat disheartening ending. - @uraimo

I traveled 500 miles from Edinburgh to Kent just to go to the Canterbury Cathedral to see the painting that inspired this book. It is that good. It was hard for me to read as I normally speed read, and the invented language makes it slow going, but it sticks with you and the imagination of Hoban is uniquely vivid. - @RichardLitt

Although I'd like to believe I'd do well in the apocalypse, this story spells out how a younger me might've fared. - @neontapir

One of Arthur C. Clarke's best novels. It makes Childhood's End seem a bit immature in comparison, and evokes that strange concept of deep space that was prevalent in the 50s and in the early Star Trek series which seems to be out of fashion more recently. - @RichardLitt

A less violent coming of age story in the vein of Hugo or The Hunger Games. - @neontapir

This had some very haunting scenes. The last pages, in particular, will stick with me for a while. - @RichardLitt

A short and rather old post-apocalyptic story which remained stuck in my mind like a ROM data. Being under strong impressions after consuming it in an instant, I described this rare pearl of a story to a Norwegian NTNU professor. To my surprise it ended as a further recommendation to his students or/and an actual part of their course reading materials. You'll definitely want to read about this machine out of wedlock…

A dreary story that compels you forward with its unyielding backdrop and vivid characters. - @neontapir

Steakley puts his readers inside the mind of an armored soldier who lives in constant fear of being torn apart by the enemy he was sent to fight. The book plays brilliantly on our innate fear of bugs and describes the visceral terror of fighting a nearly unstoppable enemy. - @phmullins

This novel starts as a simple rescue by a cadet that led to the entire universe fighting an epic battle they have no hope of winning.

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This is a quick read, but it has a slow burn; the more times I read this book, and the more I think of it, the better it becomes. This book is one of the most strategically interesting books I have read. At every turn, you can feel Orson Scott Card manipulating you into seeing how brilliant Ender is. A masterpiece. - @RichardLitt

A very entertaining military drama that has continued to grow on me, book by book. @AlexKeyes

Conan the Barbarian in space. - @alex-keyes

Twitter user: My favorite novel. Movie was worse than terrible.

This is debatably science fiction. I mention it here because certain elements, like a lot of Gene Wolfe's works, are science fiction - for instance, the android-esque doll. This book is much more of a fantasy. I love it, but it's a bit weird in places. If you like Gene Wolfe, read it. - @RichardLitt

If you liked Cloud Atlas this is a good read.

This novel explores how society might adapt to affordable temporary cloning of one's self. - @neontapir

The first book in a two part series called the extinction files, the story explores a bioterrorist plot attempting to usurp the major world governments, with an extra scifi twist . Not what I would call hard SciFi and it has its fair share of cheese and cliche, but enough action and suspense to keep the party going without getting boring. - @Rogue-System

A heartbreaking coming of age novel with a speculative, mysterious twist. Definitely a character-driven story. - @sunrein

This was pretty good; it's pretty obvious what it is about, and it reads predictably, but the ending is strong enough to make the entire book worth reading. - @RichardLitt

The alternate history worldbuilding is the draw here, and the scale and depth of it is impressive. - @neontapir

I liked this series so much I got a tattoo partially inspired by it. - @RichardLitt

A really good story about time travels, their consequences and the famous Grandfather paradox. - @Gibet

This novel is absurd fun -- think Douglas Adams style with a literary flair. Though flawed, the later novels in the series are in my reading pile. - @neontapir

This novel shows interesting mix of hard sci-fi, Nordic noir, parallel / alternative universe tree and path backtracking. The main protagonist is fighting the global cataclysm in its own style. The storytelling is so unique I'm afraid no one would be able to make a film based on this masterpiece. There is a great book ending explanation there. - @4ndrej

Worth the read, mostly because it is the first time the words 'time machine' were used, and because the story, while a bit cliched to modern ears, is still good and gripping. - @RichardLitt

A quick, fun mashup of two if my favorite genres. - @damenleeturks

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One of the funniest series I have ever read. I laugh to myself and think about this all of the time. Changed how I view the galaxy and lost pens irreversibly. I also celebrate International Towel Day every year now. - @RichardLitt

A bit of a lighthearted series, it's a great drama - @alexkeyes

This book has a cult following, and upon reading it this summer, I fully understand why people are still so enamored with it almost twenty years after its first publish. I still think back to it often, and I will eventually re-read it (at least once) to get details I missed the first time. You can get lost in this book both figuratively and literally, so it's best to take your time with it. Shout-out to Austin McConnell's video for introducing me t…

Hard-as-nails science fiction, but wonderfully fresh and imaginative (especially if you haven't had a chance to read anything written by Greg Egan before.) The stories have aged surprisingly well — which only underlines Egan’s penchant for sounding out the shape of the future. - @mihailim

You will never think about ants the same way again. - @uraimo

I can't praise this book enough. The Nine Billion Names of God is brilliantly done; well written, executed, and frisson-inducing. If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth is also a stark reminder that we only have one planet. One of the most memorable Science Fiction stories I have ever read. - @RichardLitt

The all-too-near-future novella Unauthorized Bread embodies what cyberpunk should be all about: high tech, low life. Radicalized and The Masque of the Red Death delve deep into some dark corners of society, while Model Minority is a pretty interesting take on Superman and racism. The book had me turning pages late into the night. - @nahkampf

What amazes me most about Ted Chiang’s stories is their richness—the level of detail which the author managed to weave into the stories without having them turn into fluff. Artfully executed, uniformly good through excellent—which is by no means par for the course in single-author collections! Reminds me the most of Greg Egan’s Axiomatic collection, except Chiang manages to keep his characters optimistic. - @mihailim

I think of these stories often; The Death of Dr. Island won a Nebula and offers a startling view into the rehabilitation and justice system we currently deal with and what we might have. The Doctor of Death Island is the same - I often think of him taking off the book cover, "like Mephistopholes". It takes an amazing talent to make three beautiful short stories out of permutations on a title. Also, Feather Tigers made me view the jungles in South East Asia a bit differently than I would have, a…

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Stalker is a philosophical art movie and aesthetic masterpiece, based on "Roadside Picnic". - @ggb

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This is a fairly accurate representation of the awesome book, but it focuses much more on Watney's personality than on the science (which is a given, as we can actually see Watney in this, as opposed to just read his logs in the book). The space shots were incredibly well done, and one scene with a ribbon like an umbilical chord floating in zero g - absolutely beautiful. This film had great actors, marvelously cast. And there's even a reference to Glorfindel at the council of Elrond; I don't th…

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This is a classic film, and well worth watching if only for the incredible and iconic 'khaaaaan' echo. More impressive, however, is Ricardo Montalban's performance, which is incredible on its own. As well, in a move that goes against mainstream whitewashing, a Mexican and not a Caucasian plays a genetically engineered superhuman, making this a movie that showed the power of diversity well ahead of its time. This movie is great to watch. - @RichardLitt

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