Best Science-Fiction Books to Read
Top 10 Sci-Fi books
Science-fiction’s content is imaginative but based on science. The story features scientific ideas and advanced technological concepts and relies heavily on scientific facts, theories, and principles as support for its settings, characters, themes, which is what makes it mainly different from fantasy. Authors create new worlds and use genre-specific words. Although the story is imaginary, they are usually possible according to science—or at least plausible. The concepts can be advanced science and technology, time travel, parallel universe, space exploration, and extraterrestrial life. It is often distinguished as either hard or soft. This genre has many sub-genres, but Sci-Fi/ Fantasy is sometimes categorized together.
Both time and technology have a pivotal role to select a book in this group. Because of that, the latest books are often in priority.
Hardiguards series is a science- fiction novel by Allen H. Shahri. The first book Hardiguards and the Holy Mountain, was published in 2020. The novel incorporates themes from multiple genres, including sci-fi, epic, adventure, romance, and fantasy. It is a story of space colonization in the spirit of a classic sci-fi, which presets philosophical beliefs in the scenario of an exciting bildungsroman tale. The major theme is about creation and targets both young adult and adult readers.
Hardiguards are two-legged creatures, covered by layers of scales to protect them against severe conditions on the planet. To obey the Holy Mountain, they need to make the region green and grow their population. Ace is a young Hardiguard bound to his own vices, causing a tragic accident and fails to gain his community’s trust. He is the first person who receives the most severe punishment for his fault, leading him to leave his people and seek refuge near the Holy Mountain. Living near a mysterious mountain with absolute power not only influences Ace but also requires the residents to obey its commands…
Hardiguards and the Holly Mountain
by Allen H. Shahri
The Dark Tower
by Stephen King
The Dark Tower is a series of eight books and one short story written by American author Stephen King that incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, sci-fii, horror, and western.
In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. Many of the magical aspects have vanished from Mid-World, but traces remain as do relics from a technologically advanced society. Roland’s quest is to find the Dark Tower, and a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland’s world is said to have “moved on”, and it appears to be coming apart at the seams. Mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Sometimes, even the sun rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland’s motives, goals, and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries.
The Institute
The Institute is a science fiction-horror thriller novel by American author Stephen King, published in 2019.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with unique talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check-in, but you don’t check out.”
The Institute
by Stephen King
Dark Age
by Pierce Brown
Dark Age
Dark Age is a 2019 science fiction novel by American author Pierce Brown, the second book of a trilogy that continues the story of his Red Rising trilogy. Dark Age takes place immediately after the events of Iron Gold, as the remaining Society forces aim to bring back Mercury from the Solar Republic.
A decade ago, Darrow led a revolution and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw.
Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed; he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy?
In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises.
Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic.
On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious democracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned…
Tiamat's Wrath
Tiamat’s Wrath is a 2019 science fiction novel by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, and the eighth book in their series The Expanse.
Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper.
In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.
At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father’s godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cortázar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue. Still, Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets, even her father, the emperor, doesn’t guess…
Tiamat's Wrath
by James S. A. Corey
Rise of Jain
by Neal Asher
Rise of Jain
Rise of Jain series (The Soldier published in 2018, The Warship published in 2019, and The Human 2020) is a science fiction series by an English author Neal Asher.
In a far corner of space, on the very borders between humanity’s Polity worlds and the kingdom of the vicious crab-like prador, is an immediate threat to all sentient life: an accretion disc, a solar …
The haiman Orlandine, charged with safeguarding lethal Jain tech swirling inside an accretion disc located in the distant reaches of space, has weaponized a black hole to eliminate the threat. But others are suspicious of her motives, and both the Polity AIs and the leaders of the alien prador kingdom dispatch fleets of warships in anticipation of conflict…
A Jain warship has risen from the depths of space, emerging with a deadly grudge and a wealth of ancient yet lethal technology. It is determined to hunt down the alien Client, and will annihilate all those who stand in its way. So Orlandine must prepare humanity’s defense…
Red Rising
Red Rising is a 2014 science fiction dystopian novel by American author Pierce Brown, and the first book and eponym of a series. The novel, set on a future planet Mars, follows lowborn miner Darrow as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.
It has been seven hundred years since mankind colonized other planets. The powerful ruling class of humans has installed a rigid, color-based social hierarchy where the physically superior Golds at the top rule with an iron fist. Sixteen-year-old Darrow is a Red, a class of workers who toil beneath the surface of Mars mining helium-3 to terraform the planet and make it habitable. He and his wife Eo are captured after entering a forbidden area and are arrested. While she is publicly whipped for her crime, Eo sings a forbidden folk tune as a protest against their virtual enslavement. She is subsequently hanged on the orders of Mars’ ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus. Darrow cuts down and buries his wife’s body, a crime for which he is also hanged. However, Darrow awakes to find that he has been drugged and delivered into the hands of the Sons of Ares, a terrorist group of Reds who fight against the oppression of the “low Colors”. They have adopted the video of Eo’s song and execution as a rallying vehicle for their cause. Darrow joins the Sons when he learns that Mars was already terraformed centuries before and that the Reds have been tricked into perpetual servitude and subjugation…
Red Rising
by Pierce Brown
Gideon the Ninth
by Tamsyn Muir
Gideon the Ninth
Gideon the Ninth is a 2019 science fantasy novel by the New Zealand writer Tamsyn Muir. It is Muir’s debut novel and the first in her Locked Tomb trilogy, to be followed by Harrow the Ninth and Alecto the Ninth.
The world is set in a galactic empire with nine planets, each ruled by a house that practices its own unique type of necromancy. The emperor, who rules the First House, uses his most powerful necromancers (known as “Lyctors”) and his army (known as the “Cohort”) to wage a war against an unknown enemy. The emperor invites the heirs and cavaliers of the Nine Houses to compete to become new Lyctors. The narrative begins when 18-year-old orphan Gideon Nav attempts to escape from the planet controlled by the Ninth House, where she was raised in indentured servitude. Gideon’s plan is foiled by the Ninth House’s heir, Harrowhark “Harrow” Nonagesimus, who enlists Gideon as her primary cavalier in Harrow’s bid to become a Lyctor. Although advanced technology exists, cavaliers fight with a rapier and a complementary offhand weapon such as a dagger; Gideon’s offhand weapon is a type of spiked gauntlet referred to as “knuckles,” which is considered an unusual choice…
The Fifth Season
The Fifth Season is a 2015 science fantasy novel by N. K. Jemisin. It is the first volume in the Broken Earth series and is followed by The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky.
The Fifth Season takes place on a planet with a single supercontinent called the Stillness. Every few centuries, its inhabitants endure what they call a “Fifth Season” of catastrophic climate change.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world’s sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy…
The Fifth Season
by N. K. Jemisin
Lost Universe
by Keith Brandon
Lost Universe
Lost universe is a 2019 science fiction book by Keith Brandon. The world is set at 2255 and 16 adventurers depart from Earth on a mission to find the end of the universe.
The Federation are now calling the shots and their tales of visits to Earth and secret testing on humans are disturbing and frightening. The crew must keep all their wits about them to survive this.The Earth they are told is no more; but is this the truth?
Or is it part of an elaborate tale along with cloning, missing treasure and the mysterious Lady Markass?
And all the while, they are being watched…