Strange moon dust...Earth faces destructionâŚpeople must evacuate, but where can they go? This is hard science fiction, which I devoured with relish before that dust devoured me.
The story is so real and plausible that I became caught up with the principal characters when everybody realized Earth faces doom. Broad in scope, the novel touched something deep within me when I considered the scenario. How would I make peace with myself and others when staring at death?
That is what this book brings into sharp relief: family against family, nation against nation, eager to exploit the âfinal solutionâ against an enemy. Yet, amidst looming chaos, there is hope for mankind to conquer the Solar SystemâŚif it survivesâan enchanting read.
Showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans.
Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form - a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed.
Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth's extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what's left of the planet.
Aliens have fascinated me since childhood. The idea of living on an alien planet with different biology, social structures, and ways of thinking has to be the ultimate act of imagination. Authors use aliens to highlight and interrogate aspects of humanity or to explore different ways of living, and the best alien novels invite me to inhabit the skin of an alien and open my mind to new thoughts and perspectives. As a science fiction writer, these stories inspire me to be more creative in my own flights of imagination. Here are five of the best alien science fiction novels to help you share my journey into the truly alien.
Isaac Asimov rarely wrote about aliens, but this Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel contains an astounding thought experiment, not only imagining a truly alien species but placing them in a different universe with different physical laws from our own.
I first read this novel as a teenager and was blown away by Asimovâs ability to make me understand and care about the fate of such vastly different alien creatures that possessed three distinct sexes and derived their life energy from photosynthesis.
The fact that the novel inextricably links the fate of these creatures with the fate of our own universe gave me a greater appreciation of how truly diverse life can be. A factâalong with the lessons I learned from the other novels listed hereâthat continues to inform my own writing on aliens and alien cultures.
In the year 2100, the invention of the Electron Pump - an apparently inexhaustible supply of free energy - has enabled humanity to devote its time and energies to more than the struggle for survival, finally breaking free of the Earth.
But the Electron Pump works by exchanging materials with a parallel universe, and such unbalancing of the cosmos has consequences. Humans and aliens alike must race to prevent a vast nuclear explosion in the heart of the Sun - and the vaporisation of the Earth exactly eight minutes later ...
Iâve loved zombie movies since I was a kid and first saw Return of the Living Dead during a slumber party. Since then Iâve watched as many as I could, along with shows like The Walking Dead and Z Nation. The changes in the publishing industry over the past few years have given me something even better â hundreds of amazing books about romance and survival in the zombie apocalypse to read. The five books on my list are the very best of those that eventually inspired me to write my own books. I hope you like them!
I love this book because itâs the only one Iâve found where the main character has been alone for years after the apocalypse and has to learn to be around people all over again. Not only that, she isnât sure if she even wants to be around others anymore. Shaw coaxes her into trying, and he reminds her of what it is to love and want a future, but his secret dark past keeps getting in the way. Both of them struggle with the new world and how to deal with itâwhether to go through the effort to be with people and let themselves be vulnerable, or to return to their solitary lives outside the walls where they canât be hurt by the loss or betrayal of others.
I didnât read much when I was young. But Iâve always loved stories, and found them in TV, films, and comics. It wasnât until I was older that I found that books can contain the most amazing adventures that connect with your imagination and makes them seem even more real than on the big screen. Discovering childrenâs books with my daughter, and writing my own, I wished I could have read more when I was young. I try my best to encourage young people to find the joy in reading, in the hope that they donât miss out on all those amazing stories.
This is a book for older readers who love action and adventure. All of Dan Smithâs books are dynamic and engrossing stories, but as Iâve always been drawn to colder climates, I think this is my favourite. The breathless action takes place at Outpost Zero in Antarctica where secrets and all kinds of new technology are discovered.
Iâm a huge film fan and could definitely imagine this as a big-screen blockbuster. But be warned: be prepared for thrills and chills!
When Zak's plane crash-lands on Outpost Zero, a small Antarctic research base in one of the most isolated places on Earth, he discovers a cold, dark nightmare. The power's out and the people who live there have disappeared. Worse, as he searches for answers, bizarre visions suggest a link to something else - deep beneath the ice - which only he can understand .
Dugan was my grandmotherâs maiden name. Her family was from County Wexford, Ireland near Rosslare on the islandâs east coast. In recent years I have extensively studied my Irish heritage and have discovered much about my family, and about the DNA running through my own Irish blood. The inquiry has revealed much about my love of storytelling, good conversation, and generally about the way I move through the world. As a writer of several books of personal narrative and fiction, I have tried to write books that capture a certain emotion, and now through my own ancestral discoveries, I understand how those emotions and familial ties are so tightly linked.
What stands out most after reading this story is the writing itselfâsimple and direct, unadorned, yet the narrative is complex and nuanced.
OâCallaghan is the author of several books of poetry and his prose is dripping with beautiful language. In this story, a frightened girl bangs on the door of a home and after she is allowed to enter, nothing is ever the same with an air of mystery surrounding her life and her family.
The novel is strange, unsettling, and beautiful. And although at times it is a bit perplexing, leaving you wondering what is real and what is false, its magic lies in the attention it gives to the complexities of human emotion, the said and unsaid, the complicated divide between trust and suspicion, and how it asks the question of whether it is better to listen to your head or to your heart.
I was a child of the Cold War. When the 20th Century ended, many of my peers and I thought weâd put the specter of annihilation behind us. As much as Iâve always been a fan of all things post-apocalyptic, I must acknowledge that we now face new threats that are just as much of our own making as the nuclear nightmare was. When I think about the future, I donât see or foresee a dark and dismal end. I envision a bright future that will be a lot harder to achieve than we ever thought. I look forward to creating heroes and heroines who can make that future possible.
The concept of life and death after a world war is given a twist when cold and darkness are more lethal than nuclear, chemical, or biological residues. Many of the most prominent characters are civilian airline pilots and other aviation professionals. Iâve spent much of my life around military and civil aviation. I donât encounter characters like these very frequently. I like the way the author drew upon the knowledge and skills of these people to save humanityâs future.
The six hundred passengers and crew members aboard a jumbo jetliner are left without a destination and a country when nuclear war breaks out and spreads devastation around the world.
A collapsed economy and an increasingly savage society were causing thousands to abandon America. Captain Jonah Scott was a pilot, hired to fly some lucky refugees to London. But once in the air, nuclear war broke out, and Scott became responsible for the entire human race!
As a woman who writes fantasy, sci-fi, and horror Iâm fortunate my family never said âwhy canât you be more girly?â Instead I was supported to challenge myself; to study psychology, psychophysiology, and archaeology; and to write about my passions. From that came my love for novels like these: with women who are complicated, difficult heroes, struggling with the same feet of clay as everyone.
Shannon is part of a clandestine division within the Navy utilizing possible versions of the future to solve crimes. But all timelines lead to Terminus, the end of humanity, and whenever Shannon dips into the future Terminus creeps inevitably nearer.
Leaning more heavily into science fiction is The Gone World, another complex but deeply rewarding novel. The story is grounded by Shannonâs lyrical, mournful perspective and her fierce determination to fight the injustice of a murder no matter where it takes her.
The Silence of the Lambs meets Interstellar. The terrifying, thrilling and ingenious science-fiction thriller from Tom Sweterlitsch. Film rights bought by Twentieth Century Fox with Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) to direct.
'Thrilling . . . [a] dark, page-turning thriller' The Guardian
A murdered family. A missing girl. Time is running out...
1997. Shannon Moss of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family - and to locate the soldier's missing teenage daughter. When Moss discovers that the SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra - a ship assumed lostâŚ
âWe had to put our money into bowls of vinegar,â my Aunty Mary once told me, âbecause they thought weâd infect them.â Itâs hard to believe that this happened in living memory but in the early 1960s, smallpox came to the Rhondda valleys of South Wales where my family lived. Patients were put into a local isolation hospital. When people from the valleys went to the capital city, Cardiff, some shop-owners insisted that any coins were put into vinegar â a supposed âcureâ for the plague that dates back to the Middle Ages. Is it any wonder that I grew up with a fascination for the end of civilization as we know it?
In this wonderful novel, massive earthquakes cause a geological catastrophe that changes the worldâs geography overnight. The upheaval of the ocean floor forms a land bridge that connects the island of Guernsey with mainland Britain. By removing the sea from the English Channel, Christopher creates a peculiar, surreal landscape which, we soon discover, is populated by some peculiar and surreal people. I particularly enjoyed the captain of the grounded ship who tries to run his vessel as though nothing has changed. John Christopher was the grandmaster of the post-apocalyptic genre.
One night, the island of Guernsey convulsed. As shock followed shock, the landscape tilted violently in defiance of gravity. When dawn came and the quakes had stilled to tremblings, Matthew Cotter gazed out in disbelief at the pile of rubble that had been his home. The greenhouses which had provided his livelihood were a lake of shattered glass, the tomato plants a crush of drowned vegetation spotted and splodged with red.
Wandering in a daze of bewilderment through the devastation, he came to the coast, looked out towards the sea ...
The books on this list have inspired me to expand the horizons of my imagination and to think boldly about the future. So often, it feels like weâre stuck living with our forebearsâ bad choices and our leadersâ cynical and self-serving constructions of reality. In defiance, I write books for people who have struggled to fit in, who look around at our world and imagine how things could be better, and who want to read about realistic but optimistic futures. I write alternative history and cyberpunk to highlight how our cultural, technological, and political choices affect our future and how creating change starts with imagining it.
I was hesitant to pick up this book. Previously, I had enjoyed several of Neal Stephensonâs novels while finding others a bit of a slog. I was skeptical of the premise of Seveneves (the Moon is mysteriously destroyed with disastrous consequences for Earth) because it seemed too simplistic and apocalyptic. Oh boy, was I wrong!
This book delves into the politics of hard choices, the costs of survival, and the small and large-scale tragedies that come during the unrest. The science in this book is astounding: orbital mechanics, genetic engineering, space construction, geophysics and biology, and on and on. But the humans at the heart of the story will win you over. This book stayed with me for a LONG TIME. Unforgettable.
The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction. President Barack Obama's summer reading choice and recently optioned by Ron Howard and IMAGINE to be made into a major motion picture.
What would happen if the world were ending?
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain...
Five thousand years later, their progeny - seven distinct races now threeâŚ
I started reading sci-fi in 1962 with 1957's Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars and have loved it ever since. I became a sci-fi writer with my first three books in utopian speculative fiction, The Spanner Series. Unfortunately, I stalled out due to a TBI, a cross-country move, and other distractions, but I do plan to continue with the other 7 volumes in my utopian speculative fiction series some day. The writers in my âbest ofâ list are some of my lifelong inspirations, so I hope newer readers can enjoy and learn from their works as much as I have.
Doris Lessing is another amazing speculative fiction author with many books and stories to read! This is the third book in a series of five that I highly recommend reading in its entirety and in order. But if you can only read one book, read this one. In this series, Lessing posits an Earth that has been the subject of a millennia-long experiment by beings from the planet Shikasta that includes tipping Earth on its axis to create seasons, which she speculates are the main reason humans have ever-changing moods and are quick to be emotional. A fascinating look into what makes humans the way we are from a unique perspective, along with excellent world-building and an interesting vehicle for storytelling make this a great read.
The third in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in Argos: Archives". It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.
