Here are the 50 best sci fi books of all time according to Google. Find your new favorite book from the local library with one click.
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1. Dune
by: Frank Herbert Release date: Jan 01, 2005 Number of Pages: 528 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.
2. The Left Hand of Darkness
by: Ursula K. Le Guin, Ursula Le Guin Number of Pages: 304 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
On behalf of his government, an earthling travels to an alien, backward world whose inhabitants are all ambisexual
3. Neuromancer
by: William Gibson Release date: Jan 01, 1986 Number of Pages: 231 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Children love to express themselves through movement—and with this great new resource, you can guide them through a range of actions and dances that will help them develop both physically and mentally. Lesson Plans for Creative Dance: Connecting With Literature, Arts, and Music is a resource for physical educators, classroom teachers, and dance specialists as well as a useful supplement to college level elementary education courses. Author Sally Carline has tested and refined the creative movement activities that she has prepared for educators and for preservice teachers, and she includes background material that will ground you in understanding how to best teach and incorporate movement activities in a variety of classes and settings. Lesson Plans for Creative Dance supplies you with • lesson plans that incorporate Laban movement concepts and extend children’s movement vocabulary; • a progression of learning that creates a rich, extended experience for students; • 28 dances with music for students through age 12; and • ways to incorporate dance with various types of literature, art, and music. Part I presents guidelines for assessing creative dance based on Rudolf Laban’s analysis of human movement. You learn about body, dynamic, spatial, and relationship awareness and gain insight into using rubrics to evaluate your students. You also learn how to help children warm up properly, channel their energy, and improve their footwork and rhythmic skills. Part I will help you incorporate dance with action words, action rhymes, and other poetry as well as with visuals and rhythm in a variety of settings. Part II offers 28 age-appropriate, ready-to-use dances that include a variety of lesson progressions as your students acquire and develop movement skills. You will be able to teach dance skills and incorporate other creative elements and concepts to give your students an understanding of the many ways in which a skill can be performed. Through Lesson Plans for Creative Dance, you can work on several ideas within the same lesson and continue to develop those ideas in future lessons. You can also incorporate ideas from language arts, social studies, art, music, and science to facilitate children’s learning and increase their enjoyment of various subjects. This lesson planner will help you take your movement education to the next level, help your students acquire skills and knowledge, and bring meaning and joy to your creative dance sessions.
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four
by: George Orwell Release date: Jan 28, 2021 Number of Pages: 304 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) was George Orwell’s final novel and was completed in difficult conditions shortly before his early death. It is one of the most influential and widely-read novels of the post-war period.
5. The Three-Body Problem
by: Cixin Liu Release date: Nov 11, 2014 Number of Pages: 400 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Soon to be a Netflix Original Series! “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.” – Wall Street Journal The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China’s most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin. Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death’s End Other Books Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up The Sky (forthcoming) At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
6. Fahrenheit 451
by: Ray Bradbury Number of Pages: 147 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A fireman in charge of burning books meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Depicts a future world in which all printed reading material is burned.
7. The Martian
by: Andy Weir Release date: Mar 30, 2021 Number of Pages: 480 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”–The Wall Street Journal The inspiration for the major motion picture Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive–and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills–and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit–he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE “A hugely entertaining novel [that] reads like a rocket ship afire . . . Weir has fashioned in Mark Watney one of the most appealing, funny, and resourceful characters in recent fiction.”–Chicago Tribune “As gripping as they come . . . You’ll be rooting for Watney the whole way, groaning at every setback and laughing at his pitchblack humor. Utterly nail-biting and memorable.”–Financial Times
8. Snow Crash
by: Neal Stephenson Release date: Aug 26, 2003 Number of Pages: 480 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
One of Time’s 100 best English-language novels • A mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous, you’ll recognize it immediately Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Praise for Snow Crash “[Snow Crash is] a cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian “Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century.”—William Gibson “Brilliantly realized . . . Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow.”—The New York Times Book Review
9. Leviathan Wakes
by: James S. A. Corey Release date: Jun 15, 2011 Number of Pages: 592 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The first book in the revolutionary New York Times bestselling Expanse series, a modern masterwork of science fiction. Leviathan Wakes introduces Captain James Holden, his crew, and Detective Miller as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Now a Prime Original series. Humanity has colonized the solar system – Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond – but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for – and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations – and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. “Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written.” – George R. R. Martin The ExpanseLeviathan WakesCaliban’s WarAbaddon’s GateCibola BurnNemesis GamesBabylon’s AshesPersepolis RisingTiamat’s Wrath The Expanse Short FictionThe Butcher of Anderson StationGods of RiskThe ChurnThe Vital AbyssStrange DogsAuberon
10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by: Philip K. Dick Release date: Feb 26, 2008 Number of Pages: 256 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick “The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world.”—John Brunner “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.”—The New York Times “[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling—and terrifying—possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from.”—Rolling Stone
11. Brave New World
by: Aldous Huxley Release date: Jan 01, 2014 Number of Pages: 296 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Aldous Huxley’s most enduring masterpiece, Brave New World, presents a darkly satiric vision of a “utopian” future that has both captivated and shocked readers for generations In the far future, the utopian World State seems like the ideal society—through the use of genetic engineering, the human race has been perfected, and all citizens are well provided for. There is no violence, babies are created in laboratories, and everyone consumes daily medication to fight depression and spends their time constantly seeking bodily pleasure through “Feelies”—movies that stimulate sight, hearing and touch. Humans are bred to be completely content with their assigned roles in society. However, not everyone is satisfied with the system. In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Bernard Max is unhappy, feeling that something is missing from his life. Shunning the shallow pleasures of promiscuity and mindless entertainment, Bernard longs to break free. It is with this goal in mind that he plans a visit to a Savage Reservation, where the past way of life is preserved. But his visit there will prompt dangerous questions and ignite a series of events with far-reaching consequences. Originally published in 1932, Brave New World presents a chilling imagining of a future in which humans are genetically designed and constantly drugged to be happy citizens who passively serve the ruling order. In his almost prophetic work of speculative fiction, Aldous Huxley predicted much of our current technology and social practices. His powerful novel is still as relevant as ever, both as a cautionary tale of the dangers of technology and as a provocative yet entertaining read.
12. Foundation
by: D. G. Leahy Release date: Jan 01, 1996 Number of Pages: 696 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
This book presents the ontological and logical foundation of a new form of thinking, the beginning of an absolute phenomenology. It does so in the context of the history of thought in Europe and America. It explores the ramifications of a categorically new logic. Thinkers dealt with include Plato, Galileo, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Peirce, James, Dewey, Derrida, McDermott, and Altizer.
13. The Forever War
by: Joe Haldeman Release date: Sep 02, 2003 Number of Pages: 277 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Drafted into the ranks of Earth’s interstellar warriors, private William Mandella finds his fight against the Taurans secondary to the side-effects of faster-than-light space travel, which affects the rate at which he ages. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
14. Hyperion
by: Number of Pages: 450 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Calvin J. Hamilton features information and statistics about Hyperion, a moon of Saturn. The information is offered as part of Views of the Solar System. Hyperion is one of the smaller satellites of Saturn. The moon has an irregular rotational period. Hamilton includes images of Hyperion, as well as statistics about the mass, orbital period, mean density, magnitude, equatorial radius, orbital eccentricity, mean orbital velocity, and other facts on Hyperion.
15. Red Rising
by: Pierce Brown Release date: Jan 28, 2014 Number of Pages: 400 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, BUZZFEED, AND SHELF AWARENESS “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE
16. Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis
by: Douglas Adams Release date: Jan 01, 1998 Number of Pages: 204 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Arthur Dent – ein Engländer am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs – befindet sich plötzlich auf einer unglaublichen Odyssee im Weltall.
17. Slaughterhouse-Five
by: Kurt Vonnegut Release date: Aug 11, 2009 Number of Pages: 240 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties. “Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”—The Boston Globe
18. Stranger in a Strange Land
by: Robert Anson Heinlein Release date: Jan 01, 1987 Number of Pages: 395 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
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.
19. Ringworld
by: Larry Niven Release date: Jan 01, 2005 Number of Pages: 288 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Pierson¿s puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre – the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of the Ringworld¿s surface.
20. Ancillary Justice
by: Ann Leckie Release date: Oct 01, 2013 Number of Pages: 432 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The only novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards and the first book in Ann Leckie’s New York Times bestselling trilogy. On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren – a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance. In the Ancillary world: 1. Ancillary Justice2. Ancillary Sword3. Ancillary Mercy
21. Ender’s Game
by: Orson Scott Card Release date: Apr 01, 2010 Number of Pages: 256 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is the winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards 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. 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 At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
22. I, Robot
by: Isaac Asimov Release date: Jan 01, 2013 Number of Pages: 245 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Voyager Classics – timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy. A beautiful clothbound edition of I, Robot, the classic collection of robot stories from the master of the genre.
23. Old Man’s War
by: John Scalzi Release date: Dec 27, 2005 Number of Pages: 320 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger. Old Man’s War Series #1 Old Man’s War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe’s Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: “After the Coup” Other Tor Books The Android’s Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)
24. Doomsday Book
by: Connie Willis Release date: Jan 05, 2011 Number of Pages: 592 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Five years in the writing by one of science fiction’s most honored authors, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit. For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours. Praise for Doomsday Book “A stunning novel that encompasses both suffering and hope. . . . The best work yet from one of science fiction’s best writers.”—The Denver Post “Splendid work—brutal, gripping and genuinely harrowing, the product of diligent research, fine writing and well-honed instincts, that should appeal far beyond the normal science-fiction constituency.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “The world of 1348 burns in the mind’s eye, and every character alive that year is a fully recognized being. . . . It becomes possible to feel . . . that Connie Willis did, in fact, over the five years Doomsday Book took her to write, open a window to another world, and that she saw something there.”—The Washington Post Book World
25. The Dispossessed
by: Ursula K. Le Guin Number of Pages: 311 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Frequently reissued with the same ISBN, but with slightly differing bibliographical details.
26. A Canticle for Leibowitz
by: Walter M. Miller Number of Pages: 320 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
27. The War of the Worlds
by: H. G. Wells Release date: Jan 01, 2017 Number of Pages: 206 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
When a meteorite lands in Surrey, the locals don’t know what to make of it. But as Martians emerge and begin killing bystanders, it quickly becomes clear—England is under attack. Armed soldiers converge on the scene to ward off the invaders, but meanwhile, more Martian cylinders land on Earth, bringing reinforcements. As war breaks out across England, the locals must fight for their lives, but life on Earth will never be the same. This is an unabridged version of one of the first fictional accounts of extraterrestrial invasion. H. G. Wells’s military science fiction novel was first published in book form in 1898, and is considered a classic of English literature.
28. Ready Player One
by: Ernest Cline Release date: Aug 16, 2011 Number of Pages: 384 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9
29. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
by: Robert A. Heinlein Release date: Jun 15, 1997 Number of Pages: 382 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing computer lead the lunar population in a revolution against Earth’s colonial rule
30. Frankenstein
by: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Release date: Nov 29, 2014 Number of Pages: 148 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
• This book publication is unique which includes exclusive Introduction, Historical Background and handcrafted additional content. • This edition also includes detailed Biography. • This edition has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors.Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley’s name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the story within the novel.Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character “makes a deliberate decision” and “turns to modern experiments in the laboratory” to achieve fantastic results. It has had a considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.Since publication of the novel, the name “Frankenstein” is often used to refer to the monster itself, as is done in the stage adaptation by Peggy Webling. This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of “Frankenstein” as well-established and an acceptable usage. In the novel, the monster is identified via words such as “creature”, “monster”, “fiend”, “wretch”, “vile insect”, “daemon”, “being”, and “it”. Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the monster refers to himself as “the Adam of your labours”, and elsewhere as someone who “would have” been “your Adam”, but is instead “your fallen angel.”
31. Red Mars
by: Kim Stanley Robinson Release date: Jan 01, 2009 Number of Pages: 671 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
In 2027, the Ares, the biggest space-worthy craft ever built by man, reaches high orbit around Mars. Inside is a crew who will become the first 100 people to land on the planet’s surface. Their mission: terraform a frozen wasteland with no atmosphere into a new Eden. The future of human civilization depends on their success.
32. Rendezvous with Rama
by: Arthur C. Clarke Release date: Oct 13, 2020 Number of Pages: 288 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A science-fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is one of Arthur C. Clarke’s best novels and a winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards.
33. A Fire Upon The Deep
by: Vernor Vinge Release date: Apr 01, 2010 Number of Pages: 624 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge’s award-winning works. A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind’s potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these “regions of thought,” but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Tor books by Vernor Vinge Zones of Thought Series A Fire Upon The Deep A Deepness In The Sky The Children of The Sky Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm’s World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
34. The Time Machine Illustrated
by: H G Wells Release date: May 03, 2021 Number of Pages: 104 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The Time Machine is a science fiction short story by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 and written as a landmark story. The work is generally credited with popularizing the concept of time travel using a vehicle or device to consciously and selectively travel forward or backward through time.
35. The Martian Chronicles
by: Ray Bradbury Release date: Apr 17, 2012 Number of Pages: 241 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by humans who want to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.
36. The Stars My Destination
by: Alfred Bester Release date: Jun 06, 2011 Number of Pages: 236 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
#5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. “Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them.” —Joe Haldeman #5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. “Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius, and this is one of them.” —Joe Haldeman “Bester at the peak of his powers is, quite simply, unbeatable” —James Lovegrove Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel that had intended to leave him to die. When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iBooks has reprinted ReDemolished, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)
37. The Play of Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon
by: Bert Coules Release date: Jan 01, 1993 Number of Pages: 90 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play is a dramatization of Daniel Keyes’s story about a retarded adult who desperately wants to be able to read and write.
38. Childhood’s End
by: Arthur C. Clarke Release date: Oct 27, 2015 Number of Pages: 224 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The author questions the survival of mankind in this science fiction tale about Overlords from outer space who dominate the world.
39. The Mote in God’s Eye
by: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle Release date: Mar 01, 1991 Number of Pages: 592 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The accidental killing of a group of emissaries to Earth threatens man’s survival
40. Starship Troopers
by: Robert Anson Heinlein Release date: Jan 01, 1987 Number of Pages: 263 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
In a futuristic military adventure a recruit goes through the roughest boot camp in the universe and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry in what historians would come to call the First Interstellar War
41. The Handmaid’s Tale
by: Margaret Atwood Release date: Sep 06, 2011 Number of Pages: 368 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning. “From the Hardcover edition.”
42. Anathem
by: Neal Stephenson Release date: Oct 06, 2009 Number of Pages: 1008 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A #1 New York Times Bestseller, Anathem is perhaps the most brilliant literary invention to date from the incomparable Neal Stephenson, who rocked the world with Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and The Baroque Cycle. Now he imagines an alternate universe where scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians live in seclusion behind ancient monastery walls until they are called back into the world to deal with a crisis of astronomical proportions. Anathem won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the reviews for have been dazzling: “Brilliant” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel), “Daring” (Boston Globe), “Immensely entertaining” (New York Times Book Review), “A tour de force” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), while Time magazine proclaims, “The great novel of ideas…has morphed into science fiction, and Neal Stephenson is its foremost practitioner.”
43. Contact
by: Carl Sagan Release date: Dec 20, 2016 Number of Pages: 432 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all—the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space. In December of 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future—and our own.
44. Solaris
by: Stanisław Lem Release date: Jan 01, 1987 Number of Pages: 204 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
The first of Lem’s novels to be published in americanca and still the best known. A scientist examining the ocean that covers the surface of the planet Solaris is forced to confront the incarnation of a painful, hitherto unconscious memory, inexplicably created by the ocean. An undisputed SF classic. Translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox.
45. The Stand (Movie Tie-In Edition)
by: Stephen King Release date: Dec 01, 2020 Number of Pages: 1328 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.
46. The Diamond Age. Diamond Age, Die Grenzwelt, Englische Ausgabe
by: Neal Stephenson Release date: Jan 01, 2011 Number of Pages: 499 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
A new look for cult author Stephenson’s unstoppable sci-fi classicThe future is small. The future is nano . . .And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell – an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nano-technology?Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous.And it isn’t Nell’s. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . .Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic ‘The Baroque Cycle’ (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age (winner of a Hugo Award), Snow Crash, Zodiac, Anathem and Reamde. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
47. A Wrinkle in Time
by: Madeleine L’Engle Release date: Apr 01, 2010 Number of Pages: 216 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Madeleine L’Engle’s ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic, now a major motion picture. It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger. “Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.” A tesseract (in case the reader doesn’t know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L’Engle’s unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem. A Wrinkle in Time is the winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal. It is the first book in The Time Quintet, which consists of A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. A Wrinkle in Time is now a movie from Disney, directed by Ava DuVernay, starring Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling. This title has Common Core connections. Books by Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time Quintet A Wrinkle in Time A Wind in the Door A Swiftly Tilting Planet Many Waters An Acceptable Time A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Madeleine L’Engle; adapted & illustrated by Hope Larson Intergalactic P.S. 3 by Madeleine L’Engle; illustrated by Hope Larson: A standalone story set in the world of A Wrinkle in Time. The Austin Family Chronicles Meet the Austins (Volume 1) The Moon by Night (Volume 2) The Young Unicorns (Volume 3) A Ring of Endless Light (Volume 4) A Newbery Honor book! Troubling a Star (Volume 5) The Polly O’Keefe books The Arm of the Starfish Dragons in the Waters A House Like a Lotus And Both Were Young Camilla The Joys of Love
48. Altered Carbon
by: Richard K. Morgan Release date: Jan 01, 2006 Number of Pages: 526 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
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.
49. Roadside Picnic
by: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky Release date: May 01, 2012 Number of Pages: 224 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems. First published in 1972, “Roadside Picnic” is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel’s publication in Russia.
50. Gateway
by: Frederik Pohl Release date: Jan 01, 2010 Number of Pages: 288 Find in Library Read Review Google Preview |
Wealth . . . or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate volunteers.
Last updated on October 16, 2021