The best sci-fi books to enjoy while expanding your mind

Who am I?

My lifelong passion for history and culture led me to become a science fiction writer. I like to view history as not only the story of what has already happened, but also what is going to happen to humanity. I love to spend time thinking about the vast universe and what humanity’s evolving role will be, should we manage to survive our own self-destructive tendencies. I love history so much that I wish I were immortal, just so I could witness it all, and that, naturally, has led me to read so many sci-fi books featuring forms of immortality, and incorporating my own version of technical immortality into my writing.


I wrote...

The Immortality Game

By Ted Cross,

Book cover of The Immortality Game

What is my book about?

Moscow, 2138. With the world only beginning to recover from the complete societal collapse of the late 21st Century, Zoya scrapes by prepping corpses for funerals and dreams of saving enough money to have a child. When her brother forces her to bring him a mysterious package, she witnesses his murder and finds herself on the run from ruthless mobsters. Frantically trying to stay alive and save her loved ones, Zoya opens the package and discovers two unusual data cards, one that allows her to fight back against the mafia and another which may hold the key to everlasting life.

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The books I picked & why

The Risen Empire

By Scott Westerfeld,

Book cover of The Risen Empire

Why did I love this book?

The Succession duology (The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds) is one of the best sci-fi series that few people seem to have heard about. Westerfeld does a masterful job of portraying high-tech, futuristic military combat both on the ground and out in space. It felt so realistic, and I learned so much about spaceship combat that I had never even imagined before. The stories in these books stuck in my head for years, and I find I keep returning to read them again every so often, which only happens with the very best books.

By Scott Westerfeld,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Risen Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of 80 human worlds for 1600 years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life-after-death, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power is absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshipped as living gods. No one can touch them. No until the Rix, machine-augmented humans who worship planetary Al compound minds. The Rix are cool, relentless fanatics, and their only goal I to propagate such Als throughout the galaxy. They seek to end, by any means necessary, the Emperor's prolonged…


Chasm City

By Alastair Reynolds,

Book cover of Chasm City

Why did I love this book?

Chasm City is such an amazing blend of sci-fi genres that it’s difficult to classify. It has space opera, technothriller, cyberpunk, and generation ships, all seamlessly blended into an action/mystery storyline set in a fantastical cityscape. I had not been thrilled with the first ‘Revelation Space’ novel, but this second one more than made up for the first one’s deficiencies.

By Alastair Reynolds,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Chasm City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Come to Chasm City and embark on a mind-bending ride through the universe of Revelation Space

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone.

But Chasm City is not what it was. The one time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it…


A Fire Upon the Deep

By Vernor Vinge,

Book cover of A Fire Upon the Deep

Why did I love this book?

One of the deepest and most compelling sci-fi novels I have read yet written so brilliantly that it is accessible despite its complexity. It covers so much, from superhuman intelligences to space battles to genocide to variable physics. You learn an incredible amount while reading this without ever feeling you are being lectured. It’s a truly mind-blowing work.

By Vernor Vinge,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked A Fire Upon the Deep as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fleeing a menace of galactic proportions, a spaceship crashes on an unfamiliar world, leaving the survivors - a pair of children - to the not-so-tender mercies of a medieval, lupine race. Responding to the ship's distress signal, a rescue mission races against time to retrieve the children.


Broken Angels

By Richard K. Morgan,

Book cover of Broken Angels

Why did I love this book?

Everyone has heard of Altered Carbon, but I actually prefer this second book in the series. The idea of digital immortality in these books really made me wonder what that very advanced technology might have been like when it was just being invented. That eventually led me to develop my own answer to that question in my own sci-fi novel. I so love the scene where Kovacs buys cortical stacks in bulk in a street market so he can fish through them to find appropriate team members to help him out on his mission.

By Richard K. Morgan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Broken Angels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fifty years after the events of ALTERED CARBON Takeshi Kovacs is serving as a mercenary in the Procterate sponsored war to put down Joshuah Kemp's revolution on the planet Sanction IV. He is offered the chance to join a covert team chasing a prize whose value is limitless and whose dangers are endless. Here is a novel that takes mankind to the brink. A breakneck-paced crime thriller ALTERED CARBON took its readers deep into the universe Morgan had so compellingly realised without ever letting them escape the onward rush of the plot. BROKEN ANGELS melds SF, the war novel and…


Leviathan Wakes

By James S. A. Corey,

Book cover of Leviathan Wakes

Why did I love this book?

A space opera series that feels like it could happen, and is as good as space opera can get. If you’ve seen The Expanse show based on these novels, you really owe it to yourself to read the entire series. I love to ponder where history might take the human race over the coming centuries, and there’s nothing better in my opinion than a story that feels right on so many levels, as this one does.

By James S. A. Corey,

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked Leviathan Wakes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Humanity has colonized the planets - interstellar travel is still beyond our reach, but the solar system has become a dense network of colonies. But there are tensions - the mineral-rich outer planets resent their dependence on Earth and Mars and the political and military clout they wield over the Belt and beyond. Now, when Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war. Attacked by a stealth ship belonging to the Mars fleet, Holden must find a way to uncover the motives behind the…


5 book lists we think you will like!

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