The Risen Empire: Book One of the Succession
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.
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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5,215 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about extraterrestrial life, space warfare, and spacecraft.
We think you will like Old Man's War, The Star Wars Trilogy, and Dawn if you like this list.
From Michael's list on The best multi-cultural space operas.
While I love the whiz-bang-pew of space battles, I also like to laugh. John Scalzi manages to make me do both. I love the wrinkle in this story—the main character enlists in the colonial military on his 75th birthday, knowing that once he leaves Earth, he will never be allowed to return. Watching an older man—he gets a younger body, but he’s still 75 mentally—who has put up with all the normal crap of life, and experienced a full lifetime, deal with the situation in space is really great, not only because the main character has a great sense of humor, but because he also has a finely-tuned BS detector, and it goes into overdrive the more he sees.
From Randy's list on The best science fiction stories of amazing worlds.
This first came out just a few months prior to the first movie in 1977 and I still remember sitting in my dorm room reading every word with great expectation of how it would look in the coming movie. I had the same feeling reading it as I did when I first read Dune. A totally different story, but great world building.
From Mikhaeyla's list on The best gothic science fiction books that explore the darkness of mankind.
Having started this list with the titan of gothic science fiction, Mary Shelley, it is appropriate to close out the list with another titan, Octavia Butler. Dawn is the first book of the Xenogenesis series, which—though long-recognised as a science fiction classic—has deep connections to the gothic genre with its “A live! Still alive. Alive…again” (surely a contender for the best opening to a novel), and its captors, strange Awakenings, creatures covered in writhing tentacles, and hybridisation of the human and alien. Underneath all of this, is the complex interrogation of what it means to be human—an exploration suited exceptionally well to both gothic fiction and science fiction.