I grew up curious about the world and perplexed that people saw the same problems I did but didn’t feel the same urgency. With a science teacher for a father, I became a lover of the natural world. Science fiction gave me hope and the ability to picture solutions. It puts readers in a mindset to consider “what could be.” I continue to study and read science while writing and publishing sci-fi novels through my publishing house, Epitome Press. It’s my way of exploring possible futures and inviting the world to see them with me. I hope this list of unexpectedly thought-provoking sci-fi gets you thinking, dreaming, and taking action.
This book infused me with that sense of wonder and broadened horizons that come with being transported into the unknown. I especially loved that the creatures featured and portrayed in this work of sci-fi were strange enough to challenge my preconceptions about sentience.
CS Lewis artfully balanced adventure with a comfortable pacing that allowed me to sink into the new world and alien cultures he created. In this book, values like honor, integrity, and community transcend the barriers of other worlds and alien beings. I also love that the plot of this one stands alone while still building a larger through-line that continues in the next book.
The first novel in C.S. Lewis's classic sci-fi trilogy which tells the adventure of Dr Ransom who is kidnapped and transported to Mars
In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet's treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the 'silent planet' - Earth - whose tragic story is known throughout the universe...
This book had me thinking on my feet and working to unravel the mysteries ahead of the plot while feeding my cravings for deeper philosophical concepts. Frank Herbert is great at writing complex stories that make me think, as evidenced by his Dune series. But unlike the Dune series, The Godmakers has quick pacing and witty banter.
I laughed while reading this, even while contemplating the deeper ideas he was weaving in, themes of belief in self, the nature of personal power, and stamina for longevity. Would I stand the test of immortality or the responsibility of godhood?
On the edge of a war-weary and devastated galaxy, charismatic Lewis Orne makes planetfall on Hamal.
His assignment: to detect any signs of latent aggression in this planet’s population.
To his astonishment, he finds that his own latent extrasensory powers have suddenly blossomed, and he is invited to join the company of “gods” on this planet.
And people place certain expectations on their gods….
Frankenstein digs deep into a parent’s responsibility to their child and the beginning roots of violence. Mary Shelley asks if rejection, isolation, and suffering through neglect is sufficiently potent to make a monster. This one isn’t obscure, but I was surprised and touched by the poignant and relatable themes.
It got me thinking about my childhood and my parent’s even rougher upbringings. They tried to overcome the traumas passed on to them and stumbled quite a bit. I’ve done the same with my children and wonder at what point those increments of positive change reach a tipping point. Frankenstein asserts that it is our duty to love, accept, guide, and protect the lives we bring into the world, and more than that, extends our duty to all of our fellow creatures.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
I loved the gorgeous tight prose and meticulously consistent details and plot points. This book is one of the earliest examples of alternate timeline science fiction and that in itself had me hooked! In fact, it came out as an early serial in the Thrill Book magazine in 1919 and its author was a woman (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) writing under a male pseudonym (Francis Stevens).
While there are some early elements of what could be confused for fantasy in it, it reads more like experiences of psychedelia once one considers the scientific causes revealed fully in the last chapter. I loved gradually discovering an underlying theme of how our personal choices and mindsets affect the people, events, and settings, we find ourselves in.
I walked into this expecting dinosaur horror and came away with science and intelligent social commentary. Dr. Malcolm has significantly more space on the written page to delight us with Chaos theory and criticisms of human arrogance, and I am here for it!
While Jurassic Park delivers on horror, death, and danger, it also manages to deliver some thoughtful themes that go deeper than “science is dangerous.” We explore the responsibility we have to keep the power of scientific advancement with experts operating with the temperance that expertise confers.
Thoughtful sci-fi like Jurassic Park must always come with a dose of how we maintain our humanity and navigate our relationship with the natural world as technological advancements flood in.
'Crichton's most compulsive novel' Sunday Telegraph 'Crichton's dinosaurs are genuinely frightening' Chicago Sun-Times 'Breathtaking adventure. . . a book that is as hard to put down as it is to forget' Time Out
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The international bestseller that inspired the Jurassic Park film franchise.
On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge.
Three hundred years in the future, after stringent population control and eugenics programs have been adopted as the salvation of mankind, tensions on Earth drive a variety of malcontents to accept the singular opportunity to colonize Mars in exchange for reproductive freedom. However, the colonists’ varying viewpoints on how to do so result in bitter conflicts and reluctant alliances. The Martian colonists are caught: do they forge a new path by salvaging ancient wisdom cast aside centuries before or hold to the reproductive council’s blueprints?
A scientist pregnant with a stolen experiment, a master of manipulation planted by the World Governing Council, a midwife in hiding hoping to give agency back to her patients, and a council still fighting for power—the colony must survive together.
She keeps her head down and cleans up messes. When the body count starts rising, will trying to make a living get her flushed?
Julia Xero is stuck in survival mode. After losing the only person she loved, the introverted orphan longs to escape her toxic employment for the zen of crime and trauma scene decontamination. But when she lands her dream job and is called to a bloody rooftop with a decapitated corpse, she’s horrified to come face to face with an otherworldly shark-toothed assassin.
Furious to learn she’s been enlisted by a clandestine race of beings against her…
"Be prepared for a long night of reading as the story unfolds. The end will leave you wanting more." - Goodreads Reviewer
She keeps her head down and cleans up messes. When the body count starts rising, will trying to make a living get her flushed?
Julia Xero is stuck in survival mode. After losing the only person she loved, the introverted orphan longs to escape her toxic employment for the zen of crime and trauma scene decontamination. But when she lands her dream job and is called to a bloody rooftop with a decapitated corpse, she’s horrified to come…
