Here are 100 books that Bolo fans have personally recommended if you like
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As intense as the Cold War was, I have always found myself looking toward the future. Nuclear annihilation was a real possibility in my youth. Even so, I have always been curious about the next threat beyond our current crisis would be. Beyond nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, I see that we now face possible dangers from rogue AI and climate change. If that’s not enough, let’s remember that conventional weapons are getting more powerful with the passing of each decade. That’s why the storyteller in me loves this stuff so much.
I particularly enjoy the way the author has blended apocalyptic imagery with epic space battles. As much as I enjoyed the origin story of Buck Rogers, I really was taken by the idea of a world recovering from atomic horror. It’s an action-adventure story that made me feel good about humanity’s future.
The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fiction’s original space hero, Buck Rogers.
In 1927, World War I veteran Anthony Rogers is working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation investigating strange phenomena in an abandoned coal mine when suddenly there’s a cave-in. Trapped in the mine and surrounded by radioactive gas, Rogers falls into a state of suspended animation . . . for nearly five hundred years.
Waking in the year 2419, he first saves the beautiful Wilma Deering from attack and then discovers what has befallen his country: The United States has descended into chaos after Asian powers…
As intense as the Cold War was, I have always found myself looking toward the future. Nuclear annihilation was a real possibility in my youth. Even so, I have always been curious about the next threat beyond our current crisis would be. Beyond nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, I see that we now face possible dangers from rogue AI and climate change. If that’s not enough, let’s remember that conventional weapons are getting more powerful with the passing of each decade. That’s why the storyteller in me loves this stuff so much.
I am old enough to remember the first lunar landing. I watched it as it happened, on a black-and-white TV screen. I was intrigued by the notion that we, here on Earth, would someday be in conflict with people who were born and raised on the Moon. It’s almost inevitable that you will eventually argue with your neighbors. This novel marks the first occasion that I can recall reading about how such a conflict might start. Even if I do live long enough to see humans walk on the moon again, I will still be thinking about this book.
As intense as the Cold War was, I have always found myself looking toward the future. Nuclear annihilation was a real possibility in my youth. Even so, I have always been curious about the next threat beyond our current crisis would be. Beyond nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, I see that we now face possible dangers from rogue AI and climate change. If that’s not enough, let’s remember that conventional weapons are getting more powerful with the passing of each decade. That’s why the storyteller in me loves this stuff so much.
This story reads much differently to me than any other war novel. The fact that it begins with a series of devastating natural disasters grabbed my attention. I like stories that have a twist. In this book, I enjoyed that it changed from an apocalypse story to one about an invasion, then blended the two to make something unusual.
A 9.0 earthquake… A massive tsunami… the eruption of Mt. Rainier…
…All lead to the total annihilation of all infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest.
In Slaughter County, gun club manager Phil Walker leads an impromptu band of people, working together for mutual safety and survival. Meanwhile, his son Crane is but one of hundreds at a nearby naval shipyard, working feverishly for days on-end to avert nuclear disaster.
As unprepared survivors must adapt on the fly, unlikely alliances form—and the dregs of society begin to make their moves in a new world without law and order. The best and worst…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
As intense as the Cold War was, I have always found myself looking toward the future. Nuclear annihilation was a real possibility in my youth. Even so, I have always been curious about the next threat beyond our current crisis would be. Beyond nuclear, biological, and chemical threats, I see that we now face possible dangers from rogue AI and climate change. If that’s not enough, let’s remember that conventional weapons are getting more powerful with the passing of each decade. That’s why the storyteller in me loves this stuff so much.
This is the first book in The Last Brigade series. I enjoyed the way Webb blended natural disasters with ongoing military conflicts. I’m particularly fond of the “old school” action, as well as the use of humor to keep the story moving. This is a fun romp that just happens to include tanks, artillery, and the occasional commando raid.
America might be dead, but Nick Angriff will kick your ass to resurrect her.
Lt. General Nick Angriff has spent his adult life protecting family and country from a world of terrorism spinning out of control. On the battlefield, off the grid, in clandestine special task forces and outright black ops, Angriff never wavers from duty. But when a terror attack on Lake Tahoe kills his family, he’s left with only the corrosive acid of revenge… that is, until a hated superior officer reveals the deepest of all secret operations. Against the day of national collapse, a heavily-armed military unit…
I’ve been a geeky kid all my life. (I don’t think I’ve quite grown up yet.) Born in the 1970s, my childhood was a wonderful playground of building robots and software. I was awarded one of the early degrees in AI, and a PhD in genetic algorithms. I’ve since spent 25 years exploring how to make computers think, build, invent, compose… and I’ve also spent 20 years writing popular science books. I’m lucky enough to be a Professor in one of the world’s best universities for Computer Science and Machine Learning: UCL, and I guess I’ve written two or three hundred scientific papers over the years. I still think I know nothing at all about real or artificial intelligence, but then does anyone?
This is another break from AI, and it’s another bizarre world. Why do computer scientists like this kind of thing? I think it’s because we invent mind-bending mathematical worlds in which our algorithms live – we like to explore the strange and weird. When reading this book, at first you wonder if this is science fiction at all – the story seems fantastical. But check out the Appendix and there’s the scientific explanation, complete with equations for the weird laws of physics. Now, this is a proper hard science fiction book… somehow disguised almost as a fairy tale. A lovely read and the ending is suitably in keeping with the rest of the story… Unexpected.
Tighe lives on the wall. It towers above his village and falls away below it. It is vast and unforgiving and it is everything he knows. Life is hard on the wall, little more than a clinging on for dear life. And then one day Tighe falls off the wall. And falls, and falls, and falls ...Lavishly praised everywhere from Asimov's magazine to Interzone, ON is proof positive that Adam Roberts is a new author whose potential for greatness is rapidly being realised. ON is at once a vertiginous concept novel, a coming of age saga, a picaresque journey across…
I’ve loved all kinds of science fiction since I was a child, and always enjoy discovering new worlds, and the frisson of danger that inevitably accompanies the discovery. After a successful career in science and engineering, spanning more than three decades, I left the corporate world to make stringed instruments and to write fiction and non-fiction. My two novels are An Accident of Birth, and the space opera, Galactic Alliance: Betrayal, and I’ve written a non-fiction reference book Brass and Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makers. I live in Kent, England with my wife, Margo, and our cat.
Ian Banks is as well known for his science fiction as for his mainstream and literary fiction. This is the first book in his Cultureseries, in which the Culture is a galaxy-wide advanced technological society with complex attitudes to how it should interact with other civilizations. The Culture is at war with the Idrians. Consider Phlebas is the story of a mercenary lone operative on a quest to retrieve a stranded Culture AI mind from an abandoned world to further the Idrian cause. The problem is that he is not the only one going there to find it, and nobody is playing nicely – not even the stranded AI mind. The wide-ranging inventiveness, subtle humour, and gritty realism of this story makes for highly compelling reading.
"Dazzlingly original." -- Daily Mail"Gripping, touching and funny." -- TLSThe war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza,…
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
I’m a former journalist and intelligence officer turned writer, so I seek out authenticity in my reading, especially when it comes to war stories. I look for fiction from people who have been there or know how to listen to those who have, and be their voice. When I write, I always put together a team of veterans and specialists in their fields to challenge my work and make sure I get it right, too!
I needed a gripping story for a drive across Australia, 800 miles from Sydney to Adelaide. I wanted one that would grab me and keep me awake and alert. This one really got my brain fizzing because it lifts you out of today and transports you into a future that could easily come true (let's hope it doesn't!).
It's the sort of audiobook that has you still sitting in your car, listening to the end of the chapter in your driveway because you can't turn it off!
It was called Jade Dragon…and it threatened to destroy the West.
Was an attack on the US imminent?
In a lab deep in the heart of China, a brilliant engineer had a breakthrough. It was the most powerful AI ever created. Ma Young believed the Jade Dragon could combat the world’s most dire challenges. There was just one problem...the president of China had other ideas. Was this their chance to conquer?
The war began at the speed of light. The entire NATO alliance stood on the brink of destruction. Cyber attacks, deepfakes, and a wave of social media disinformation wrought…
Youth play such a significant role in the history of our struggles for justice–and yet most teenagers I meet in the classroom have limited access to these important stories. These stories are more relevant than ever as we see current youth-led activism for #BlackLivesMatter and Youth4Climate Marches. When I talk to youth about historical youth-led protests, their eyes light up–they make these connections lightning fast and say–why aren’t we being taught about things like this more in school?
Set in a future of climate change where the UN (Run by a Super Intelligent AI)–this story has so much heart and punch that it hasn’t left me all these years later. Greta, our protagonist, grows so much during this harrowing ride–but it is believable every step of the way.
The children of world leaders are held hostage in an attempt to keep the peace in this “slyly humorous, starkly thought-provoking” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel.
Greta is a Duchess and a Crown Princess. She is also a Child of Peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world, the great Artificial Intelligence, Talis. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Start a war and your hostage dies.
The system has worked for centuries. Parents don’t want to see their children murdered.…
Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”
I’m going old-school, back to one of the grandfathers of science fiction, Robert Heinlein.
Not only is his book a masterful example of character-driven storytelling, but it takes a critical eye to many of the things our current society takes for granted as being “true” and “right,” finding them wanting. It’s also been a huge influence on me in my writing, as have many of Heinlein’s other works, and I couldn’t not put it in here.
In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison...
Life isn't easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV.
When humble technician Mannie O'Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities... or become friends.
And perhaps overthrow the government while they're at it.
In 2126, society finally has its quick fix. ReInception is a machine used for modifying human behaviors, everything from taming unruly children to reprogramming terrorists.
Columbia student Leandrea Justus is passively anti-ReInception. But when she and her boyfriend are separated during a bombing at an anti-ReInception rally, Ward — not…
I've always been interested in Native American culture, while at the same time horrified at the way most European settlers treated them. (My best friend as a child was Native American.) Without consciously planning on it, many of my other books and short stories feature Native American customs and characters—though not as thoroughly as Red Sky, Blue Moon. I've also always been fascinated by Viking history, though I only recently discovered I'm a direct descendant of a fairly famous Viking—Rollo. I had no particular expertise with these cultures when I began this book, but I spent many hours of research to be sure I got everything right.
I liked the unusual idea of having a Native American tribe to be the first humans to conquer space and create an interstellar nation. Overall it combines great science fiction concepts and world-building with powerful human drama. I found this book "spoke to me" in ways others don't, playing upon my lifelong interest in Native American culture.
In this tale of settler worlds a newspaperman and his friend,Wanderer,are forced to travel worlds in search of a lost guardian spirit through danger and evil,then into war.This is soft SF of lost love and the power of friendship.
