Here are 49 books that Fledgling fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve published eleven classic-style space opera novels, a novella, and many short stories. Before becoming a writer, I spent twenty years in US Air Force in space operations; even though my books are light on science, I really was a rocket scientist! Plus, I’ve read science fiction since I was barely a teen, starting with Heinlein and McCaffery, and am always looking for my next favorite author!
Siti Kassis isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life, but following her father back to the deserted homeworld of humanity is pretty low on her list. But the Hero of Darenti Four insists, and it’s an exciting mission, so they enter deep sleep together, and emerge into a much different Earth than they expected.
The characters are believable and clever, with funny bits liberally sprinkled throughout, and Julia’s writing is excellent. Young, old, male, or female; every reader will love Siti’s adventures on a catastrophically changed Earth!
A hero with big expectations. A daughter who doesn’t want to live in his shadow.
Siti Kassis, daughter of the “Hero of Darenti Four,” doesn't know what she wants out of life. A lot of her friends are taking time to travel and see the galaxy. But her father wants her to attend the Academy and follow in his footsteps.
Then the Hero is offered one last assignment: take a team to find and explore the deserted homeworld of mankind. It’s a twenty-year mission, and he doesn’t want to leave his only child behind. Siti's going, whether she wants to…
I’ve published eleven classic-style space opera novels, a novella, and many short stories. Before becoming a writer, I spent twenty years in US Air Force in space operations; even though my books are light on science, I really was a rocket scientist! Plus, I’ve read science fiction since I was barely a teen, starting with Heinlein and McCaffery, and am always looking for my next favorite author!
Diana Smythe is a survivor, and she’ll do almost anything to keep her dream of flying to the stars alive. But she won’t betray her friends, or give into bullies, which gets her into ever-deeper trouble. Good thing she’s super smart!
Star Compass is an excellent combination of steampunk and sci-fi. Anthea is a wonderful writer, her characters strong but flawed, and her worldbuilding amazing, combining Victorian mores with modern space flight.
Steampunk meets Space Opera in this captivating tale of adventure and romance from USA Today bestseller Anthea Sharp.
Diana Smythe was a child of the nobility… once. Now the streetrat known as Diver, she spends her days picking pockets, and her nights gazing at the galaxy overhead, dreaming of the day she’ll escape Earth for a brighter future among the stars.
Derek Byrne polices the grimy streets around the Southampton Spaceport, trying to keep the gangs in line and the gutters clear of riffraff. When his path crosses Diana’s, he sees beyond her masculine disguise and catches a glimpse of…
I’ve published eleven classic-style space opera novels, a novella, and many short stories. Before becoming a writer, I spent twenty years in US Air Force in space operations; even though my books are light on science, I really was a rocket scientist! Plus, I’ve read science fiction since I was barely a teen, starting with Heinlein and McCaffery, and am always looking for my next favorite author!
Clair Johnson is determined to prove herself and find out what really happened to her mother. Neither of those things happen the way she expects.
This is an easy read, with interesting world building, and a realistic set of characters. I enjoyed the setting, the friend group, and the intrigue a lot!
In a world of music videos on television, punk rock, and roller derby, the race for space is finally on in this young adult SF adventure!
The United Federation has set a goal of sending a manned rocket to the moon; but rival countries will stop at nothing to plant their flags first—no matter the cost.
For Claire Johnson, that cost might be her life.
The seventeen-year-old spunky waitress wants nothing more than to honor her mother's memory by gaining entrance to the United Federation Space Program and doing her part for the mission. Yet her father wants Claire as…
I’ve published eleven classic-style space opera novels, a novella, and many short stories. Before becoming a writer, I spent twenty years in US Air Force in space operations; even though my books are light on science, I really was a rocket scientist! Plus, I’ve read science fiction since I was barely a teen, starting with Heinlein and McCaffery, and am always looking for my next favorite author!
Ruby hates robots and artificial intelligence. She desperately wants to join an expedition to the outer reaches of the solar system, where humans do the work, rather than computers. But she’s still too young and needs to finish her degree. Determined to make her own fate, she sets off to join, but of course, she’s abducted by space-faring robots with some very strange flaws…
A really fun book, with robots that are all too human, and an endearing main character.
What would you do if you were kidnapped by alien robots?
Ruby Palmer finds herself on an entire planet surrounded by the things she hates the most: robots. Besides taking everything she says way too literally, the robots have problems of their own. A myriad of technical glitches are, on the cosmological scale, quickly destroying them. Ruby has the programming knowledge and skills that matter to them, but can she overcome her fears and find it within herself to help? Her survival, along with the survival of all of humanity and robot kind, depends on it.
Okay, so you’ve read Dune, you’ve read Starship Troopers, you’ve read 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe you’ve even read From Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon. Seen the movies, too (or maybe you cheat and say you’ve read the books when you’ve only seen the flicks). Bet you think that makes you an expert on science fiction about space, right? Not even close! If you want to read more than just the well-known classics everyone else has, find these books. Some have become obscure and are now out of print, but they’re not hard to find; try ABE, eBay, and local second-hand bookstores. They’re worth searching for, and then you’ll really have something to talk about.
Before writing this little gem, the author produced some of the most notable Star Trek novelizations. Then she decided to create her own version of Star Trek and do the stuff she couldn’t do there. The first volume of a series, it kicks things off when the science crew of the good ship Starfarer, upon learning that their brand-new ship is about to be turned over to the military and become a warship, decides to take matters in their own hands and hijack their own starship. Space adventure at its best.
In the first in the Starfarers series of novels, the commander of the Starfarer spacecraft, scientist Victoria MacKenzie, must battle her own commanders on Earth to keep on her mission to find extraterrestrial life. Reissue.
I’ve always loved science fiction. My father was an Asimov junkie, and our house was packed with science fiction novels and stories from Azimov to Heinlein to Wyndham and Wilhelm. I began writing science fiction in high school, yet only recently published my first 4 novels (one of which won a Bookfest award). I hold a bachelor’s degree in computer science (bioinformatics), and I stay on top of science to inform my writing. It’s through this background that I select novels, seeking out new tropes and ideas in technological advancement. Each of these novels I mention exceeded my expectations and then some. Pick one up today—you won’t be disappointed!
What a phenomenal novel by Ann Leckie! I came across Ann Leckie’s series as I was working through books about cloning while I was writing my books. What do I love about it? The concepts, for sure: AI ships being negotiated, the entire idea of shipping minds around, a leader who sabotages herself to the detriment of her realm. All of these have been done to some extent before, but not at the scale that Ann Leckie takes on. She also manages to avoid some dead clone tropes and dead or dying AI tropes while she entertains. This novel (and series) were done well and the characters pop with personality. Loved it!
Breq and her crew must stand against an old and powerful enemy, the Lord of the Radch, and fight for the right to determine their own destinies in the stunning conclusion to the NYT bestselling Imperial Radch trilogy A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.
For a moment, things seemed to be under control for Breq, the soldier who used to be a warship. Then a search of Athoek Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist, and a messenger from the mysterious Presger empire arrives, as does Breq's enemy, the divided…
I’m a Virginia-based science fiction and fantasy writer who’s lived variously-enriching lives as a coroner’s assistant, customer service manager, university lecturer, secretary, factory technician, and clerk. I’ve bounced all around the Midwest, from Minnesota to Ohio to Colorado to Missouri and now out on the East Coast.
Ammonite starts in space and lands on an alien world but brings plenty of Earth’s history along with it. Human settlers that lost an age ago, transformed by a virus that only women survive but allows them to reproduce, have spread across this world. Anthropologist Marghe Taishan faces down nomadic horse archers and gets lost in pastoral folkways both new and familiar. She deconstructs her future and rebuilds herself out of the past. Ammonite’s new world shows us how our world might have looked if different paths were taken.
Winner of the Lambda and Tiptree Awards • “A knockout . . . Strong, likable characters, a compelling story, and a very interesting take on gender.”—Ursula K. Le Guin
Change or die. These are the only options available on planet Jeep. Centuries earlier, a deadly virus shattered the original colony, killing the men and forever altering the few surviving women. Now, generations after the colony lost touch with the rest of humanity, a company arrives to exploit Jeep—and its forces find themselves fighting for their lives. Terrified of spreading the virus, the company abandons its employees, leaving them afraid and…
I discovered science fiction at age nine with Rocketship Galileo and Red Planet and have never lost my love for speculative worlds, even after growing up to follow a career teaching and writing about the history of cities and city planning. In recent years, I’ve also begun to write about the field of SF. So it is one-hundred-percent natural for me to combine the two interests and explore science fiction cities. I try to look beyond the geez-whiz technology of some imagined cities to the ideas of human-scale planning and community that might make them fun places to visit or live in if we could somehow manage to get there.
At the center of the story is Spearpoint, the tallest skyscraping megabuilding that you could imagine. It is so enormous that it is divided into segments from bottom to top with different levels of technology (Horsetown and Steamville at the bottom, cybertowns, and then the fantastic Celestial Levels at the top). But wait, there’s more.
Roaming the rest of the planet is the Swarm, hundreds of giant aircraft that function together as the neighborhoods of a “distributed city” much like the fleet in Battlestar Galactica. The very different cities do not play well together, and you get to choose which one you’d rather live in. I like flying, myself.
Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different - and rigidly enforced - level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains ...Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels…
It was during the epistemological craziness around the year 2000 that I christened myself a truth warrior. I was already a scientist. Yet I knew there were other important truths, not of the mind but of the heart, truths we discover and marvel over in the realm of art. So as a biology professor I was granted a sabbatical to write the second of three of my novels, about Pliny the Elder. It is through literature, some of my own making, that I find new ways of seeing and experiencing the world: and of discovering and validating what is true, and what is not.
In my golden years I’ve come, perhaps wrongly, to trust myself and the decisions I make. Still I sometimes agonize over decisions which like a great clapper sound the bell at the core of my ethical self.
Nearly as handwringing are choices I’m forced into through something new I’ve learned about myself, my friends, or the world around me. Something new that shakes the ground of my understanding so violently I have to stop what I’m doing and hold on.
This is what happens in The Sparrow, as at last we – as someday we surely will – communicate with other life from outside the earth. Salzman cleverly puts much of the action into the hands of the Jesuits. Imagine how they must feel when the Bible, their tradition, and almost everything they believe go out the door…
'The Sparrow is one of my favourite science fiction novels and it destroyed me in the best way when I read it. It is so beautifully written and the construction of the narrative is masterful.' Emma Newman, acclaimed author of Planetfall
Set in the 21st century - a number of decades from now - The Sparrow is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and talented linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who - in response to a remarkable radio signal from the depths of space - leads a scientific mission to make first contact with an extraterrestrial culture.
I grew up in a secular Jewish household where Yiddish culture, history, and politics were a part of daily life. As a result, when I began reading (and eventually writing) science fiction and fantasy, I would take note if I found a novel or short story collection that reflected any of the many flavors of Judaism and Jewish culture. While it is not all I read or write about (I make my living as a tech journalist and I have very eclectic tastes in literature), I find that my curiosity is particularly piqued when confronted with a new book that covers both those genres.
Wandering Stars is a landmark anthology that should be the starting point for anyone interested in Jewish science fiction and fantasy. It contains a collection of incredible short stories; it’s nearly impossible to pick out the best. My own favorites include William Tenn’s “On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi,” Avram Davidson’s “The Golem,” Harlan Ellison’s “I’m Looking for Kadak,” and Isaac Bashevitz Singer’s heartbreaking, “Jachid and Jechidah.”
Jewish science fiction and fantasy? Yes! The distinguished list of contributors includes: Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Pamela Sargent, Avram Davidson, Geo. Alec Effinger, Horace L. Gold, Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, and Carol Carr.
William Tenn's futuristic story "On Venus, Have We Got A Rabbi" takes on the volatile issue of "Who is a Jew?"--a question certainly as timely in 1998 as he imagines it will be in 2533. Asimov's "Unto the Fourth Generation" takes on the issue of Jews as endangered species in America, a theme that is even more apparent today than…
