Fans pick 100 books like Ilium

Like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Frank Herbert’s book tells the story of a man who could be the villain or the hero, depending on who you ask. I love watching how an intelligent yet malleable person can be swept up in feelings of duty, responsibility, and leadership only to make highly questionable decisions.

Paul Atreides’ moral ambiguity is undeniably engineered by the shifting and slimy political landscape of the Dune universe, driving home the idea in my mind that good worldbuilding can set the stage for truly complicated characters.

I love how Lyra’s world is so different from ours, yet doesn’t require a huge leap of faith to believe. The science-like attention to detail somehow makes it sensible. Are there talking polar bears who shape metal with their paws and claws? Yes. Are my objections to that bizarre idea addressed so well that I accept it as normal? Also yes. 

The amount of thought put into the world makes the unreal feel very real, in other words. Yes, there are subtle magical forces, witches, and humans tethered to literal spirit animals…but scientists have studied and invented machines to work with all of it the same way we work with forces in our own world that we don’t understand. This series respects its readers' intelligence, regardless of age.

I recommend this book because it is my favorite modern sci-fi series. What gripped me with this was the overall premise of the story.

This story starts with the curtain being dropped for the book’s MC, and he realizes his life is not what it seems and his people are nothing more than slaves for a higher order. He sets out to change that. It is an amazing story that took the battle-school trope that I loved in Ender’s Game to a whole new level. I instituted the trope into my book and feel it has a good balance between the YA version of Ender’s Game and the very mature version of Red Rising.

This is my first foray into actual science fantasy, and it definitely influenced my work.

I love this book because although it seems at a casual glance to be written in the mold of 50s and 60s science fiction, with earthmen fighting bug-eyed aliens, it’s, in fact, a profound exploration of the morality of war, of chances, lost and motives misunderstood and of the ruthless use of children as combatants.

The training regimen of the children is gripping, as is the climactic space battle, but it’s the ending of the novel that gives the story its deep spiritual resonance.

For someone who’s read every book in the Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin series, it’s hard to find an age-of-sail book that has anything truly new to add.

Or so I thought until I picked up this book. It asks the question, what if Jack Aubrey could have sailed a wooden frigate to a Barsoomian version of Mars? The obvious answer, of course (and the one in this book) is that Britain would have extracted every plank of Marswood, ounce of Marsspice, and bag of Marstatoes it could get its imperialistic little hands on.

That’s Arabella’s world, where cannons boom in the interplanetary air currents, and spaceships are driven by sail power. As a fan of both sea stories and space operas, I’m there for it.

H.G. Wells delivers an astonishing tale of space invaders from Mars, with breathtaking scenes of monstrously huge three-legged walking machines terrorizing the populace of London and its surrounds. For sheer imagery, few science fiction stories before or since have come close to its gripping, real-world feel.

The story is told by an unnamed protagonist who goes on an odyssey in ravaged London as towering alien war machines chase, kill, or capture fleeing citizens in chaotic scenes of panic and fear. That fear sent chills along my spine on rereading this classic recently.

Notable were touching humanistic scenes with Dr. Ogilvy, an astronomer who leads an ill-fated attempt at truce-making, and a defeated soldier whose counterattack with artillery failed horribly.

This book made a deep impact on me when I first read it decades ago and it influenced me in the way I try to understand and write history to this day. I’d already read The Odyssey when I encountered Finley’s book, but Finley made me believe in a world that became real despite being imaginary. The World of Odysseus is an amalgam of the half-remembered world in which it is set – the twelfth century BC – and of the world in which Homer was composing – the eighth century BC – and of the big gap in between the two, known as the Dark Ages.

It’s a completely artificial world but it’s wholly convincing and coherent – a world, incidentally, dominated by a large cast of formidable women. Finley provides by far the best introduction to it, and he writes in an engaging, unpedantic, highly accessible, and informative… show more.

The first three books on this list are focused on the history of space exploration; The Mars Challenge is all about the future. Told us a conversation between an ambitious student and a more experienced space professional mentor, The Mars Challenge explores just that – the numerous challenges humanity will have to overcome before we can take the first steps on the Red Planet. In doing so, it threads a needle brilliantly – doing justice to the complexity of these challenges, but presenting them in a way that a lay reader can understand. The book is perfect for inspiring the next generation of explorers, and provides a fun read for adults who’d like an overview of the challenges of space.

"The One Who Waits," one of my favorite stories in this collection, would be regarded more commonly as science fiction, as it takes place during an Earth expedition to Mars. But Ray Bradbury’s story also pioneers the classic horror trope of a small group of people falling one by one to a mysterious creature they cannot see—and with a means of disguise highly imaginative, beautifully written, and fundamentally terrifying. Bradbury is a phenomenal writer and it’s difficult to recommend any one story without feeling certain you’ve dropped the ball in not recommending another--you really can't go wrong with this entire collection--but the quick, clever, nuanced "The One Who Waits" is one of the best sci-fi/horror hybrids ever written.

This was the first time, upon finishing the first in a series, that I immediately cracked open the sequel, just to make sure my favorite hero came out alright. Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, is a giant among pulp and fantastic fiction. His tale of a gentlemanly Virginian war veteran thrust among the alien warriors of Mars is one whose DNA is woven into all modern sci-fi and fantasy and has been celebrated by everyone from Ray Bradbury to Carl Sagan.

Best of all, the place where it all began still holds sway more than a century on from its debut. John Carter, soon-to-be Warlord of Mars in the Barsoomian tomes that followed, is a model hero and a beautiful celebration of loyalty, strength, compassion, and friendship.