Love The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet? Readers share 87 books like The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet...

This is my favorite hard sci-fi classic. I love the beautiful mix of real science (wormholes excepted), compelling story, and characters, and it touches on both first contact and the way in which human nature might cause us to react to it. That is the power combo, in my opinion!

The movie of the book was very good — Robert Zemeckis is a brilliant director — although it left out some fantastic details that, as a math and science fan, I really loved! (I won’t spoil it here; it’s too good.)

This book is both a fascinating vision of a tumultuous world and a deep dive into the mind of a troubled and compelling protagonist.

The character work in this book is incredibly impressive, with the long arc of the protagonist’s development drawn in convincing and gripping detail that left me feeling like I had known this person for years through all their triumphs, tragedies, and mistakes, which is to say nothing of its creative and plausible magic, its socio-political commentary, and its meditation on family and grief. Rightfully recognized as a modern classic, it is a book all fans of fantasy should read.

This book is unhinged in the best way. I love Gideon’s unique voice. Around her is a deadly-serious necromancer murder mystery with interplanetary stakes, and she cares more about cracking dirty jokes and finally eating some warm food. Her relationship with her arch-nemesis/only friend Harrow leaps off the page.

I love the scene where they get into a pool so Harrow can finally confess to Gideon her darkest secret—so hot and so disturbing all at the same time. While this book isn’t technically a romance and the genre feels more like a horror fantasy set in space, I couldn’t resist putting it on the list. As Gideon says to Harrow, “One flesh, one end, bitch.”

Le Guin is my favorite author, and all of her power is on display in this science fiction novel about an emissary who visits a planet (Gethen) where, most of the time, the people have no sex differentiation. Sex traits only become apparent in the two days per month of “kemmer,” and Gethenians may kemmer as male or female (and which is not completely predictable).

Because of Le Guin’s skill as a novelist, the implications of this arrangement are explored in subtle but powerful ways, more as the warp and weft of the cultural background than the main feature of the plot (although it is definitely significant). The book shows how deeply gender and sex infuse our own culture through the contrast with Gethen. The bonus is that this is a masterpiece of a novel, one often mentioned on lists of the best science fiction novels of all time. Le… show more.

My sister and I were only close because we’re only two years apart. But recently we’ve had some tragedy in our family, and that brought us closer.

While I was making this list of books, I was reminded of this story and how much I enjoyed it, not just for the prose, which I take notice of and will drop a book if it’s bad, but for that reminder of the brother and sister story here. Not to mention the rescue crew of odd characters which reflects a belief of mine: truth is universal.

Any human or alien can understand compassion and suffering and choose the better of the two.

Every now and then, I discover a book that has imagined a world and/or a character that takes me by surprise, and I can’t stop reading about them. Again, it’s all about character! In this book, I met a human cyborg enslaved by a computer program and built as a security unit rented out to corporate groups exploring planets for profit.

This sentient cyborg frees itself from enslavement, hilariously staves off the boredom of security work by watching its favorite media series, and as it watches characters in these shows, begins to learn about human behavior. I enjoyed the awkward, touching way it developed friendships and emotional connections. The character, which calls itself Murderbot, presents as if it’s on the spectrum.

Its first-person narration is snarky, occasionally hilarious, and endearing as it slowly learns what it means to have friendships. And oh, it finds all this wildly inconvenient, hates eye… show more.

This a beautifully lyrical book. The first chapter winds and twists through different scenes and places, like a gentle lake through a peaceful forest. Emily St John Mantel leads you through the past, present, and future so softly that it takes you a moment to realize the bleakness and horror of the post-pandemic world she’s describing.

I love a story told from multiple points of view, and this one is a masterclass. It weaves different events and characters so precisely that when everything comes to a head in the final chapters, it feels inevitable and natural. I also love a nuanced villain, and (without giving away who) this one is fantastic! I understood their motivation and logic, even as I desperately wanted them to lose.

This book is a classic now and will still be one hundred years from now. It’s the only truly fiction book on this list, but it contains some of the deepest truths about human nature, the meaning of time, memory, and identity.

Different narrators tell their tragic stories, which converge in a beautifully wrapped-up end set in a dystopian future with an ongoing war among different species descent from modern Homo sapiens. What is not to love about it?

I liked this book (and also the others of the trilogy) for the realistic and well-thought-out description of the terraforming of Mars.

The ethical and political aspects of this endeavor are so well described that the reader immediately gets involved in the political struggle (I personally joined the ‘green’ party advocating for immediate terraforming).

But politics on Mars is as harsh as on Earth and even more deadly since the place is a very dangerous one. The United Nations plays the part of the felon, trying to prevent Martians from becoming independent, and the war they wage causes the reader to lose several friends.

Reading the first couple of chapters of this book is like being thrown into the deep end of a pool and asked not just to swim but to do some calculus homework while you’re at it. The setting just doesn’t seem to make any sense, physically or morally. But I kept treading water until this book had a grip on me that wouldn’t let go. By the time the concept of “Calendrical Heresy” came up, I couldn’t put it down.

In this book, spaceships (and their horrifying, inhumane weapons) run on forces that depend on the calendar. Change the calendar and you change the rules of reality itself. This unique bit of worldbuilding lays the foundations for a gritty, unwavering exploration of personal identity under the heels of oppression, and holy crap, is it a wild, profound journey.