Fans pick 69 books like The Pride of Chanur

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.

Isaac Asimov rarely wrote about aliens, but this Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel contains an astounding thought experiment, not only imagining a truly alien species but placing them in a different universe with different physical laws from our own.

I first read this novel as a teenager and was blown away by Asimov’s ability to make me understand and care about the fate of such vastly different alien creatures that possessed three distinct sexes and derived their life energy from photosynthesis.

The fact that the novel inextricably links the fate of these creatures with the fate of our own universe gave me a greater appreciation of how truly diverse life can be. A fact–along with the lessons I learned from the other novels listed here–that continues to inform my own writing on aliens and alien cultures. 

I won’t lie; this series hurt my brain. It did not hold back with the twists or the depth of dialogue and intrigue either. I love it for the way it showed me the sheer complexity a series could offer. Asimov built a world that felt so real—complete with deep political intrigue, technological advancements, and power struggles that echoed across generations.

What captivated me most was how the storylines tied together over time, often referring back to events from the first book in ways that made everything feel interconnected. You don’t just read the Foundation series; you invest in it, piecing together the layers of Asimov’s universe as you go.

The story is full of big ideas—focusing not just on individuals but on the grand sweep of civilizations rising and falling. I felt that this series taught me the importance of understanding the long game: that things unfolding today may… show more.

I have enjoyed literally hundreds of hours of thrilling military SF in the series of which this book is the first novel. David Weber is one of two authors who have invented new SF sub-genres. In David’s case, the sub-genre is often called space opera. The other author is David Drake. His Hammer’s Slammers stories are now considered the first books in the ‘space marines’ sub-genre.

David Weber’s story universe is huge. I sometimes think it’s too big in the sense that he tries to weave too many sub-plots into the larger story arc. But his first book is quite moderate in this regard. I started writing my own military SF novels partly because Weber wasn’t writing new sequels fast enough to satisfy my thirst for thrilling space combat.

This omnibus collects eleven short stories about space merchant Nicholas Van Rijn. Van Rijn (no coincidence that he’s Dutch) is literate, clever, eccentric in speech, archaic in dress, and occasionally valiant in battle – but he’d much rather trade than fight, and although he describes trade as “swindling each other,” he characteristically strikes deals that benefit all parties.

Van Rijn’s trade-in spices (he is CEO of the Solar Spice and Liquors Company) is a callout to the history of the Dutch East India Company. The great early modern companies (and specifically, the British East India Company) are one of the inspirations in my book: they founded some fortunes and give to startling adventure stories, but the contradictions inherent in their nature also led to corruption and oppression.

Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle is an amazing novel and not for those who like quick reads. At nearly 1,000 erudite pages it depicts the lives and confusions of natural philosophers between the years 1660 and 1713 at the dawn of the scientific revolution. Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, King Charles II, and many others fill the pages with wit, history, avarice, sex, political duplicity, religious prejudice, and wars that seem to pop up by whim. 

The sheer volume of historical research evident in Quicksilver eclipses all other works of the genre. The number of “throw away” lines that reveal deeper research and add but a thought or two to the current narrative is awesome. This is rapture for a bibliophile. Mr. Stephenson is a genius.

If it’s hard to make readers side with spiders, what about plants?

The planet on which an unlucky group of humans are stranded in Semiosis is indeed home to sentient plants that see humans as just another resource. But this isn’t some Day of The Triffids monster tale. The plants can’t move anything like humans can, which, in the hands of a lesser author, might make for quite a static, boring story.

Burke demonstrates her boundless imagination by taking the reader into the "mind" of the plant, seeing the world, its threats, and resources in a completely different and plant-like way and bringing a sense of urgency as the survival of plant and humans alike become bound together.

It’s a fascinating read, and the follow-up, Interference, is just as good. 

As a big fan of xenofiction, I appreciated that large parts of the book were written from the perspective of non-humans. I loved the author’s imagination, which, while innovative, never strayed into the implausible.

I was very interested in the timespan of thousands of years and the concept of accelerated evolution, and I found the intelligent, massive spiders to be both creepy and fascinating. For me, Children of Time was a good page-turner and a great read.

I was enthralled by this book. If memory serves me correctly, C.J. Cherrryh was awarded the title of Grand Master by an SF organization for this book and it’s obvious why.

The scope of the story universe she has created is mind-boggling. The characters are believable, and the action makes your heart beat faster. There are scenes in the book that make you want to see them in a movie. I can say that this book and her style of writing has had a bigger impact on my own writing than any other author.

If military SF is your thing, you’ll love this book.

Larry Niven (like CJ Cherryh) is a Grand Master of science fiction and no stranger to creating unique alien creatures and societies. But the Pak aliens are one of his weirdest creations of all.

I won’t spoil the surprise, but the Pak are truly unique amongst science fictional aliens, and the Hugo-nominated book–much like The Pride of Chanur–is a non-stop chase across space with the Pak demonstrating time and again that humanity is no match for them and that they could, in fact, be our deadliest threat.

I read this book many years ago, and it’s stayed with me as a great example of alien SF.