The most recommended new hard science fiction books

Personally, I like nonfiction, but Whalefall is one fiction novel that’s a “keeper”!

May I walk you through an interesting journey, to say the least? The stage is set, and a son in the usual ”my Dad doesn’t know anything” mentality, Jay Gardner, embarks on a venture to find the remains of his dad in the Pacific Ocean, where they both were divers.

We are escorted into the ocean underworld and all the challenges that lay in store. In this mission, Jay is tangled up in a “gigantic” octopus; the tentacles surround him, and the next thing we know, Jay is inside the stomach of a whale. He is engulfed by the whale, air tanks, and all. It takes Jay a bit of ingenuity and science to know how to navigate this perplexing scenario.

You will be surprised by how it all ends up! 

Peter Cawdron has written a whole series based on various first-contact scenarios, each an independent novel.

Apothecary is one of my favorites. Set in 16th-century England, it follows a young apprentice named Anthony, who works at a London apothecary (a pharmacy). When his blind friend Julia is accused of witchcraft and set to burn at the stake, Anthony seeks help from a member of the aristocracy who harbors a deep secret about her arrival in this medieval land.

The story is accurate, fascinating, and fun, as superstition and primitive technology clashes with advanced alien science. But like all Peter Cawdron stories, at its heart Apothecary is a story of characters struggling to do what’s right.

I have a long-standing interest in both Simulation Theory and a new theory championed by Robert Lanza, a foremost stem cell researcher, called Biocentrism. This theory has ample scientific evidence to support the idea that reality is a product of consciousness, not the other way around.

In this novel, Lanza reveals his theory in an entertaining and understandable way. The characters explore the tenets of the theory, especially the idea of life after death. If you want your mind to be blown, you should explore Biocentrism. This novel is an excellent introduction to this theory.

My mother has a service dog, and I’ve inherited a disability or two. The heroine in The Spare Man didn’t let her dog or her physical limitations stop her. She even used them to her advantage when she could.

I also loved how the book was an old-school Nick and Nora style murder mystery told in the far future on a space cruise ship. The author mixed those genres like she was mixing a tasty cocktail.

It was glorious fun from first page to last. And like all the stories on my list, it showed how much a hero can shine, no matter what gender or lack of gender she is, no matter how big or how small, what sort of personality or capability she has. It might be more of a mark of courage for a hero to find a friend than storm a castle, but that’s okay because… show more.

As someone who is a bit of a naturalist/nature nerd, this book (the third in a series) explored some absolutely fascinating imaginations of evolution in non-human species.

The series looks at a group of characters and their descendants over thousands of years, after mankind has abandoned Earth and seeded and terraformed, then abandoned, different extraterrestrial planets.

What would consciousness and related society and technology look like for spiders? Octopuses? Corvids? And what would happen if humans then encountered these evolved species again after that evolution? 

This book hijacked my nights and rewired my thinking about our technological future. As a tech enthusiast, I was fascinated by Liam Dunne’s supercomputer-augmented mind. But it was Oliver Scott’s terrifying genius that truly got under my skin.

The ethical dilemmas sparked heated debates with friends, and the narrative had me oscillating between awe and dread. This thriller is a rare blend of entertainment and deep questioning—a literary rollercoaster that kept me thinking long after the last page.

This near-future cyberpunk murder mystery scratched a fictional itch I didn’t know I needed to scratch.

The mystery at the heart of this story is so compelling that I was listening to the audio on 2x speed by the end because I just couldn’t consume the story fast enough. The story also offers a cutting and insightful critique of our society and the ways in which our economy often forces us to sacrifice our health for the sake of productivity.

If you want a science fiction read with a fascinating premise and a burn-the-midnight-oil mystery, check this one out!

When I was a kid I was very excited about wolves. Not in the sense that I knew a lot about wolves—I didn’t study them and learn about them—so much as I felt certain, in my heart of hearts, that if I met a wolf, we would understand each other in a way no two creatures ever have. Feed Them Silence is a book that returned me to that sense of certainty, but with a more fundamentally realistic understanding of the nature of animals as existing outside of human understanding. I couldn’t put it down, and the hours slipped right past me.

The premise of this short novel is that humans are being engineered by aliens to be a variety of sizes. Quite a lot of sizes, really. I almost wish there was a diagram.

That said, the book was really engaging and had some of the most off-the-wall sex scenes I’d ever read.
 It reminded me of that crazy, weird animated movie “Fantastic Planet” from the 1970s. Whenever you pair giant humans with tiny people, things get bizarre, and this author certainly delivered on that!


This book is illustrated with some incredible drawings by author-illustrator Mike Dubisch. I loved how this book takes the reader into a whole other world that truly stays with you for months after reading it.

Holm has crafted a chilling tale that races its way through New York City at breakneck speed. A violent massacre occurs in a future world where disease has gained the upper hand. Detective Jacob Gibson is pulled onto the case, thrown off the case, and then lands squarely in the middle of the crux of the case.

At the center of the horror is an eleven-year-old immigrant boy desperately being searched for by multiple powerful interest groups. The question is, why? Who is Child Zero, and what does he have to offer?

Told from multiple perspectives, the suspense is kept razor thin, and the action explodes from the pages. A winner from Chris Holm.