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Tag: Science fiction

  • Klara and the Sun

    Klara is an Artificial Friend, a humanoid robot companion sold to keep children company, and she narrates from her place in a city store. Unusually observant, she studies passers-by and the movements of the Sun, which she regards as a benevolent force that nourishes her and perhaps everyone else. She waits to be chosen.

    Eventually she is bought for Josie, a lively but chronically ill girl living with her anxious mother in a remote house. Josie's illness is linked to a procedure many families undergo to give their children advantages, and her neighbour and close friend Rick has not had it. Klara devotes herself to Josie's welfare and forms her own logic about how she might help.

    Ishiguro's first novel after his Nobel Prize returns to the territory of Never Let Me Go: a narrator with a limited view of a disquieting world. Through Klara's literal, generous perspective he raises questions about love, loneliness, artificial intelligence and whether a person can be replicated. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021.

    Book details

    AuthorKazuo Ishiguro
    First published2021
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)303
    SettingAn unnamed American city and a rural house, in the near future

    Themes

    • Artificial intelligence
    • Love and devotion
    • Loneliness
    • Faith
    • What makes a person unique

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a gentle, thoughtful novel about AI and human attachment.

  • The Martian

    A dust storm forces the crew of the Ares 3 mission to abort and leave Mars in a hurry. Astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris during the evacuation, and his crewmates, believing him dead, depart without him. He wakes up wounded, alone, with no way to contact Earth and supplies meant to last a few weeks, while the next mission will not arrive for years.

    Watney, a botanist and mechanical engineer, records his progress in sardonic log entries. He grows potatoes in Martian soil, manufactures water from rocket fuel, rigs rovers for long drives and improvises communication. Meanwhile NASA eventually realises he is alive, and engineers, managers and his former crew wrestle with how, and whether, to bring him home.

    Weir first released the novel in instalments on his website and then as a cheap e-book in 2011 before a publisher picked it up. Its appeal lies in plausible problem-solving and a hero who meets disaster with jokes. Readers enjoy the realistic science explained with clarity. Ridley Scott's 2015 film starring Matt Damon brought it to a huge audience.

    Book details

    AuthorAndy Weir
    First published2011
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)369
    SettingAcidalia Planitia and other regions of Mars, plus NASA on Earth, near future

    Themes

    • Survival
    • Ingenuity
    • Humour under pressure
    • Teamwork
    • Space exploration

    Who should read it

    Readers who love hard science, problem-solving and a funny, resilient narrator.

  • Project Hail Mary

    A man wakes up on a spacecraft with two dead crewmates and no idea who he is or how he got there. As fragments of memory return, he learns his name is Ryland Grace, a former molecular biologist turned middle-school science teacher, and that the Sun is being dimmed by a microorganism called Astrophage, threatening life on Earth within decades.

    Grace has been sent to Tau Ceti, a nearby star that seems unaffected, to find out why. Flashbacks reveal the frantic international effort that built his ship and how he came to be aboard. In the Tau Ceti system he makes an extraordinary discovery that turns a lonely survival mission into something much stranger, and the story becomes as much about friendship as about science.

    Like The Martian, the book is full of hands-on experiments and calculations explained in a breezy, humorous voice, but its emotional core is warmer. Weir plays with memory to keep revealing information about Grace's past. It became a major bestseller and was adapted into a feature film starring Ryan Gosling.

    Book details

    AuthorAndy Weir
    First published2021
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)476
    SettingThe spacecraft Hail Mary in the Tau Ceti system, with flashbacks to Earth, near future

    Themes

    • Friendship
    • Sacrifice
    • Scientific problem-solving
    • Memory
    • Courage

    Who should read it

    Fans of The Martian and anyone who enjoys optimistic, science-packed adventure.

  • Ender’s Game

    Humanity has survived two invasions by an insect-like alien species nicknamed the buggers and is preparing for the next war. The international military searches for gifted children who might become commanders, and Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, a third child in a society that restricts families to two, is selected at the age of six and sent to Battle School in orbit.

    At Battle School, Ender's teachers deliberately isolate him and push him to the limit. Students compete in armies in a zero-gravity battle room, and Ender's unconventional tactics quickly make him a star and a target. On Earth his siblings, the menacing Peter and compassionate Valentine, pursue their own plan to shape world politics through pseudonymous essays on the networks.

    Card expanded the novel from a 1977 short story. It explores the manipulation of children, the ethics of war, empathy for the enemy and the loneliness of exceptional talent. It won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, is often read by teenagers and military cadets alike, and was followed by Speaker for the Dead and a large series of sequels.

    Book details

    AuthorOrson Scott Card
    First published1985
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)324
    SettingBattle School, an orbiting military academy, and Earth, in the future
    AwardsNebula Award for Best Novel 1985, Hugo Award for Best Novel 1986

    Themes

    • Child soldiers
    • Manipulation
    • Ethics of war
    • Empathy
    • Isolation

    Who should read it

    Teens and adults who enjoy military science fiction with strategy and moral weight.

  • Neuromancer

    Case was once a top console cowboy, a hacker who jacked his nervous system into the global computer matrix. After he stole from his employers, they damaged his nerves so he could never connect again, and he now drifts through the neon underworld of Chiba City in Japan. A mysterious man named Armitage offers to repair him in exchange for his skills on a high-stakes job.

    Case teams up with Molly, a street samurai with surgically implanted mirrored lenses and retractable blades, and a cast of criminals including the illusionist Riviera and the digital ghost of Case's old mentor. The trail leads from the sprawling cities of the American East Coast to Istanbul and Freeside, a luxury orbital resort, and toward a powerful artificial intelligence with its own agenda.

    Gibson's dense, slangy prose and vision of corporate power, body modification and virtual reality shaped decades of science fiction, films and video games. The novel swept the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards. Many of its ideas about networked life, hacking and AI read as remarkably prescient, though it was written on a typewriter.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Gibson
    First published1984
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)271
    SettingChiba City, the Sprawl, Istanbul and the orbital colony Freeside, near future
    AwardsNebula Award for Best Novel 1984, Hugo Award for Best Novel 1985, Philip K. Dick Award 1985

    Themes

    • Artificial intelligence
    • Corporate power
    • Virtual reality
    • Identity
    • Body modification

    Who should read it

    Readers curious about the roots of cyberpunk and the cultural imagination of the internet.

  • The Three-Body Problem

    The novel opens in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, when astrophysicist Ye Wenjie watches her father beaten to death at a struggle session. Disillusioned with humanity, she is later sent to a remote military base, Red Coast, which turns out to be a secret project to search for extraterrestrial life. A decision she makes there sets the story in motion.

    Decades later, nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao is drawn into an investigation by police officer Shi Qiang after a wave of scientists' suicides. Wang finds his vision disrupted by a mysterious countdown and becomes absorbed in Three Body, a strange virtual-reality game set on a world with chaotic, unpredictable suns, where civilisations rise and fall. The game hides a larger truth.

    Liu blends hard physics, Chinese history and big philosophical questions about contact with alien civilisations. Ken Liu's 2014 translation introduced the book to English readers, and it became the first translated novel to win the Hugo Award. It opens the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy and has been adapted for Chinese television and Netflix.

    Book details

    AuthorLiu Cixin
    First published2008
    Original languageChinese
    Translated byKen Liu
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)400
    SettingChina, from the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s to the present day
    AwardsHugo Award for Best Novel 2015

    Themes

    • First contact
    • Science and politics
    • Disillusionment with humanity
    • Cosmic sociology
    • History's scars

    Who should read it

    Readers who love ambitious, idea-heavy science fiction with a non-Western perspective.

  • Dune

    Thousands of years in the future, a galactic empire depends on melange, a spice that extends life and enables space navigation, found only on the harsh desert planet Arrakis. The Emperor hands control of Arrakis to Duke Leto Atreides, removing the rival House Harkonnen, but the gift is a trap. The Duke's son Paul, trained in combat and in the mental disciplines of his mother Jessica, travels with the family to their new fief.

    On Arrakis, water is so scarce that people wear stillsuits to recycle their own moisture, and giant sandworms roam the dunes. The native Fremen, a fierce desert people, hold prophecies that seem to point at Paul. As betrayal unfolds, Paul and Jessica must survive among the Fremen while Paul's growing prescient visions show him terrifying possible futures.

    Herbert combined political intrigue, ecology, religion and economics into a densely built world, complete with appendices and glossaries. The novel warns against messianic leaders and resource dependence. It won the first Nebula Award and shared the Hugo, is often called the best-selling science fiction novel ever, and has been filmed by David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve.

    Book details

    AuthorFrank Herbert
    First published1965
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    SettingThe desert planet Arrakis, in the far future
    AwardsNebula Award for Best Novel 1965, Hugo Award for Best Novel 1966

    Themes

    • Power and politics
    • Ecology
    • Religion and messianism
    • Colonialism
    • Destiny

    Who should read it

    Science fiction readers who want deep worldbuilding and political intrigue on an epic scale.

  • Foundation

    The Galactic Empire has ruled for twelve thousand years from Trantor, a planet covered by a single city. Hari Seldon, a mathematician, has developed psychohistory, a science that predicts the behaviour of huge populations, and it tells him the Empire will collapse into thirty thousand years of barbarism. He cannot prevent the fall, but he believes he can reduce the dark age to a single millennium.

    Seldon arranges for a group of scientists and encyclopedists to be exiled to Terminus, a resource-poor planet at the galaxy's edge. The book then jumps forward across decades in linked episodes, as a series of leaders, among them the shrewd mayor Salvor Hardin and the trader Hober Mallow, face crises that Seldon foresaw, using wit, religion and commerce rather than force.

    Built from short stories first published in Astounding magazine in the 1940s, Foundation is a novel of ideas, driven by dialogue and political manoeuvring more than action. Inspired by Gibbon's history of Rome, it explores how civilisations decline. The trilogy won a special Hugo for Best All-Time Series in 1966 and has influenced generations of writers.

    Book details

    AuthorIsaac Asimov
    First published1951
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)255
    SettingTrantor and the planet Terminus in a declining Galactic Empire
    AwardsHugo Award for Best All-Time Series 1966 (Foundation trilogy)

    Themes

    • Fall of civilisations
    • Prediction and determinism
    • Knowledge preservation
    • Politics
    • Reason over force

    Who should read it

    Readers who like idea-driven science fiction about history, politics and the long view.

  • The Handmaid’s Tale

    After a coup topples the United States government, a fundamentalist regime called Gilead takes power in New England. With birth rates collapsing, the few women still able to conceive are assigned as Handmaids to high-ranking Commanders and their wives, stripped of their names, property and right to read. The narrator, known only as Offred, is one of them.

    Offred recounts her daily routine of shopping trips, rituals and surveillance in the household of a Commander and his wife Serena Joy, interleaved with memories of her former life with a husband and daughter. Small risks, from forbidden games of Scrabble to whispered contact with other women, hint at resistance, and a chauffeur named Nick complicates her sense of who can be trusted.

    Atwood said she included nothing that had not already happened somewhere in history, which gives the book its chill. Its restrained, intimate first-person voice makes the horror feel personal rather than abstract. Winner of the Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award, it gained a vast new audience through the television series, and red handmaid robes became a protest symbol.

    Book details

    AuthorMargaret Atwood
    First published1985
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)311
    SettingGilead, a theocracy in the former United States, around Cambridge, Massachusetts
    AwardsGovernor General's Award for English-language fiction 1985, Arthur C. Clarke Award 1987

    Themes

    • Reproductive control
    • Religious authoritarianism
    • Gender oppression
    • Resistance
    • Memory

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a gripping dystopia about women's rights, power and complicity.

  • Brave New World

    Set six centuries ahead in a unified World State, the novel imagines a society that has abolished families, ageing and unhappiness. Babies are grown in bottles and sorted into castes from Alpha to Epsilon, then conditioned through sleep lessons to love their assigned work. Casual sex, synthetic entertainment and a tranquilliser called soma keep everyone docile, and history has been quietly erased.

    The story follows Bernard Marx, an Alpha who feels out of place, and Lenina Crowne, a cheerful product of the system. A trip to a reservation in New Mexico brings them into contact with John, a young man raised outside the World State who knows the world largely through a battered volume of Shakespeare. His arrival in London turns him into a curiosity and sets up a collision between two ways of living.

    Huxley writes with satirical bite, mocking mass production, consumerism and the worship of efficiency, with Henry Ford standing in for God. Where Orwell later imagined control through fear, Huxley suggested that comfort and distraction might do the job more smoothly. That idea has kept the book central to debates about technology, genetic engineering and the price of a frictionless life.

    Book details

    AuthorAldous Huxley
    First published1932
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)288
    SettingLondon and a New Mexico reservation in the World State, year 632 After Ford

    Themes

    • Social conditioning
    • Consumerism
    • Loss of individuality
    • Technology and control
    • Happiness versus freedom

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in classic dystopias and in the question of whether pleasure can be a tool of control.