Station Eleven cover
Science Fiction Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

After a flu pandemic devastates civilisation, a travelling Shakespeare company performs for those who remain.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Survival
Dune cover
Science Fiction Dune

Frank Herbert

On a desert planet of immense value, a young nobleman navigates prophecy, politics, and the weight of destiny.

4.2 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Politics
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cover
Science Fiction The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Moments before Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, an ordinary man is rescued by his alien best friend.

4.2 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Survival
1984 cover
Science Fiction 1984

George Orwell

In a totalitarian state where Big Brother watches everything, one man dares to hold onto his own truth.

4.2 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Politics
Brave New World cover
Science Fiction Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

A genetically engineered utopia where everyone is conditioned to be happy -- except for those who can't stop thinking.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Martian cover
Science Fiction The Martian

Andy Weir

An astronaut accidentally left behind on Mars must survive alone using nothing but science, duct tape, and dark humour.

4.4 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Survival
The Left Hand of Darkness cover
Science Fiction The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin

An envoy from Earth visits a planet where people have no fixed gender -- and learns how much of politics, trust, and love depends on it.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Recursion cover
Science Fiction Recursion

Blake Crouch

A neuroscientist's memory technology goes terribly wrong, unravelling reality itself -- and a detective races to stop it.

4.2 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
Children of Time cover
Science Fiction Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky

The last human survivors search for a new home -- and find a planet already claimed by a civilisation of rapidly evolving spiders.

4.3 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Survival
Project Hail Mary cover
Science Fiction Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

A man wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is -- and gradually realizes he's humanity's last hope.

4.5 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
Annihilation cover
Science Fiction Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer

Four women enter a mysterious quarantined zone where nature has gone impossibly wrong -- and where the greatest danger may be what it turns them into.

3.8 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
Flowers for Algernon cover
Science Fiction Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes

A man with an IQ of 68 undergoes an experimental procedure that triples his intelligence -- and then discovers what it means to lose everything you've gained.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
The Time Machine cover
Science Fiction The Time Machine

H.G. Wells

A Victorian inventor hurtles 800,000 years into the future -- and finds that humanity has split into two terrifying species.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Power & Ambition
Klara and the Sun cover
Science Fiction Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro

An artificial friend observes the human world from a shop window, forming an intense bond with the girl who chooses her.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Fahrenheit 451 cover
Science Fiction Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

A fireman whose job is to burn books begins to question everything he has been told in a future where reading is illegal.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Politics
Ender's Game cover
Science Fiction Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card

The world's most gifted child soldier is trained in zero-gravity combat simulations for an alien war -- but the final battle may not be a game.

4.3 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet cover
Science Fiction The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

Becky Chambers

A crew of misfits takes the long route through the galaxy on a tunnelling ship, building found family one meal at a time.

4.2 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Friendship
Foundation cover
Science Fiction Foundation

Isaac Asimov

A mathematician predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and establishes a Foundation to preserve human knowledge -- a plan that will take a thousand years to unfold.

4.2 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Politics
The Handmaid's Tale cover
Science Fiction The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

In the Republic of Gilead, Offred is a Handmaid -- a woman reduced to her reproductive function -- and everything she tells us may or may not be the truth.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Hyperion cover
Science Fiction Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Seven pilgrims journey to a monster that kills in ways that make no sense -- and each of their stories is a different kind of science fiction, and together they become something stranger.

4.3 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Slaughterhouse-Five cover
Science Fiction Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time -- moving randomly between the firebombing of Dresden, a zoo on an alien planet, and an ordinary American life.

4.1 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty War
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? cover
Science Fiction Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick

A bounty hunter is hired to retire six escaped androids -- and becomes unable to say with certainty whether the difference between them and him is real.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Three-Body Problem cover
Science Fiction The Three-Body Problem

Liu Cixin

A physicist investigating a series of suicides discovers that humanity has been contacted by an alien civilisation -- and some people are trying to help them invade.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Survival
Kindred cover
Science Fiction Kindred

Octavia Butler

A Black woman in 1970s California is pulled back in time to an antebellum plantation -- repeatedly, involuntarily, always to save the life of her white ancestor.

4.4 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Parable of the Sower cover
Science Fiction Parable of the Sower

Octavia Butler

A teenager with hyper-empathy -- she feels others' pain as her own -- watches her gated community collapse and walks north through a burning California to build something better.

4.3 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
The Dispossessed cover
Science Fiction The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

A physicist from an anarchist moon travels to the capitalist planet it orbits -- the first person to make that crossing in 170 years -- and is changed by both worlds.

4.2 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Oryx and Crake cover
Science Fiction Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood

The last human survivor of a corporate-engineered plague wanders a transformed Earth -- and remembers how two friends he loved caused it.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
I, Robot cover
Science Fiction I, Robot

Isaac Asimov

Nine stories about robots bound by three laws and the endlessly inventive ways those laws can produce unintended consequences -- and the humans who learn to live alongside them.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Old Man's War cover
Science Fiction Old Man's War

John Scalzi

On his seventy-fifth birthday, John Perry joins the army -- they give elderly recruits young bodies to fight interstellar wars he doesn't yet understand.

4.2 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
The War of the Worlds cover
Science Fiction The War of the Worlds

H.G. Wells

Martian tripods incinerate the English countryside and all of Victorian England's confidence in its own dominance -- a novel that invented the alien invasion.

3.8 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
Solaris cover
Science Fiction Solaris

Stanisaw Lem

A psychologist arrives at a space station above a planet-sized ocean to find the crew shattered -- because the ocean has been reading their minds and recreating their dead.

4.0 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
📚 No cover
Science Fiction We

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Citizens of the One State live in glass apartments where all behavior is visible and scheduled -- and one engineer's love affair begins to give him a private interior life he cannot afford.

3.9 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Dark Matter cover
Science Fiction Dark Matter

Blake Crouch

A physicist is kidnapped, drugged, and wakes up in a life that is almost his own -- except the wife and son he loves do not exist in this version.

4.1 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
A Psalm for the Wild-Built cover
Science Fiction A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers

A tea monk searching for purpose rides into the wilderness and meets a robot who has never encountered a human before -- and both of them are looking for the same thing.

4.1 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity