really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 287,523 ratings

"This is a biopunk dystopia apocalypse story about a future where capitalism and alienating technology and good old human cruelty have combined to make everyone just bad. And then one mad genius decides to do something about it"

4.17 avg rating — 75,595 ratings

"his is a novel about grad school! It’s set in a world where universities are monastic, quasi-religious institutions, and how some students from one of these institutions help save the world when some very powerful aliens show up and start doing mean stuff. Anyway, this is one of the most creative sci-fi novels I’ve read, really defying any sort of established genre and making up a bunch of tropes out of whole cloth. The ending, while supremely satisfying, is also a beautiful joke about Neal Stephenson’s legendary inability to write a satisfying ending.

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4.04 avg rating — 5,382 ratings

"I love this short story collection of Chinese fiction. It's 13 stories and three essays, a cool blend of Chinese fantasy and science fiction with insights into Chinese culture and broader human themes.
Examples of some shortrt stories are ones like “The Year of the Rat” by Chen Qiufan: Unemployed college students are hired to hunt genetically engineered, intelligent rats that have escaped, leading to questions about the morality of their mission.
2. “The Fish of Lijiang” by Chen Qiufan: A burned-out office worker sent to Lijiang for rehabilitation discovers high-tech manipulations and reflects on class themes during his stay.
3.“The Flower of Shazui” by Chen Qiufan: An engineer selling black market AR software helps a troubled prostitute, blending high-tech elements with societal issues in an alternate Shenzhen Bay.
4.“A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia: Ning, raised by ghosts in an abandoned amusement park, discovers the park’s true nature and the bittersweet history of its inhabitants.
5. “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia: Tongtong’s family uses a prototype robot to care for her irritable grandfather, exploring the needs of the elderly in a near-future setting.
6. “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia Jia: A dragon-horse awakens in a post-human world and journeys with a bat, reflecting on time’s passage and nature’s resilience.
7. “The City of Silence” by Ma Boyong: In a totalitarian 2046, people are restricted to using only “healthy words,” leading Arvardan to discover a hidden message and a dangerous invitation.
8. “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang: Lao Dao navigates a physically folding Beijing to deliver a message, highlighting the stark class divides in a futuristic city.
9. “Call Girl” by Tang Fei: A teenage girl entertains older gentlemen with stories, revealing unexpected twists and the mysteries of her dog-whistle pendant.
10. “Grave of the Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo: A princess and her mother travel through a cooling universe in a giant robot, discovering the reasons behind the dying stars in this multi-layered fairy tale.
11. “The Circle” by Liu Cixin: Set in ancient China, Jing Ke creates a primitive man-powered computer to calculate pi under King Zheng’s orders, blending historical fiction with early computational concepts.
12. “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin: Elderly beings claiming to be humanity’s progenitors live with human families, exploring generational dynamics and societal roles in a science fiction setting.
13. “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang: Describes numerous fantastical worlds and their inhabitants, emphasizing the impossibility of perfection but the enduring beauty and wonder in discovery."

3.89 avg rating — 7,790 ratings

3.49 avg rating — 1,846 ratings

4.39 avg rating — 1,347 ratings

"SO FUN. Think Kpop Singing survival contest in space where idols are regarded as gods. FWe begin on a random moon, following Phex around as he does his job as barista, and little else. Until one day, while singing along with the Gods on the dome above him at work, he becomes discovered, forced to audition, and offered the chance to become a God (think super mega pop star with rabid fans) because he’s just trying to muddle through life. The way the art/music form is described is religious synesthesia and it absolutely tracks with how my brain tingles when the RIGHT song comes on.
The para-social relationships are explored thoughtfully. Perhaps one of the best pieces of the world building is how music is such an intrinsic part of the world. All species audition to become Gods – those who can manipulate music in various ways and broadcast that out into the world around them through special domes, and other means. I won’t spoil all the specifics for you, because you need to read it, and experience it, as you go. "

3.89 avg rating — 2,229 ratings

"Havent read it yet but find the summary compelling. Think Heroes x Alien with Ripley as the cheerleader that follows about prison-guard-in-training, Kenzie, who is taken hostage by the superpowered criminal teens of the Sanctuary space station—only to have to band together with them when the station is attacked by mysterious creatures.
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4.07 avg rating — 10,738 ratings

4.14 avg rating — 6,681 ratings

"Romance. I also love Cold Burn of Magi series.Vesper Quill works hard as a lowly designer for the powerful Kent Corp. When she points out a significant design flaw in their new star cruisers, she’s surprised to find herself on the run for and fighting for her life. Kyrion Coldren is from a Regal family and leads the Arrows, the imperium’s elite force in the war against the Techwavers. When Vesper saves Kyrion, something happens linking the pair, and now they need to uncover the truth together before they are discovered, or worse.
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4.05 avg rating — 16,014 ratings

"One of my favorites sci-fi and SO fun.Amaranthe, one of the only female "enforcers" in her empire's capital. She gets on the emperor's top adviser's nerves and ends up as a fugitive from the law, cooking up a scheme to save the emperor's life through criminal means.

Along her journey Amaranthe builds a team of enigmatic followers. This is where the book really shines. The interactions between Amaranthe and her teammates, all of whom have rather.... colorful personalities, are so damn funny.

Sicarious in particular is a riot. He is a legendary assassin who is known across the empire to have killed several platoons of soldiers - alone, at once - and nonchalantly murders anyone who crosses him. Once we meet him, he is indeed cold and murderous, but in such a dry way that humor naturally follows in his wake. They have the best slow-burn relationship and she's brilliant and what you expect from a smart woman who doesn't become useless. If you like this, youll like Shards of Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold."

3.83 avg rating — 20,441 ratings

"I would give this a B but included it because it's a good easy and fun read. A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer -- before they kill again."

3.78 avg rating — 4,391 ratings

"Really unique Swedish novel set in a dystopic imagining, language has the power to shape reality. Unless objects, buildings, and the surrounding landscape are repeatedly named, and named properly, everything will fall apart. Trapped in the repressive colony, Vanja dreams of using language to break free, but her individualism may well threaten the very fabric of reality. Bizarre, surreal, disorienting, bleak, and unsettling set in this dystopian society that is barely held together by tight control of the masses through policing of language and strict regulations, slowly dissolving into an unknowable muck.I also enjoyed her book The Memory Theater, which is wonderland-meets-neverland with more prescriptive scarification and dark."

4.09 avg rating — 8,355 ratings

4.19 avg rating — 263,586 ratings

"Oldie but goodie. It’s about a future America that’s falling apart for no particular reason, and a girl who fights against despair and social disintegration by fixating on the idea of interstellar exploration. The defiant optimism in the face of calamity is definitely something the world could use right now. The saga of poor people trying to escape a dying Los Angeles is also among the more gripping plots I’ve read."

3.59 avg rating — 48,752 ratings

". It’s about a mad scientist and a witch growing up in conservative 1980s America, who become best friends and later save the world. It is, to put it bluntly, one of the most beautiful books ever written to me. It defies genre classification — it’s a picaresque, surrealistic sci-fi/fantasy book that’s really just about human relationships and love and friendship and pain.
It’s the story of a mad scientist and a witch who become friends growing up in a small conservative 1980s American town. In the second half of the book (spoiler!!), after a falling-out, the protagonists both end up in 2000s San Francisco — the mad scientist in a sci-fi version of the startup world, the witch in a fantasy version of SF’s literary underground scene. (Among other things, All the Birds depicts the soul and culture and feeling of San Francisco better than any other book I’ve read.) Eventually the world must be saved, but ultimately the human relationships that the characters form are the most important thing.
If I had to pick one book to be the “great American novel”, at least as far as the last half century is concerned, this might be it."

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 54,146 ratings

"There's so much good stuff here. Future Earth is a messed-up Earth, no surprise there. Humans regularly 'ascend' into a fake-sounding cyberheaven. vampires - apparently an extremely predatory offshoot of the homo sapien, complete with an anti-Euclidean mental bias that explains their phobia of crosses - have been revived and now serve the human race (the inclusion of vampires may sound cheesy, but believe me, it is one of more absorbing things about the novel). there is some deadly construct called the Icarus Array located somewhere near the sun, stationed there to "protect" us. Sex is an outdated activity (perhaps the sole unconvincing part of the novel). genuine human contact rarely takes place face-to-face (i.e your usual Cold Techno-Dystopia). After a creepy alien event, silly humans decide to fling a crew of misfits out into the void to engage with said ambiguous threat. There's a woman who has compartmentalized herself into 4 different and distinctly individualistic personalities, a military type armed with slaved drones whose biggest flaw/greatest attribute is her ability to empathize with her enemies, a couple guys who project their consciousness through machinery, all inputs mediated by that machinery - all the better to study the world, the ship's captain, a sociopathic vampire mentally bonded to his ship's computer brain and then there is our hero - a sort of minister of information, missing half a brain, trained to avoid all forms of true connection, unwilling to engage in basic empathy. They get there and its confusing and things don't add up. Blindsight is about very very scary aliens, but also about the nature of consciousness. I love books that combine nifty sci-fi with mind-bending philosophy with a readable, gripping plot.Read this if you like: Aliens, philosophy, horror "

3.74 avg rating — 4,031 ratings

"If you liked Black Mirror, you'll like this.It's a collection of thirteen short stories features a variety of imagined futures where technology has become so embedded in day-to-day life that it's impossible to live without it. Many of the characters have grown so dependent on virtual reality that they've forgotten how to connect with people in the real world. Some of them seem to crave offline connections, but are clueless about how to obtain them. Similar to this is Ted Chiang's short stories but I enjoyed this more."

3.57 avg rating — 220,302 ratings

"In the world of The Ministry of Time, the British government has discovered the technology for time travel. To test it, they’ve plucked people out of history right when they would have died. Our unnamed narrator is a government bureaucrat assigned to help a Victorian explorer adjust to life in the 21st century. They fall in love, of course, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.

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3.93 avg rating — 44,936 ratings

4.34 avg rating — 15,050 ratings

4.30 avg rating — 174,599 ratings

"Really good. It’s a great story. The plot revolved around the race for survival between races on attaining a single terraformed planet; The races being the last surviving humanity that fled their dying Earth, and the sentient spiders accidentally evolved by a mad scientist; these beings were born and live on the planet.
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3.94 avg rating — 2,447 ratings

"Very unusual time-travel book, on many best-of lists. Two ships meet in a weird space zone, one a ship evidently from the past of the other, hailing from the era of an interspecies war. The past ship’s crew are supposed to somehow become galaxy-saving heroes, but they don’t seem to quite match the historical stories"

3.55 avg rating — 55,471 ratings

"Really interesting novel that perfectly mimics Twitter, the social media de rigueur of the first quarter of the century. It begins with the fragmentary reflections of a woman deep inside “the portal,” mimicking the post-sense, post-irony, post-everything of social media , kinda reads like internet logs. tThere is a dramatic shift in tone from Part 1 to Part 2. This move is jarring, but it serves a very real narrative purpose: this book is about the stark contrast between Extremely Online life and what we call Real Life; it’s about the sudden shock of being jolted from one to the other by tragic events. Lockwood is performing a very clever trick here, underscoring the character’s emotional whiplash by giving the you emotional whiplash too.
Part 2 is a deeply emotional story about grief and love, while also raising questions about who gets to be seen in the online social media world, whose lives are deemed to be worth documenting this way. The fragmentary prose style remains consistent even as the subject matter darkens, emphasising the short distance between tweets and poetry at times. It’s very moving and by the time I"

4.03 avg rating — 129,996 ratings

"It's a very interesting take on the whole "first contact with aliens" but also on social media.
Such an adventure! Extremely weird (in the best way) work of speculative fiction because it takes the traditional alien + artificial intelligence Sci-Fi scenario and, even while conserving its epic and world-scale quality, breaks it down to a more realistic script through inserting it into an advanced contemporary society and asking how would a modern Earth react to stumbling across an otherworldly, static robot popping up on the street corners all over the world?What role would celebrities, media influencers, and political pundits play in guiding the planet to choose a course of action regarding this world-changing mystery? And which path would they choose: acceptance or fear, solidarity or prejudice, peace or violence, order or chaos?
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4.21 avg rating — 16,149 ratings

"A gripping story about a post-apocalyptic Earth divided between two opposing groups of nations, with the western citizens living in fear of a repressive police force. With only 10 years before the world becomes uninhabitable, the West is attempting to assess the possibilities offered by an alternative world using a new faster than light vehicle. The action is moved very quickly, switching between the viewpoints and actions of a number of groups and individuals, with numerous twists and turns leading to a denouement which paves the way for the next book in the series. Characters are well developed and believable and it is a really worthwhile read.

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4.11 avg rating — 72,242 ratings

"The Aztec Empire in Space, in the best way possible.Less pew-pew and more palace intrigue and factions both domestic and military vie for power at the heart of the Teixcalaani Empire. And pulled into the middle of if is our protagonist, a wonderfully complex characters facing trials both personal and profession, including the mystery of her predecessor's death, her own assassination attempts, and that expat feeling, etc"

4.24 avg rating — 161,413 ratings

"I love how this book is "

4.10 avg rating — 53,504 ratings

3.64 avg rating — 28,302 ratings

"Aboard the Six-Thousand Ship, sometime in the 22nd century, employees are encouraged to be present-minded lest they lose themselves to memories of Earth and of their left-behind loved ones. Such nostalgia is not productive and is bound to interfere with their work performance. The Employees, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, is made up of interviews with these workers, some of whom are human, others humanoid, although the distinction is at times made unclear. To stave off melancholy — another deterrent to work — they’re given child holograms and stimulating objects with which to interact. Unsurprisingly, labor peace eludes the ship, and a workplace novel devolves into a full-blown horror story, leaving behind few survivors. This is more than a clever reframing of sci-fi tropes, although it’s that, too"

3.64 avg rating — 67,897 ratings

"Basically linked short stories but feel like a complete, cohesive novel, one that imagines a parallel future where people are able to externalize their memories and upload them into a cloud. There are pluses: Murders are solved, the tragically separated are reunited, children get to truly know their parents. But there are downsides, too, mainly society’s collective immersion into a massive entangled web of constant surveillance."

3.81 avg rating — 70,647 ratings

3.75 avg rating — 3,285 ratings

"his novella is an elegant and thoughtful take on Ursula K. Le Guin’s famous “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Le Guin’s short story imagines a beautiful paradise that is made to function because of a single child who is being tortured in a basement. Samatar’s novella imagines a fleet of spaceships powered by an underclass held in chains below decks, and a professor who develops a scholarship program to bring one of the boys in chains to the world above.

What strikes me most about the world she’s built is how fully she’s imagined its physical details. When the boy comes up to the upper levels for the first time in his life, he’s untethered from the chain that attaches him to everyone below deck. Without their counterbalancing weight, he has to relearn how to walk."

4.07 avg rating — 40,290 ratings

"This might be the greatest sci-fi book series of all time with an amazing female character. It’s a series of intrigues, space adventures, mysteries, and comedies, centered around a liberal family struggling to reform a conservative empire. Astute observers will recognize that Tyrion Lannister was probably slightly inspired by Miles Vorkosigan. I’m truly amazed that no one has talked about making this into a Netflix series yet. I have several friends who read the entire series multiple times in a row after I recommended it. My advice is to start with Barrayar, then move on to The Warrior’s Apprentice.

In addition to how great of a read it is, I find the Vorkosigan saga’s take on humanity’s future to be subtly, subversively bold. The basic thesis — never stated, but always implied — is that technology opens up possibilities for humans to be better people. Perhaps the most techno-optimistic idea of all.

Read this if you like: Fun space adventure, heartwarming stuff"

3.56 avg rating — 14,178 ratings

"I included this because of how today's social media is. here Cory Doctorow has engineered a world where everyone is immortal (thanks to digital memory backups that can be downloaded into clone bodies) and connected to social networks all the time (literally, via implants in their brains and eyes!). If your society is going to eliminate death, you better well have all the other animal needs taken care of, and this one seems to: there is no hunger, pollution isn't an issue, and traditional concepts of wealth-through-accumulation-of-things are a thing of the past (note the book is unclear on whether this is the case everywhere; maybe, say, Ghana has been allowed to just quietly go about its business).

Instead of money, status is determined through a true social currency: others' esteem, a system Doctorow has given the stupid but memorable name "whuffie." Like an extreme extension of re-tweets, you earn more whuffie if people look at you as an influencer, an innovator: someone worth knowing. Do something dumb and they can take their whuffie back. Like Homer says, in Doctorow's world, first you get the sugar, then you get the whuffie, then you get the women (note: I know this isn't really a Simpsons quote, shut up).

So this is the interesting idea at the core of this book, which is really just an extended demonstration of the concept adorned with additional sci-fi ideas (digital immortality!) in a fun setting, namely (obviously) Disney World, where the rather unlikeable main character works as an "Imagineer," perfecting the "guest experience" of decades old theme park attractions while remaining slavishly faithful to their nostalgic qualities. "

4.04 avg rating — 33,389 ratings

"This is very 80s and sometimes a little clunky to read but this ideas in it are astounding. This series focuses on dolphins and chimpanzees that humans have reengineered to have human-level intelligence, who now have to help humans fight a desperate war against religious alien fanatics. It’s a fun romp, but also a deep meditation on history, ancestry, and collective purpose. "

3.75 avg rating — 78,219 ratings

"Probably the archetypical climate fiction book and basically how I feel like climate devastation will happen, this slow decay. This novel is set in a world that hasn’t collapsed, but where climate change is just slowly making everything harder and everyone poorer. And in this world of scarcity, modern pro-social behavior has largely gone out the window, in favor of scrabbling selfishness. It’s a dark meditation on how resource limits bring out the worst in humanity.

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3.94 avg rating — 19,487 ratings

"This suffers a bit from 90s bloating but it is really unique and engaging, . It’s set on a planet where a strange phenomenon gives life to humans’ thoughts, basically creating a dark fantasy world that knocks humans back to a more-or-less medieval standard of living (and also gives rise to scary scary demons). The books are notable for the excellent and archetype-defining character of Gerald Tarrant, an evil wizard/vampire who is reluctantly forced to save the world. Watching Tarrant go up against a series of even more evil wizards is consistently fun — sort of a Silence of the Lambs style showdown of Big Bad vs. Bigger Bad."

4.11 avg rating — 92,188 ratings

"I think this is very unique and compelling- I think it suffers from too many characters from it's a good read nonetheless. Set in a dystopian future, people incarcerated in privatized prisons can opt to join their prison's battle squads, the so-called chains, and become combatants (links) in televised death matches, whose lives (and deaths) are turned into media spectacles on the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment channel (CAPE) - if they survive for three years, an almost impossible task, they are granted their freedom. Of course, the viewers devouring capital punishment as a past-time are not giving in to the worst human impulses, no: they are watching "hard-action-sports". This book is razor-sharp, brutal, and coming from a place of outrage."

4.06 avg rating — 37,137 ratings

"Probably one of the best written books I've read."

4.07 avg rating — 613,939 ratings

3.96 avg rating — 463,709 ratings

"Not really sci-fi but has a time loop."

4.49 avg rating — 223,721 ratings

"An absolutely absurd, bizarre, and outlandishly fun read if you really want something unique and fun. It's like a videogame but a book?
Most of humanity is wiped out by aliens who plan to harvest Earth's minerals. The handful that remains have been thrown into a televised death game (e.g. The Running Man, The Hunger Games, etc) where everything is like a hack & slash dungeon crawl RPG (e.g. Diablo or Torchlight). If you survive to the 18th level of the dungeon then you win."

3.98 avg rating — 68,501 ratings

3.72 avg rating — 5,509 ratings

3.84 avg rating — 335,433 ratings

4.59 avg rating — 5,851 ratings

"One of my favorite books, Chinese sci-fi- ignore the cover, It's because it has a manga adaptation but it's not YA but one of the loveliest books I've read. Utterly compelling. First of all, this is such a wonderful unique premise - a story about a sentient little mushroom who gains human form amidst an ecological apocalypse and has to learn what it means to be human while watching humankind lose their humanity in a bid to save the world.

This is a story about what it means to survive in a world that perpetually flickers towards extinction. It asks questions central to our very species: what does it do to a person to understand, acutely and with pain, the world’s capacity for violence? Who are we after enduring, when all that’s left of us is so ruthless to survive even when we don’t have the stomach for it?

Dystopia is about things carried to extremes, and Shisi is unafraid to push past the hold of even our most uncomfortable imaginings. The novel’s resounding theme—should human interests be put above all else?—haunts the pages, reminding us that we are all-too-often sustained and consoled by the knowledge that science will always prevail, that survival is inevitable, that collapse is something that happens to other people in far away places. Or that, at the very least, we can always reassemble ourselves in the aftermath of collapse.

It is against this monumental reality of cataclysm that An Zhe’s innocent search for his spore unfolds, and because he’s a literal mushroom, with a rudimentary and naive understanding of good and evil or of what propels humans to do the things they do, there is very little space for the endless self-justifying impulse of “human interest.” In a little mushroom’s rendering of the world, the ugliness—that is to say, all the details of struggle and survival—is stark and unflinching, with nothing to hide behind. What we are ultimately left with is a haunted and haunting portrait of what we do to one another in our desperate grasping to unmake our undoing."

3.12 avg rating — 372 ratings

"t's the story of a young woman who tells to an AI god she intends to destroy. Encompassing several worlds, many gods, and peoples displaced and destroyed by war and colonialism, her tale is woven through with complex ideas about selfhood, history, and freedom. "

3.89 avg rating — 71,573 ratings

"Basically Titanic in space x Lost but more focus on the build up of the romance than action just fyi. If you want something like this but more adult and less YA,try Stray by Andrea K. Höst.
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3.88 avg rating — 131,145 ratings

"Do you remember being nine and staying up all night, reading with a flashlight under the covers because you simply could not wait until morning to know what happens next? Reading Ling Ma’s Severance gave me that need-to-know feeling. The bare-bones premise alone is fascinating: something calls Shen Fever strikes New York City. It spreads like wild fire, turning the afflicted into a kind of zombie–not so much dangerous as they are really banal. The “fevered” are stuck mindlessly in their everyday routines (one particularly haunting scene includes watching a fevered family set the table, go through the motions of eating, clear the dishes, rinse, and repeat), which they perform until their bodies rot.

Our heroine Candace Chen is a twenty-something-year-old working in Bible production. She’s a hard worker, a creature of habit, and pretty much the only one who stays in Manhattan through the horrors of Shen Fever. Severance jumps back and forth between her normal days to her suffocating stint with a band of survivors after leaving the city. Ling Ma is a master at cutting through time, and leaving us in moments where, much like everyone else in the story, we’re wondering how did we even get here?

While other families flee, Candace moves into her office, continues to work, and starts an anonymous photography blog of the decimated city. (In a lot of ways, this is a story about being disillusioned by New York.) (And also a pretty funny and creepy critique of capitalism and the workplace.) Honestly, Candace’s matter-of-fact, unsentimental tone makes her the perfect person to be with during what feels like the end of the world.

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3.80 avg rating — 12,936 ratings

4.43 avg rating — 797 ratings

"Not really sci-fi and minimal romance but one of the most engaging and wholesome stories. 60 year Tabitha ends up somehow in her past body and what follows is taking what could be a very basic easily cliche story completely changes under this. What a bizarre idea, but somehow the author makes it work. It is oddly captivating to watch this girl rebuild her life from a position of absolute powerlessness.
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4.33 avg rating — 1,002 ratings

4.31 avg rating — 319,217 ratings

4.17 avg rating — 185,219 ratings

3.81 avg rating — 42,609 ratings

3.99 avg rating — 119,012 ratings

"I mean, the plot is a Capital ship AI trying to solve its own betrayal and destruction in the body of a human. It rules."