Hello, sci-fi enthusiasts! Are you constantly searching for the next fantastic book to read? Look no further! We at Book Nerdection Have Compiled Some of the Best Sci-fi Books from recent years for you. There is something on this list for every type of reader, from action-packed space adventures to thought-provoking future novels. So Let’s get going.
The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
A covert military experiment transmits messages into space to contact aliens while the Cultural Revolution is taking place in China. The signal is picked up by an alien civilization that is about to invade Earth. Different groups begin to develop on Earth in the meantime, aiming to either welcome the advanced beings and aid them in conquering a corrupt earth, or to resist the invasion. The end result is a work of science fiction art with incredible breadth and vision.
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The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
For the last time, this is how the world ends.
The sun-blocking ash erupting from the world’s only continent’s vast crimson rift is where it all begins. With a slain son and a lost daughter, it all begins in death. A betrayal sets the stage for festering scars that have been latent for a long time.
This is the Stillness, a place where the power of the earth is used as a weapon and where disaster has long been a part of life. Where there is no mercy, too.
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Sea of Tranquility, By Emily St. John Mandel
Edwin St. Andrew, exiled from polite society after a poorly thought-out rant at a dinner party, is eighteen years old when he travels across the Atlantic by steamship. He explores the forest, mesmerized by the splendor of the Canadian environment, and is completely taken aback when he unexpectedly hears the violin playing in an airship terminal.
A well-known author named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour two centuries later. Her home is the second moon colony, a haven of white stone, spired towers, and manufactured beauty, though she travels all around Earth.
A bizarre line can be found in Olive’s best-selling pandemic book: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing airship terminal while the trees of a forest rise all around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
This is a novel about time travel metaphysics that captures the reality of our current time.
Sea of Tranquility Won Nerdection Best Book in Science Fiction in our Best Books of the year 2022
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Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The last of the human race’s survivors fled a dying Earth in search of a new home amid the stars. Following in their predecessors’ footsteps, they find the greatest treasure of the previous era: a world that has been terraformed and made suitable for human life.
But in this new Eden, all is not right. The many years since the planet was abandoned have had terrible effects on the architects’ efforts. The planet, which is pure and uninhabited, is not waiting for them. It was once a haven, but under new owners it has become the worst nightmare of mankind.
Two civilizations are currently in route to collide, each pushing the limits of what it is possible for them to endure. Who are the rightful heirs of this new Earth while humanity’s future is in jeopardy?
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Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The amazing tale of humanity’s first trip outside of the solar system is told in Aurora, a significant new book from one of science fiction’s most influential authors.
It is the creation of a writer at the pinnacle of his abilities and is exquisitely imagined and told.
Years ago, we left Earth and began our journey.
As we get closer to our new house.
AURORA.
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The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Physics controls everything in our universe. Before the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field accessible at specific locations in space-time that may transport humanity to other planets around other stars, traveling faster than the speed of light was impossible.
Humanity extends to countless more worlds by riding The Flow. Earth has been abandoned. The Interdependency, a new empire founded on the idea that no human colony can survive without the others, rises to power. It serves as a barrier against interplanetary conflict and a system of governance for the empire’s leaders.
The Flow is timeless, but it is also dynamic. The Flow alters its route in the same way that rivers do. Whole universes have on occasion been cut off from the rest of humanity. Three individuals—a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency—must race against time to find out what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the verge of collapse when it is discovered that the entire Flow is moving and may one day permanently separate all human worlds from one another.
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The Martian, by Andy Weir
Astronaut Mark Watney was one of the first persons to set foot on Mars six days ago.
He’s now certain he’ll be the first person to pass away there.
Mark finds himself stranded and entirely alone after a dust storm nearly kills him and causes his crew to flee while believing he is dead. He has no way to even signal Earth that he is alive, and even if he did, his supplies would be depleted long before a rescue could reach.
He probably won’t have enough time, though, to starve to death. It’s much more likely that the broken equipment, the harsh environment, or simple “human mistake” will kill him first.
However, Mark isn’t quite prepared to give up. He persistently overcomes one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another by using his inventiveness, engineering expertise, and a relentless, determined refusal to give up. Will his ingenuity be sufficient to defeat the insurmountable obstacles against him?
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Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
The reality in 2045 is a depressing place. Wade Watts only truly feels alive when he is logged into the OASIS, a large virtual environment where the majority of people spend their days.
A number of difficult puzzles based on the eccentric developer of the OASIS’ love with vintage pop culture are left behind after he passes away. Whoever solves them first will receive authority over the OASIS as well as his enormous riches.
Wade then deciphers the first hint. Suddenly, he is surrounded by opponents who will do anything to win this reward. The race has begun, and winning is your only chance of surviving.
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The Passage, by Justin Cronin
The Passage is the story of Amy, who was abandoned by her mother when she was six years old and is now being hunted down and imprisoned by the mysterious forces behind a government experiment of cataclysmic proportions. However, the lawman ordered to find her, Special Agent Brad Wolgast, is disarmed by the oddly silent girl and risks everything to save her. Wolgast facilitates her escape as the experiment goes horrifyingly wrong, but he is unable to halt society’s implosion. Additionally, Amy is burdened with the enigmatic and terrible awareness that she is the only one with the ability to restore order to the broken world as she travels alone across miles and decades into a future filled with violence and sorrow.
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Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey
The solar system, including Mars, the Moon, the asteroid belt, and beyond, has been colonized by humans, yet the stars remain out of our reach.
Jim Holden is the XO of an ice miner that travels between the Saturnian rings and the Belt mining sites. He discovers a mystery they never intended to have when he and his crew discover the Scopuli, an abandoned ship. A secret that someone is prepared to kill for—and kill on a scale Jim and his crew can’t conceive. Unless he discovers who fled the ship and why, war is about to break out in the system.
The odds are against Holden and Miller as they attempt to negotiate with the Earth government, Outer Planet revolutionaries, and covert businesses. But in the Belt, the laws are different, and one tiny ship has the power to alter the course of the cosmos.
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Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
The record-breaking debut novel that won every major science fiction award, Ancillary Justice is Ann Leckie’s powerful and thought provoking story of a warship trapped in a human body and her search for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.
The soldier known as Breq is nearing the end of her mission on a distant, freezing world.
She had served as the Justice of Toren, a massive spacecraft with an artificial mind that connected millions of warriors working for the Radch, the galactic empire that ruled the universe.
Now, a treacherous act has taken it all from her, leaving her with little more than a frail human body, unsolved questions, and a fierce desire for retribution.
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The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
“If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams… And from there, it’s easy to control our entire lives.”
Constantly frozen darkness on one side and unrelenting, scorching sunshine on the other, January is a dying planet. In two ancient towns that were constructed in the last amount of habitable darkness, humanity is struggling to stay alive.
However, living in cities can be just as perilous as it is outside in the hostile wastelands.
After being banished into the night, Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is thought to have died. Sophie resolves to remain hidden from the public in the hopes that she can recover after being saved only by developing an extraordinary kinship with the mysterious monsters that roam the ice.
But fate has other ideas, and Sophie’s subsequent voyage and the dysfunctional family she discovers will alter the course of history.
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The Test, by Sylvain Neuvel
The not-too-distant future in Britain.
The British Citizenship Test is being taken by Idir.
He longs for his family to fit in.
25 questions would decide their fate. 25 chances to make an impression.
Idir is given the choice between life and death when the test takes an unanticipated and deadly turn.
When your options are limited to multiple choice, how do you value life?
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Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”
“I live for you,” I say sadly.
Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”
Darrow belongs to the lowest caste in the future society’s color-coded structure because he is a Red. Like his fellow Reds, he toils all day in the hope that he and his group would be able to sustain human life on Mars in the future. But he works freely, knowing that one day his children will live in a world that he has improved by his blood and sweat.
Darrow and his kind, however, have been duped. He soon learns that humans arrived on the surface several generations ago. The earth is covered in vast cities and verdant wilderness. Darrow and other Reds are merely the slaves of a scheming ruling elite.
Darrow gives up everything to enter the fabled Institute, a testing ground for the dominant Gold caste where the next generation of humanity’s oppressors compete for dominance, motivated by a desire for justice and the memory of a lost love. He will be forced to face up against the best and most brutal members of society’s ruling elite in a battle for his life and the very destiny of civilization. There, he will do whatever it takes to defeat his adversaries, even if that means joining them.
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The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
A massive meteorite struck the planet in 1952 on a chilly spring night, decimating much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington, D.C. Similar to how the previous such meteorite made the globe uninhabitable for the dinosaurs, the accompanying climatic catastrophe will soon make it uninhabitable for humans. Due to the impending threat, space colonization efforts must be drastically increased and involve a significantly bigger proportion of humanity.
Elma York is hired by the International Aerospace Coalition to work as a calculator because of her background as a WASP pilot and mathematician. But given the number of highly qualified and experienced female scientists and pilots working on the initiative, Elma soon starts to ask why they aren’t allowed to travel into space as well.
Even the most cherished social norms may not have a chance against Elma because of her passion for being the first female astronaut.
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The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
Travel throughout the multiverse is now conceivable, but there’s a catch: No one is allowed to go to a universe where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose alternate selves are particularly adept at passing away due to disease, territorial disputes, or vendettas they couldn’t escape. On a total of 372 worlds, Cara’s life has been cut short.
Cara, though, has made it through on this dismal Earth. Cara is rescued from the squalor of the wastelands because she is recognized as an anomaly and is thus the ideal candidate for multiverse travel. What used to make her unimportant has now unexpectedly turned into a source of strength for her. She resides in a nice apartment on the ground floor of affluent but walled-off Wiley City. She works—and brazenly flirts—with Dell, her attractive but distant handler, as the two women gather information about other planets for the Eldridge Institute. Even yet, she finds it difficult to feel at home in any location and occasionally travels to the wastes to see her family. Cara is on a guaranteed route to citizenship and security as long as she can stay out of trouble and maintain her composure.
However, disaster finds Cara when one of her eight doppelgängers that are still alive dies inexplicably, thrusting her into a new environment with an old secret. What she learns will, in ways she could never have predicted, link her past and future and expose her own part in a conspiracy that jeopardizes not only her reality but the entire multiverse.
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The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley
The Light Brigade is a powerful and imaginative take on the future of war. Kameron Hurley’s writing is raw and emotive, perfectly capturing the confusion and trauma of combat. The concept of soldiers being transformed into light adds a unique twist to the story. The main character, Dietz, is relatable and well-developed, and the theme of memory and the blurred lines between reality and mission briefing is handled skillfully. I highly recommend this book to science fiction fans and anyone interested in a thought-provoking look at the psychological effects of war.
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The Last Astronaut, by David Wellington
In the book The Last Astronaut, Sally Jansen, a former NASA astronaut dealing with the fallout from a botched Mars mission, is asked by NASA to look into a sizable extraterrestrial object that is moving toward Earth. As she and her crew uncover the object’s mysteries, they are forced to fight for their lives against both the perils of space and something far worse. Fast-paced and thrilling, The Last Astronaut is hailed as a “terrifying tour de force” and “breathless, addictive reading” for its first-contact story. It was included on the 2020 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist.
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Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
In Snow Crash, Hiro lives in a futuristic Los Angeles where franchises dominate the landscape and citizens rarely leave their autonomous city-states. He works as a pizza delivery man, using his samurai swords to defend his pies from marauders. When his fellow hackers at the club known as The Black Sun start falling victim to a mysterious new drug called Snow Crash, Hiro sets out to investigate and discovers a virtual villain with plans for world domination. Along the way, he is joined by Y.T., a teenage skateboard courier, and they must race to stop the Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a fast-paced and imaginative tale that takes readers from the world of cybercrime to the roots of language itself.
