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Want to Read Adult Science Fiction? Here's Where to Start

  • Writer: Allison Alexander
    Allison Alexander
  • May 15
  • 8 min read

Interested in reading adult sci-fi novels but not sure where to begin? Here are some recommendations listed in order of publication date. I hand-picked these myself—many are my personal favourites, while others are beloved classics. I chose a variety of different subgenres, from time-travel stories to dystopian nightmares to space opera shenanigans, so that there's something for everyone!

CLASSICS

10 book covers: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; Dune by Frank Herbert; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick; 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; The Female Man by Joanna Russ; Kesrith by C.J. Cherryh; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams; Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey

Date Published: 1950

Series: Robot #0.1

Number of Books in Series: 4

Summary: A collection of short stories that explore the development of artificial intelligence and how humanity might react to robots when they become sentient.


Date Published: 1953

Summary: Books are illegal, and it's the firefighters' job to burn them. Guy Montag is a firefighter living a mundane life he hates until he tries cracking open a book himself.


Date Published: 1965

Series: Dune #1

Number of Books in Series: 8

Summary: This is set in a futuristic, desert world without computers. Water is scarce and everyone on the planet is addicted to a spice that extends life and enhances minds. There's a lot to take in when reading this; it explores politics, religion, ecology, and economics.


Date Published: 1968

Summary: Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter tasked with killing robots who look exactly like humans. Empathy is what's supposed to distinguish humans from AI, but Deckard has to overcome his own empathy in order to destroy them. The movie Blade Runner is loosely based on this novel.


Date Published: 1968

Series: Space Odyssey #1

Number of Books in Series: 4

Summary: After a mysterious monolith is discovered buried on the moon, humanity sends a crew of astronauts to Jupiter. On the way, they're attacked by their own A.I. system, the HAL 9000.


Date Published: 1969

Summary: A human ambassador visits the planet Winter with the goal of including them in an intergalactic civilization. Winter is an arctic world with an ambisexual civilization, and the ambassador struggles to understand a genderfluid society.


Date Published: 1975

Summary: This novel weaves the story of three women: Joanna, who is from a world much like ours in the 70's; Jeannine, who is from an alternate world where the Depression never ended; and Janet, who is from a utopian future where only women exist.


Date Published: 1978

Series: The Faded Sun #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: If you liked Dune, you might also like Kesrith, which also takes place on a desert planet in a politically-charged galaxy. Its about the aftermath of an interstellar war between humans and an alien race, where humans have been given a planet in the peace treaty, but the planet is already inhabited by a nomadic warrior people who fought on the aliens' side. Cue conflict!


Date Published: 1979

Series: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1

Number of Books in Series: 6

Summary: Earth is demolished by aliens to make way for a galactic freeway, leaving Arthur Dent homeless. This is a hilarious sci-fi about his adventures journeying through space along with the self-centered president of the galaxy; the president's girlfriend, whom Arthur hit on at a cocktail party once; a paranoid, depressed android; and a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of ballpoint pens.


Date Published: 1982

Series: Crystal Singer #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: After being rejected on her world as a concert singer, Killashandra Ree travels to the forbidden planet Ballybran, where members of a guild have careers and wealth by mining valuable crystalline rock. Of course, there are risks involved.

INFLUENTIAL TITLES

10 book covers: Neuromancer by William Gibson; The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood; Grass by Sheri S. Tepper; Hyperion by Dan Simmons; Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis; Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson; Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler; Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon; The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Date Published: 1984

Series: Sprawl #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: This is the benchmark novel for the cyberpunk subgenre of sci-fi, though it's a challenging read due to its dense techno-prose. It's about a hacker who's hired to target a powerful artificial intelligence in a world where Gibson basically predicted the internet.


Date Published: 1985

Series: The Handmaid's Tale #1

Number of Books in Series: 2

Summary: A near-future story in a dystopian world where woman are only valued for their ability to give birth.


Date Published: 1989

Series: Arbai #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: Marjorie Westriding Yrarier travels from Earth to the planet Grass to discover why it is untouched by a galactic plague.


Date Published: 1989

Series: Hyperion Cantos #1

Number of Books in Series: 4

Summary: This is The Canterbury Tales set in space, structured as seven smaller stories that make up the novel. A deadly entity known as the Shrike lives on the planet Hyperion, and a religion has grown around it where people make pilgrimages to try to see the Shrike, though most never return.


Date Published: 1990

Series: Jurassic Park #1

Number of Books in Series: 2

Summary: When the science to clone dinosaurs is discovered, someone makes the obvious choice to create an amusement park so people can visit them (for a price). What could go wrong?


Date Published: 1992

Series: Oxford Time Travel #1

Number of Books in Series: 5

Summary: A young woman named Kivrin time travels from near-future Oxford to a 14th-century English village. It starts quite slow, but what begins as a quiet academic investigation turns into a story of survival, endurance, and hope.


Date Published: 1992

Summary: Bizarre cyberpunk at its finest. In the near-future, where corporations have taken over the world and people spend most of their time in virtual reality, a pizza delivery boy and a skater girl get sucked into a search-and-destroy mission via the threat of infocalypse.


Date Published: 1993

Series: Earthseed #1

Number of Books in Series: 2

Summary: In a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by climate change, a teenager with the ability to feel others' pain creates a religion based on the belief that "God is change" and that humanity's destiny is to inhabit other planets.


Date Published: 2003

Summary: In this space opera, Kylara Vatta chooses to join the military instead of taking part her wealthy family's transport business. However, she gets expelled and returns home humiliated, but she's got a shot at redemption as captain of a Vatta transport ship. But what becomes a simple mission sails her and her crew into the middle of a colonial war, where her military experiences is vital.


Date Published: 2006

Series: Remembrance of Earth's Past #1

Number of Books in Series: 4

Summary: When aliens receive a signal from Earth and are on their way to invade, one human faction rises up to welcome them and another to resist them. This story explores nanoscience, astrophysics, and religion with the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a backdrop.

MODERN GEMS

10 book covers: The Martian by Andy Weir; Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey; The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers; Binti by Nnedi Okorafor; All Systems Red by Martha Wells; This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone; Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir; Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman; The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez; Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Date Published: 2011

Summary: This novel began as a series of blog posts in which the author explored how someone might survive on Mars. It's hard sci-fi with a wonderfully sarcastic protagonist. The movie with Matt Damon is also really good.


Date Published: 2011

Series: The Expanse #1

Number of Books in Series: 10

Summary: This is a fantastic space opera set in a galaxy where Mars, the moon, and the asteroid belt have been colonized. Politics are fracturing between Earth, Mars, and the Fringers, there's a noir-like mystery involving a missing girl, and the motley crew of a spaceship find themselves at the center of everything.


Date Published: 2014

Series: Wayfarers #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: This is cozy science fiction that follows a crew of humans and aliens as they tunnel wormholes for profit. It's a feel-good, found family story that delves into the cultural and anatomical differences of aliens.


Date Published: 2015

Series: Binti #1

Number of Books in Series: 3

Summary: Binti is the first of the Himba people to go to the best university in the galaxy. On her journey, she encounters people who don't understand or respect her culture and an alien race who want her dead.


Date Published: 2017

Series: The Murderbot Diaries #1

Number of Books in Series: 7

Summary: A self-aware security robot has hacked its own governor module and freed itself, though it's still pretending to be bound by the company protocols. Even though it just wants to be left alone to watch television, it protects the exploratory team its been contracted to—a job that's made more difficult as someone's out to murder them.


Date Published: 2019

Summary: Two agents on opposite sides of a war write letters to taunt each other, and their rivalry gradually turns into something more. This is a short novella with a really interesting structure, where the sci-fi worldbuilding is a fascinating backdrop to a queer, epic romance.


Date Published: 2019

Series: The Locked Tomb #1

Number of Books in Series: 4

Summary: Queer necromancers in space. Need I say more?


Date Published: 2020

Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #1

Number of Books in Series: 7

Summary: This is an outrageously bloody and hilarious LitRPG about a guy and his cat who get put into a sadistic intergalactic game show after aliens invade Earth.


Date Published: 2020

Summary: This is a beautiful story about a woman whose friends have aged past her due to her travel in space and the boy she adopts.


Date Published: 2021

Summary: A sweet science fantasy that includes deals with the devil, a donut shop run by alien refugees, violin prodigies, and curses.


Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, so if you click through and purchase any of the books linked in this article, I will earn a small commission AND you will support an indie book store!


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The book cover of Making Myths and Magic: A Field Guide to Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels.
How to Revise Your Novel_cover_edited.jpg

ABOUT

Allison Alexander is a freelance book editor, writer, and artist. She has a BA in English, a certificate in Publishing, and ten years of experience working with authors. She is also a co-host of The Worldbuilder’s Tavern podcast and composer of her newsletter for genre writers, Editor’s Alchemy.

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