A while ago I wrote an article about my top five favorite books of all time, and received a few requests to write about my top five books from my other favorite genres as well, so here I am. Science fiction isn't a genre for everyone, and sometimes the genre can get too science-y and technical for casual reading pleasure, but when you find a good sci-fi novel without all the scientific jargon overwhelming your senses, the genre is one of the most interesting and rewarding ones in my humble opinion.
Over the course of the past few years, when I started really getting into this particular genre, I've amassed a very healthy repertoire of some of the best sci-fi novels of our time; they have the perfect mixture of space opera, space odyssey, and space jargon to make them at once enjoyable to read but also accurate and plausible in reality.
So without further ado, a countdown of my top five sci-fi books of all time!
5. Across the Universe Trilogy by Beth Revis
This trilogy is more on the young adult sci-fi side, with the main characters being teenagers and a majority of the story focusing on romance, but it's an excellent introduction to the genre. A massive generation ship called the Godspeed has left Earth on a century-long mission to reach the stars, and an Earth-like planet to begin humanity's first forays into the wider universe. Amy is a young Earth girl who has joined her parents on this journey, agreeing to be cryogenically frozen along with two hundred others on the ship, to be reawakened when they arrived on the new planet. However, at some point, things on the ship went horribly wrong, and the trip that was supposed to last a hundred years has last almost triple that, and the people who live on the ship have consigned themselves to living out the rest of their lives there, never seeing the new Earth. But not everything is how it seems on this ship, and when Amy is awakened early, she discovers some shocking truths about what humanity has become since she went to sleep. The trilogy calls into question the nature of humans and humanity and paints a devastatingly real picture of our baser human nature when confronted with the unknown. Again, it reads more like a young adult than a true full-blown sci-fi, but if you've never read the genre before, this is a great way to ease your way into the technical jargon that comes with the territory.
4. The Starbound Trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Much like the previous series, this trilogy also reads like a young adult novel and also focuses on a central romance theme, but unlike the first series, this trilogy is far more representative of a true space opera, and reads like a true sci-fi novel. Each book is set in the wider universe; the first book, in a ship that crashes on to a strange planet, the only survivors the spoiled daughter of the richest man in the universe, and a poor soldier who accidentally became a hero at the expense of his platoon. The second book, on a native to an outlying planet so far from the sun that almost everyone has forgotten about them, and a soldier sent to quell their rebellious thoughts. The third, on a young girl turned assassin who is trying to avenge her father's death, but accidentally stumbles upon an underground hacker who has his own motives and vendetta against their common enemy. Each book focuses on two different main characters, but all three have a common enemy, a common theme, which comes to a head in the final book when they all come together for an explosive meeting to take on the shadowy alien enemy that has been slowly gnawing away at humanity. If you want a romance fix AND a mysterious universe fix, these books are perfect.
3. The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Similar to her other trilogy, the Starbound Trilogy, Amie Kaufman has created three seemingly different narratives but unites them all through a common enemy in her really creatively done series, the Illuminae Files. These books are incredibly unique, as they aren't written in a narrative at all. Rather, they are a compilation of security footage analyses, chat logs, private IMs between the characters, lightbeam transmissions, and ship correspondence logs created by an artificial intelligence aboard the space ship. The story starts in Illuminae with the illegal destruction of an illegal mining planet in the outer reaches of the solar system, annihilating nearly the entire population on the planet. The few survivors make it to three spaceships; a science vessel, a military destroyer, and a passenger vessel. At some point, the military ship's AI turns on its commanders just as an alien plague runs rampant through the science vessel, leaving only the Hypatia vessel alive and limping towards civilization and survival. What happens next, and throughout the second novel, you have to read to find out. This is one of the most uniquely told stories I've ever come across, putting genre aside. I would highly recommend reading the physical copy of these books rather than an e-copy, because the illustrations and chat logs just do not translate electronically the same way they do on physical paper.
2. The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey
The Expanse series is truly the epitome of true science fiction. Space ships, battles in space, Mars and Jupiter settlements battling for control of the universe, generation ships aimed for the stars, and an insidious alien life form invading the solar system bent on the destruction of humanity, this series has it all. The books focus on central character James Holden and his crew, who travel the universe on a stolen Mars warship trying to solve the centuries old mystery of the stars. Each book features a new set of complementary characters as Holden and his crew embark on new adventures, each time coming closer to the apex of the plot: discovering alien life existing in a thousand other universes. While there is some technical jargon that sometimes requires me to reread a sentence or to so I can fully picture what the author is describing, it's still a fast-paced adventure set in the bowels of space that will have you reading until three in the morning.
1. House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
My first, and all-time favorite, experience with sci-fi, which began my entire love affair with the genre, was this beauty right here. Alastair Reynolds is a former nuclear scientist, and dedicated most of his professional life to the study of the stars before becoming a science fiction novelist, so his books all have a unique feeling of being legitimately plausible, which is why I enjoy his writing so much. When he writes a fictional novel about humanity's ability to reach the stars, it feels as if it could be within reach, rather than something awesome and impossible. While he is a prolific writer of sci-fi, and I've read many of his other novels, the House of Suns will forever be my favorite by Reynolds. It has every element a true sci-fi novel should have, including a romance, space ships that can travel at the speed of light, entire universes at the disposal of the main characters, and a foray into the wider expanse. There's mystery, there's suspense, there's a "bad guy" and an omnipresent force that you're not sure is good or bad, and there's the persistent question of what humanity truly is at its core.
