Reader's Corner: Science Fiction
Looking for a good book to read but don't know where to start? This guide covers popular, award-winning, and just plain great nonfiction and fiction genres and books.
Staff Picks
Star Wars: Convergence (the High Republic) by
The next adventure in the High Republic begins expanding the new era of Star Wars, with a story set generations before Light of the Jedi. It is an age of exploration. Jedi travel the galaxy, expanding their understanding of the Force and all the worlds and beings connected by it. Meanwhile, the Republic, led by its two chancellors, works to unite worlds in an ever-growing community among near and distant stars. On the close orbiting planets of Eiram and E'ronoh, the growing pains of a galaxy with limited resources but unlimited ambition are felt keenly. Their hatred for each other has fueled half a decade of escalating conflict and now threatens to consume surrounding systems. The last hope for peace emerges when heirs from the two planets' royal families plan to marry. Before lasting peace can be established, an assassination attempt targeting the couple tilts Eiram and E'ronoh back into all-out war. To save both worlds, Jedi Knight Gella Nattai volunteers to uncover the culprit, while Chancellor Kyong appoints her son, Axel Greylark, to represent the Republic's interests in the investigation. But Axel's deep distrust of the Jedi sparks against Gella's faith in the Force. She's never met such a puffed-up, privileged party boy, and he's never met a more self-serious, relentless do-gooder. The more they work to untangle the shadowy web of the investigation, the more complicated the conspiracy appears to be. With accusations flying and potential enemies in every shadow, the pair will have to work together to have any hope of bringing the truth to light and saving both worlds.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY CORDOVA ZPublication Date: 2022-11-22
Station Eternity by
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian's talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes. From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn't make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet...and markedly devoid of homicide. But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime-and fast-or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board....
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY LAFFERTY MPublication Date: 2022-10-04
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by
A USA Today Bestseller! "Tender and healing... I'm prescribing a preorder to anyone who has ever felt lost. Stunning, kind, necessary." --Sarah Gailey on book 1: A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a story of kindness and love from one of the foremost practitioners of hopeful SF. After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY CHAMBERS BPublication Date: 2022-07-12
Sea of Tranquility by
Edwin St. Andrew ;is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise 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. A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY MANDEL EPublication Date: 2022-04-05
Upgrade by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "If Michael Crichton had written a superhero novel, it would look a lot like Upgrade."--The New York Times Book Review "You don't so much sympathize with the main character as live inside his skin."--DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series "Mysterious, fascinating, and deeply moving--exploring the very nature of what it means to be human."--ALEX MICHAELIDES, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient and The Maiden The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion--currently in development as a motion picture at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners "You are the next step in human evolution." At first, Logan Ramsay isn't sure if anything's different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep. But before long, he can't deny it: Something's happening to his brain. To his body. He's starting to see the world, and those around him--even those he loves most--in whole new ways. The truth is, Logan's genome has been hacked. And there's a reason he's been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy. Worse still, what's happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large--at a terrifying cost. Because of his new abilities, Logan's the one person in the world capable of stopping what's been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he'll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. And even as he's fighting, he can't help wondering: what if humanity's only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution? Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man's thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity--and our boundless potential.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY CROUCH BPublication Date: 2022-07-12
How High We Go in the Dark by
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * ROXANE GAY'S AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK Shortlisted for the The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction "Moving and thought-provoking . . . offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits." -- New York Times Book Review "Haunting and luminous . . . Beautiful and lucid science fiction. An astonishing debut."Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta Recommended by New York Times Book Review * Los Angeles Times * NPR * Wall Street Journal * Entertainment Weekly *Esquire * Good Housekeeping NBC News * Buzzfeed * Business Insider * Bustle;* Goodreads * The Millions * The Philadelphia Inquirer Minneapolis Star-Tribune San Francisco Chronicle *The Guardian * PopSugar Literary Hub and many more! For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague--a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY NAGAMATS SPublication Date: 2022-01-18
Children of Memory by
The modern classic of space opera that began with Children of Time continues in this extraordinary novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu &and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost. Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology - and they've arrived from another world to help humanity's colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself. Children of Memory by Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky is a far-reaching space opera spanning generations, species and galaxies.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY TCHAIKOV APublication Date: 2023-01-31
Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection by
From Leviathan Wakes to Leviathan Falls, James S. A. Corey's Hugo Award-winning Expanse series has redefined modern space opera. Now, available in print for the first time comes the complete collection of short fiction set in the Expanse universe, including both a brand-new novella set after the events of Leviathan Falls and author's notes on each story. On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse. Contents: The Expanse Short Fiction Drive The Butcher of Anderson Station The Churn Gods of Risk The Vital Abyss Strange Dogs Auberon The Sins of our Fathers --- For more from James S. A. Corey, check out: The Expanse Leviathan Wakes Caliban's War Abaddon's Gate Cibola Burn Nemesis Games Babylon's Ashes Persepolis Rising Tiamat's Wrath Leviathan Falls
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY COREY JPublication Date: 2022-03-15
The Kaiju Preservation Society by
The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy. When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls "an animal rights organization." Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble. It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society whose found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
Call Number: SCIFI FANTASY SCALZI JPublication Date: 2022-03-15
Science Fiction
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and capitalization) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology.
Science fiction differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation).
For more content on the Science Fiction genre and its various subgenres take a look at this separate guide.
Science Fiction Booklists in the BPL Online Catalog
- Science Fiction: Classic and Contemporary TalesWhether you’re participating in the Boston Public Library’s summer reading Book Bingo and need some suggestions to complete that "Science Fiction" square, or are just looking for a great new read, here’s a list of science fiction titles to add to your summer 2018 reading list.
- 21st Century Space OperaMost people are familiar with Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Isaac Asimov's Foundations series, but there are plenty of more recent space operas out there! This booklist is just a small sample of the space operas published in the 21st century.
- Science Fiction That Makes You ThinkThis personalized reading list was created by a librarian at the Boston Public Library for a reader. Would you like your own personalized list of reading suggestions? Visit www.bpl.org/shelf-service.
- 9 Ways to Bring Your Robot to the BeachNine quick reads for that oh-so-relatable summer moment when you just want to read about robots at the beach.
- Afrofuturism: Because Science Fiction is Too Darn WhiteAfrofuturistic sci-fi -- science fiction created by and featuring people of African origin living outside the continent -- combats the unfortunately overwhelming whiteness of the sci-fi genre by specifically celebrating black characters. From pioneers of the genre like Octavia Butler and Samuel Dhalgren, to up-and-comers like Rivers Solomon and Nicky Drayden, this booklist aims to provide an introduction to the genre.
- Don't Panic and Carry a Towel: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ReadalikesMay 25th is Towel Day: an annual celebration of the life and works of Douglas Adams. The name references the famous line from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." While there's no one who can perfectly replicate Douglas Adams' unique creative genius, these witty, satirical, and surrealistic books certainly come close!
- To See the Stars: 9 Sci-Fi BooksJuly 20, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing! Celebrate by reading one of these fascinating science fiction books about desperate and determined individuals who go to extraordinary lengths for the chance to leave their home planet.
- Queering Sci-Fi: 16 Novels With LGBTQ+ CharactersThis list contains science-fiction novels with LGBTQ+ characters. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but we hope it will get you started, or at the very least, help you find a few titles you've not seen before. Reach into the future and check one out today so you may enjoy it tomorrow! Some of these books are only available in ebook format. To learn more about downloading books onto Overdrive's Libby app, check out this link: http://www.bpl.org/collections/downloadable.htm
- If you like Margaret Atwood...If you like any of Margaret Atwood's works, be it her dystopian societies, her thoughts on women's roles in society, or her writing style, you'll be sure to find a similar title to read here.
- If you liked The Hunger Games Trilogy...If you enjoyed Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games Trilogy, try these similar titles from a list compiled by Books and Authors.