The further away from planet Earth a sci-fi story takes place, the more sci-fi it feels for many. Though there are many great sci-fi tales taking place right here on our already pretty dystopian planet, it’s hard to beat the allure of the final frontier.
Let’s look at the best sci-fi books that take place outside of Earth, shall we?
10. Halo: The Fall of Reach (Eric Nylund)
If video game narratives tend to pale in comparison to those seen in literature, then the narratives seen in literary adaptations of video games tend to pale in comparison to both. Still, there are exceptions. The best one, as far as I know, is Halo: The Fall of Reach. It tells a compelling enough tale to entice people who were previously only into Halo because of all the gunplay, and it does it in Legendary difficulty mode because it’s a prequel.
Many fans of the games consider that The Fall of Reach is vastly superior to Halo: Reach, the critically acclaimed Halo game that ostensibly tells the same story.
9. The Martian (Andy Weir)
In his first novel, Andy Weir proves that you can do great sci-fi by resorting to way more science than fiction. The Martian transplants the classic story of the sailor who falls off the ship and is accidentally left for dead to the space setting.
As expected, surviving Mars proves even harder than surviving a deserted island. It’s incredibly satisfying to see Mark Watney putting his knowledge into practice in an attempt to last as long as possible on the surface of such a callous planet.
8. The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is one of the first known publications to seriously engage with the concept of colonizing Mars. As the title suggests, it’s more of a collection of tales about the challenges and adversities of conquering a new planet.
The Martian Chronicles remains a prescient piece of writing even three-thirds of a century later. Yes, please note that this was all written in the ’50s, long before we even got to space. So, if The Martian Chronicles remains good in our times, imagine how mind-blowing it would’ve been to read it back when it came out.
7. Old Man’s War (John Scalzi)
If you’re looking for a contemporary sci-fi author capable of going toe to toe with the masters of (relatively) old, then John Scalzi might be your guy.
One of the wildest aspects of war is that it tends to boil down to sending a bunch of youths to some foreign land because a bunch of old guys wanted them to go. Old Man’s War asks, “What if it was old people doing the fighting?” and “what if they were fighting for a purpose that directly benefitted them, like the right to an awesome retirement?” Scalzi had me at old people fighting, but then he added that said wars were in space and against a bunch of aliens, at which point I was almost ready to enlist for him.
6. Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)
Ancillary Justice is a space opera like no other. Instead of telling you the tale of one hero who goes against an Empire, it tells the story of a great Imperial warlord whose brain used to control the hivemind of an entire army but who saw an act of treason reducing their reach to that of one single body.
Want an original revenge tale that will make you even more scared about Humankind’s desire for galaxy-wide domination than you already are? Then this is the one for you.
5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is the first of what author Douglas Adams describes as a trilogy of five books. That’s even more wrong than you think, as it’s actually comprised of six books.
If you’re into that kind of humor, then you should accompany Arthur Dent as he makes use of the titular Hitchhiker’s Guide, a sort of electronic McGuffin that helps him navigate the galaxy. He’ll need it, too, because planet Earth has just been destroyed to make way for a new space highway.
This is the quintessential space sci-fi comedy. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but if it’s already your thing — or you happen to acquire that taste — you’re bound to have a lot of fun with it.
4. Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks)
Tired of overly serious and dour sci-fi tales where people only venture out to space because planet Earth can no longer sustain the human race due to human-caused troubles? Then Consider Phlebas — or pretty much any other book from Iain M. Banks’ The Culture series — a great pick.
Do you like Utopias? What about ring worlds, like Halo, but without the evil aliens and the awful human Military Industrial Complex? Consider Phlebas invites you to enjoy a post-scarcity, post-war galaxy. More or less away from any grand threat, there’s space to in a bunch of wacky and hilarious concepts rarely seen in other sci-fi works. Phlebas is a great palate cleanser for hard sci-fi and a fantastic reading on its own.
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
Movie adaptations of popular novels tend to suffer criticism for not being able to feature every detail in the book — down to things that have no reason to be in the movie. The beauty of 2001: A Space Odyssey is that this pointless debate doesn’t need to occur.
Neither the book nor the movie are trying to outdo the other. Both works were made at the same time as they were meant to serve as companions to one another. Now, given that the 2001 film is seen as one of the greatest and most visionary sci-fi works ever due to — among other things — how it called us fools for blindly trusting AI, you do the math and wonder just how good its literary sibling might be.
2. The Sirens Of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut)
Kurt Vonnegut explores the idea of absurdly wealthy men who owe everything to nepotism but attribute it to divine favor and puts it to the test by finally sending them to space in The Sirens Of Titan.
Will Malachi Constant see that things are not as he thought them to be and learn a valuable lesson? Will he become even more insufferable? This glorious sci-fi comedy is complex to the point that effectively spoiling it would be no easy task. Still, I recommend you go into the hilarious The Sirens Of Titan knowing as little as possible.
1. Solaris (Stanislaw Lem)
While most sci-fi loves to focus on stories about greatly detailed space wars, Stanislaw Lem was wondering what actual contact with an alien entity would look and feel like. Will the two vastly different entities be able to communicate right away? Will each even be aware of the presence of the other? Can they influence each other even with no real mutual understanding? Solaris asks these questions and many more, then only answers some of them while telling a deep story about love and about what it means to be human.
If you’re still on the fence, know that Solaris is the work that inspired Silent Hill 2, one of the greatest narratives in video game history.
