10 Best Hard Sci-Fi Books of All Time
Hard science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction writing that emphasizes scientific accuracy and precise technical detail as part of its world-building. Enjoy 10 Best Hard Sci-Fi Books of All Time!
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10 Best Hard Sci-Fi Books of All Time
The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov’s Robot series – from the iconic collection I, Robot to four classic novels – contains some of the most influential works in the history of science fiction. Establishing and testing the Three Laws of Robotics, they continue to shape the understanding and design of artificial intelligence to this day.
In the vast, domed cities of Earth, artificial intelligence is strictly controlled; in the distant Outer Worlds, colonists and robots live side by side.
A Spacer ambassador is found dead and detective Elijah Baley is assigned to find the killer. But with relations between the two cultures in the balance, the Spacers insist that he work with a partner of their choosing – a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw.
Baley has never seen a robot like Daneel before – almost indistinguishable from a human – and soon, though the Three Laws of Robotics should render the crime impossible, Baley’s partner becomes his prime suspect.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists’ deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
The Martian by Andy Weir
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.
But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
n a world where the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent … and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep.
Once considered interesting anomalies, now Leisha and the other “Sleepless” are outcasts — victims of blind hatred, political repression, and shocking mob violence meant to drive them from human society … and, ultimately, from Earth itself.
But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her “gift” — a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom … and revenge.
Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan
Cass has stumbled on something that might be an entirely different type of physics, and she’s travelled three hundred and fifty light-years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, to test her theory. The novo-vacuum she creates is predicted to begin decaying the instant it’s created, but even so short-lived a microscopic speck could shed new light on the origins of the universe.
But instead of decaying, Cass’s novo-vacuum is wildly successful and begins expanding, slowly but inexorably taking over the universe …
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
The multi-award-winning SF masterpiece from one of the greatest SF writers of all time
Rama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through space, Rama is a technological marvel, a mysterious and deeply enigmatic alien artefact.
It is Mankind’s first visitor from the stars and must be investigated …
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Mars – the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind’s dreams of space conquest.
From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists – hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert – Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.
It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising and violence is brewing… for civilization can be very uncivilized.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison…
Life isn’t easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV.
When humble technician Mannie O’Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities… or become friends.
And perhaps overthrow the government while they’re at it.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Five prominent biophysicists give the United States government an urgent warning: sterilisation procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.
Two years later, Project Scoop sends seventeen satellites into the fringes of space in order to ‘collect organisms and dust for study’.
Then a probe falls to the earth, landing in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona. A little while later, in the nearby town of Piedmont, bodies are discovered heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise.
But the terror has only just begun, because when they try to find the cause of death, the scientists don’t realise just what kind of unearthly danger they are dealing with.
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st-century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes … all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
Moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays, this book is a real mind stretcher – and yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the whole.
If you enjoyed our 10 Best Hard Sci-Fi Books of All Time, check out 13 Stunning Modern Sci-Fi Books to Read
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