Someone asked: “Science fiction for someone who has never read any.”
Sci-fi for beginners.
No need to know what a warp drive is. These are stories about people first, with big ideas around them. Start anywhere.
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Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir · 2021
A man wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. Funny, clever and pure momentum.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams · 1979
Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The funniest science fiction ever written.
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel · 2014
After a pandemic, a travelling theatre company performs Shakespeare to survivors. Beautiful rather than bleak.
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2019
An artificial friend watches over a sick girl and tries to understand humans. Gentle, strange and heartbreaking.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969
An envoy on a frozen planet where people have no fixed gender. A classic that still feels ahead of its time.
Dune
Frank Herbert · 1965
A desert planet, a noble family betrayed and a boy who may be a messiah. The epic every other epic borrows from.
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler · 1979
A Black woman in 1970s California is pulled back in time to a slave plantation. Time travel as you've never read it.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Becky Chambers · 2014
A mismatched crew on a tunnelling ship across the galaxy. Cosy, kind science fiction, like a found family in space.
Not quite it?
Tell the bookseller what you've already read and what you're in the mood for. We'll narrow it down.