A ReadOrbit guide
The first meeting matters most when it changes the people involved. These books place character alongside cosmic discovery.
Get a personal shortlist
2016
by Brendan DuBois
*A decade ago, the alien Creepers came to Earth, dropping asteroids to drown our coastal cities, detonating nuclear weapons overhead to destroy our communications, power and computer systems, and to set up their network of killer stealth satellites to kill anything on our planet…
2001
by Joe Haldeman, Kevin Orton
The Arrival Is Imminent Joe Haldeman's novel The Comingis a tightly constructed near future thriller which begins by recapitulating a classic science fictional motif: the moment of first contact with an alien intelligence. The story begins on October 1, 2054. Aurora (Rory) Bell,…
2000
by William Shatner
For three full decades, on television and in film, actor William Shatner has portrayed one of the legendary heroes of science fiction: James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise. Although Kirk was believed to have perished at the conclusion of Star Trek Generations,…
1999
by Dale Maharidge
Sometime after 2050, America's entire population will shift to minority-majority status, but before this century's end, California will have a population that is less than half white. How the state - which has had a major impact on American race relations in the 1990s - chooses t…
1997
by Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers takes place in the midst of an interstellar war between the Terran Federation of Earth and the Arachnids (referred to as "The Bugs") of Klendathu. It is narrated as a series of flashbacks by Juan Rico, and is one of only a few Heinlein novels set out in this fas…
1987
by C. S. Lewis
2. That hideous strength : a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups Add to My List by Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963. ... That hideous strength : a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups / C.S. Lewis. ... Publisher, Date: New York : Scribner Classics, 1996. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/b…
1951
by John Wyndham, Marcel Battin, Cover by Andy Bridge
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization…
2013
by Dirk Schulze-Makuch
It has been nearly 100 years since the Apollo moon landings, when Jack and Vladimir, two astronauts on a mission to Venus, discover a mysterious void related to indigenous life on the planet. Subsequently more voids are detected on Earth, Mars, Titan, and, quite ominously, inside…
2011
by Pittacus Lore
(source: http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-power-of-six/#gsc.tab=0) **The Power of Six** by Pittacus Lore is the second volume in a series that began with the book "I Am Number Four." It is a saga that pits good against evil on an interplanetary scale. Nine children and thei…
2008
by Poul Anderson
There was Joachim, captain of the Nomad star ship Peregrine, and ruler of the Peregrine clan. There were also all the ship’s officers and crew and their entire families. Bound to no world, the better part of their lives spent on the great ships, the Nomads were something like the…