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Classic Sci-Fi Books

Finding classic science-fiction novels, popular series, hidden gems, and underrated masterpieces has never been easier!

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The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells book cover

The War of the Worlds

Author: H.G. Wells

Year: 1898

Rating: 3.83

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people…

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A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs book cover

A Princess of Mars

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Year: 1912

Rating: 3.81

A Princess of Mars is the first of eleven thrilling novels that comprise Edgar Rice Burroughs' most exciting saga, known as The Martian Series. It's the beginning of an incredible odyssey in which John Carter, a gentleman from Virginia and a Civil Wa…

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The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick book cover

The Man in the High Castle

Author: Philip K. Dick

Year: 1962

Rating: 3.62

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war — and is no…

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His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik book cover

His Majesty's Dragon

Author: Naomi Novik

Year: 2006

Rating: 4.03

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sw…

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy book cover

The Road

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Year: 2006

Rating: 3.97

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the…

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The Stand by Stephen King book cover

The Stand

Author: Stephen King

Year: 1978

Rating: 4.34

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of…

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Neuromancer by William Gibson book cover

Neuromancer

Author: William Gibson

Year: 1984

Rating: 3.9

Hotwired to the leading edges of art and technology, Neuromancer is a cyberpunk, science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.The Matrix is a world…

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1984 by George Orwell book cover

1984

Author: George Orwell

Year: 1949

Rating: 4.19

Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a tot…

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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood book cover

The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Year: 1985

Rating: 4.12

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her bac…

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley book cover

Brave New World

Author: Aldous Huxley

Year: 1932

Rating: 3.99

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel ant…

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Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson book cover

Red Mars

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

Year: 1992

Rating: 3.86

In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research & cutting-edge science in the 1st of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars:For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. Fo…

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Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke book cover

Rendezvous with Rama

Author: Arthur C. Clarke

Year: 1973

Rating: 4.1

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at an inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthi…

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Old Man's War by John Scalzi book cover

Old Man's War

Author: John Scalzi

Year: 2005

Rating: 4.21

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien race…

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On Basilisk Station by David Weber book cover

On Basilisk Station

Author: David Weber

Year: 1992

Rating: 4.13

Honor Harrington in trouble: Having made him look the fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way p…

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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov book cover

I, Robot

Author: Isaac Asimov

Year: 1950

Rating: 4.2

Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine , struggle to redefinelife, love, and consciousness—and where the stakes are nothing less than survival. Filled with unforgettable characters,…

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The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov book cover

The Caves of Steel

Author: Isaac Asimov

Year: 1954

Rating: 4.17

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City de…

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Dune by Frank Herbert book cover

Dune

Author: Frank Herbert

Year: 1965

Rating: 4.23

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing conscio…

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Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks book cover

Consider Phlebas

Author: Iain M. Banks

Year: 1987

Rating: 3.86

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right…

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Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve book cover

Mortal Engines

Author: Philip Reeve

Year: 2001

Rating: 3.78

'It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.' The great traction city London has been skulking in the hills to avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier c…

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Perdido Street Station by China Miéville book cover

Perdido Street Station

Author: China Miéville

Year: 2000

Rating: 3.95

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies the city of New Crobuzon, where the unsavory deal is stranger to no one--not even to Isaac, a gifted and eccentric scientist who has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique res…

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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon book cover

Outlander

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Year: 1991

Rating: 4.23

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a…

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The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger book cover

The Time Traveler's Wife

Author: Audrey Niffenegger

Year: 2003

Rating: 3.98

A funny, often poignant tale of boy meets girl with a twist: what if one of them couldn't stop slipping in and out of time? Highly original and imaginative, this debut novel raises questions about life, love, and the effects of time on relationships.…

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Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card book cover

Ender's Game

Author: Orson Scott Card

Year: 1985

Rating: 4.3

Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alie…

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams book cover

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

Year: 1979

Rating: 4.22

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years,…

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Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter book cover

Awaken Me Darkly

Author: Gena Showalter

Year: 2005

Rating: 3.89

RIDDING THE WORLD OF EVIL, ONE ALIEN AT A TIME: THAT'S MIA SNOW'S MISSION. Snow is in the forecast. In a time and place not too far away, Mia Snow is an alien huntress for the New Chicago Police Department. Heading up her expert team of Alien Inves…

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke book cover

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Author: Susanna Clarke

Year: 2004

Rating: 3.82

Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing…

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Fatherland by Robert Harris book cover

Fatherland

Author: Robert Harris

Year: 1991

Rating: 3.99

It is twenty years after Nazi Germany's triumphant victory in World War II and the entire country is preparing for the grand celebration of the Führer's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as the imminent peacemaking visit from President Kennedy.Meanwhil…

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Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik book cover

Throne of Jade

Author: Naomi Novik

Year: 2006

Rating: 3.87

When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo–an unhatched dragon’s egg–Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain’s Aerial Corps, man…

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The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson book cover

The Years of Rice and Salt

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

Year: 2002

Rating: 3.74

It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur - the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed. But what if? What if the plague killed 99 perc…

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1632 by Eric Flint book cover

1632

Author: Eric Flint

Year: 2000

Rating: 4.04

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE -- AMERICAN STYLE 1632 And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy. 2000 Th…

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Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson book cover

Snow Crash

Author: Neal Stephenson

Year: 1978

Rating: 4.02

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon…

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Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood book cover

Oryx and Crake

Author: Margaret Atwood

Year: 2003

Rating: 4.01

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss…

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Count Zero by William Gibson book cover

Count Zero

Author: William Gibson

Year: 1986

Rating: 4.01

A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfecte…

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Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan book cover

Altered Carbon

Author: Richard K. Morgan

Year: 2002

Rating: 4.05

Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-c…

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Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson book cover

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Author: William Gibson

Year: 1988

Rating: 3.99

William Gibson, author of the extraordinary multiaward-winning novel Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date... The Mona Lisa Overdrive. Enter Gibson's unique world - lyric and mechanical, erotic and violent, sobering a…

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick book cover

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Author: Philip K. Dick

Year: 1968

Rating: 4.08

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill.Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then...'retire' them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like hum…

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury book cover

Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Year: 1953

Rating: 3.99

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses i…

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The Giver by Lois Lowry book cover

The Giver

Author: Lois Lowry

Year: 1993

Rating: 4.13

The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he…

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Animal Farm by George Orwell book cover

Animal Farm

Author: George Orwell

Year: 1945

Rating: 4.13

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned…

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Uglies by Scott Westerfeld book cover

Uglies

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Year: 2005

Rating: 3.85

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is t…

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Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds book cover

Revelation Space

Author: Alastair Reynolds

Year: 2000

Rating: 3.98

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repe…

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2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke book cover

2001: A Space Odyssey

Author: Arthur C. Clarke

Year: 1968

Rating: 4.15

On the Moon, an enigma is uncovered.So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...On…

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Ringworld by Larry Niven book cover

Ringworld

Author: Larry Niven

Year: 1970

Rating: 3.96

The artefact is a circular ribbon of matter six hundred million miles long and ninety million miles in radius. Pierson's puppeteers, the aliens who discovered it, are understandably wary of encountering the builders of such an immense structure and h…

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Foundation by Isaac Asimov book cover

Foundation

Author: Isaac Asimov

Year: 1951

Rating: 4.17

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will las…

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Dauntless by Jack Campbell book cover

Dauntless

Author: Jack Campbell

Year: 2006

Rating: 3.96

The Alliance has been fighting the Syndics for a century--and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, be…

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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman book cover

The Forever War

Author: Joe Haldeman

Year: 1974

Rating: 4.14

The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private Wi…

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