Best hard science fiction novels
Science fiction that shows its working. The physics is load-bearing and the problem-solving is the plot.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 6 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 3 listsAltered Carbon
Richard K. Morgan
For readers who liked how coldly Liu treats a human life as a variable. Morgan makes bodies disposable and builds a mean, propulsive detective story on top of it.
2 of 12recommended on 3 listsAurora
Kim Stanley Robinson
Robinson's most sceptical book: a generation ship that behaves exactly as physics and biology say it would, which is to say badly. The anti-romance of colonisation.
3 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
First contact done as anthropology rather than warfare: one envoy trying to understand a world whose assumptions differ from his at the root. The other end of Liu's question.
4 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu
For readers who came for the argument about what humanity should do with a planet, conducted at civilisational scale and with equally uncompromising physics.
5 of 12recommended on 2 listsAncillary Justice
Ann Leckie
An empire whose logic is genuinely non-human, examined from inside it. Leckie shares Liu's appetite for consequences unfolding across a thousand years and several bodies.
6 of 12recommended on 2 listsDune
Frank Herbert
The other great novel where ecology, politics and physics matter more than any single person, and where a plan can take three centuries to pay off. Herbert thinks at Liu's scale.
7 of 12recommended on 2 listsEnder's Game
Orson Scott Card
Humanity training children for a war against something it does not understand, using exactly the simulation trick Liu reworks as the Three Body game.
8 of 12recommended on 2 listsFoundation
Isaac Asimov
Asimov's psychohistory is the direct ancestor of Liu's long game: a plan laid down by people who know they will be dust long before it matters.
9 of 12recommended on 2 listsHyperion
Dan Simmons
Seven pilgrims, seven stories, one entity that makes human timescales look silly. Simmons shares Liu's willingness to let the universe be genuinely indifferent to us.
10 of 12recommended on 2 listsLeviathan Wakes
James S.A. Corey
The same escalation — a small discovery that turns out to threaten the species — told as a hard-boiled thriller that never once stops to lecture you.
11 of 12recommended on 2 listsNeuromancer
William Gibson
Shares the feeling of a human being comprehensively outclassed by the intelligence on the other side of the screen, and a plot you half-assemble yourself out of technical debris.
12 of 12recommended on 2 listsRed Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson
Robinson does for terraforming what Liu does for astrophysics: the engineering is the story, and the argument over who gets to control it is the other half.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the hard science fiction book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like Red MarsKim Stanley Robinson
- Books like The Three-Body ProblemCixin Liu
- Books like The MartianAndy Weir
- Books like BlindsightPeter Watts
- Books like 2312Kim Stanley Robinson
- Books like Project Hail MaryAndy Weir
NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.