Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of the young rebels who venture illegally into the Zone, one of six areas on Earth that have been profoundly changed by the visitation of aliens to Earth. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And despite the danger, the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answers he's been looking for. 

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Similar books we recommend: 

• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/rendezvous-with-rama)
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/ted-chiang)

Space ships whip across the solar system, ice haulers burn in from the gas giants, stolen Martian corvettes sneak behind enemy lines, and very human characters tie it all together and make the incredible journey worth the ride. Miraculously all 9 books (plus a collection of short stories) are fun, well-done adventures that will keep you turning the pages and racing to find out what happens next. Seriously, if you haven’t read the Expanse yet, it’s time for a treat that goes down easy.

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• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/house-of-suns)
• Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/children-of-time)
• Memories Legion – James S.A. Corey

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason. Unless D-503 can find a space within himself - that disease the ancients called a soul.

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Similar books we recommend: 

• 1984 by George Orwell (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/1984)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/brave-new-world)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A starship is taking off from Mars, and just before it does one of the crewman arrives with a strange new creature. What will the Wub bring to those on board, and the headstrong captain who can't stop thinking with his stomach?

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PS We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is still coming soon, but Brent had a family emergency, so Cody stepped up to bring y'all this gem in the meantime.

Rumors are swirling about a species of super-intelligent octopus living off the coast of Vietnam. As corporations and other non-state actors begin to investigate, it becomes clear that we are not alone in the universe - alien life has evolved right here on earth. DIANIMA, a giant tech company known for its machine learning prowess, buys the islands to study the octopuses and try to monopolize their unique brains for profit. They send Evrim, the world’s first true android / AI, and Dr. Ha Nguyen, a brilliant marine biologist, to study the octopuses, and Altantsetseg, a battle-hardened drone operator, to defend the islands from rapacious automated fishing vessels. 

Can they learn to communicate with the octopuses? Or will this new intelligent life be destroyed by global corporations run amok?

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• Check out Ray Nayler's answers to your questions about the book!

Similar books we recommend: 

• Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Story of Your Life - Ted Chiang (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/ted-chiang)
• The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/the-windup-girl)

Ranking our top 15 sci fi books of all time:

• 15 - Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu 
• 14 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• 13 - Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
• 12 - Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• 11 - Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
• 10 - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• 9 - The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• 8 - Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• 7 - A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
•  6 - Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• 5 - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 4 - Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 3 - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• 2 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• 1 - Contact by Carl Sagan

If you think something deserves to be on the list, drop us a line on Discord!

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Paul Durham has begun experimenting on his own mind. He uploaded a copy of his neural patterns - everything that makes him who he is - into a computer simulation. The more he experiments, the more the lines between the real person and the virtual person begin to blur. What he discovers there, out at the edge of consciousness and the pattern that defines him, give him an impossible idea. A permutation city, where immortality might be possible.

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Similar books we recommend: 

• The Hidden Girl and other Stories - Ken Liu (our interview with Ken Liu: https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/ken-liu)
• The Last Question - short story by Asimov (available free here: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html)
• Diaspora - Greg Egan

We talked with Peter about:

• Why he quit science to write fiction
• The real-world science that inspired Blindsight
• Why vampires?!
• Blindsight movie(s) in the works
• What's coming next (the sequel to Echopraxia!)

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video, or join the Hugonauts book club on discord!

And if you haven't listened to our episode about Blindsight, check it out here.

Tyler, Jason, and Diane are growing up together in the suburbs of Washington, DC. One night, as they are outside looking up at the sky, something shocking happens - all the stars go out at once. The 'Hypotheticals' have wrapped the earth in a spin membrane that isolates the Earth, making time move millions of times slower inside the barrier than outside. In Tyler, Diane, and Jason's lifetime the sun will turn into a red giant and consume the earth - unless they can figure out how to escape the Spin!

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video
• This week we were joined by Jonathan from Words in Time - check out his channel on YouTube!

Similar books we recommend: 

• Contact - Carl Sagan (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/contact)
• Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
• Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/the-three-body-problem)

Winston Smith is a Party member living in London. He, like every other member of the Party, is under constant surveillance. Despite the risk, he dares to buy a blank book and begin to write down his thoughts. From the first moment he writes “down with Big Brother” he believes he is doomed to die in the torture chambers below the Ministry of Love. Will his deviance be caught, or will Winston succeed in finding a way to resist the totalitarian control of the Party?

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/brave-new-world)

Ranking the 2023 Hugo nominees: 

• N/A: Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir 
• #5: Spare Man - Mary Robinette Kowal 
• #4: Daughter of Doctor Moreau - Silvia Moreno-Garcia 
• #3: Nettle and Bone - T Kingfisher 
• #2: Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi 
• #1: Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldry 

And three amazing sci-fi books that should have made the list: 

• The Mountain and the Sea - Ray Nayler 
• Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel 
• Eyes of the Void - Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Shevek is a brilliant physicist, working on a new theory that may be as transformative and foundational as the work of Einstein. In pursuing his theory, he discovers that his dry homeworld of Anarres is not as free as he believed it to be. His society of anarchists has grown rigid, bureaucratic, and resistant to change in the years since the revolution. 

In order to pursue his work, he must leave Anarres and be the first to travel back to the deeply unequal, capitalist planet of Urras. Will Shevek succeed at completing his theory and igniting the fires of change? Or will he be consumed in the struggle for freedom?

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/the-left-hand-of-darkness)
• The City and the City - China Miéville (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/the-city-and-the-city)
• Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/the-mars-trilogy-colonizing-and-terraforming-mars)

The bombs fell, and the world ended. A man and his pregnant wife survived the blasts. Their son would be born into a world changed entire. It grew darker, and colder, and more violent. The new world was grim and grey and relentless, and the wife could not bear to live in it. 

The man and his young son had to set out on the road, alone, heading south. The road, though, is dangerous. Cannibals and slavers and men driven mad with hunger roam the hills. Even if the man can avoid marauders, will he be clever and lucky enough to find food and supplies in the picked-over remains of civilization to feed his son? And every day that they survive, they have to ask themselves if it is worth surviving. What awaits them in the south, on the coast?

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• Anything by Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, etc.
• Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/parable-of-the-sower)
• A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr. (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/a-canticle-for-leibowitz-who-knew-the-nuclear-apocalypse-could-be-so-funny)

Kris Kelvin is traveling to the ocean world of Solaris. For more than 100 years, scientists have been trying to understand and communicate with alien life. But Solaris is truly alien - the entire planet-wide ocean is a single living organism. As Kelvin arrives, he finds that things are going wrong. The science station is disturbing and nearly abandoned. Will he be able to unravel the mystery of Solaris? Or will he lose his mind in the attempt? 

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• Blindsight - Peter Watts (https://youtu.be/7GSLFAU_CFk)
• Ubik - Philip K Dick
• Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

Jim Holden is XO of an ice hauler making runs from the rings of Saturn to the asteroid cities of the Belt. Out in the darkness, they detect a distress signal, and move to investigate. Holden leads the away team to check on the signal, and they find a dead ship called the Scopuli that seems to have been boarded with military precision. Moments later, a stealth ship fires nuclear torpedoes at the ice hauler, killing the entire crew, leaving Holden and his away team as the only survivors. All the evidence points to the Martian military, and system-wide war threatens to break out unless Holden can find out who set the trap, and why. 

Miller is a detective on Ceres, and he is looking for a girl. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and Holden, they realize that this girl may be the key to everything. 

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. 

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
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Similar books we recommend: 

• House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds - https://youtu.be/qTKm46YrIiQ
• The Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson - https://youtu.be/D7OrjGfKUj4
• Murderbot Series - Martha Wells

Guy Montag is a fireman - one whose job is to burn books, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag and his wife, Mildred (who spends all day with her television ‘family’) had never questioned his life as a fireman, until he meets his eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse. Clarisse introduces him to a bigger world and new ideas, and Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video (and see the short videos we've started posting every other week)

Similar books we recommend:

• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.
• The Giver - Lois Lowry

Substance D is a new drug sweeping the nation and slowly destroying the minds of its users. As the connection between the two halves of their brains degrades, they grow increasingly disoriented and confused before suffering irreversible brain damage. 

Fred is an undercover narcotics agent working to uncover where the new drug is coming from. But to find the source he has to pose as Bob Arctor, a user, and soon Arctor is as addicted as the junkies around him. Can he see through his psychosis long enough to tell which leads are real and which imagined? Or will he be consumed, like his friends, by substance D?

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For all six of the nominated books we'll give you a quick summary (with no spoilers), a review, and a rundown of what kind of reader is likely to love (and who might hate) each book.

Featuring: 

1. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler 
2. Babel by R.F. Kuang 
3. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree 
4. Spear by Nicola Griffith 
5. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher 
6. Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

And join us for our next episode on A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick!

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video (and see the short videos we've started posting every other week)

Set in a futuristic, unified World State, Brave New World tells the story of a very different kind of dystopia. The population is not tightly controlled in the traditional sense - instead they are free to do what they choose, and live phenomenally happy lives. However, people are born in test tubes and modified in-vitro to fulfill their role in the caste system, to love their work, and to love the hedonistic lifestyle that the World State provides. 

Bernard Marx is not perfectly happy though. He arranges a trip to a reservation to see a different way of living, and there meets someone born outside the system - The Savage - who begins to question the social order and chafe against the World Controllers who mastermind the system.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video (and see the short videos we've started posting every other week)

Four soldiers are serving a four year tour of duty as the only crew members on a super-advanced AI battleship, dispatched to fight the alien Salamanders who have been spewing black holes everywhere and killing humans in space. 

The ship is fully controlled by AI, and as the mission goes on our heroes feel more and more like window dressing - they sure are killing a lot of aliens, but are they anything more than passengers on this ship? Or are they just window-dressing for the military industrial complex?

Thanks to Lori from the Hugo, Girl podcast for joining us for this episode! Hugo, Girl is a monthly show featuring three very funny space feminists reading and discuss Hugo Award-winning fiction. Cody joined them on their most recent episode, talking about the hugely underrated book Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. 

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Related books we recommend:
  • The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
  • Blindsight by Peter Watts
  • Lexicon by Max Barry

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video (and see the short videos we've started posting every other week)