Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Science fiction is a form of thought experiment: push one variable in our world to its extreme and see what humans become on the other side. Reading Asimov's Foundation, we ask: what if you really could predict the arc of civilizations? Reading Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life, what if you could perceive past and future simultaneously? Reading Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem, what if the universe is, in fact, a dark forest? Fantasy works in reverse — it builds a wholly different world and uses the distance to show us our own more clearly.

Two main currents:

• Science Fiction: The Golden Age (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) → the New Wave (Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Delany) → Cyberpunk (Gibson, Stephenson) → Contemporary (Ted Chiang, Andy Weir, N.K. Jemisin, Jeff VanderMeer, Liu Cixin). We give the Liu Cixin trilogy its own anchor collection because it's the rare translated sci-fi that has redrawn the genre.
• Fantasy: The high-fantasy tradition Tolkien laid down, Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, Rowling's Harry Potter, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth, Robin Hobb's Farseer and Liveship series.

Where to start:

• Never read sci-fi: Begin with Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (short stories you can finish one at a time) or Andy Weir's The Martian / Project Hail Mary (the "science-as-puzzle" mode is the most welcoming).
• Never read fantasy: Start with Tolkien's The Hobbit or Rowling's Philosopher's Stone — do not, please, open with The Silmarillion.
• Ready for the heavy end: Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy back-to-back with Asimov's Foundation trilogy.

What we don't include: pulp series with paper-thin worldbuilding, "fantasy" with no internal logic, science fiction whose science doesn't survive a single Wikipedia check.

Subcategories: Hard Sci-Fi · Soft Sci-Fi · Cyberpunk · Dystopian · High Fantasy · Urban Fantasy · Translated Sci-Fi

Browse: 10 Best Sci-Fi Novels of the 21st Century, Ranked · The Three-Body Problem Reader's Guide