Classic Sci-Fi
Revisit some of the foundational novels of the science fiction genre with this book list.
Contact
Sagan, Carl, 1934-1996
1997
In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there?
The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret, 1939- author
2010
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile.
The hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy
Adams, Douglas, 1952-2001
1985
The comic misadventures of Arthur Dent...refugee from the late planet Earth...and his pal from Betelguese, Ford Prefect.
Hyperion
Simmons, Dan
2011
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope--and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. From the Paperback edition.
The Martian chronicles
Bradbury, Ray, 1920-2012, author
1977
Leaving behind a world on the brink of destruction, man came to the Red Planet and found the Martians waiting, dreamlike. Seeking the promise of a new beginning, man brought with him his oldest fears and his deepest desires. Man conquered Mars - and in that instant, Mars conquered him. The strange new world with its ancient, dying race and vast, red-gold deserts cast a spell on him, settled into his dreams, and changed him forever.
Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Vonnegut, Kurt, author
2019
The sparrow
Russell, Mary Doria, 1950-
1997
A motley combination of agnostics, true believers and misfits becomes the first humans to explore the Alpha Centauri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results
The time machine
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946, author
2012
"Chilling, prophetic and hugely influential, The time machine sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, where he is delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty and contentment in the form of the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man. But he soon realizes that they are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and living in terror of the sinister Morlocks lurking in the deep tunnels, who threaten his very return home. H.G. Wells defined much of modern science fiction with this 1895 tale of time travel, which questions humanity, society, and our place on Earth."--Amazon.com.