Every few days someone writes to me asking where to start with science fiction. And I, who have been reading it for years, go blank for a second: the honest answer is that it depends on who you are, and you cannot tell that to somebody who only wants a title.
So this is not a canon. It is what I would give to someone who asks me where to start and does not want me to sell them twenty volumes they are probably never going to finish.
If you are looking for ships that explode, there are few here. If you are looking for an idea that keeps you awake at three in the morning, keep reading.
What makes a science fiction book good
Not imagination. Anybody with a notebook and too much time has imagination. What really separates a good book from a catalogue of inventions is that someone pays a price for the idea. That the future serves to look at the present with discomfort, not to show off about the future.
Hence my criterion, which is not the one the magazines use: a science fiction book is good when, on closing it, I look at my own life as if it were a little bit someone else’s. When the world the author invented leaks into my kitchen.
The books, at a glance
Dune, by Frank Herbert · Foundation, by Isaac Asimov · Solaris, by Stanisław Lem · Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick · Neuromancer, by William Gibson · Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson · The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood · The Road, by Cormac McCarthy · Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro · Hyperion, by Dan Simmons · The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu · Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir · The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin · A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. · The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Classics that do not expire
Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)
Everybody recommends it to you for the desert, the worms and the spice. I recommend it for the politics: for how Herbert understands that power is inherited with water, with religion and with fear. The first hundred pages are hard work. After that you cannot put it down, and not because of the adventure, but because of the feeling of reading a manual on why societies rot.
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov (1951)
Asimov writes like an accountant who has seen the future and did not like it. There are no individual heroes here: there is history, and history laughs at the plans of men. I am interested precisely in what it lacks (the people are half-finished), because what remains is an idea that still works: you can foresee the behaviour of a crowd and never that of a person.
Solaris, by Stanisław Lem (1961)
The best book about the impossibility of communicating. Lem puts a living ocean in front of a group of scientists and does not give them a single answer. It is uncomfortable, slow, and it advances at exactly the speed of a conversation that is going nowhere. I have come back to it several times and it always leaves me with the same feeling: someone knocking at a door that does not exist. I do not know if it is a horror novel disguised as a scientific treatise or the other way round; I do not care much either.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (1968)
The film ate the book, but the book is another thing: dirtier and sadder. Dick did not care about robots, he cared about empathy: who has it, who fakes it, who uses it as an excuse. Every time somebody tells me that artificial intelligence is going to replace us, I think of this book and of how little of a joke Dick found the subject.
Cyberpunk: the future we already live in
If you want the full map of the subgenre, I already left it in cyberpunk: what to read, and I explained what cyberpunk is and where it comes from somewhere else.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson (1984)
The book that named everything. Gibson invented cyberspace without having used a computer and got it more right than all those who did use them. It is dense, it goes at full speed and it does not ask your permission. I dedicated a long analysis to it: almost everything we today call the internet was already in its pages, only with worse hygiene.
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (1992)
If Neuromancer is the cathedral, Snow Crash is the market in front of the cathedral. Stephenson laughs at everything while he builds it: the metaverse, corporate sects, samurai hackers on motorbikes. It has the best first page in cyberpunk. Read it for what it is: a hundred-page joke that has unfortunately become prophetic.
Dystopia: the science fiction that frightens because it is true
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1985)
Atwood did something almost nobody does: she invented nothing. Every atrocity in the book happened before in some real country, with different clothes. That is why it bothers. The prose is cold on purpose, the horror told by someone who no longer has a voice left to shout with.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
There is almost no science in The Road. There is a father, a son, a shopping cart and a burnt world. McCarthy writes with the punctuation of a man who has stopped believing in commas. If you survive the opening, it will not let you go.
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
The proof that you can write science fiction without a single technical word. Ishiguro tells you about an English boarding school and a friendship that goes wrong, and only at the end do you understand where you have been. The cruelty here does not shout: it administers. And it always administers better than it would shout.
Space opera and ambition
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (1989)
Seven pilgrims, seven stories, a planet that is dying. Each chapter is a different genre, and all of them are good. It is the structure of The Canterbury Tales put inside an interstellar war. If you like science fiction with a smell of old paper and libraries, this is your book.
The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu (2008)
Chinese science fiction came through the front door with this book: the universe as a game of hostile physics and humanity as the neighbour who switches on the light in a field of snipers without knowing that the light can be seen from very far away. Sometimes the translation shows. It does not matter.
Recent science fiction (and why I do not dismiss it)
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (2021)
A man alone on a ship, a physics problem and an optimism that almost annoys. Weir writes as if solving a calculation were a form of tenderness. It is not profound and it does not pretend to be: it is the book I would give to someone who believes science fiction is sad. It is not sad, mind you, but sometimes it looks like it.
The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
A world that breaks every few centuries and a society that has learned to live with the end of the world. Jemisin writes with a cold rage that never escapes her, not even in the biggest scenes, and that grows slowly until you realise you have spent two hundred pages without breathing. If you thought fantasy and science fiction travelled on separate roads, this book joins them without asking permission.
Oddities almost nobody recommends to you
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. (1959)
A monk keeps the ruins of science as if they were relics. It is a history of civilisation told from an abbey: every time humanity recovers knowledge, it uses it again to do itself harm. Miller took twenty years to write the sequel, which is understandable: it had to be digested.
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
Le Guin takes an invention from physics (a planet without a fixed gender) and uses it to blow up everything we take for granted. It is anthropology disguised as a novel and, at the same time, an adventure novel. I do not know anyone to whom I have lent it and who has returned it to me the same.
And a few more classics (for another afternoon)
These do not get an entry because they no longer fit, but they are on the same shelf: 1984 and Brave New World, which are not science fiction for the purists and are for everybody else; Ender’s Game, with its uncomfortable morality; 2001: A Space Odyssey, which reads better after seeing the film; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in case all this is getting too serious for you; and Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, which is like Do Androids Dream…? but with more fever.
I also have things about book series, cyberpunk written in Spanish and the best science fiction series on television, in case what you are looking for is not a novel.
Where to start depending on what you already like
If you are into ideas and do not care about characters: Foundation. If you want to feel that the future is already here: Neuromancer. If you like a book that leaves you feeling bad: The Road or A Canticle for Leibowitz. If you are looking for pure, well-told adventure: Hyperion. If you want to argue with me over the table: Solaris.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best science fiction book to start with?
Neuromancer if you are into speed, Project Hail Mary if you prefer something kind. To really start: Foundation. It reads quickly and it teaches you how the genre thinks.
Which science fiction book should I give as a present?
Hyperion. It looks good on any shelf and almost nobody has read it, so you seem smarter than the one who gives Dune for the umpteenth time.
Is there science fiction written by women?
Plenty, and very good. On this list you have Le Guin, Atwood and Jemisin. If you want more, look at my list of the best dystopian novels.
And if you liked this list
The books I write come out of here, out of all this. If you have got this far and you want something written by me, you have them here without intermediaries: I would start with 11.4 light dreams, or with Brin’s black tears if you prefer cyberpunk without anaesthetic. I also write standalone stories, in case you prefer to try me in small doses.
And one last thing: if you read only one book from this list and then you write to tell me I was wrong, it will already have been worth it. The best lists do not close. They get argued about.
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