The team at Stowmarket Library share some of their favourite sci-fi stories! Browse our staff recommendations and pick up a copy from your local library.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations or explore more of the National Year of Reading campaign.
The Mercy of Gods
James S.A. Corey
The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin.
Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them.
They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
Jimmy is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human. He lives in a tree, dresses himself in old bedsheets, and now calls himself Snowman. He mourns the loss of his best friend, Crake. And the voice of Oryx, the woman they both loved, teasingly haunts him.
Before, Snowman had led a privileged life. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Was he himself in any way at fault? Why has he now been left alone with his bizarre memories? And why are the green-eyed, more-than-perfect Children of Crake seemingly his responsibility?
Searching for answers, Snowman embarks on a journey through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride – a near future that is outlandish yet all too familiar.
The Ministry of Time
Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a job in a new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore.
As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’.
With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.
But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, they are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures.
The Seep
Chana Porter
Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a 50-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle – but nonetheless world-changing – invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.
Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence – until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.
Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind.
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
The Galactic Empire has prospered for twelve thousand years. Nobody suspects that the heart of the thriving Empire is rotten, until psychohistorian Hari Seldon uses his new science to foresee its terrible fate.
Exiled to the desolate planet Terminus, Seldon establishes a colony of the greatest minds in the Empire, a Foundation which holds the key to changing the fate of the galaxy.
However, the death throes of the Empire breed hostile new enemies, and the young Foundation’s fate will be threatened first.
The Foundation series is Isaac Asimov’s iconic masterpiece. Unfolding against the backdrop of a crumbling Galactic Empire, the story of Hari Seldon’s two Foundations is a lasting testament to an extraordinary imagination, one that shaped science fiction as we know it today.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Becky Chambers
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn’t expecting much. The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that’s seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.
But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful – exactly what Rosemary wants. Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet.
They’ll earn enough money to live comfortably for years – if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space.
I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman
Deep underground, 39 women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there and only vague notions of their lives before.
As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner.
But soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above.
Annie Bot
Sierra Greer
Annie is a robot, created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner, Doug. Playful and eager to please, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the outfits he buys for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his whims.
Maybe the apartment isn’t always spotless, but she’s trying to be good enough for Doug. She’s trying really hard. But as Annie grows more self-aware, she begins to chafe against the borders of her life: the empty weeks spent confined to the apartment, the fitness regimens designed to keep her part-organic body toned, the service appointments to increase her bra size and shave inches off her waistline.
Worst of all are Doug’s unpredictable moods, and the way he can punish her without even raising his voice. Annie starts to imagine the impossible – what would life be like outside Doug’s apartment? What could she be like without Doug?
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?