Favorite Hard Science Fiction
Explore the best hard science fiction books with our curated list of favorites. Discover mind-bending stories grounded in real science, perfect for fans of rigorous, tech-driven narratives.
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A Fire Upon The Deep
by Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war …
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A Deepness in the Sky
by Vernor Vinge
After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture …
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True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
by Vernor Vinge
A collection of articles and essays about the new frontier of the Internet, especially a direct interface between brain and computer that enables game players …
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Axiomatic
by Greg Egan
A dazzling collection of short fiction, filled with invention and hard-science speculation, by the popular author of QUARANTINE, PERMUTATION CITY, and DISTRESS. Growing in reputation …
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Permutation City
by Greg Egan
Transformed into an electronic code, a Copy must discover an alternate way out, back into its real body, because the original avenue of escape has …
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Schild's Ladder
by Greg Egan
Twenty-thousand years in the future, a dangerous experiment in quantum physics creates an expanding vacuum in space that threatens to wipe out all humanity. By …
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Diaspora
by Greg Egan
In a new world of digital beings, where humans have chosen to be forever digitized, have selected renewable robotic bodies, or remain flesh on Earth, …
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Excession
by Iain Banks
Iain M. Banks is a true original, an author whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination and inimitable revelatory power. …
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Code of the Lifemaker
by James P. Hogan
Thirg, the notorious philosopher, knows there are alien beings on other worlds on the other side of the sky. When aliens do arrive, Thirg's heretical …
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The Immortality Option
by James P. Hogan
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was frozen and lifeless...but only by some definitions! Organic life had never evolved on its barren surface, but somehow Titan had …
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Blood Music
by Greg Bear
In order to save his biochip experiments from his nervous employers, eccentric genius Vergil Ulam of Genetron Labs injects himself with his cell cultures, thereby …
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Queen of Angels
by Greg Bear
In twenty-first-century Los Angeles, three dissimilar sleuths--therapist Martin Burke, ambitious cop Mary Choy, and Richard Fettle, the killer's offbeat colleague--investigate diverse reasons why poet Emanuel …
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The Forge of God
by Greg Bear
Earth is threatened by the invasion of an interstellar research probe gone mad, in a study of the complex interactions--and their ramifications--between human passions and …
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Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private …
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The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson
Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time …
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Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired …
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Toolmaker Koan
by John McLoughlin
In the not-too-distant future, after a One-Day War separates the world into two opposing power blocs, a Soviet space probe discovers Charon, an ancient, god-like …