Sci-Fi Favorites
Discover the best sci-fi favorites, from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Larry Niven's Ringworld to timeless classics like When Worlds Collide. Explore this curated list of must-read science fiction books and authors.
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The Nagasaki Vector
by L. Neil Smith
Traveling back in time to medieval Japan, the crew's mutiny threatens to strand Captain Gruenblum in the past
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Ringworld
by Larry Niven
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel Four travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world. Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy. Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?
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Ringworld Engineers
by Larry Niven
A return voyage to the astonishing world of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, with even more remarkable adventures and surprises, and a solution to that tantalizing question left from the earlier book: how was Ringworld built and by whom? It’s been twenty years since the quixotic and worldsweary Louis Wu discovered the Ringworld. Now he and Speaker-To-Animals are going back, captives of the Hindmost, a deposed puppeteer leader. With Louis’ help, the Hindmost intends to regain his status by bringing back such extraordinary treasures from the Ringworld that his fellow puppeteers will have to be impressed. But when they arrive, Louis discovers that the Ringworld is no longer stable . . . and will destroy itself within months. To survive he must locate the control center of the legendary engineers who built the planet. His quest becomes a wild and gripping venture, blended with the mysteries and spectacular technologies that only Larry Niven can conjure! Praise for Ringworld Engineers “For new readers, there’s fascinating adventure in plenitude. For old fans of Niven’s Known Space series, or of the original volume, there are all the fine, characteristic touches that delight us Niven fans, and which support his reputation for uncommon wittiness and fast narrative pace.”—Chicago Sun-Times “The Ringworld Engineers has all the imaginativeness, convincing detail, and narrative vivacity that have come to be associated with the works of Larry Niven. Furthermore, it answers a lot of questions that have been tantalizing his readers for a long time. Most highly recommended!”—Paul Anderson “When I finished The Ringworld Engineers, I cleared my calendar for a week, sat down, and reread every word of the Known Space cycle from scratch, then reread The Ringworld Engineers. It was worth the effort, and left me staggered by the breadth and scope of Larry’s vision. . . . If you count yourself as a true friend of Larry Niven, race right out and get this one.”—Analog Science Fiction Magazine “Another fine masterpiece from the master of science fiction . . . The coming conquest of space has always been a central myth of science fiction, and Larry Niven’s future worlds have made the most of it. The Ringworld itself is a dazzling notion, carrying the future evolution of technology about as far as possible.”—Jack Williamson “Adventurous exploration of a mind-boggling landscape.”—Publishers Weekly
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse. With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover. Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
by Douglas Adams
Now celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series! “Douglas Adams is a terrific satirist.”—The Washington Post Book World Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons? Time for a cup of tea! Join the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his uncommon comrades in arms in their desperate search for a place to eat, as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability. Among Arthur’s motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who’s gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android. Their destination? The ultimate hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food speaks for itself (literally). Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that The Hitchhiker’s Guide deleted the term “Future Perfect” from its pages, since it was discovered not to be! “What’s such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams’s sardonically silly eyes.”—Detroit Free Press
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Life, the Universe and Everything
by Douglas Adams
Now celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series! “Wild satire . . . The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes.”—Chicago Tribune The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads—so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation. They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galaxy; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox. How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert “universal” Armageddon and save life as we know it—and don’t know it! “Adams is one of those rare treasures: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading.”—Arizona Daily Star
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
by Douglas Adams
Now celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series! “A madcap adventure . . . Adams’s writing teeters on the fringe of inspired lunacy.”—United Press International Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth’s dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on. God only knows what it all means. Fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it’s light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. What else is new? “The most ridiculously exaggerated situation comedy known to created beings . . . Adams is irresistible.”—The Boston Globe
