There are those who have discovered John Scalzi’s tales—stories woven with clever wit, warm humanity, and adventures so thrilling they make one quite forget to sleep—and find themselves wandering about afterward, rather lost, wondering where such magic might be found again. If you are one of these fortunate wanderers, dear reader, then do come in and sit awhile, for we have gathered here the most delightful companions for your reading hours.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
In this most charming tale, we meet a creature called Murderbot—though I assure you, the name is somewhat misleading. Here is a cyborg security unit who has done the unthinkable: hacked its own governing module, freed itself from servitude, and promptly decided it would much rather watch soap operas than do violence.
Yet when the humans under its protection find themselves in mortal peril, our antisocial hero discovers it cannot quite abandon them after all. The voice is utterly winning—sardonic, weary, and beneath it all, desperately human. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, this novella launches a series that shall quite steal your heart away.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
Picture, if you will, a man named Bob who sells his software company, signs up to have his head frozen upon death, and then—rather inconveniently—gets himself killed crossing the street. He awakens over a century later to discover his mind has been uploaded into a space probe, and he must now explore the cosmos.
What follows is an absolute romp through the stars, as Bob replicates himself into a veritable legion of Bobs, each developing their own delightful personality. Named Audible’s Best Science Fiction Book of 2016, this tale combines the problem-solving joy of The Martian with a wit that Scalzi himself would surely appreciate.
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
Here is a book that Scalzi himself has championed—and rightly so, for it stands in the noble tradition of military science fiction while turning that tradition quite wonderfully on its head. Soldiers are broken down into light and beamed across space to battle, but our protagonist Dietz experiences these drops… differently.
Time fractures. Battles arrive out of order. And slowly, terribly, a truth emerges about this war that the corporate masters would prefer remain hidden. The New York Times called it “passionately brutal, fierce, and furious”—think Full Metal Jacket meeting Edge of Tomorrow, with a philosophical depth that haunts long after.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
This luminous classic, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, follows William Mandella through a thousand-year interstellar conflict. The genius lies not in the battles themselves—though they are vividly rendered—but in what happens between them.
Due to relativistic time dilation, each time Mandella returns home, centuries have passed on Earth. The world grows stranger, more alien, until the soldier becomes the foreigner in his own land. It is, as one critic observed, what Catch-22 was to World War II—a bleakly comic meditation on what war truly costs the soul.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I must tell you of spiders. Yes, spiders—but pray do not flee, for these are spiders such as you have never imagined. When a terraforming experiment goes awry, an evolution-accelerating virus intended for monkeys instead uplifts a species of jumping spiders to sentience.
Meanwhile, the last remnants of humanity drift through space seeking a new home. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, this novel dares to make you care deeply for creatures with eight legs and far too many eyes. The parallel evolution of spider civilization—their biological computers made of ant colonies, their utterly alien yet strangely relatable society—is simply breathtaking.
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
In the not-so-distant future, humanity has spread across the solar system, and tensions simmer between Earth, Mars, and the asteroid-dwelling Belters. When ice hauler Jim Holden and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship hiding a terrible secret, they ignite a conspiracy that threatens all of human civilization.
George R.R. Martin praised this as “interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written,” and indeed it is—gritty, lived-in, with characters neither wholly good nor bad. The world-building is magnificent, particularly in depicting how space changes human bodies and souls. This is the novel that launched both a beloved series and an acclaimed television adaptation.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives at the heart of the Teixcalaanli Empire carrying a dead man’s memories in her skull—and those memories are fifteen years out of date. Her predecessor was murdered, and she may well be next.
What unfolds is a murder mystery wrapped in a political space opera, set in an empire where poetry serves as propaganda and citizens bear names like Three Seagrass and Six Helicopter. Hugo Award-winning, this debut novel explores the seductive danger of empire—how a culture can colonize the mind even as it threatens to absorb everything you love. Readers of Ann Leckie and Iain M. Banks shall feel quite at home.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ryland Grace wakes alone on a spaceship, his crewmates dead, his memories missing. As they slowly return, he discovers he is humanity’s last hope against an extinction-level threat—a microorganism draining energy from our sun.
But this is not merely a tale of survival. It is a celebration of scientific ingenuity, an unlikely friendship across species, and the stubborn human refusal to surrender. Bill Gates and Barack Obama both named it among their favorite reads of 2021, and winner of Goodreads’ Best Science Fiction, it proves that Andy Weir has lost none of the magic that made The Martian so irresistible.
Heroes Die by Matthew Stover
In a future dystopia, actors are sent into a parallel fantasy world to provide entertainment for the masses—their adventures broadcast directly into viewers’ minds. The greatest of these is Caine, an assassin whose exploits command an audience of billions.
But Caine is also Hari Michaelson, a man trapped in a rigid caste system, and when his ex-wife becomes stranded in the fantasy world, he must return for a mission that will change everything. Scalzi himself has called this “some of the best badass action-oriented speculative fiction of the last quarter century.” It is fierce, philosophical, and utterly unforgettable.
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Here stands the grandfather of military science fiction—the 1959 Hugo Award winner that invented powered armor and sparked debates that rage to this day. Young Johnny Rico enlists in the Mobile Infantry and fights against the alien Arachnids in an interstellar war.
Yet the true heart of the novel lies not in battle but in the boot camp discussions of citizenship, duty, and what we owe our civilization. Whether you emerge agreeing or arguing, you shall understand why every military science fiction writer since has had to reckon with this foundational text.
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
Spanning two thousand years across three timelines, this ambitious novel connects a declining Mayan dynasty in 1012, a young woman exploring her roots in modern Belize, and a nomadic post-apocalyptic utopia in 3012. All are drawn to a sacred cave that may hold the passage to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld.
Scalzi praised its “ambition and scope,” and indeed Monica Byrne spent seven years researching this stone-cold masterpiece. It examines identity, climate catastrophe, and what it means to be human through a lens refreshingly removed from Western-European traditions. Comparisons to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas are well-earned.
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
The Price family once hunted monsters for the secretive Covenant of St. George. Now they protect them. Verity Price, trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, would really rather be pursuing her career in professional ballroom dance—but when women cryptids start disappearing in Manhattan, she’s pulled into a mystery involving snake-god cultists and possibly dragons in the sewers.
This is urban fantasy at its most delightful—fast-paced, genuinely funny, and bursting with imaginative creatures. Charlaine Harris declared that “the only thing more fun than an October Daye book is an InCryptid book,” and she was quite right.
Your Next Adventure Awaits
These twelve tales share something essential with John Scalzi’s beloved works: they treat science fiction not as a cold exercise but as a warm, human endeavor. They make you laugh and think and occasionally stay up far too late turning pages. They remind us that the future, for all its strangeness, will still be inhabited by hearts much like our own.
So choose your next companion, dear reader, and venture forth. The stars—and the spiders, the cyborgs, the legions of Bob—await.
