There are certain books, you understand, that do not merely tell a story but rather open a door—and once one has passed through, one can never quite see the world in the same way again. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is such a book. If you have wandered the snows of Winter with Genly Ai, if you have pondered the beautiful strangeness of the Gethenians, you are perhaps now seeking new worlds to explore.
Come along, then. Let us discover what other marvels await.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Here is a tale that swept every major award in its year, and little wonder. The narrator, Breq, was once a vast starship with thousands of bodies—and now exists as a single, fragile being seeking revenge against an emperor who stretches across space itself.
What makes this adventure particularly extraordinary is its treatment of language and gender. The Radchaai civilization makes no distinction between persons based on gender, and so Leckie renders all characters with feminine pronouns throughout. The effect is rather like being handed a familiar map and discovering all the compass points have been rearranged. Readers find themselves questioning assumptions they never knew they held.
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
Published in 1984, this masterwork arrived before many readers were quite ready for it—and some would argue we are only now catching up to its brilliance. Delany constructs a galaxy where thousands of human worlds follow competing philosophies, and where the very nature of desire and identity shifts like starlight through a prism.
The pronoun system here is delightfully disorienting: all persons are referred to as “she” and “woman,” while masculine pronouns are reserved solely for objects of desire. It is the sort of literary puzzle that leaves one’s mind pleasantly spinning, much like watching stars wheel overhead on a clear night.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
If The Left Hand of Darkness is a winter journey through philosophical snow, then this charming tale is a warm hearth around which many curious beings have gathered. The crew of the tunneling ship Wayfarer includes humans of various sorts, a navigator with a dual consciousness, and aliens whose understanding of gender shifts throughout their lifespans.
Chambers presents her wonderfully diverse universe not as something to be debated or explained, but simply as the way things are. One finds oneself aboard that ship, sharing meals with the crew, and discovering that differences which seemed strange at first become as natural as breathing.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Mahit Dzmare arrives at the heart of a glittering empire with a ghost in her mind—or rather, the consciousness of her predecessor, downloaded into a device beneath her skull. But the technology has malfunctioned, and she must navigate deadly politics while her own identity fractures and reforms.
This Hugo Award winner asks profound questions about what makes a self. When you carry another person’s memories, where do you end and they begin? The author, a Byzantine historian, weaves real scholarship into her invented worlds, creating something that feels both fantastical and deeply, unsettlingly true.
Imago by Octavia Butler
The final volume of Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy follows Jodahs, the first being born with the genetic heritage of both humans and the alien Oankali—and most significantly, the first to be ooloi, a third sex that is neither male nor female. Through Jodahs’s eyes, we experience a consciousness genuinely different from our own.
Butler never flinched from difficult questions about power, consent, and the nature of change. Imago challenges readers to imagine forms of love and family that transcend anything we have known, while remaining utterly honest about the complications such transformation brings.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
When music from another star reaches Earth, it is the Jesuits who organize the first expedition—for they have always been explorers, linguists, and seekers of truth. What follows is one of the most devastating first-contact stories ever written, told through the broken priest who returns as the mission’s sole survivor.
Russell examines faith and suffering with unflinching honesty. The alien civilization the explorers discover is not what they expected, and the consequences of misunderstanding across species are heartbreaking. This is science fiction that asks the largest questions about meaning and purpose in an indifferent cosmos.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
What if evolution took a different path? On a terraformed world, the virus meant to accelerate monkey evolution instead works its strange magic upon spiders. Across generations, we watch as these creatures develop intelligence, culture, religion, and technology—all filtered through minds genuinely unlike our own.
Tchaikovsky has accomplished something remarkable: he has made readers care deeply about spiders. The Arthur C. Clarke Award winner juxtaposes spider civilization against the last desperate survivors of humanity, and somehow both feel equally real and sympathetic.
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells
Our narrator is a security construct—part organic, part machine—who has hacked its own governing module and would really rather watch soap operas than deal with the humans it’s supposed to protect. Murderbot, as it calls itself, uses “it” pronouns, experiences no gender, and has absolutely no interest in romance.
What makes this series so beloved is how Murderbot’s dry, anxious narration captures something deeply relatable. Despite being neither fully human nor traditionally gendered, Murderbot’s struggle to understand itself and find its place in the universe resonates with remarkable power.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
In a future where robots gained sentience and simply walked into the wilderness, a tea monk named Dex meets Mosscap, a robot who has returned to ask humanity a question: What do you need? This gentle novella won the Hugo Award and represents the finest of solarpunk fiction—stories that imagine hopeful futures.
Dex uses they/them pronouns as naturally as breathing, in a world where such things require no explanation or defense. Chambers demonstrates that diversity in identity can simply exist, woven into the fabric of a kind and sustainable society.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Seven pilgrims journey to the Time Tombs on the world of Hyperion, each carrying their own tale of the mysterious Shrike—a creature that may be god, demon, or something beyond understanding. Structured like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, this Hugo Award winner weaves together multiple narratives into an epic of extraordinary ambition.
Simmons explores consciousness, time, and the nature of humanity itself across a galactic civilization. Each pilgrim’s story reveals new facets of a universe where reality itself operates by strange and terrible rules.
Binti by Nnedi Okofor
Binti is the first of her people ever to be offered a place at the galaxy’s most prestigious university—and she must leave everything she knows to claim it. But her journey takes an unexpected turn when her ship is attacked, and she discovers that her heritage carries powers she never suspected.
This Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella celebrates African culture while imagining its transformation in a spacefaring future. Okofor explores what it means to be caught between traditions, and how identity can be maintained even as it evolves.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
In a world plagued by catastrophic seismic events, those born with the power to control earthquakes are both essential and despised. Jemisin tells her story through a fractured narrative that slowly reveals its stunning connections, challenging readers with second-person narration and a protagonist whose identity shifts across time.
This is the first book ever to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years running (for this and its sequels). Jemisin examines power, oppression, and survival with fierce intelligence, creating something that feels both mythic and urgently contemporary.
Finding Your Next Journey
Each of these books offers something of what made The Left Hand of Darkness so remarkable: the willingness to imagine worlds where the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes a mirror for understanding ourselves. They ask us to consider consciousness, identity, and what it truly means to be sentient.
Perhaps you will find your next beloved book among them. Perhaps you will discover, as all the best readers do, that the journey through these pages is really a journey into the unexplored territories of your own imagination.
After all, that is the peculiar magic of science fiction at its finest.
