The Fantasy Review‘s list of 10 Modern Science Fiction Books That Will Blow You Away.
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells
From the blurb:
“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety….
The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1) by Liu Cixin
From the blurb:
Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
Children of Time (Children of Time, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
From the blurb:
Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age – a world terraformed and prepared for human life.…
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
From the blurb:
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.
No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.
Until now.…
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
From the blurb:
“Are you happy with your life?”
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” …
Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, #1) by Sylvain Neuvel
From the blurb:
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.…
Translation State by Ann Leckie
From the blurb:
Qven was created to be a Presger Translator. The pride of their clade, they always had a clear path before them: Learn human ways and, eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds.…
Blindsight (Firefall, #1) by Peter Watts
From the blurb:
Two months since the stars fell…
Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.…
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
From the blurb:
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment 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, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.…
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
From the blurb:
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.…
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar was so gimmicky and completely pointless and way too engrossed in its flowery words to care about delivering a story. And to include this garbage of a novel with the fantastic The Three-Body Problem and other great novels in this list is just blasphemy.