Top 50 sci-fi books from over 400 I've read in 3 years on BookTube

this is a huge, imaginative space opera masterpiece that captures everything great about science fiction. It's got big ideas, incredible world-building, and convincing aliens, and children in peril, all balanced, importantly, with an epic sense of galactic scale that I think very few books achieve.

this is a fascinating exploration of language and identity set in a society where even saying I is forbidden.

in this book as a shared virtual dream world that blurs the line between reality and imagination, a theme to which Priest returns a number of times over his career. And those that stay too long in the dream world described in this book lose their grip on what is real and what is not.

this is a time travel story set, mainly anyway, during World War II that feels just incredibly immersive and detailed a reflection of the research that she put into it. And but it's emotionally powerful, too.

this is a bleak, oppressive blend of horror and science fiction that really got under my skin. Much of the population rises into the red sky one night with very few left behind, a sort of horrific rapture.

this is a huge and gritty alternate history that feels incredibly grounded with a very robust and extremely sweary female protagonist that completely carries the story and rewrites history as she goes.

And this is a sequel to Dogs of War and Bear Head, both of which are also excellent. You should read those, too.

in this book Earth has regressed to a post-technology society, but the heavily modified Martians come to the rescue and it goes horribly wrong right from the off.

this is a fascinating exploration of inequality through genetic modification. What if you didn't need any sleep?

this is a time travel story set, mainly anyway, during World War II that feels just incredibly immersive and detailed a reflection of the research that she put into it. And but it's emotionally powerful, too.

this is a deeply unsettling first contact novel that questions consciousness itself. And I thought it really stuck with me afterwards and has a band of very flawed and interesting characters to boot.

this is a dying Earth story filled with strange life and layered storytelling along with Tchaikovsky's trademark world building. And just by the way, the audio book, which is how I read this book, is really fabulous and I think very well worth reading this book with your ears and not your eyes.

one of the most impressive and convincing alien survival stories out there. It's a really fantastic alien ecosystem and I certainly cared about the characters, whether they were human or not.

This is a fascinating look at how a small society evolves in near darkness and shaped by myth, survival, and a very limited understanding of the world in which they now live.

And this is a sequel to Dogs of War and Bear Head, both of which are also excellent. You should read those, too.

And actually, you should also read Echopraxia which is a sort of loose sequel that I really enjoyed as well.

a truly original first contact story built around language. It's complex, ambitious, and actually unlike anything else that I've read.

this is a harsh, post-apocalyptic world with a strong female protagonist who spends most of the story searching for safety and maybe or maybe not finding it.

This is a beautifully melancholic coming-of-age story set on a strange world with 40-year winters and enigmatic alien life that may well play a bigger role than it first appears.

Hopeland is not a nation, it's a family, a found family, a chosen family. I was absolutely lost in this book. I loved everything about it.

this is a grand and operatic continuation of a space epic as book two of seven. And it expands on the scale of book one whilst I think also deepening something of its philosophical edge.

this is a haunting slow burn exploration of obsession and the unknown with a some added mummy issues.

this is a very different kind of Culture novel. It's quieter, much more character-focused, and slowly revealing what's really going on beneath the surface.

this is a powerful and unsettling time travel story confronting slavery in a direct and deeply human way. It's harrowing at times as you might expect, but also I think she did really well it giving a real a very real and human portrayal of the people that are enslaved.

And this is a haunting mosaic of a post-apocalyptic society shaped by ritual and dogma. It has some really compelling character work and I think with Roberts' trademark melancholy running through it.

in this book, an ancient evil escapes a black hole leaving a trail of bodies and blood behind it. And as a bonus extra, in the middle of this book, slightly randomly, there's a really entertaining section involving a man trying to take a walk on the molten core of a planet.

this is a rich sprawling planetary adventure full of imagination, mystery, and beautifully realized world building with Silverberg's trademark silky prose.

There are no easy fixes in this quietly melancholy book about obsession, loss, and grief all set against a compelling vision of a near future England greatly impacted by the ecological and economic impacts of climate change.

the cyberpunk classic that defined the genre, the urtext of cyberpunk in fact, dense, stylish, and still hugely influential even to this day.

This is a stylish and experimental, energetic even, space opera of the new wave packed with symbolism and mythic undertones and left me wanting more by ending on an unfinished sentence.

a powerful and unsettling journey through a collapsing America. And this is another book where things go south pretty quickly.

this is a near future thriller about branding, culture, and meaning in a hyperconnected world.

a beautifully constructed alternate history told in fragments building by the end a rich and atmospheric world as rebellion builds amongst the ordinary folk. I thought it was a very stoutly English story with a very evocative sense of place.

this is a story driven by grief, guilt, and hidden truth. And I thought a fascinating study of both mental illness and neural diversity.

in this book an elderly woman stays behind on an abandoned colony world and finds something rather unexpected. And the chief joy of this book, I think, was the very unusual and interesting protagonist that I think make it a really great first contact story.

this is a tale of triumph over adversity on a dark alien world explored in part through some genuinely non-human perspectives. And this is yet another exhibition for Adrian Tchaikovsky's world-building skills.

Ostensibly a space opera, but really a parable using twin supernovas to show the different ways that people cope with increasingly impending and at the same time far off disaster.

this is a character-driven space opera with a grounded emotional core set in a gritty solar system and with a very interesting and sweary female lead.

this is a deeply disturbing dystopia that forces you to confront some uncomfortable truths. We can no longer eat animal products, but fear not, we can eat another kind of flesh.

an absolute banger, simple in concept but executed extremely well, and it still feels really fresh and gripping. And actually this was the umpteenth reread for me, and I think that it still holds up extremely well.

this is a stark and brutal look at how quickly society can unravel in the face of disaster. In this case, a virus which affects all forms of grass, including a what are arable staple crops like rice and corn and wheat and so on.

A financial analyst working with MI6 wakes up one day with no memory after he's had some kind of breakdown. And he gets caught up in a subculture of people obsessed with something called The Essence, which is an unexplained force which can affect everyday objects and people alike.

a gripping time-loop story that blends big ideas with a very personal story. It's clever, tense, and constantly evolving.

a subtle and quietly unsettling novel about memory, perception, and invisibility. The kind of book that becomes more disturbing the more you think about it, and that closes with a real what the hell just happened here moment.

In this book, reality itself shifts via dreams in this philosophical and unsettling classic. A man is manipulated by his psychologist into dreaming a better future for us all with what often turns out to be disastrous results.

a dark layered story of rivalry and obsession that constantly shifts your understanding of what's actually happening.

a chillingly plausible vision of climate collapse and social divide set in what used to be Melbourne, Australia, and which employs a clever framing device, and not the last one of those that we'll see in this list.

of course, the goat of alien invasion stories and still, I think, incredibly effective. I think it's really stood the test of time, which do me well.

in this a brutal bioengineered future where corporate power and survival collide. Set in a much changed Bangkok, which I thought was a really great setting.

this is a brilliantly realized alternate wrapped in a noir detective story. The setting is fantastic, but it's Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning atmospheric prose that I found to be superb, and the character work that goes with it really elevates it to the heights.

this is a brilliantly strange novel where the deeper that you go, the more unsettling and fascinating it becomes. and has a real slow burn payoff I found towards the end.

that's one of Baxter's earliest novels, a big idea hard science fiction novel playing with time, causality, and cosmic scale.

this one is a brilliantly structured Culture novel that slowly reveals its emotional core and lands with some real impact with not one but two gut-punch twists that leave you reeling.

This is a recent book, a quietly unsettling near-future story dealing with climate change, rewilding, and what we choose to bring back. Ultimately, I thought a hopeful book demonstrating that real change most often comes at a community level.