Genres & Moods

Hard Science Fiction

Scientifically grounded science fiction that leans on real physics, engineering, and big conceptual puzzles, ideal for readers who enjoy complex, idea heavy stories.

36 covered books

Cover of Absolution GapScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Absolution Gap

The Inhibitor Trilogy, Book 3

By Alastair Reynolds

While humanity searches for help against the Inhibitors, a religious movement follows moving cathedrals across the moon Hela and watches the gas giant Haldora for an impossible sign.

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Cover of Beyond the Aquila RiftScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Beyond the Aquila Rift

The Best of Alastair Reynolds

By Alastair Reynolds

This career-spanning collection brings together Reynolds's major novellas and stories, including Revelation Space histories, deep-time journeys, cosmic horror, machine minds, and intimate speculative tragedies.

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Cover of Blue Remembered EarthScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Blue Remembered Earth

Poseidon's Children, Book 1

By Alastair Reynolds

After matriarch Eunice Akinya dies, grandchildren Geoffrey and Sunday follow clues across a prosperous African-led solar system, uncovering a secret their powerful family wants contained.

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Cover of Century RainScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Century Rain

A Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

Future archaeologist Verity Auger enters a hidden version of 1959 Paris, where jazz musician and private investigator Wendell Floyd is pursuing a murder tied to realities neither fully understands.

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Cover of Chasm CityScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Chasm City

A Revelation Space Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

Security specialist Tanner Mirabel crosses interstellar space to hunt Argent Reivich through Chasm City, a former technological paradise deformed by plague and divided by extreme inequality.

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Children of Ruin

Children of Time, Book 2

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Humans and Portiid spiders investigate a lost terraforming mission where uplifted octopuses and an invasive alien intelligence have created a dangerous new problem of communication.

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Children of Strife

A Children of Time Novel

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Scientist Alis, mantis-shrimp captain Cato, and the AI Kern search a rediscovered terraforming outpost after the rest of their crew vanishes, exposing a refuge shaped by old vanity and new danger.

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Children of Time

Children of Time, Book 1

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Humanity's last ark approaches a terraformed world where uplifted spiders have built a civilization, forcing two evolutionary histories toward contact, conflict, and an uncertain shared future.

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Cover of ContactScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Contact

A Novel

By Carl Sagan

Radio astronomer Ellie Arroway helps identify a signal from Vega whose mathematical structure forces scientists, governments, and religious leaders to decide what evidence of another intelligence would demand from humanity.

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Cover of Deep NavigationScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Deep Navigation

A Collection

By Alastair Reynolds

This collection gathers early and previously scattered Reynolds stories, moving from Antarctic isolation and ecological games to alien rescue, deep-time revenge, and Revelation Space side tales.

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Cover of Elysium FireScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Elysium Fire

Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, Book 2

By Alastair Reynolds

When citizens across the Glitter Band begin dying as their neural implants fail, Tom Dreyfus and Panoply must trace the crisis through political unrest, manipulated memories, and a dangerous hidden agenda.

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Cover of EversionScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Eversion

A Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

Ship's doctor Silas Coade repeatedly joins expeditions toward an impossible alien structure, with each attempt unfolding in a different kind of vessel and making reality itself part of the mystery.

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Cover of Forever FreeScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Forever Free

The Forever War, Book 2

By Joe Haldeman

William Mandella, Marygay, and other veterans living apart from postwar humanity make a desperate plan to recover control of their future, only to face a mystery larger than the old conflict.

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Cover of Forever PeaceScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Forever Peace

A Standalone Companion Novel

By Joe Haldeman

Physicist and remote-combat operator Julian Class confronts the human cost of piloting soldierboy machines while a scientific project threatens consequences on a universal scale.

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Cover of Galactic NorthScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Galactic North

Stories from the Revelation Space Universe

By Alastair Reynolds

Eight stories span centuries of the Revelation Space universe, tracing Conjoiners, Demarchists, Ultras, medical horrors, alien artifacts, and the long transformation of humanity.

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Cover of House of SunsScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

House of Suns

A Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

Six million years in the future, clone shatterlings Campion and Purslane arrive late to a reunion and discover that nearly every member of Abigail Gentian's galactic line has been murdered.

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Cover of Inhibitor PhaseScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Inhibitor Phase

A Revelation Space Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

A hidden community survives under the threat of the Inhibitors until the arrival of a stranger forces its leader into a mission that may offer humanity one last chance against extinction.

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Cover of Machine VendettaScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Machine Vendetta

Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, Book 3

By Alastair Reynolds

The suspicious death of Prefect Ingvar Tench draws Tom Dreyfus into a case where Panoply's old enemies, machine intelligence, and the Glitter Band's fragile democracy collide.

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Cover of On the Steel BreezeScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

On the Steel Breeze

Poseidon's Children, Book 2

By Alastair Reynolds

Three versions of Chiku Akinya pursue different paths as generation ships approach Crucible, an artificial intelligence tightens its influence, and an alien structure waits on humanity's intended home.

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Cover of PermafrostScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Permafrost

A Novella

By Alastair Reynolds

In a climate-ravaged 2080, an aging teacher joins a desperate project that reaches into 2028 through the mind of a young woman, risking causality in an attempt to give humanity another future.

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Cover of Poseidon's WakeScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Poseidon's Wake

Poseidon's Children, Book 3

By Alastair Reynolds

A message from seventy light-years away calls for Ndege Akinya, sending her daughter Goma toward Crucible while human, machine, and elephant intelligences face an ancient invitation.

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Cover of Project Hail MaryScience Fiction · Thriller

Project Hail Mary

A Novel

By Andy Weir

Ryland Grace wakes far from Earth with no memory, then must solve a star-killing mystery, forge an unlikely friendship, and decide what a successful mission really means.

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Cover of Pushing IceScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Pushing Ice

A Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

When Saturn's moon Janus abruptly leaves orbit, the ice-mining ship Rockhopper begins a pursuit that strands its crew inside a first-contact mystery extending into the deep future.

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Cover of Redemption ArkScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Redemption Ark

The Inhibitor Trilogy, Book 2

By Alastair Reynolds

As the Inhibitors begin erasing human settlements, Conjoiner veteran Nevil Clavain defects to stop Skade from controlling weapons that may offer humanity its only chance to resist.

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Cover of Revelation SpaceScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Revelation Space

The Inhibitor Trilogy, Book 1

By Alastair Reynolds

Archaeologist Dan Sylveste investigates the extinction of the Amarantin while the damaged starship Nostalgia for Infinity and assassin Ana Khouri converge on him for very different reasons.

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Cover of ShroudScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Shroud

A Novel

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Scientists Juna and Mai are stranded on a lightless, high-gravity world whose alien life perceives reality in ways that make survival and first contact equally difficult.

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Cover of Slow BulletsScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Slow Bullets

A Novella

By Alastair Reynolds

Soldier Scur awakens aboard a damaged prison ship with former enemies, failing records, and no reliable path home, forcing survivors to decide what history their new society can preserve.

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Cover of Terminal WorldScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

Terminal World

A Novel

By Alastair Reynolds

Pathologist Quillon flees the vertical city of Spearpoint with an angel's secret, crossing zones where different technologies function and the world itself resists a single explanation.

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Cover of The Forever WarScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

The Forever War

The Forever War, Book 1

By Joe Haldeman

Conscript William Mandella fights an interstellar war against the Taurans, but relativistic travel means that every campaign carries him farther from the Earth and culture he remembers.

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Cover of The Iron TacticianScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

The Iron Tactician

A Merlin Novella

By Alastair Reynolds

The wandering spacefarer Merlin discovers a derelict swallowship and becomes entangled in an old strategic conflict where machines, memory, and survival make every apparent victory suspect.

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Cover of The Medusa ChroniclesScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

The Medusa Chronicles

With Stephen Baxter

By Alastair Reynolds

Augmented explorer Howard Falcon crosses centuries of expansion, artificial-intelligence conflict, and repeated returns to Jupiter in this continuation of Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting with Medusa.

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Cover of The Three-Body ProblemScience Fiction · Hard Science Fiction

The Three-Body Problem

Book 1 of the Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy

By Liu Cixin

The Three-Body Problem follows scientists, soldiers, and disillusioned idealists from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the present as a secret first contact with the unstable Trisolaran star system turns physics itself into a warning that an alien invasion is on the way.

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