Series

Books like Backworlds: 9 series to read next

Backworlds is science fiction and space opera, set in far future and space. The 9 series below are ranked by how much of that they share — each card says which parts.

Backworlds is 8 books, 2013–2021.

The Backworlds page →Narrow this list →

Uplift
Cities in Flight
Known Space
Heaven Chronicles / Zones of Thought
Humanx Commonwealth
Ender's Game
Heechee
Alliance-Union
The Lost Fleet

UpliftUniverse

universe13 books1980

About uplift and aliens.

“No species, the Galactics insist, ever climbs to sapience alone.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

Cities in FlightSeries

seriesJames Blish10 books1950

Science fiction and space opera, about space colonization, set in far future and space.

“The stories cover roughly two thousand years, from the very near future to the end of the universe.”
from the catalogue description
Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0

Start with They Shall Have Stars →

Known SpaceUniverse

universe142 books1964

About aliens.

“Give a clever species a few centuries and a working fusion drive, and it will fill the sky with problems.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

Heaven Chronicles / Zones of ThoughtSeries

seriesJoan D. Vinge & Vernor Vinge8 books1976

Science fiction and space opera, set in far future and space.

Reading order →

Humanx CommonwealthUniverse

universe39 books1972

About aliens.

“Two species that ought, by every buried instinct, to recoil from one another instead clasp hand to truhand and build a galaxy together.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

Ender's GameUniverse

universe39 books1977

Science fiction, set in far future.

“To beat your enemy you must first understand him so completely that you love him — and in the instant you love him, you destroy him.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

HeecheeSeries

seriesFrederik Pohl19 books1972

About aliens.

“The Heechee are an advanced alien race that visited the Solar System hundreds of millennia ago and then mysteriously disappeared.”
from the catalogue description
Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0

Start with Gateway →

Alliance-UnionUniverse

universe173 books1976

Science fiction, set in far future.

“Around that spine cluster the merchanter novels of trader Families, the Faded Sun trilogy of human envoys among the martial alien Mri, and the Chanur books, narrated from the hierarchical, whiskered viewpoint of the hani.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

The Lost FleetUniverse

universe27 books2006

Military science fiction.

“A war a hundred years old has forgotten how to fight it.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

Why these

No sales rank, no star ratings, no readers also bought.

Shared terms are not a promise that a book feels the same. Two series can be far-future political intrigue and read nothing alike — what the ranking can say is what they are about, and each card says which parts it shares.

Questions readers ask

What should I read after Backworlds?: Uplift — the closest match to Backworlds on what it is about, not on what sells.
Where do I start with Backworlds?: The Backworlds. It is the entry the catalogue recommends for Backworlds.
How big is Backworlds?: Backworlds is 8 books, 2013–2021.

Books like Backworlds: 9 series to read next

Read next in Backworlds

Why these

Questions readers ask

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