More like Execution Hour
but
- Berserker (Fred Saberhagen)
series59 books1963
similar byspacefar futurescience fictionwartense+3 more
The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life.
- Company Wars
series7 books1981
part of Alliance-Union Universe
similar byspacefar futurescience fictiontense+2 more
Company Wars gathers the novels C. J. Cherryh set during the breakaway conflict between Earth's colonial Company and the newly independent Union, within her wider Alliance-Union future history. Anchored by the Hugo Award-winning Downbelow Station, the books follow different ships, stations, and crews caught on either side, from merchanter traders to military spacers, rather than a single continuing cast. Read in any order, they build up a picture of the political and economic pressure that reshapes Cherryh's larger Alliance-Union universe.
- Forever War
series10 books1972
similar byspacefar futurescience fictionmilitary science fiction+3 more
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War (1974) follows a soldier conscripted into a centuries-long interstellar war against the alien Taurans, using relativistic space travel so that months spent in transit correspond to years or decades passing back on Earth. Haldeman later returned to the same conflict in Forever Peace (1997), a thematically connected but separate story, and Forever Free (1999), a direct sequel set years after the original war's end. The first novel won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and is considered a foundational work of military science fiction.
- Dune Universe
universe78 books1963
Start hereDune · Start here
similar byfar futurescience fiction+2 more
Arrakis. Dune. The desert planet, where empire runs on a single substance: the spice melange, which folds space, prolongs life, and unlocks prescience, and which exists nowhere else in the known universe. Frank Herbert's saga is a meditation dressed as an adventure — feudal houses and a secret sisterhood, engineered messiahs and the patient ecology of a world without water, all turning on the terrible gravity of who commands the spice. It reads like scripture and schemes like a war room, ten thousand years hence, among people who have outlawed the thinking machine and made instruments of themselves instead. At its heart stand Herbert's original six — Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune — a single deepening arc across millennia, arguing the whole way between prophecy and free will. Around that spine his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have raised a vast prequel architecture: Prelude to Dune, tracing the great houses a generation before Paul; Legends of Dune, reaching back to the crusade that broke the machines; the Schools of Dune cycle on the founding of Bene Gesserit, Mentat, and Navigator; the Caladan Trilogy and Heroes of Dune filling years the originals left in shadow. Many hands, dozens of volumes, one desert. What sets Dune apart is its refusal of the simple: religion is manufactured, heroes are hazards, and the sand itself — worm, water, ecology — acts as a political power. Begin where the universe did, with Frank Herbert's Dune (1965), and read the original six in order; you need nothing else to feel the full weight. The prequels are a country to explore afterward, taken by era. Beginnings are delicate times.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
similar byfar futurescience fiction+2 more
Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles opens with 1965's Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis where House Atreides takes control of the only source of the vital spice melange and young Paul Atreides is pulled into a struggle over its politics and religion. Herbert carried the story forward across five further novels — Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune — following Paul's line over the following millennia, before Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson later extended the saga. Many other editions of these six novels are omnibus and box-set repackagings rather than separate stories.
- War Dogs
series3 books2014
completed
similar byspacescience fictionmilitary science fiction+4 more
Greg Bear's trilogy opens with humanity fighting an entrenched, technologically superior alien presence across the Solar System, following a soldier drafted into a war whose true stakes he only gradually understands. War Dogs (later reissued as War Dogs: Ares Rising) was followed by Killing Titan and Take Back the Sky as the scope of the alien threat, and the deceptions surrounding it, widens.
- Bio of a Space Tyrant
series6 books1983
similar bydarkspacefar futurescience fiction+1 more
Bio of a Space Tyrant series is a six-book science-fiction series by Piers Anthony based within the Solar System. The series revolves around the character Hope Hubris and his family, and charts Hope's ascent from poor Hispanic refugee to Tyrant of Jupiter, a single person heading the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of the government. It is considerably more adult-themed than many of Anthony's earlier works.
- Providence
Max Barrystandalone novel2020
similar bysurvivalspacefar futurescience fictionmilitary science fictionwartense+1 more
Providence is the sixth novel by Australian science fiction author Max Barry. It was published in March 2020 by Putnam.
- Ocean / Galactic Center
series12 books1972
similar byfar futurescience fiction+5 more
The Galactic Center Saga is a series of books by author Gregory Benford detailing a galactic war between mechanical and biological life.In the Ocean of Night (1977) — 1977 Nebula Award nominee, 1978 Locus Award nominee Across the Sea of Suns (1984) Great Sky River (1987) — 1988 Nebula Nominee Tides of Light (1989) — 1990 Locus Award nominee Furious Gulf (1994) Sailing Bright Eternity (1996) "A Hunger for the Infinite" a novella published in the anthology Far Horizons
- Forge of God
series2 books1987
completed
similar bysurvivaldarkscience fictiontense+2 more
The Forge of God (1987) is Greg Bear's science fiction novel about Earth's discovery that it is the target of an incomprehensible, overwhelming alien attack, following scientists and ordinary people as they try to understand what is destroying the planet. Its 1992 sequel, Anvil of Stars, follows a group of young survivors sent on a mission of interstellar retaliation, continuing directly from the first book's ending.
- Xan-Sskarn War
series1 book2010
similar bydarkspacefar futurescience fictionmilitary science fictionwartense+1 more
- Ender Wiggin
series14 books1977
part of Ender's Game Universe
similar byfar futurescience fiction+2 more
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1985, expanded from his 1977 novella) follows child prodigy Andrew "Ender" Wiggin as he is recruited into a military training program built to prepare Earth's defenses for an anticipated third war against an insectoid alien species known as the Formics. The saga continues years later through Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, following an older Ender as he confronts the moral weight of his role in that earlier conflict, and concludes the core arc in Children of the Mind, with Ender in Exile filling in the years between the first two books. Set within the wider Ender's Game universe, the series shifts from military coming-of-age story to slower, more philosophical science fiction as it progresses.
- The Stars My Destination
Alfred Besterstandalone novel1956
similar bysurvivaldarkspacefar futurescience fiction
When a passing spaceship refuses to rescue the lone survivor from the drifting wreck of another ship, he dedicates his life to discovering who made that decision and exacting his revenge, in the process altering human history and his own character.
- The Light Brigade
Kameron Hurleystandalone novel2019
similar bydarkfar futurescience fictionmilitary science fictionwar+2 more
The Light Brigade is a 2019 science fiction novel by Kameron Hurley, in which brutal descriptions of war and economic exploitation in a dystopian future are used to provide strongly critical commentary on the nature of warfare and capitalism. It was nominated for both Hugo and Locus awards for 2020.
- Cowl
Neal Asherstandalone novel2004
similar bysurvivaldarkfar futurescience fictiontense+2 more
In the far future, the Heliothane Dominion is triumphant in the solar system, after a bitter war with their Umbrathane progenitors. But some of the Umbrathane have escaped into the distant past, where they can position themselves to wreak havoc across time and undo their defeat. The most fanatical of them is the superhuman Cowl, more monstrous than any of the creatures outside his prehistoric redoubt. Cowl sends his terrifying hyperdimensional pet, the torbeast, hunting through all the timelines for human specimens. It sheds its scales - each one an organic time machine - where its master orders. Anyone who picks one up is dragged back to the dawn of time, where Cowl awaits. Then the beast can feed, growing ever larger... In our own near-future, Tack is one of U-gov’s programmable killers. When a scale latches onto him, his doom seems inevitable, but the Heliothane have other ideas: they can use Tack against Cowl. Tack is no stranger to violence, but the Heliothane, hardened in their struggle for humanity’s very existence, have much to teach him. He will need it all for his encounter with Cowl.Once one of Tack’s targets, Polly escaped with her life when a torbeast scale snatched her. Now, like Tack, she must learn fast as she is dragged back to Day Zero. To cheat death again, she will have to help him save the human race.
- Heritage of Flight
Susan Shwartzstandalone novel1989
similar bysurvivaldarkspacefar futurescience fictionmilitary science fictionwartense
From the back cover of the Tor first edition: "Pauli Yeager knew how to survive in deep space; as senior fighter pilot for the battleship Amherst she had logged years of combat experience. But she knew she wasn't prepared for the new command. Project Seedcorn was the last hope of an ambitious race. Humanity was embroiled in a planet-slagging war that promised a fast and final death. The small group of refugees hidden on the fringe of human-occupied space was ordered to live and be human. THe initial survey had shown no life on Cynthia, but there was life, intelligent life... huge graceful creatures with iridescent wings. They filled the sky with splendor and covered the ground with a legacy of horror. The simple command, live and be human, became an epitaph. Survival depended on the children - human and Cynthian - and Paul had to convince her people to commit a heinous crime or watch their children die..."
- The Hunger Games Universe
universe5 books2008
Start hereThe Hunger Games · Start here
similar bysurvivaldarkfar futurescience fictiontense+1 more
Panem, they call it now — a nation raised on the drowned bones of North America, a glittering Capitol ringed by twelve districts it once starved into obedience. Every year the Capitol collects its debt in children: two tributes from each district, drawn by lottery, dropped into an engineered arena, and made to kill one another on live television while the whole country is required to watch. This is the Hunger Games — entertainment, punishment, and government at once. Suzanne Collins tells it in a compact, unified body of work. The founding trilogy — The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay — follows Katniss Everdeen, a girl from the coal-mining District 12 who volunteers in her sister's place and becomes something the Capitol never scripted. Two prequels reach back into the same machinery: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes traces a young Coriolanus Snow long before he is President, and Sunrise on the Reaping returns to District 12 a generation ahead of Katniss. Begin with the trilogy, in order — it is Katniss's voice, close and present-tense, that makes Panem breathe, and the prequels land hardest once you know how her story ends. Beneath the spectacle sits one steady, uncomfortable question: who profits when we agree to look away.
- The Hunger Games
series3 books2008
part of The Hunger Games Universe
similar bysurvivaldarkfar futurescience fictiontense+1 more
The Hunger Games is a series of young adult dystopian novels written by American author Suzanne Collins. The series consists of a trilogy that follows teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as two prequels. The Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in Panem, a post-apocalyptic North American country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and 12 districts in varying states of poverty. As punishment for rebellion, the Capitol hosts an annual battle royale competition called The Hunger Games. Each of the 12 districts must send two children between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate, and the last surviving child is dubbed the victor.
- Nicholas Seafort
series7 books1994
completed
similar byspacefar futurescience fictionmilitary science fictionwartense+1 more
The Seafort Saga is a series of science fiction novels written by American author David Feintuch. The novels are set from the late 22nd century to the mid-23rd century and relate the adventures of Nicholas Seafort, an officer in the (fictional) UNNS| United Nations Naval Service. The series is a collection of personal accounts, usually from the perspective of Nicholas Seafort, describing Seafort's adventures, beginning as a lowly midshipman, to the elected leader of earth, and finally to the captain of the UNNS flagship Olympiad. Although most books in the series are told from a single perspective, usually Seafort's, Voices of Hope is a collection of accounts from several sources: Seafort's son, PT, the son of a friend of Seafort's, and a transient boy named Pook. Additionally, Children of Hope is narrated by Randy Carr, the son of a close friend of Seafort.
- Flood
series6 books2008
similar bysurvivalscience fiction+3 more
In Stephen Baxter's Flood, sudden seismic upheaval releases immense reservoirs of water trapped deep beneath Earth's crust, and sea levels begin climbing far faster than anyone can adapt to, forcing a handful of survivors to watch coastlines and then continents disappear. The 2009 sequel, Ark, follows a parallel thread of people who instead gamble everything on a desperate escape from the drowning planet. Together the two books trace roughly a half-century of civilizational collapse and reinvention as dry land runs out.
