More like Midnight Robber
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- Citizen of the Galaxy
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1957
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fictioncoming of age
On a planet far distant from Earth, a lame beggar buys a young boy slave who has forgotten his origins. The beggar is more than he seems, and gives the boy an extensive education while employing him as an observer of activity in their city. Years later, the beggar is captured by the government, and the youth must escape the planet.
- Tunnel in the Sky
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1955
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fictioncoming of age
As the final test of a survivalist/explorer class, teenagers are dumped on an alien planet to use their skills while awaiting pickup. But something has gone wrong, and they find they are on their own.
- The Stars My Destination
Alfred Besterstandalone novel1956
similar byfar futureadventurousdarkother star systemsscience 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.
- Starman Jones
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1953
similar byfar futureadventurousother star systemsscience fictioncoming of age
Starman Jones, a 1953 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, features a farm boy who wants to go to the stars. Charles Scribner's Sons published the book as part of the Heinlein juveniles series.
- Starship Troopers
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1959
similar byfar futureadventurousother star systemscoming of agescience fiction
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on November 5, 1959.
- Destiny's Road
Larry Nivenstandalone novel1997
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fictionspace colonization+2 more
Destiny's Road is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1998. It follows Jemmy Bloocher's exploration of Destiny's Road, a long scar of once-melted rock seared onto the planet's surface by a spaceship's fusion drive. Jemmy is descended from the original Destiny colonists, who were stranded when their landing craft deserted them.
- Ringworld
series5 books1970
part of Known Space
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fiction
The Ringworld series is a series of science fiction novels written by American author Larry Niven. It is part of his Known Space series of stories. Its backdrop is the Ringworld, a giant artifact 3 million times the surface area of Earth circling a star. The series is composed of four standalone science fiction novels, the original award-winning book and its three sequels:1970: Ringworld 1979: The Ringworld Engineers 1996: The Ringworld Throne 2004: Ringworld's Children
- West of the Sun
Edgar Pangbornstandalone novel1953
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fictionspace colonization+1 more
From the back cover of the Dell first paperback printing: "After eleven years in space the Argo landed... West of the Sun ... on the dangerous planet Lucifer. The crew faced and untamed world of huge carnivorous birds with wolverine heads and flashing black teeth; furred, ten-foot tall men; red-skinned man-eating pygmies. They fought for mere survival but - their duty was to colonize and populate the planet - four men and only two women."
- Old Man's War
series16 books2005
similar byfar futureother star systemsadventurousscience fiction+1 more
The Old Man's War series is a series of science fiction novels by John Scalzi. The first book in the series, Old Man's War, was first published in 2005 by Tor Books, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006. In 2026 it was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series.
- Catteni Sequence
series5 books1970
completed
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fiction+1 more
The Catteni series is a tetralogy of science fiction novels by American writer Anne McCaffrey. In this universe, humans are slaves of aliens, the humanoid Catteni. Woven through all four of the books are details of the relationship between Kristin Bjornsen, a former slave, and Zainal, a renegade Catteni.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
similar byfar futureother star systemsscience fiction+1 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.
- Creatures of Light and Darkness
Roger Zelaznystandalone novel1969
similar byfar futuredarkother star systemsscience fictionscience fantasy
Creatures of Light and Darkness is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Roger Zelazny. Long out of print, it was reissued in April 2010. The novel is set in the far future, with humans on many worlds. Some humans have god-like powers or perhaps are actually gods—the names and aspects of various Egyptian gods are used. Elements of horror and technology are mixed, and the novel shares elements with cyberpunk.
- Red Planet
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1949
similar byfar futureadventurousscience fictioncoming of agespace colonization
A boy colonist on Mars takes his bouncing ball Martian pet with him to boarding school, but the new Headmaster is a controlling tyrant. Things get worse when he discovers a plot that will jeopardize all of the colonists.
- Imperial Galaxy
series2 books2012
similar byfar futureadventurousother star systemsscience fictioncoming of age
Prince Khemri has spent his life as one of ten thousand princes bred and trained by a sprawling galactic empire, expecting eventual rule -- until he learns just how disposable princes actually are, and how routinely they're assassinated by their own siblings. Garth Nix's A Confusion of Princes follows Khemri through the empire's ruthless military, its secret intelligence service, and a deadly, decades-long competition to determine who might one day take the throne. It's a single, self-contained space opera rather than an ongoing series.
- The Algebraist
Iain M. Banksstandalone novel2004
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fiction+1 more
The Algebraist is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, published in print in 2004. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005.
- Heorot
series4 books1987
similar byother star systemsfar futurescience fictionspace colonization+1 more
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes's The Legacy of Heorot strands human colonists on an idyllic-seeming alien world where they discover apex predators -- grendels -- hidden beneath the surface, forcing them to fight for survival. Beowulf's Children continues the colony a generation later as the children born on the planet clash with their parents over how to live alongside the grendels, and a fourth book, Starborn and Godsons, returns to the settlement decades further on. It's hard-SF creature-horror crossed with generational colony drama.
- Revolt on Alpha C
Robert Silverbergstandalone novel1955
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Revolt on Alpha C is a juvenile science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg, published by Crowell in 1955. It was Silverberg's first published book.
- Pip & Flinx
series18 books1972
part of Humanx Commonwealth
similar byfar futureother star systemsadventurousscience fiction
The Pip & Flinx novels follow Flinx, a young man with an unusual, mysterious origin, and his ever-present animal companion Pip, across Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth setting. Beginning with The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972) — chronologically the second entry, since Foster later filled in Flinx's earlier life — the series grew to fifteen novels published between 1972 and 2017, mixing planetary adventure with a slowly unfolding personal mystery.
- Spatterjay
series3 books2002
part of Polity
similar byfar futureother star systemsdarkscience fiction+1 more
Spatterjay is set on the ocean world of the same name within Neal Asher's Polity future history: a planet whose ecology is uniquely dangerous, drawing soldiers, monsters, and old enemies of the Polity into its waters across the trilogy's three books (The Skinner, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Orbus). It continues Asher's interest in body horror and extreme biology set against a backdrop of AI-run human space.
- Space Winners
Gordon R. Dicksonstandalone novel1965
similar byother star systemsfar futureadventurousscience fictioncoming of age
They were humanity's hope - the first young people selected to leave Earth for study in the Galactic Federation. But something went wrong in deep space. Terribly wrong. Suddenly Jim Rawlins, Ellen Bouvier, Curt Harrington, and the squirrel-like Alien philosopher Peep were castaways, stranded on the Quarantined World of Quebahr - with no training, and little hope of rescue. Between them and the Federation's emergency beacon were primitive Mauregs, aggressive Walats, lizard-like Noifs - plus danger, conspiracy, and the mystery of an impending high-tech war on a backward, peaceful planet. Without warning, the future of two worlds - Earth and Quebahr - depended on three young humans' ability to adopt and survive.
- Dune Universe
universe78 books1963
Start hereDune · Start here
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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.
- Tower and the Hive
series7 books1959
completed
part of The Talents
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The Tower and the Hive series opens with The Rowan (1990), following an isolated but powerful telepath who is drawn out of her loneliness by a psychic call for help from a distant Talent facing an alien threat. Anne McCaffrey continued the story across four more novels, Damia, Damia's Children, Lyon's Pride, and the concluding The Tower and the Hive (1999), following later generations of a telepathic family staffing the Prime Towers that give a starfaring human civilization instant communication. The series is set later in the same Talents universe as McCaffrey's earlier Pegasus books.
- Uplift Universe
universe13 books1980
Start hereUplift · Start here
similar byfar futureother star systemsadventurousscience fiction
No species, the Galactics insist, ever climbs to sapience alone. For a billion years the elder races have "uplifted" their chosen clients — reshaping some promising animal, gene by patient gene, into a thinking being, then binding it through long ages of indenture. Patron lifts client; client one day becomes patron; and every lineage traces back through the vast Galactic Library to the vanished Progenitors who began it all. Then a ragged band of primates arrives at the stars with no patron to claim them — wolflings, self-made, an affront to a hundred thousand years of law — and worse, these humans have already started uplifting neighbors of their own: the neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees of Earthclan. David Brin builds this galaxy across two trilogies. The first — Sundiver, the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Startide Rising, and the Hugo-winning The Uplift War — sends an expedition into the Sun, then follows the dolphin-crewed survey ship Streaker as it flees a discovery that sets fanatical star-clans at war, and a chimp-led resistance on an invaded colony world. The second sequence, Uplift Storm — Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, Heaven's Reach — descends to Jijo, a forbidden world where six fallen races hide as illegal settlers, and draws every loose thread toward a reckoning. Short fiction fills the margins. This is space opera with an ecologist's conscience: teeming with invented biologies, wry cross-species banter, and real unease about what we owe the minds we make. Begin with Startide Rising — the saga's beating heart, and readable on its own — or take Sundiver first and read straight through in publication order.
- Deathworld
series4 books1960
completed
similar byfar futureother star systemsadventurousscience fictionspace colonization
Deathworld is the name of a series of science fiction novels by American writer Harry Harrison, including the books Deathworld, Deathworld 2 and Deathworld 3, plus the short story "The Mothballed Spaceship". The central hero is a gambler who becomes involved with colonists of an extremely hostile planet.
