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- A World Called Solitude
Stephen Goldinstandalone novel1981
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Birk Aaland is a refugee from Earth's tyrannical government. He finds himself stranded on an uncharted planet, which seems to be inhabited. His explorations reveal long-deserted cities perfectly maintained by the robot servants of their former inhabitants. Thus he becomes the marooned king of an isolated kingdom of machines. His life is a painfully lonely one and he spends eleven years without any human contact or companionship, tortured by memories of his former life on Earth and increasingly unable to imagine returning to it. Then his fitful peace is shattered when a spaceship crashes on his planet, and the sole survivor is a woman named Michi Nakamura. But she is not about to accept a fate in Birk's solitary world.
- Mockingbird
Walter Tevisstandalone novel1980
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WorldCat: In a future world where mankind is dying, humans wander through life in a drugged electronic bliss. Quick sex is the norm, and some people would rather commit suicide than live in hopelessness. Humanity's salvation rests with an android who has no desire to live, and a man and a woman who must discover love, hope, and dreams of a world reborn.
- The Chrysalids
John Wyndhamstandalone novel1955
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The Chrysalids is a science fiction novel by British writer John Wyndham, first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph. It is the least typical of Wyndham's major novels, but regarded by some as his best. An early manuscript version was entitled Time for a Change.
- Saint Leibowitz
series6 books1955
completed
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Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), assembled from three novellas he had published earlier in the decade, follows the monks of a Catholic monastery in the post-nuclear American Southwest as they preserve fragments of scientific knowledge across centuries, watching civilization slowly rebuild itself and edge back toward the mistakes that destroyed it. Miller's posthumous sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, completed by Terry Bisson from his notes after his death and published in 1997, returns to the same abbey and its world decades later. Together the two novels form a sparse, decades-spanning series about memory, faith, and the cycles of civilization.
- Tau Zero
Poul Andersonstandalone novel1970
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During an epic voyage to a planet 30 light years away, the engines of the starship the 'Leonora Christine' are damaged. Unable to slow down, it attains light speed (the tau zero of the title). The disparity between time for those on board and external time becomes impossibly great. Eons and galaxies hurtle by, as the crew speed helplessly into the great unknown.
- City
series19 books1944
completed
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City is Clifford D. Simak's fix-up novel, assembling eight linked stories originally published in Astounding Science Fiction during the 1940s and framed as legends dogs tell about a half-mythical creature called Man. It follows humanity's gradual abandonment of its cities and eventual departure from Earth, while the dogs left behind are surgically uplifted into a peaceable, speaking civilization of their own. The book won the International Fantasy Award in 1952.
- The Last Man
Mary Shelleystandalone novel1826
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The Last Man is an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, first published in 1826. The narrative concerns Europe in the late 21st century, ravaged by the rise of a bubonic plague pandemic that rapidly sweeps across the entire globe, ultimately resulting in the near-extinction of humanity. It also includes discussion of the British state as a republic, for which Shelley sat in meetings of the House of Commons to gain insight to the governmental system of the Romantic era. The novel includes many fictive allusions to her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, who drowned in a shipwreck four years before the book's publication, as well as their close friend Lord Byron, who had died two years previously.
- The Songs of Distant Earth
Arthur C. Clarkestandalone novel1986
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The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favourite. Prior to the publishing of the novel, Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologised in The Sentinel in 1983.
- Tower of Glass
Robert Silverbergstandalone novel1970
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Tower of Glass is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg, published in 1970. It was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1970, and for both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1971.
- The City and the Stars
Arthur C. Clarkestandalone novel1956
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The City and the Stars is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1956. This novel is a complete rewrite of Clarke's earlier Against the Fall of Night, his first novel, which had been published in Startling Stories magazine in 1948 after being rejected by the editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, according to the author.
- Hainish
series33 books1964
completed
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The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. The cycle is set in a future history that features civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"); these humans are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, as well as setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, the peaceful planet Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth, but they were instead the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain in the distant past, after which interstellar travel ceased for an extended period. Some of the human races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering; this includes people who can dream while awake, and a world of hermaphroditic people who only enter active sexuality once per month, not knowing which sex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's narrative approach, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore the anthropological and sociological outcomes of human evolution in those environments. The author often discounted the characterization of a so-called "Hainish Cycle".
- The Face of the Waters
Robert Silverbergstandalone novel1991
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On the ocean world of Hydros -- a planet with no land beyond a scatter of artificial floating islands -- the human settlers of Sorve commit an offense against the native aquatic Hydrans serious enough to get their community banished, forbidden from settling on any other island. With nowhere else to go, Sorve's people set out across the water in a makeshift flotilla, chasing rumors of a mythical island called the Face of the Waters that may or may not exist, forced to reckon with what they owe the world they've spent generations treating as theirs. A Robert Silverberg novel of exile and search, told through Sorve's displaced islanders.
- Shakespeare's Planet
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1976
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Woken after a thousand-year voyage meant to find humanity a new home, Carter Horton finds his ship stranded for good, tended by the disembodied minds of three volunteers who gave up their bodies to fly it. Outside waits a world already crowded with strangers: a robot named Nicodemus, and an alien called the Carnivore who claims to have known a human, once, called Shakespeare, and to have arrived here through a tunnel across time. As more travelers arrive through that same tunnel, Horton has to work out what kind of planet he has actually landed on. A standalone novel from Clifford D. Simak.
- The Long Tomorrow
Leigh Brackettstandalone novel1955
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The Long Tomorrow is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Leigh Brackett, originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc in 1955. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, it portrays a world where scientific knowledge is feared and restricted. It was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1956.
- Aurora
Kim Stanley Robinsonstandalone novel2015
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Aurora is a 2015 novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel concerns a generation ship built in the style of a Stanford torus, traveling to Tau Ceti to start a human colony. The novel's primary narrative voice is that of the starship's artificial intelligence. Aurora was well received by critics.
- Cycle of Fire
Hal Clementstandalone novel1957
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After his ship crashed on the inhospitable planet Abyorman, Nils Kruger had spent weeks wandering across the face of the planet.suffering from blistering heat, the searing cold of an alien climate. Now he had found a fellow wanderer, Dar, an alien castaway. They may both die. The human opts to do something about it. Dar, who knows the time of his death in advance, opts to do nothing. Which of them is right? Perhaps both
- Destiny's Road
Larry Nivenstandalone novel1997
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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.
- Destiny Doll
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1971
similar byscience fictionfar futurerobotssurvival
A group of space travelers is trapped on a planet that lured them to land. The story involves their adventures on the planet and the discovery of friendly aliens, robots, and not-so-friendly life forms. There is the alternate reality possibility toward the end of the story.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
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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.
- Remnant Population
Elizabeth Moonstandalone novel1996
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From the dust jacket front flap of the Baen first edition: Alone at last... People had always told Ofelia what to do; for once she was going to do what she wanted. She refused to get on the cryo ships, refused to leave the only world she could call home. And when they finally came for her, she hid, not that the authorities looked all that hard for one crazy old woman. Now Ofelia is alone, content to live with no more demands on her self or her time, the only remaining settler on an abandoned planet. The new settlers arrive. At first she fears that they have come to reoccupy the settlement she has come to think of as hers - but they land far away. And as Ofelia secretly listens, they are slaughtered to the last child by stone-age aliens no one knew were there. Now it will be up to Ofelia to save the aliens from Earth's wrath...
- Snake
series5 books1973
completed
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Vonda N. McIntyre's Dreamsnake (1978) follows Snake, an itinerant healer in a post-nuclear world who treats patients with venom from three genetically altered serpents, including an alien 'dreamsnake' that eases the dying. When her dreamsnake is killed early on, Snake sets out across a fractured, tribal far-future Earth to find a replacement. The novel grew out of McIntyre's 1973 novelette 'Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,' which became its opening section.
- Foundation Universe
universe123 books1940
Start hereFoundation · Start here
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There is a science that reads the future of quadrillions the way an astronomer reads the orbits of stars. It is called psychohistory, and its equations foresee something the ruling Galactic Empire cannot admit: the throne is rotting, and thirty thousand years of barbarism are coming. One man, Hari Seldon, cannot stop the fall. He can only shorten it — by seeding a Foundation of scholars at the rim of the galaxy, a fragile institution built to carry knowledge across the dark and cut the interregnum to a single millennium. This is a universe told in the register of history itself: the long view, the calm of deep time, empires measured in centuries and men measured against them. The spine is Asimov's original trilogy — Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation — followed decades later by the sequels Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth and the prequels Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. Late in life Asimov braided this in with his other future histories: the Robot novels of detective Elijah Baley and his humaniform partner R. Daneel Olivaw (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire) and the early Galactic Empire novels (Pebble in the Sky and its kin), until one continuous chronicle ran from the first thinking robots to the Second Empire. Other hands extend it — the Second Foundation Trilogy by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin, and shared-world spinoffs such as Robot City — so the corpus sprawls beyond a single author's tidy shelf. What distinguishes it is that the drama is intellectual: crises resolved by insight, nerve, and dialogue rather than fleets and blades, each turn hinging on the hidden logic of the Seldon Plan. Begin where readers have always begun — with Foundation, and the original trilogy in publication order. The rest opens outward from there.
- Berserker (Fred Saberhagen)
series59 books1963
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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.
