Cosmic Greatness: 21 of the Best Award-Winning Sci-Fi Books

This rock-and-roll-cyberpunk novel hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention. In a near-future England, a rock star befriends a guitarist and a techno-wizard against a backdrop of corruption and music festivals. But as this book and series roll along, something like a science fiction Arthurian retelling comes to life.

Yuri Terisov is wasting away in the brig of a pirate ship that he used to command. After aliens destroyed his home colony when he was 4, he was living in a refugee camp until a pirate came and took him away. But now he’s in the brig, at least until a military black ops agent offers him a way out. There are strings attached, of course. Dangerous strings.

N.K. Jemisin is well-known for her Broken Earth trilogy, but that’s fantasy. These are the best award-winning sci-fi books. In The City We Became, New York City is a living life form with six children: the city and its five boroughs. In Brooklyn, a politician can hear the song this great city sings. In Manhattan, a student steps off a train and remembers nothing about himself, but he can feel the pulse of the city. Characters and city combine for a cool exploration.

Time travel and both of the major science fiction awards? This classic has it all. Kivrin is a 21st-century student studying a 14th-century plague. Oh, and she uses time travel to do it. But things go wrong, however, forcing Kivrin’s fellows to launch a rescue attempt. Now Kivrin’s vow to not change the past is conflicting with her ability to save it.

Sometimes award-winning sci-fi books can be based on classics like this. Canterbury Tales…in space. That’s the setup magnificently executed in this novel. Seven pilgrims are journeying to Hyperion on the eve of the end of everything. On Hyperion live the Shrike, creatures that are worshipped and feared. These pilgrims have their tales, their secrets, and one may change the course of human history.

Living on the moon is hard. Taking over a massive company and building it into an empire on the moon? Even harder. But Adriana Corta did it. Now, as her life nears its end, her five children must fight to keep that company going. They’ll have to fight outsiders and each other. Should be fun.

Looking for oppressive aliens and anti-utopian themes? Look no further. Charley wants to be the fastest runner in the world, just like his father. But Charley doesn’t run at track and field meets. He’s a mount for the Hoot, an alien invader. If he ever wants his freedom, he’ll need to find the other free humans and understand what that even means.

It’s hard to overstate just how good Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series is. So when she released the fourth book, which also happened to be the first novel-length book in the series, of course it grabbed both of the big awards. Murderbot is a robot with an A.I. that, well, just wants to kill people. But their human associates are just always so needy, even when Murderbot just wants to sit at home and watch TV.

Namwali Serpell took the world by storm with her debut novel. Beginning in 1904, a feud breaks out between three Zambian families, and thus begins this tale of retribution that spans generations, out of the past and all the way into the future. Romance, history, fairytale, and science fiction all blend together in this one.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a book I recommend often, though this sequel was the one to win a Nebula Award. Having survived the destruction of her home and founded a new religion, Lauren has established a peaceful community. But when an ultra-conservative president takes power, his followers see Lauren’s people as a target.

This highly imaginative, hard sci-fi adventure set the genre world on fire in 1971 and still holds up today. Louis Wu is given a job to visit Ringworld, an artificially constructed ring the diameter of Earth’s orbit. Along with a couple of aliens and a woman named Teela, they soon crash land on the ring and start unraveling its mysteries as they desperately try to find a way off of it.

This incredible novel blends fantasy, science fiction, and astute observations of social issues into a novel that should have won even more awards. Ezili has the powers of an Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love. Now she’s traveling time and space to inhabit other women, struggling against a man’s world and unaware of this holy presence.

Idris was created during the war after Earth was destroyed. Strong, fast, not needing sleep, and able to communicate telepathically with each other and the enemy: the Architects. But when the Architects vanished, people like Idris became obsolete. But something strange has appeared in space, obviously made by the Architects. Now Idris and his crew will have to find answers.

Here’s another one from the way-back machine that wasn’t just part of the pantheon of award-winning sci-fi books, but part of a sexual revolution. Valentine Michael Smith is a human raised on Mars by Martians. His homecoming is a heralded event. When he starts to display powers no other human has and espouses a radical philosophy, the world will never be the same.

This book, which begins a series, has captured sci-fi imaginations since it came out, and it’s soon coming to Netflix. In the midst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, an experiment sends a message to space. An alien species facing their own destruction receives it and plans to invade Earth. Now, as the invaders close in, humanity is crumbling into even more factions.

It’s a rare thing for a science fiction novel to also be historical, and this novel did it with aplomb. Imagine that the Underground Railroad during the American Civil War was a LITERAL underground railroad. That’s what this novel does. The genre is speculative. The human drama and tragedy of slavery are very real.