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🧲 Books like this

Cosmonaut Keep

Ken MacLeod · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Xenocide

Orson Scott Card · 562 pages

On Lusitania, Ender finds a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together. However, Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entir

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetSpace Opera
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We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Dennis E. Taylor · 322 pages

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetSpace Opera
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Caliban's War

James S.A. Corey · 608 pages

The second book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Caliban's War shows a solar system on the brink of war, and the only hope of peace rests on James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante's shoulders. Now a Prime Original series. We are not alone. On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetSpace Opera
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The Mote in God's Eye

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle · 560 pages

Science fiction classic about the rise, fall and subsequent rise of a civilization where the peak catastrophe is known as the "crazy eddy point". Introduces the concept of frictionless toilets that don't have any water in them but I suspect the authors didn't think it all the way through - I don't recall a negative air pressure that would keep odours in their rightfull place. Nevertheless a fascin

First ContactAlien PlanetSpace ColonizationSpace Opera
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City of Pearl

Karen Traviss · 392 pages

Three separate alien societies have claims on Cavanagh's Star. But the new arrivals -- the gethes from Earth -- now threaten the tenuous balance of a coveted world. Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland agreed to lead a mission to Cavanagh's Star, knowing that 150 years would elapse before she could finally return home. But her landing, with a small group of scientists and Marine

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetSpace Opera
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Old Man's War

John Scalzi · 319 pages

John Scalzi channels Robert Heinlein (including a wry sense of humor) in a novel about a future Earth engaged in an interstellar war against more advanced species. Citizens volunteer for the Colonial Defense Forces after retirement, in exchange for which they have their consciousness transferred into a young body, cloned from their DNA but enhanced. If, against the odds, they survive two years o

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetFirst ContactSpace Opera
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Hyperion

Dan Simmons · 481 pages

In the 29th century, the Hegemony of Man comprises hundreds of planets connected by farcaster portals. The Hegemony maintains an uneasy alliance with the TechnoCore, a civilisation of AIs. Modified humans known as Ousters live in space stations between stars and are engaged in conflict with the Hegemony. Numerous "Outback" planets have no farcasters and cannot be accessed without incurring sign

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetSpace OperaScience Fiction
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Ancillary Justice

Ann Leckie · 401 pages

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the *Justice of Toren*--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, a

Space ColonizationDual TimelineSpace OperaAlien Planet
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The Seeds of Earth

Michael Cobley · 641 pages

More than 150 years after an alien race destroyed Earth, the planet Darien hosts a thriving human settlement, but this settlement is soon to become the focus of an intergalactic power struggle that dates back to an apocalyptic battle fought between ancient races at the dawn of galactic civilization.

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetScience Fiction
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Ultima

Stephen Baxter · 538 pages

Hailed as “one of the most inventive writers that science fiction has ever produced" (SF Site), Stephen Baxter builds on the massive success of Proxima with a career-defining novel of big ideas.... On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered—hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has c

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetSpace Opera
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Hellhole Inferno

Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson · 552 pages

"After the events of Hellhole Awakening, the people of Hellhole and the shadow-Xayans scramble to rally against the threat from the still-living rogue Xayans. Back on Sonjeera, the Monarchy is in an uproar after their surprising defeat and the breakaway of the Deep Zone planets. The dowager Queen decides to go to Hellhole on a diplomatic mission, hoping to keep her power. But after touring Hellhol

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetFirst ContactSpace Opera
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The Blighted Stars

Megan E. O'Keefe · 491 pages

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A Deepness in the Sky

Vernor Vinge · 699 pages

The story of the Spiders, inhabitants of a planet where the sun regularly stops shining for periods of 200 years, during which they are frozen in ice. The novel picks them up emerging from their most recent hibernation in a frenzy of activity and innovation to make up for lost time. By the author of A Fire upon the Deep.

Alien PlanetFirst ContactSpace OperaDense Prose
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Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson · 640 pages

Red Mars is the first novel of the Mars trilogy, published in 1992. It follows the beginnings of the colonization of Mars, from the arrival of the First Hundred to the First Martian Revolution.

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetDense ProseScience Fiction
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The Fuzzy Papers

H. Beam Piper · 309 pages

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetFirst ContactScience Fiction
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Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions

Ursula K. Le Guin · 384 pages

The author's first three novels--City of Illusions, Rocannon's World, and Planet of Exile--are included in an omnibus edition, all set in the same universe as The Left Hand of Darkness, as her characters battle forces in society that seek to tear them apart.

Space ColonizationAlien PlanetFirst ContactSpace Opera
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Crossfire

Nancy Kress · 364 pages

"Crossfire is the story of a human colony settling on a distant planet, a colony formed by Jake Holman - a man trying to escape a dark past. But as this diverse group of thousands comes to terms with their new lives on a new world, they make a startling discovery; primitive humanoid aliens. There are only a few isolated villages, and the evidence seems to indicate the aliens aren't native to the p

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Foundation's Edge

Isaac Asimov · 426 pages

After the defeat of the Mule by the Second Foundation, Terminus enjoys a period of prosperity and stability which is publicly attributed to the Seldon Plan, but which some feel is the work of the Second Foundation. A search is begun to determine if the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile, the Second Foundation finds that there is evidence of an independent force acting against the Mule to

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Foreigner

C.J. Cherryh · 378 pages

The story of humans stranded on an alienplanet where registered assassination is a way of life. They are the descendants of a space ship which lost itsway 500 years earlier. They live on an island and theonly contact they are allowed with the mainland isthrough one human, the foreigner of the novel.

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Pandora's Star

Peter F. Hamilton · 988 pages

Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such sf giants as Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. But Hamilton's bestselling fiction--powered by a fearless imagination and world-class storytelling skills--has also earned him comparison to Tolstoy and Dickens. Hugely ambitious, wildly entertaining, philosophically stimulating: the novels of Peter F. Ha

Space ColonizationFirst ContactSpace OperaScience Fiction
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Marsbound

Joe Haldeman · 292 pages

A novel of the red planet from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of The Accidental Time Machine and Old Twentieth. Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime—they’re going to Mars. Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebe

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetScience Fiction
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The Mercy of Gods

James S. A. Corey · 366 pages

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Expanse comes a spectacular new space opera that sees humanity fighting for its survival in a war as old as the universe itself. ★ “Masterful . . . . This is space opera at its best.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The start of something truly epic." ― Fonda Lee, author of Jade City How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in th

First ContactAlien PlanetSpace OperaScience Fiction
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The Silver Ships

S.H. Jucha · 306 pages

First ContactSpace ColonizationSpace OperaScience Fiction
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Jem

Frederik Pohl · 313 pages

The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three (Food Bloc, Fuel Bloc & People Bloc) bitterly competing power blocs of the war torn & resource-starved 21st century. But when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its three intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries. Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making o

Space ColonizationFirst ContactAlien PlanetScience Fiction
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