Best Starter Science Fiction Books

Best Starter Science Fiction Books

Update: 2025-11-25
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Whether you like ripping page turners, incredible characters, books that make you laugh out loud, exploring unforgettable new worlds, or literary books that will make you see the world in a new way, there's a great intro to scifi out there for everyone!

If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for all the books we talked about: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:38 Incredible Characters - Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold 
  • 3:07 A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 
  • 4:04 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 
  • 4:52 Unforgettable Worlds - The Expanse by James S.A. Corey 
  • 6:58 Hyperion by Dan Simmons 
  • 8:24 House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds 
  • 9:20 Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky 
  • 10:56 The Forever War by Joe Haldeman 
  • 12:22 Funny SF - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 
  • 13:36 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson 
  • 14:50 Old Man's War by John Scalzi 
  • 16:01 Page turners - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 
  • 17:43 Dark Matter or Recursion by Blake Crouch 
  • 18:52 All Systems Red by Martha Wells 
  • 20:01 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 
  • 21:35 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 
  • 22:34 Literary SciFi - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin 
  • 24:55 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
  • 26:26 The Road by Cormac McCarthy 
  • 27:49 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 
  • 28:40 Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
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Best Starter Science Fiction Books

Best Starter Science Fiction Books

Cody Troyer, Brent Gaisford