Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2020: Military Science Fiction
- Sara M.
- Wednesday, January 01, 2020
Collection
Fulfill the "Read a Science Fiction Book" prompt by choosing a book from your favorite subgenre or trying something new! Military sci fi can be about grunt shock troops, peacocking admirals in Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy, hard drinking engineers below decks - anything with a military focus in the future or a "what if" situation.
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2020 reading challenge. Find more lists here.
The Forge of God
Published in 2014
On July 26, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone. On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological records of Death Valley. A cinder cone was left off the map. Could it be new? Or, stranger yet, could it be artificial? The answer may be lying beside it-a dying Guest who brings devastating news for Edward and for Planet Earth. As more unexplained phenomena spring up around the globe-a granite mountain appearing in Australia, sounds emanating from the earth's core, flashes of light among the asteroids-it becomes clear to some that the end is approaching, and there is nothing we can do. In The Forge of God, award-winning author Greg Bear describes the final days of the world on both a massive, scientific scale and in the everyday, emotional context of individual human lives. Facing the destruction of all they know, some people turn to God, others to their families, and a few turn to saviors promising escape from a planet being torn apart. Will they make it in time? And who gets left behind to experience the last moments of beauty and chaos on earth? Nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1987 and for Hugo and Locus Awards in 1988, The Forge of God is an engrossing read, breathtaking in its scope and in its detail.
Ender's Game
Published in 2002
An expert at simulated war games, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth's complete destruction.
The Forever War
Published in 2009
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand, despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away.
Ancillary Justice
Published in 2013
Now isolated in a single frail human body, Breq, an artificial intelligence that used to control of a massive starship and its crew of soldiers, tries to adjust to her new humanity while seeking vengeance and answers to her questions.
A Talent for War
Published in 1989
Christopher Sim changed mankind's history forever when he forged a rag-tag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the alien Ashiyyur. But now, one man believes Sim was a fraud, and Alex must follow the legend into the heart of the alien galaxy to confront a truth far stranger than any fiction.
The Mote in God's Eye
Published in 1974
In 3016, the 2nd Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to faster-than-light Alderson Drive. Intelligent beings are finally found from the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud. The bottled-up ancient civilization, at least one million years old, are welcoming, kind, yet evasive, with a dark problem they have not solved in over a million years.
All You Need is Kill
Published in 2014
When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his fifth iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally -- the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death?
Old Man's War
Published in 2017
Enlisting in the army on his seventy-fifth birthday, John Perry joins an interstellar war between Earth and alien enemies who would stake claims on the few existing inhabitable planets, unaware that the conflict involves much more than he understands.