A moving meditation on revolution, knowledge, and human longevity 

On Mars, experienced archaeologist Hjalmar Nederland is excavating the ruins of a domed city destroyed hundreds of years earlier. Nederland knows that he is digging up his own birthplace - he is 310 years old. It is only the written record that tells him about his origins in New Houston, however. While biotechnology allows humans to live over 600 years, their memories can cover only a fraction of that time. Knowledge, then, is a site of struggle - because he who controls the past, controls the future.

Originally published in 1984, Icehenge is an early book by the American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. Rather than a true novel, it is a set of three linked novellas - two of which had been published previously. While these stories are a clear precursor to Robinson's better known Mars trilogy (1993 - 1996), they have a unique power of their own. With settings that range across our solar system, Icehenge is a thought provoking exploration of the struggle for revolution, the uses and abuses of knowledge, and the personal and social effects of extreme human longevity.

The classic which helped to define hard science fiction

In the November 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the critic P. Schuyler Miller used the term “hard science fiction” in print for the first time. He had coined a term to describe SF that aspires to scientific rigour and plausibility, a term still in common use in SF circles today. But scientifically rigorous SF was not new, and one of the definitive novels in this style had been published years earlier: Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity (1954). 

Set on one of the most famously strange worlds in science fiction, this 1950s classic is about cooperation between humans and aliens in a uniquely hostile environment.

In which life, the universe, and everything are just a game

Cheyne Scarne is a complicated man. He is a professional gambler, who plies his trade in the many casinos and saloons of the solar system and beyond. He is also a professor of randomatics, a new science of chance and probability. Unfortunately, he has another vocation: he is an unwilling spy for the state.

The Grand Wheel is the eighth novel by the underrated British SF writer Barrington J. Bayley. It is another of the author's space operas with a difference - this time, the themes are gambling and probability. Cheyne Scarne is caught between multiple factions in a civilisation on the brink of disaster - all of them increasingly aware of a dizzying realm of mathematics that undergirds reality.

A controversial psychological SF novel of crime and rehabilitation 

Paul Macy is a brand-new man. Walking down the street in a future New York, he knows that he is a kind of fiction - a personality construct designed to put a perfectly good body back into circulation. The future looks bright - until a chance encounter with a telepath allows the previous owner of his body to resurface. Nathaniel Hamlin was supposed to be destroyed, but the brilliant artist and serial rapist still exists and wants his body back.

Originally published as a two-part serial in 1971, The Second Trip is a hard-edged psychological SF novel by prolific author Robert Silverberg. Its intense depictions of misogyny and sexual violence generated intense discussion at the time, and retain their power to shock. A less discussed work of the most notable phase of Silverberg's career, The Second Trip incorporates elements from both the UK and US conceptions of the science fiction New Wave.

A unique and moving feminist post-apocalyptic tale

Generations after a catastrophic nuclear exchange, society has reorganised along simpler, sparser lines. Small communities eke out a basic existence, towns make do with basic industries, and the only known city jealously guards its advanced technology. A clan of wandering healers provide medical aid with their unusual snakes - some a product of human bioengineering, others of alien origin. When one healer loses her alien “dreamsnake” due to the fear and superstition of her patient’s family, she sets out in a desperate bid to replace it.

Written by Vonda N. McIntyre (1948 - 2019) and originally published in 1978, Dreamsnake was a major critical success. It secured the “triple crown” by winning the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel. McIntyre’s work was also recognised for its notable feminist reconfiguring of the heroic quest in science fiction. However, the novel still fell out of print - there were no new English-language print editions published between 1994 and 2016. Today, Dreamsnake is a highly recommended work of feminist, post-apocalyptic SF.

The controversial, brutal dystopian novel with a language of its own

A Clockwork Orange is one of the most notorious novels of the 1960s, a detour into social science fiction by “Protean man of letters” Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993). Later adapted for film by Stanley Kubrick, the book is set in a still-shocking vision of the near future. In what may or may not be London, law and order is breaking down and the generation gap has become a yawning gulf. Gangs of brutal teenagers roam the streets, indulging in drugs, theft, and ultraviolent mayhem. All the while, they use a mode of speech all of their own: nadsat.

Burgess described A Clockwork Orange as a jeu d’esprit, something of a playful exercise which was written in just three weeks. It came to dominate his reputation and overshadow his legacy as a comic novelist and a composer. He went as far as to say that he regretted writing it, because he felt it was too likely to be misinterpreted. Despite his misgivings, it is clear that Burgess put a great deal of himself into A Clockwork Orange. It incorporates his fascination with linguistics, his love of classical music, and his dislike of the behaviorism pioneered by the American psychologist B.F. Skinner.

The novel focuses on Alex, leader of a particularly vicious gang. Upon his capture, he is subjected to a cruel and radical process designed to cure his sociopathic nature. This invites the core questions of the book - is it possible, or desirable, to alter a person’s nature? If a person can no longer choose, are they still a real or whole person?

A feminist subversion of SF adventure on a snowbound world

Paradise is a snowbound vacation world which attracts wealthy tourists. When it is drawn into a “commercial war”, a group of visitors are trapped there with no way out. Due to restrictions on technology, a special kind of agent is needed to rescue them from the harsh environment. Alyx is that agent - a thief from ancient Tyre, accidentally pulled into the future by a malfunctioning time machine. 

Picnic on Paradise is the first novel by American SF author Joanna Russ. It represents a feminist subversion of a traditional adventure story, and a precursor to Russ’ best known novel The Female Man (1975).

A vivid alternate history set in an England dominated from Rome

Superstitious hauliers move commodities using steam-powered road trains. The fiercely independent Signallers send messages using mechanical semaphore towers. Brotherhoods of monks, sworn to silence, operate both printing presses and the Inquisition. There are no telephones, nuclear power stations, or television. Britain has a King, but the real power lies in Rome, with the Pope. It is 1968 and this is a very different world.

Pavane is one of the most celebrated British science fiction books of the 1960s. It is frequently cited as a particularly strong example of alternate history. But Keith Roberts’ best known book does not fit entirely smoothly into either of those categories. It isn't even really a novel, but rather a set of stories linked by a unique and vividly rendered setting, and by Roberts' beautiful prose. This is the kind of book that mainstream literary authors wish they could write - and the kind that SF fans ought to read.

The clones of a renegade scientist star in the author’s first novel

Several hundred years into the future, a formidable alien race intercedes on Earth. It reserves the planet for the sole use of its intelligent species - which is to say, the dolphins and whales. Humans are regarded as mere vermin, and exiled to the moon, Mars, and other worlds of the solar system. Luckily, Homo sapiens is given a lifeline, or rather a hotline - a stream of advanced scientific knowledge transmitted by another, apparently more benevolent alien species. This is the world of The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977) by John Varley.

Born in Austin, Texas in 1947, Varley made his debut as an SF writer in 1974, and quite quickly established himself as a major presence in the field. He went on to major awards success, primarily for his shorter fiction. Most notably, his 1985 novella “Press Enter”, won a triple crown of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. The Ophiuchi Hotline is his debut novel, and an entry in his “Eight Worlds” series, which plays fast and loose with its own continuity but deals with humanity’s exile from Earth, and the profound changes experienced by the displaced species.

In this book - included in David Pringle’s landmark Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels - Varley explores a radically changed vision of human society. In this future, advanced biomedical techniques provided by aliens have made transplants trivial, body modification easy, and death optional. But in Varley’s hostile universe, it may be that humanity as a whole is running out of time.

I was recently struck by a post online saying, “if I spent all of my time reading and never did anything else I would still never run out of amazing books to read and I think that is a really wonderful thing about humanity.” In 2024, I have read more classic SF books than ever, at a faster rate than ever before. I know I am only scratching the surface, and that is the wonderful thing about this genre.

It has been a little tricky to choose ten best books this year, and I’ve stretched my definition by including two fantasy novels. These books were published between 1959 and 1986. Between them they contain faster than light travel, superpowered clothes, matter transmission, androids, and a ghostly Mayan priestess. They are challenging, rewarding, entertaining reads - the best subset from the 90 or so books I will finish in 2024. 

Over the course of the year I have written at length about all ten of my picks, so you can find out more about them either in text or podcast form. If you have read these, or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to know. Later, there's brief roundup of my biggest disappointment of the year, some honourable mentions, and my plans for 2025. But now, in no particular order, is the list...