We talk a fair bit about books that have been adapted to TV or movie, but what about those adapted to video game?

There are dozens of great games based on sci-fi novels, and as inspiration works both ways, you can find many excellent sci-fi reads that were inspired by video games as well.

While the books here will appeal to a sci-fi fans who aren't gamers, if you are a sci-fi fan who is a gamer, we think you'll find this list especially interesting as all the books featured here either inspired or were inspired by a video game. Check it out!

Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn

The thrilling prequel to the award-winning video game from BioWare.

Every advanced society in the galaxy relies on the technology of the Protheans, an ancient species that vanished fifty thousand years ago. After discovering a cache of Prothean technology on Mars in 2148, humanity is spreading to the stars; the newest interstellar species, struggling to carve out its place in the greater galactic community.

On the edge of colonized space, ship commander and Alliance war hero David Anderson investigates the remains of a top secret military research station; smoking ruins littered with bodies and unanswered questions. Who attacked this post and for what purpose? And where is Kahlee Sanders, the young scientist who mysteriously vanished from the base–hours before her colleagues were slaughtered?

Sanders is now the prime suspect, but finding her creates more problems for Anderson than it solves. Partnered with a rogue alien agent he can’t trust and pursued by an assassin he can’t escape, Anderson battles impossible odds on uncharted worlds to uncover a sinister conspiracy . . . one he won’t live to tell about. Or so the enemy thinks.

Read Mass Effect: Revelation here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Gears of War Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss

As kids, the three of them were inseparable; as soldiers, they were torn apart. Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago fought alongside Dom’s elder brother Carlos at Aspho Fields in the epic battle that changed the course of the Pendulum Wars. There’ s a new war to fight now, a war for mankind’s very survival. But while the last human stronghold on Sera braces itself for another onslaught from the Locust Horde, ghosts come back to haunt Marcus and Dom. For Marcus–decorated war hero, convicted traitor–the return of an old comrade threatens to dredge up an agonizing secret he’s sworn to keep.

As the beleaguered Gears of the Coalition of Ordered Governments take a last stand to save mankind from extermination, the harrowing decisions made at Aspho Fields have to be re-lived and made again. Marcus and Dom can take anything the Locust Horde throws at them–but will their friendship survive the truth about Carlos Santiago?

Read Gears of War Aspho Fields here on Amazon.

BioShock: Rapture by John Shirley

It's the end of World War II. FDR's New Deal has redefined American politics. Taxes are at an all-time high. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has brought a fear of total annihilation. The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business has many watching their backs. America's sense of freedom is diminishing…and many are desperate to take that freedom back.

Among them is a great dreamer, an immigrant who pulled himself from the depths of poverty to become one of the wealthiest and admired men in the world. That man is Andrew Ryan, and he believed that great men and women deserve better. And so he set out to create the impossible, a utopia free from government, censorship, and moral restrictions on science—where what you give is what you get. He created Rapture—the shining city below the sea.

But as we all know, this utopia suffered a great tragedy. This is the story of how it all came to be…and how it all ended.

Get your copy of BioShock: Rapture here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems. First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel’s publication in Russia.

Read Roadside Picnic here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

The novel that gave birth to the video games 'Metro 2033' and 'Metro: Last Light.'

The breathtaking original story that inspired both the METRO 2033 and METRO: LAST LIGHT video games! An international bestseller, translated into 35 languages.

Set in the shattered subway of a post apocalyptic Moscow, Metro 2033 is a story of intensive underground survival where the fate of mankind rests in your hands.

In 2013 the world was devastated by an apocalyptic event, annihilating almost all mankind and turning the earth’s surface into a poisonous wasteland. A handful of survivors took refuge in the depths of the Moscow underground, and human civilization entered a new Dark Age.

The year is 2033. An entire generation has been born and raised underground, and their besieged Metro Station-Cities struggle for survival, with each other, and the mutant horrors that await outside.

Artyom was born in the last days before the fire. Having never ventured beyond his Metro Station-City limits, one fateful event sparks a desperate mission to the heart of the Metro system, to warn the remnants of mankind of a terrible impending threat. His journey takes him from the forgotten catacombs beneath the subway to the desolate wastelands above, where his actions will determine the fate of mankind.

Grab Metro 2033 in paperback here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

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I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

Seven stunning stories of speculative fiction by the author of A Boy and His Dog.

In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence.

This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Grand Master of Science Fiction Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream also includes “Big Sam Was My Friend,” “Eyes of Dust,” “World of the Myth,” “Lonelyache,” Hugo Award finalist “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer,” and Hugo and Nebula Award finalist “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.”

Get your copy of I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream in paperback here on Amazon.

Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena

When Dr. Nagashima loses his wife in a mysterious car crash, he is overwhelmed with grief but also an eerie sense of purpose; he becomes obsessed wiht reincarnating his dead wife. Her donated kidney is transplanted into a young girl wiht a debilitating disorder, bu the doctor also feels compelled to keep a small sample of her liver in his laboratory. When these cells start mutating rapidly, a consciousness bent on determining its own fate awakens, bent on becoming the new dominant species on earth.

Parasite Eve was the basis of the hugely popular videogame of the same name in the U.S. and has been cinematized in Japan.

Dive into Parasite Eve here on Amazon.

Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett

Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn is an Imperial inquisitor, one of the tirelss defenders of humanity. With his warband he scourges the galaxy, walking in the shadows of darkness in order to root out heresy. When that heresy is found to infiltrate the hierarchy of the Imperium and the Inquisition itself, Eisnehorn must rely on himself alone to deal with it – even if it means making deals with the enemy and compromising everything he ahs ever believed in.

Read it because
It's the whole classic trilogy that remains top of many Warhammer 40,000 fans' must-read lists, And in Pariah, there's a chance to catch up with Eisenhorn decades later, when he's a renegade from Imperial justice...

Get your copy of Eisenhorn here on Amazon.

Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks

Washed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. Where am I? Who am I? And why is everything made of blocks? But there isn’t much time to soak up the sun. It’s getting dark, and there’s a strange new world to explore!

The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island . . . like the horde of zombies that appears after nightfall. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow.

In this world, the rules don’t always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed.

Start reading Minecraft: The Island here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund

The New York Times bestselling origin story of the Master Chief—part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo!

The twenty-sixth century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope. At the Office of Naval Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey has been hard at work on a top-secret program that could bring an end to the conflict…and it starts with seventy-five children, among them a six-year-old boy named John. And Halsey could never guess that this child will eventually become the final hope against an even greater peril engulfing the galaxy—the inexorable confrontation with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant.

This is the electrifying origin story of Spartan John-117—the Master Chief—and of his legendary, unstoppable heroism in leading the resistance against humanity’s possible extinction.

Grab Halo: The Fall of Reach here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Have you already read any of these? Which will you pick up next? What sci-fi titles would you recommend for gamers? Let us know here in the comments, or over in the Discover Sci-Fi Facebook group!

*All book-related copy in this post was pulled from Amazon, Goodreads & Wikipedia, unless otherwise credited.

Have you immersed yourself in Jeremy Robinson’s thrilling and expansive Infinite Timeline universe? If you have, you’re most certainly aware of and eagerly awaiting the newest edition to the universe, The Order. The Order promises to be an EPIC standalone thrill ride that brings together different groups of characters from several of the existing novels within the universe. If you’re new to this universe, please allow us the extreme pleasure of introducing you!

Robinson, a life-long sci-fi fan and comic book lover, began his career as an illustrator before turning his creative talents toward writing. He has since written more than 70 novels and novellas; some of these projects have been optioned for development to the screen. The Infinite Timeline universe we’re discussing today is one he has been building out for five years now. What is notable, is that is while each of the novels standalone, they have a more expansive feel than many standalone books owning to their placement within this larger universe, bringing readers a true full-world experience. Keen eyed readers invested in these books from the beginning, will probably have noticed a growing connection between the novels and this crossover is about to deepen with The Order, which sees groups from several of the novels pulled together..

We wanted to speak with Jeremy to get a sense of what inspired him to take this approach to storytelling — one that is fairly unique in the world of original novels— and to find out more of what is in store with The Order. Lucky for us, we were able to do just that!

DSF: Before we dive into The Order specifically, we want to acknowledge what a feat your Infinite Timeline universe is! We’d love to hear more about the creative roots of this project and, just briefly, how the books relate to each other.

JR: I wanted to create something big and unique. I’d done a massive crossover novel before, bringing together characters from ten separate novels or series that take place in separate dimensions of reality. It wasn’t a long-term plan. With the Infinite Timeline, I wrote eight standalone novels that take place in the same universe, with the same world events taking place in all of them, and connections between them forming in epilogues. The result is nine books you can read in any order, all merging for two crossovers, the first of which is The Order, followed by Khaos and then an epic grand finale, Singularity.

DSF: Like every other fan of your books, we are STOKED about the publication of The Order. Without giving too much away, can you tell us a little bit about what to expect about this book and how it fits into the Infinite Timeline as a whole?

JR: The Order is the first of the three crossovers and includes fan-favorite characters from Flux, The Others and Exo-Hunter. The lead character is Dark Horse, a music loving soldier from the 80s, who was sent 1000 years into the future where he defeated the Union, a white supremacist galactic empire, and returned to the present. But humanity is not safe. With Earth under threat from hostile aliens seeking to bring order to the universe, Dark Horse and some new friends must embrace the crazy, build the perfect soundtrack and save the Earth.

DSF: We understand you’ve put together something special for the release of this novel, some additional media to make the reading experience even more immersive. We’d be thrilled if you could share more about that for our readers!

JR: As with Exo-Hunter, The Order focuses on Dark Horse’s love of music and has its own playlist, which can be listened to at certain scenes throughout the novel and can be found at: https://bewareofmonsters.com/playlist/

We love a good audio bonus, and can easily imagine how this might really elevate an already sensational reading experience! And speaking of audio, audiobook fans can rest assured that they will not be left behind. The legendary R.C. Bray has brought to life all but one of the books in the Infinite Timeline thus far, catapulting the books into Audible's top 100 bestsellers, and establishing both the SOVAS award winning book, The Others and the fan favorite, Exo-Hunter, as #1 bestsellers. Additionally, Robinson's book Mind Bullet, recently won the 2022 Earphones award for science fiction. With The Order, listeners can expect a similarly dazzling performance.

We really could not be more excited about this release. Can you tell? As we said at the top, we know existing fans are as stoked as we are; to those of you for whom this was your first introduction to this outstanding universe, we hope our excitement has rubbed off and that you go — today — and check out The Infinite Timeline for yourself!

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10 Sci-Fi Books for Gamers!