Destiny is calling and his grandfather's legacy awaits in Backyard Starship. Embark on the adventure of a lifetime with USA Today best-selling author J.N. Chaney alongside Terry Maggert, and brought to life on audiobook by Jeffery Kafer, in this galactic quest for glory.

Here's the exclusive video trailer to feast your eyes on and get STOKED about this series!

And here's the series synopsis:

"When Van Tudor returns to his childhood home, he inherits more than the family farm.

His grandfather used to tell him fantastic stories of spacemen and monsters, princesses and galactic knights. Little did Van realize, the old man's tales were more than fiction. They were real.

Hidden beneath the old barn, Van’s legacy is waiting: a starship, not of this world.

With his combat AI, an android bird named Perry, Van takes his first steps into the wider galaxy. He soon finds that space is far busier and more dangerous than he could have ever conceived.

Destiny is calling. His grandfather's legacy awaits."

Start the series today! Get Backyard Starship on audiobook.

Already a fan? Then pre-order Legacy of Stars (Backyard Starship, Book 4) now!

Humans have been writing about artificial intelligence for at least 150 years, one of the first known appearances being Sam Butler's 1872 novel, Erewhon. Since that book, artificial intelligence has gone from science fiction to science fact, and while the technology is still in its relative infancy and doesn't always look exactly as our favorite sci-fi authors imagined, it's nonetheless exciting to see something we could once only imagine become an almost mundane part of our everyday lives.

Sci-fi authors are still getting a lot of mileage out of the topic of artificial intelligence, and we continue to be enthralled by their stories. If you are, too, you're going to love the books on this list! Check it out! 

The Caves of Steel (Robot Series Book 1) by Isaac Asimov

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together.

Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer.

The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw.  Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot—and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!

Read The Caves of Steel here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

The classic science fiction novel that captures and expands on the vision of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal film—and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves.

From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

This allegory about humanity’s exploration of the universe—and the universe’s reaction to humanity—is a hallmark achievement in storytelling that follows the crew of the spacecraft Discovery as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Their vessel is controlled by HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals—and perhaps threatens—the human mind.

Grappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope.

Read 2001: A Space Odyssey here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.

Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

Get your copy of Neuromancer here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Read Ancillary Justice here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Speak by Louisa Hall

A thoughtful, poignant novel that explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence—illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding.

In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.

A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend’s mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.

Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps—to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human—shrinking rapidly with today’s technological advances—echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.

Grab Speak here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

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

From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement and The Children Act—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding.

Machines Like Me takes place in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first synthetic humans and—with Miranda's help—he designs Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and clever. It isn't long before a love triangle soon forms, and these three beings confront a profound moral dilemma.

Get your copy of Machines Like Me here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Novice Gods by Bobby Adair

Dive into Novice Gods here on Amazon.

The Mother Code by Carole Stivers

What it means to be human—and a mother—is put to the test in Carole Stivers’s debut novel set in a world that is more chilling and precarious than ever.

The year is 2049. When a deadly non-viral agent intended for biowarfare spreads out of control, scientists must scramble to ensure the survival of the human race. They turn to their last resort, a plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots—to be incubated, birthed, and raised by machines. But there is yet one hope of preserving the human order: an intelligence programmed into these machines that renders each unique in its own right—the Mother Code.

Kai is born in America’s desert Southwest, his only companion his robotic Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and motivations of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. But as children like Kai come of age, their Mothers transform too—in ways that were never predicted. And when government survivors decide that the Mothers must be destroyed, Kai is faced with a choice. Will he break the bond he shares with Rho-Z? Or will he fight to save the only parent he has ever known?

Set in a future that could be our own, The Mother Code explores what truly makes us human—and the tenuous nature of the boundaries between us and the machines we create.

Get your copy of The Mother Code here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Machinehood by S.B. Divya

Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this “clever…gritty” (Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings) science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy—from Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya.

Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s, 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.

All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week.

Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight.

Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood, and what do they really want?

A “fantastic, big-idea thriller” (Malka Older, Hugo Award finalist for The Centenal Cycle series) that asks: if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?

Start reading Machinehood here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

E-Day by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The only hope to save humanity is no longer human...

Engines. Genetically modified warriors that keep the great Nova Alliance war machine churning against the enemy Coalition. Most days, Engines are all that stand between salvation and chaos. Led by legendary Engine, Captain Akira Hayashi, Shadow Squad has fought on the frontlines for a decade. They are on the brink of victory when the Coalition launches a series of desperate and devastating attacks that cripple the Nova Alliance restoration sites vital to save the dying planet.

As the sites burn and Earth’s hope of salvation fades, Shadow Squad is equipped with neural implants to connect them to Apeiron, the first hybrid-human-AI entity. She is coded for what Captain Hayashi believes is an impossible task—peace. But war isn’t the only threat to the Earth. Apeiron has uncovered a deadly secret with implications that could end all life. This rapidly approaching threat can be stopped only if humanity bands together on what will become known as E-Day, a pivotal moment that will determine the evolution—or the extinction—of the entire human race.

Grab E-day 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.

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.

If you spend any time in the Discover Sci-Fi Reader Group over on Facebook, you have probably seen recent posts sharing various lists featuring, all told, hundreds of sci-fi and fantasy titles written by women. These lists left us feeling inspired, and so in honor of International Women's Day, we decided to share a shorter list of of sci-fi written by women that we consider must reads.

This, of course, is not a definitive list of the "best" titles; more so, it's a collection of sci-fi titles from classic to contemporary that we have loved, and that we think you will, too! Some of these you will surely be familiar with, but we hope you'll find some new-to-you gems here as well. 

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

In a near-future world beset by war, climate change, and overpopulation, Portland resident George Orr discovers that his dreams have the power to alter reality. Upon waking, the world he knew has become a strange, barely recognizable place, where only George has a clear memory of how it was before. Seeking escape from these “effective dreams,” George eventually turns to behavioral psychologist Dr. William Haber for a cure. But Haber has other ideas in mind.

Seeing the profound power of George’s dreams, Haber believes it must be harnessed for the greater good—no matter the cost. Soon, George is a pawn in Haber’s dangerous game, where the fate of humanity grows more imperiled with every waking hour.

As relevant today as it was when it won the Locus Award in 1971, The Lathe of Heaven is a true classic, at once eerie and prescient, entertaining and intelligent. In short, it does “what science fiction is supposed to do"

Read The Lathe of Heaven here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback

Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

The Beyond started with the Stations orbiting the stars nearest Earth. The Great Circle the interstellar freighters traveled was long, but not unmanageable, and the early Stations were emotionally and politically dependent on Mother Earth. The Earth Company which ran this immense operation reaped incalculable profits and influenced the affairs of nations.

Then came Pell, the first station centered around a newly discovered living planet. The discovery of Pell's World forever altered the power balance of the Beyond. Earth was no longer the anchor which kept this vast empire from coming adrift, the one living mote in a sterile universe.

But Pell was just the first living planet. Then came Cyteen, and later others, and a new and frighteningly different society grew in the farther reaches of space. The importance of Earth faded and the Company reaped ever smaller profits as the economic focus of space turned outward. But the powerful Earth Fleet was sitll a presence in the Beyond, and Pell Station was to become the last stronghold in a titanic struggle between the vast, dynamic forces of the rebel Union and those who defended Earth's last, desperate grasp for the stars.

Read Downbelow Station here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Shards of Honor (Miles Vorsokigan Book 1)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia survive countless mishaps while their mutual admiration and even stronger feelings emerge. A science fiction romance by a Hugo and Nebula Award winning master. Bujold's SHARDS OF HONOR is the first book in her SF universe to feature the Vorkosigan clan, followed by the Hugo award-winning BARRAYAR. The Nebula award-winning FALLING FREE precedes it by internal chronology in the same future history.

Get your copy of Shards of Honor here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

A Door Into the Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

Read A Door Into the Ocean here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Bellwether by Connie Willis 

Sandra Foster studies fads—from Barbie dolls to the grunge look—how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity—if not serendipity—which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless. Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?) But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer. . . . 

Grab Bellwether here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback.

Like what you're reading?

If you're enjoying this Sci-Fi Debuts list, why not join the DSF community for more awesome content? You'll get to be notified whenever a top 10 list or any other articles of interest go up on our site. It's free to sign up and you'll also get recommendations for new releases and discounted ebooks from our expert editorial team, from bestsellers to hidden gems.

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival--until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime.

Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life . . . and set her free.

Get your copy of Midnight Robber here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who inadvertently travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.

Dive into The Time Traveler's Wife here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Fledgling, Octavia Butler’s last novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted—and still wants—to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.

Get your copy of Fledgling here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback.

Provenance by Ann Leckie

Though she knows her brother holds her mother's favor, Ingrid is determined to at least be considered as heir to the family name. She hatches an audacious plan -- free a thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned, and use them to help steal back a priceless artifact.

But Ingray and her charge return to her home to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

Start reading Provenance here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback.

Like what you're reading?

If you're enjoying this list of reads, why not join the DSF community for more awesome content? You'll get to be notified whenever a top 10 list or any other articles of interest go up on our site. It's free to sign up and you'll also get recommendations for new releases and discounted ebooks from our expert editorial team, from bestsellers to hidden gems.

Infomacracy (Book One of the Centenal Cycle) by Malka Older

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.

With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

Grab Infomacracy here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.

But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.

Grab The Power here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

Grab The Book of M here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, 1) by Mary Robinette Kowal

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process.

Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.

Elma’s drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.

Grab The Calculating Stars here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in paperback.

To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in subzero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.

A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.

Grab To Be Taught If Fortunate here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt...natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was "wrong". But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.

Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the "reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist" and the "saga of the wicked woman and mad man" unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn't so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.

Grab Noor here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

A fighter pilot on a mission to reunite with her daughter. A cyborg soldier on a quest to regain his humanity. Mortal enemies during the war, they must now work together to salvage a seventy-year-old freighter and navigate the gauntlet of pirates, scavengers, mercenaries, and other pitfalls that stand in their way after the fall of the largest empire mankind has ever known. 

This set includes:

Book 1: Star Nomad

Book 2: Honor’s Flight

Book 3: Starseers

The previously unpublished prequel novella Last Command

The short story “Starfall Station"

Grab your copy of The Fallen Empire Collection for FREE when you sign up for the Discover Sci-Fi newsletter. 

Which of these amazing titles written by the women of sci-fi have you read? Which will you pick up next? Which books that don't appear here would be on your list. 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.

Grab your pens and get ready to mark your calendars, folks! There is a slew of new titles coming in 2022 and we have compiled a list of those that are among the most hotly anticipated! You'll find first contact stories, hopepunk, afrofuturism, military sci-fi and more here, so whatever sci-fi subgenre is your jam, know we have you covered. 

Ascension Wars: The Complete Series (Books 1-4) by Jasper T. Scott

Release Date: February 13, 2022

The United Nations of Earth sent out the Forerunners to explore and colonize the most promising star systems within 50 light-years of Earth.

Forerunner One left Earth under the command of Captain Clayton Cross, heading for Trappist-1. After a ninety year journey, the crew encountered not only a habitable world, but alien life already inhabiting it, and dark secrets lurking beneath the surface.

The revelation of who these aliens are and what they want proves more terrifying than anyone could have imagined, and Captain Cross is forced to make tough decisions that will affect not only his crew, but the fate of the entire human race.

Read Ascension Wars here on Amazon.

Let Freedom Ring (Starship Freedom V) by Daniel Arenson 

Release Date: March 1, 2022

The starship Freedom is marooned in deep space. Far from home. Crippled. Barely flying.

But she is not alone.

In the shadows, evil stirs. A race woven from arachnid and human DNA. They hunt like spiders. They think like men. They are the perfect killers.

Like a virus, they invade the Freedom.

James “Bulldog” King, commander of the Freedom, has fought alien fleets. This is different. This is worse. The infestation swarms through Freedom’s labyrinthine halls. Destroying. Eating up the Freedom from the inside.

King must muster all his courage. All his strength. He must reclaim his ship. He must find his way home. Or not only Freedom will fall—but Earth itself.

Read Let Freedom Ring  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook

Aliens vs. Predators - Ultimate Prey by Louis Ozawa et al. 

Release Date: March 1, 2022

Fifteen new and original stories for a first-of-its-kind anthology, set in the expanded Aliens vs. Predators Universe.

Here the ultimate hunters, the Predators, pitted against their ultimate prey, the Xenomorphs from Alien, with humans caught in the middle! Taking place on Earth and in distant space, these tales have been crafted by a who's who of today's most talented authors of the fantastic:

David Barnett - Roshni "Rush" Bhatia - Curtist C. Chen - Delilah S. Dawson - Mira Grant - Susanne L. Lambdin - Jess Landry - Yvonne Navarro - E.C. Myers - Scott Sigler - Maurice Broaddus - Chris Ryall - Bryan Thomas Schmidt - Steven L. Sears - Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa.

Inspired by the events of the original Aliens vs. Predators movies, graphic novels, and novels, these are the ultimate life-and-death struggles. Including a new story written by Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa ("Hanzo" from the movie Predators) as Hanzo's brother faces the eternal threats of both the Yautja and the Xenomorphs.

Get your copy of Aliens vs. Predators - Ultimate Prey here on Amazon. Also available on paperback.

Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell

Read Stars and Bones here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook

The Sins of Our Fathers: An Expanse Novella by James S. A. Corey

Release Date: March 15, 2022

The Sins of Our Fathers is a new novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. 

 Grab The Sins of Our Fathers here on Amazon.

Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection by James S. A. Corey

Release Date: March 15, 2022

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars.

On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them.

On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet.

On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home.

All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Get your copy of Memory's Legion here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Release Date: March 15, 2022

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

Dive into Kaiju Preservation Society here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Second Chance (The River Saga Book 2) by Nathan Hystad

Release Date: March 29, 2022

Colton Beck has a new lease on life. Their alliance is confident they can find their enemy in the Alruna system, and it’s all hands on deck. After the revelation of his origins from the mysterious woman on Dicore, Colton is at odds with where his loyalties stand.

The truth behind Indie Hart’s dedication to the Angor is revealed, making Colton doubt her motives as well as the Angor’s.

When Earth is threatened, it’ll take a lot more than one man to save the planet.

With the help of Colton’s allies, they find the source of the River, and discover its connection to the Rusa.

All pieces come together for a cataclysmic resolution, but who can Colton truly trust?

Second Chance is science fiction with a hard twist from the Best-Selling author of First Life, The Event, and Lost Contact.

Get your copy of Second Chance here on Amazon.

E-Day III Dark Moon by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Release Date: March 29, 2022

The third and final book in the explosive new sci-fi adventure by NYT bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith.

Start reading Dark Moon here on Amazon. 

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Sea of Tranquility b y Emily St. John Mandel

Release Date: April 5, 2022

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

Grab Sea of Tranquility here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe

Release Date: April 19, 2022

Whoever controls our memories controls the future.

Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborating creators have written a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether human, A.I., or other, your life and sentience was dictated by those who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate.

That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it’s like to live in such a totalitarian existence…and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the traditions of speculative writers such as Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor—and filled with the artistic genius and powerful themes that have made Monáe a worldwide icon in the first place—The Memory Librarian serves readers tales grounded in the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, but also reaching through to the worlds of memory and time within, and the stakes and power that exists there.

Grab The Memory Librarian here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Release Date: May 3, 2022

After eighty years of fragile peace, the Architects are back, wreaking havoc as they consume entire planets. In the past, Originator artefacts – vestiges of a long-vanished civilization – could save a world from annihilation. This time, the Architects have discovered a way to circumvent these protective relics. Suddenly, no planet is safe.

Facing impending extinction, the Human Colonies are in turmoil. While some believe a unified front is the only way to stop the Architects, others insist humanity should fight alone. And there are those who would seek to benefit from the fractured politics of war – even as the Architects loom ever closer.

Idris, who has spent decades running from the horrors of his past, finds himself thrust back onto the battlefront. As an Intermediary, he could be one of the few to turn the tide of war. With a handful of allies, he searches for a weapon that could push back the Architects and save the galaxy. But to do so, he must return to the nightmarish unspace, where his mind was broken and remade.

What Idris discovers there will change everything.

Grab Eyes of the Void here on Amazon. Also available in hardcover.

The Portals by Nathan Hystad

Release Date: May 24, 2022

Dean Parker is no longer the Recaster or in charge of the Alliance. As a result, he dives headfirst into the fray.

Since the discovery of countless new portals, the Gatekeepers must ramp up their exploration efforts. With Sarlun gone, and Shimmal’s withdrawal from the Alliance, unity at the Academy is more imperative than ever.

Jules and Dean may have recovered from their breakup, but when they travel to a distant world to assist an ailing race, they’ll need to decide what is most important to them.

The Portals is a fast-paced, riveting adventure, unlike any before it.

Grab The Portals here on Amazon.

The City Inside by Samit Basu

Release Date: June27, 2022

“They'd known the end times were coming but hadn’t known they’d be multiple choice.”

Joey is a Reality Controller in near future Delhi. Her job is to supervise the multimedia multi-reality livestreams of Indi, one of South Asia’s fastest rising online celebrities—who also happens to be her college ex. Joey’s job gives her considerable culture-power, but she’s too caught up in day-to-day crisis-handling to see this, or to figure out what she wants from her life.

Rudra is a recluse estranged from his wealthy and powerful family who fled to an impoverished immigrant neighborhood where he loses himself in video games and his neighbors’ lives. When his father’s death pulls him back into his family’s orbit, an impulsive job offer from Joey becomes his only escape from the life he never wanted.

But no good deed goes unpunished. As Joey and Rudra become enmeshed in multiple conspiracies, their lives start to spin out of control, complicated by dysfunctional relationships, corporate loyalty, and the never-ending pressures of surveillance capitalism. When a bigger picture begins to unfold around them, they must each decide how to do the right thing in a shadowy world where simply maintaining the status quo feels like an accomplishment. Ultimately, resistance will not—cannot—take the same shape for these two very different people.

Grab The City Inside here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Speaking Bones (The Dandelion Dynasty Book 4)

by Ken Liu

Release Date: June 21, 2022

The concluding book of The Dandelion Dynasty begins immediately after the events of The Veiled Throne, in the middle of two wars on two lands among three people separated by an ocean yet held together by the invisible strands of love.

Harried by Lyucu pursuers, Princess Théra and Pékyu Takval try to reestablish an ancestral dream even as their hearts grow in doubt. The people of Dara continue to struggle against the genocidal Lyucu as both nations vacillate between starkly contrasting visions for their futures. Even the gods cannot see through the Wall of Storms, for only mortal hearts can decide mortal fates.

Award-winning author Ken Liu fulfills the covenants first laid out a decade ago in a series delving deep into the connection between national myths and national constitutions in this ambitious, “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR).

Grab Speaking Bones here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy (Monk & Robot Book 2) by Becky Chambers

Release Date: July 12, 2022

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a story of kindness and love from one of the foremost practitioners of hopeful SF.

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.

They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

Grab A Prayer for the Crown Shy here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Release Date: July 12, 2022

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope
for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

Grab Upgrade here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook and in hardcover.

Which of these hotly anticipated 2022 releases will make their way into your (e)bookshelf or into your ears? Which ones are you most excited for? 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.