This week's blog was inspired by a recent comment we received from a Discover Sci-Fi reader on our Facebook Group. The reader mentioned an interest in social science fiction, and so we started to think about all the books we love that fall under that umbrella; those books that use elements of science fiction to put humans under pressure and take a deep dive into the resulting human behaviour. The list of books quickly tumbled forth and we are excited to share it with you.

Because sci-fi has always concerned itself with exploration of society, there are titles here spanning almost 80 years, taking us from the 40s right up to present day. So, whether you favor classics, or contemporary—or maybe you're like us and dig both—we've got some recommendations here you are sure to love! 

Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein 

Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war have been things found only in the histories. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century.

They should all have been very happy....

But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy.

However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman is definitely not a good idea....

Read Beyond This Horizon here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

First published in 1949, award-winning Earth Abides is one of the most influential science-fiction novels of the twentieth century. It remains a fresh, provocative story of apocalyptic pandemic, societal collapse, and rebirth.

The cabin had always been a special retreat for Isherwood Williams, a haven from the demands of society. But one day while hiking, Ish was bitten by a rattlesnake, and the solitude he had so desired took on dire new significance.

He was sick for days—and often delirious—waking up to find two strangers peering in at him from the cabin door. Yet oddly, instead of offering help, the two ran off as if terrified. Not long after, the coughing began. Ish suffered chills and fever, and a measles-like rash on his skin. He was one of the few people in the world to live through that peculiar malady, but he didn't know it then.

Ish headed home when he finally felt himself again—and noticed the strangeness almost immediately. No cars passed him on the road; the gas station not far from his cabin looked abandoned; and he was shocked to see the body of a man on the roadside near a small town.

Without a radio or phone, Ish had no idea of humanity’s abrupt demise. He had escaped death, yet could not escape the catastrophe—and with an eerie detachment he found himself curious as to how long it would be before all traces of civilization faded from Earth.

Read Earth Abides  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

Get your copy of Fahrenheit 451 here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Read Hyperion  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

 Grab The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas here on Amazon. 

This Perfect Day by Ira Levin

Considered one of the great dystopian novels—alongside Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World—Ira Levin's frightening glimpse into the future continues to fascinate readers even forty years after publication.

The story is set in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called “The Family.“ The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp that has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as human beings, but will remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce. even the basic facts of nature are subject to the UniComp's will—men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night.

With a vision as frightening as any in the history of the science fiction genre, This Perfect Day is one of Ira Levin's most haunting novels.

Get your copy of This Perfect Day here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

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Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...

Grab Too Like the Lightning  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Polar Vortex by Matthew Mather

Arctic meets Da Vinci Code in this breathtaking thriller from Matthew Mather, worldwide bestseller over a million copies sold, translations in 24 languages and film development by 20th Century Fox.

A flight disappears over the North Pole. No distress calls. Vanished into thin air.

Mitch Matthew is a writer struggling to make ends meet when his wife's brother Josh offers them a first class seat on a flight from Hong Kong to new York. When his wife needs to stay behind, it becomes an opportunity for some quality time with his five-year-old Lilly.

At check in, they run into a strange Norwegian arguing with a huge Russian. A mysterious redhead is guarding a package in the business lounge. But everything is fine, until...

With hours of Allied Airlines 695 disappearing, a massive international search in launched. Aircraft and ships are dispatched from Russia, China, America, Canada and Norway. As tensions rise, the world edges to the brink of apocalyptic war.

In an area overflown by dozens of satellites from as many nations, ringed by radar and missile installations dating from the Cold War...How can a modern airliner simply vanish in one of the most heavily monitored places on Earth?

Dive into Polar Vortex here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Utopia 58 by Daniel Arenson

Imagine a perfect society. A world with no racism, sexism, or ageism. A utopia.

In Utopia 58, everyone is equal. Everyone must be equal.

Too beautiful? A mask will hide that pretty face. Too tall? We'll saw your legs down to size. Too male or female? The surgeon's knife will fix that. Too smart? A buzzer in your skull will drown out all that pesky thinking. You will be equal. Like it or not.

Utopia 58, built atop the ruins of North America, created perfect harmony. A society with no race, gender, or age. Pure equality.

KB209 was born into this utopia. He has no true name. No past. No future. He is one among millions. The same.

One day, at a propaganda rally, KB209 glimpses an act of startling defiance. A citizen with painted toenails. A woman in a genderless society. Color in a black and white world.

When KB209 confronts her, he is drawn into an underground rebellion. A movement that dares to dream. That dares to say: "We are unique. We are individuals. We will be free!"

Get your copy of Utopia 58 here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.

Start reading The Ministry for the Future here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

Margaret Atwood meets Miranda July in this wildly imaginative debut novel of a mother's battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change; A prescient and suspenseful book from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Nature.

Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now.

Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they slowly and painfully learn to survive in an unpredictable, dangerous land, bickering and battling for power and control as they betray and save one another. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.

At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood and what it means to be human, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary novel from a one-of-a-kind literary force.

Grab The New Wilderness  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Simulant by Bobby Adair

The war against the sentient artificial intelligence has been simmering and erupting for two years. In their attempt to isolate the hardware hosting the AI's software, the armies of the world have embarked on a coordinated campaign to destroy silicon-based processor equipment across the planet.

Unfortunately, it's not just TV's, laptops, and cellphones that have fallen in their crosshairs, but service robots and even the computer modules driving the prosthetic limbs used by some of the disabled.

Trapped in Dallas, at the center of an assault, Madison has enlisted the help of a damaged robot to help her escape before she falls victim to the indiscriminate violence raging her way.

Can she get away? Will she survive? All she knows is that she can't do it alone.

Grab Simulant  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Today I Am Carey by Martin L. Shoemaker

TODAY

Mildred has Alzheimer's. As memories fade, she acquires the aid of a full-time android to assist her in everyday life. Carey. Carey takes care of Mildred, but its true mission is to fill in the gaps in Mildred’s past. To bring yesterday into today by becoming a copy. But not merely a copy of a physical person. A copy from the inside out.

I AM

After Mildred passes, Carey must find a new purpose. For a time, that purpose is Mildred’s family. To keep them safe from harm. To be of service. There is Paul Owens, the overworked scientist and business leader. Susan Owens, the dedicated teacher. And Millie, a curious little girl who will grow up alongside her android best friend. And Carey will grow up with her. Carey cannot age. But Carey can change.

CAREY

Carey struggles. Carey seeks to understand life’s challenges. Carey makes its own path. Carey must learn to live. To grow. To care. To survive. To be.

Grab Today I Am Carey  here on Amazon. Also available on audiobook.

Have you dove into any of these social sci-fi reads? Which ones did you previously miss that will now make their way into your (e)bookshelf or into your ears? Have a personal favorite from the sub-genre that didn't appear on our list? Give it a shout out in the comments here, 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.