Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time

Over the years we've built up a pretty big backlog of short novels that we really liked but hadn't had a chance to cover on the show - so today we're bursting that dam.

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The seven books we recommend in this ep:

• This is how you Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
• Babel-17 by Samuel Delany
• All Systems Red by Martha Wells
• Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
• The Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

There is only one human settlement on the planet of Arieka. There, in Embassytown, a young woman named Avice grows up in a strange world between worlds, where all that is human and all that is alien collide without ever really coming together. That's not much of a summary, but this is a book that really benefits from going in mostly blind, so we made sure to keep things really clean in the pre-spoilers section too.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend:

• Babel-17 by Samuel Delany
• City and the City or anything else by China Miéville 
• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

If you want to see the complete survey results, including all the top books, favorite authors, and short stories come find them on the discord.

Video version of this episode available on YouTube.

The 2024 Nebula awards are coming up, so we read  and ranked all the books for ya. And we've got good news, this was a great year for fantasy and sci-fi!

• Join the book club on discord: https://discord.gg/fHejh3PpR2
• Video version of the show on YouTube https://youtube.com/@hugonautspod

The short listed books:

1. Translation State by Ann Leckie
2. Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
3. The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang
4. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
5. The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
6. The Witch King by Martha Wells

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The survivors live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. It is humanity's last refuge. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. 

But now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity. 

• Vote for your top 10 favorite SF novels by April 26! 
• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

This is a unique book! So instead of our normal book recs, we recommend some similar video games:

• The Last of Us
• Bioshock
• The Witcher 3 (harhar)

Six days ago astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of the young rebels who venture illegally into the Zone, one of six areas on Earth that have been profoundly changed by the visitation of aliens to Earth. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And despite the danger, 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 answers he's been looking for. 

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/rendezvous-with-rama)
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/ted-chiang)

Space ships whip across the solar system, ice haulers burn in from the gas giants, stolen Martian corvettes sneak behind enemy lines, and very human characters tie it all together and make the incredible journey worth the ride. Miraculously all 9 books (plus a collection of short stories) are fun, well-done adventures that will keep you turning the pages and racing to find out what happens next. Seriously, if you haven’t read the Expanse yet, it’s time for a treat that goes down easy.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/house-of-suns)
• Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/children-of-time)
• Memories Legion – James S.A. Corey

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason. Unless D-503 can find a space within himself - that disease the ancients called a soul.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!
• Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video

Similar books we recommend: 

• 1984 by George Orwell (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/1984)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (https://hugonauts.simplecast.com/episodes/brave-new-world)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A starship is taking off from Mars, and just before it does one of the crewman arrives with a strange new creature. What will the Wub bring to those on board, and the headstrong captain who can't stop thinking with his stomach?

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PS We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is still coming soon, but Brent had a family emergency, so Cody stepped up to bring y'all this gem in the meantime.