Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time

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!watch the episode on YouTubeThis is a unique book! So instead of our normal book recs, we recommend some similar video games:

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!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

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!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

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!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

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!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

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? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!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.

Rumors are swirling about a species of super-intelligent octopus living off the coast of Vietnam. As corporations and other non-state actors begin to investigate, it becomes clear that we are not alone in the universe - alien life has evolved right here on earth. DIANIMA, a giant tech company known for its machine learning prowess, buys the islands to study the octopuses and try to monopolize their unique brains for profit. They send Evrim, the world’s first true android / AI, and Dr. Ha Nguyen, a brilliant marine biologist, to study the octopuses, and Altantsetseg, a battle-hardened drone operator, to defend the islands from rapacious automated fishing vessels. Can they learn to communicate with the octopuses? Or will this new intelligent life be destroyed by global corporations run amok? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeCheck out Ray Nayler's answers to your questions about the book!Similar books we recommend:

Ranking our top 15 sci fi books of all time: If you think something deserves to be on the list, drop us a line on Discord! Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTube

Paul Durham has begun experimenting on his own mind. He uploaded a copy of his neural patterns - everything that makes him who he is - into a computer simulation. The more he experiments, the more the lines between the real person and the virtual person begin to blur. What he discovers there, out at the edge of consciousness and the pattern that defines him, give him an impossible idea. A permutation city, where immortality might be possible. Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

We talked with Peter about: Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video, or join the Hugonauts book club on discord! And if you haven't listened to our episode about Blindsight, check it out here.

Tyler, Jason, and Diane are growing up together in the suburbs of Washington, DC. One night, as they are outside looking up at the sky, something shocking happens - all the stars go out at once. The 'Hypotheticals' have wrapped the earth in a spin membrane that isolates the Earth, making time move millions of times slower inside the barrier than outside. In Tyler, Diane, and Jason's lifetime the sun will turn into a red giant and consume the earth - unless they can figure out how to escape the Spin! Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Winston Smith is a Party member living in London. He, like every other member of the Party, is under constant surveillance. Despite the risk, he dares to buy a blank book and begin to write down his thoughts. From the first moment he writes “down with Big Brother” he believes he is doomed to die in the torture chambers below the Ministry of Love. Will his deviance be caught, or will Winston succeed in finding a way to resist the totalitarian control of the Party? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Ranking the 2023 Hugo nominees: And three amazing sci-fi books that should have made the list: Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTube

Shevek is a brilliant physicist, working on a new theory that may be as transformative and foundational as the work of Einstein. In pursuing his theory, he discovers that his dry homeworld of Anarres is not as free as he believed it to be. His society of anarchists has grown rigid, bureaucratic, and resistant to change in the years since the revolution. In order to pursue his work, he must leave Anarres and be the first to travel back to the deeply unequal, capitalist planet of Urras. Will Shevek succeed at completing his theory and igniting the fires of change? Or will he be consumed in the struggle for freedom? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

The bombs fell, and the world ended. A man and his pregnant wife survived the blasts. Their son would be born into a world changed entire. It grew darker, and colder, and more violent. The new world was grim and grey and relentless, and the wife could not bear to live in it. The man and his young son had to set out on the road, alone, heading south. The road, though, is dangerous. Cannibals and slavers and men driven mad with hunger roam the hills. Even if the man can avoid marauders, will he be clever and lucky enough to find food and supplies in the picked-over remains of civilization to feed his son? And every day that they survive, they have to ask themselves if it is worth surviving. What awaits them in the south, on the coast? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Kris Kelvin is traveling to the ocean world of Solaris. For more than 100 years, scientists have been trying to understand and communicate with alien life. But Solaris is truly alien - the entire planet-wide ocean is a single living organism. As Kelvin arrives, he finds that things are going wrong. The science station is disturbing and nearly abandoned. Will he be able to unravel the mystery of Solaris? Or will he lose his mind in the attempt? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Jim Holden is XO of an ice hauler making runs from the rings of Saturn to the asteroid cities of the Belt. Out in the darkness, they detect a distress signal, and move to investigate. Holden leads the away team to check on the signal, and they find a dead ship called the Scopuli that seems to have been boarded with military precision. Moments later, a stealth ship fires nuclear torpedoes at the ice hauler, killing the entire crew, leaving Holden and his away team as the only survivors. All the evidence points to the Martian military, and system-wide war threatens to break out unless Holden can find out who set the trap, and why. Miller is a detective on Ceres, and he is looking for a girl. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and Holden, they realize that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Guy Montag is a fireman - one whose job is to burn books, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag and his wife, Mildred (who spends all day with her television ‘family’) had never questioned his life as a fireman, until he meets his eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse. Clarisse introduces him to a bigger world and new ideas, and Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTubeSimilar books we recommend:

Substance D is a new drug sweeping the nation and slowly destroying the minds of its users. As the connection between the two halves of their brains degrades, they grow increasingly disoriented and confused before suffering irreversible brain damage. Fred is an undercover narcotics agent working to uncover where the new drug is coming from. But to find the source he has to pose as Bob Arctor, a user, and soon Arctor is as addicted as the junkies around him. Can he see through his psychosis long enough to tell which leads are real and which imagined? Or will he be consumed, like his friends, by substance D? Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTube

For all six of the nominated books we'll give you a quick summary (with no spoilers), a review, and a rundown of what kind of reader is likely to love (and who might hate) each book. Featuring: And join us for our next episode on A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick! Join the Hugonauts book club on discord!watch the episode on YouTube