The most suspenseful books in science fiction

Number one on my list has to be Hyperion.

Hyperion is a novel that from the jump, steeps the reader into another whole league of suspense. From a story about a priest who can’t die, to a man who is investigating his own death, then a daughter who is aging backward, each of these interconnected stories raises the stakes of the other. And that’s the rub, even though the previous story was intense, the subsequent (interconnected) story manages to make the previous story even more nail-biting.

I’m trying not to spoil anything but there are some really big ideas in this book. Hyperion is my favorite novel of all time and I honestly should have ended the list with this one, but I couldn’t wait to talk about it.

What can I say about Annihilation? It’s a novel where the reader isn’t quite sure what is going on, nor can any two readers agree on what they just read and that’s the amazing part about it.

Hypnosis, genetic deviation, and something utterly alien make this such an intense read. And that suspense is heightened because there is a level of mystery and weirdness in Jeff VanderMeer’s world, where things aren’t quite grounded in the reality that we are used to.

Ender’s Game has many similarities to Androne. The game-like elements of the story and the way the lead characters are both withdrawn from the battlefield.

What Ender’s Game does really well is the anticipation it creates as we wait on pins and needles for this build-up to a battle with the aliens. Ender has all of that pressure mounted on him as a child, the fate of the world, but the internal politics heighten that tension as well, as Ender’s life is under threat from his cohorts, even his own brother on one occasion. 

I can only speak from my experience and, wow, this book hooked me right at the end of that first chapter, “but it’s happening faster.” Now to go into what that means, I will remain spoiler-free, but my jaw dropped. And the story only ramped up after that.

I love stories where the protagonist finds themselves in genuine peril, and Claire puts Harry August in a particular type of peril that truly had me terrified for his well-being in every chapter. The best type of suspense escalates in every chapter and it escalates here in this book in the best possible ways.

Blindsight is a suspenseful read for a number of reasons.

It’s hard science fiction, so there is a heavy amount of science poured into the pages, but that science goes deep into the realms of philosophy. It delves into the mysteries of the human mind, its limits, and the idea of what is consciousness.

The tension here was very existential for me because I often find myself in these same debates with myself and this novel took me deeper into that debate—deeper into the depths of the human mind than I ever wanted to be.