79 books like The Expanse

This entire series was amazing. Okay, a few of the books were a bit slow, but overall, it was great. The new worlds, the political intrigue, everything about this story was great. There were histories that drove the characters that were only hinted at or mentioned in passing, but they brought life to them. Just like we are all shaped by our past, our countries, and our places in society, so are all the characters in this book.

My favorite character wasn’t Paul, though; it was Duncan Idaho. I was so sad when he was killed, but I was fascinated when they brought him back from the dead in the second book and others because Herbert made it so interesting. The bodyguard programmed, created even, to kill the one he once died to protect. Now, that’s some drama right there. 😊 

The twists, turns, and world-building were amazing. I learned… show more.

I love this book because although it seems at a casual glance to be written in the mold of 50s and 60s science fiction, with earthmen fighting bug-eyed aliens, it’s, in fact, a profound exploration of the morality of war, of chances, lost and motives misunderstood and of the ruthless use of children as combatants.

The training regimen of the children is gripping, as is the climactic space battle, but it’s the ending of the novel that gives the story its deep spiritual resonance.

Every now and then, I discover a book that has imagined a world and/or a character that takes me by surprise, and I can’t stop reading about them. Again, it’s all about character! In this book, I met a human cyborg enslaved by a computer program and built as a security unit rented out to corporate groups exploring planets for profit.

This sentient cyborg frees itself from enslavement, hilariously staves off the boredom of security work by watching its favorite media series, and as it watches characters in these shows, begins to learn about human behavior. I enjoyed the awkward, touching way it developed friendships and emotional connections. The character, which calls itself Murderbot, presents as if it’s on the spectrum.

Its first-person narration is snarky, occasionally hilarious, and endearing as it slowly learns what it means to have friendships. And oh, it finds all this wildly inconvenient, hates eye… show more.

Chasm City is part of Reynold's Revelation Space series, but this future-noir mystery is perfectly readable as a standalone. It follows a man on a mission of revenge, one that takes him into the crumbling, plague-ridden remains of a once-great civilization that has descended into chaos and squalor. The world-building is top-notch—this is a dying, decaying city that you can feel in your bones—and full mysteries that explore ideas of identity, memory, and redemption in a twisty mystery that ties together past, present, and future.

When it comes to human spaceflight programs, a lot has been written about the astronauts, administrators, and decision-makers who set policy and defined these programs from the top. The People’s Spaceship presents the four decades of NASA’s Shuttle Program as a mission to engage the public in the excitement of space exploration and make spaceflight relevant to people’s everyday lives.

In a post-Apollo era of declining budgets, NASA’s outreach efforts during the Shuttle era demonstrate the agency’s increasing reliance on public support and the public relations apparatus it built to garner it. Despite the Shuttle’s flaws, NASA managed to create a sense of public ownership of the program, as well as generations of kids who grew up dreaming of their own Shuttle flights.

The rise of spaceflight in the Soviet Union came amidst a very different social and cultural context than it did in the United States. While the Soviet program operated mostly in secret, with accomplishments often reported only after their successful completion, their public reception had little to do with their importance to state officials.

This book reveals an older Russian cosmism (or cosmic mysticism) practiced by some of the founders of pre-Soviet Russian rocketry, such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose work tapped into an early wave of interest in space travel beginning around World War I. Public support and enthusiasm for spaceflight were genuine, rooted not in state-sanctioned interpretations of spaceflight but in a broadly shared utopian imagination and belief that the Russian future was in the stars.  

The early years of spaceflight coincided with the heyday of American advertising and eye-catching mid-century graphic design. The visual aesthetic of the Space Age, as expressed in the aerospace advertisements that populated magazines and trade journals of the day, reflected this intersection of futuristic technology and innovative design.

Collected together in a critical mass in this book, these advertisements evoke an era in which tomorrow was the product, aerospace was the currency, and American industry was set to reshape the cosmos.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, science fiction has been a major force in defining our collective imagination of what spaceflight is and why it is significant. This book puts the history of space science fiction in the context of the American space program, charting the reality of spaceflight against expectations set in popular culture.

Telling these parallel stories of real space accomplishments and fictional space exploits allows Weitekamp to reveal stories of spaceflight as inseparable from broad cultural concerns such as American identity, the frontier, race, gender, and sexuality. Weitekamp has spent her career curating the social and cultural history of spaceflight collection at the National Air and Space Museum, and her argument is built upon her expert analysis of popular culture objects from the collection. 

When I first began writing, the most common critique I got was, “You haven’t found your voice yet.” My editor said my style reminded her of Dean Koontz and gave me this book.

I was hooked from the first rain-soaked scene, where protagonist Spencer Grant checks on a missing friend and stumbles into a rogue government hit squad. Fortunately, Spencer Grant has a robust skill set of his own, along with a very dark secret in his past, his personal “dark river of the heart.”

The book goes a bit wild near the end, but by then, the lap bar is firmly down, and there is no getting off the ride. When I finished it, I declared, “I want to write just like that!”

I’m a sucker for unique worldbuilding, and this book's combination of military traditions and the age of sail with magic space travel scratches that itch nicely. Dianne Morrison tells a heartfelt and deeply emotional tale that is at once both a coming-of-age story following a young elf’s pursuit of dreams as a star-pilot and a gritty cautionary tale on the horrors of war.

I felt for Shaundar and friends as they struggled through their own challenges to pursue their dreams, their patriotism as they snuck away to join the new war effort, and their horror as those dreams fell apart and survival became paramount. Check the content warnings on this one, as the narrative leans heavily beyond heroes and into the dark sides of war.