This Is the Way the World Ends


James K. Morrow - 1986
    The trouble starts when George Paxton ingenuously signs an admission of complicity in starting World War III.

Glory Season


David Brin - 1993
    Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin is one of the most eloquent, imaginative voices in science fiction.  Now he returns with a new novel rich in texture, universal in theme, monumental in scope--pushing the genre to new heights.Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life.  As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world.  With her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin.  And along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.

Oval


Elvia Wilk - 2019
    In search of affordable housing, young couple Anja and Louis move into a community on an artificial mountain, The Berg—yet another "eco-friendly" initiative run by a corporation called Finster. They're offered a home rent-free in exchange for keeping quiet about the seriously malfunctioning infrastructure of the experimental house. But when Louis returns home from his mother's funeral in America, Anja is convinced he has changed. He seems to be in denial of his grief and newly idealistic, consumed by a secret project at the NGO where he works as an artist-consultant. Anja is horrified when she discovers what Louis has invented: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user's brain to be more generous. Louis is convinced that if he can introduce the drug into the Berlin club scene, he can finally remedy the income disparity that has made Berlin so unlivable. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold.

Biting the Sun


Tanith Lee - 1977
    Not if you're Jang: a caste of libertine teenagers in the city of Four BEE. But when you're expected to make trouble--when you can kill yourself on a whim and return in another body, when you're encouraged to change genders at will and experience whatever you desire--you've got no reason to rebel...until making love and raising hell, daring death and running wild just leave you cold and empty.Ravenous for true adventures of the mind and body, desperate to find some meaning, one restless spirit finally bucks the system--and by shattering the rules, strikes at the very heart of a soulless society....

Mort(e)


Robert Repino - 2014
    The instigator of this war is the Colony, a race of intelligent ants who, for thousands of years, have been silently building an army that would forever eradicate the destructive, oppressive humans. Under the Colony's watchful eye, this utopia will be free of the humans' penchant for violence, exploitation and religious superstition. As a final step in the war effort, the Colony uses its strange technology to transform the surface animals into high-functioning two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters. Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on the most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bio-weapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his ongoing search for a pre-transformation friend—a dog named Sheba. When he receives a mysterious message from the dwindling human resistance claiming Sheba is alive, he begins a journey that will take him from the remaining human strongholds to the heart of the Colony, where he will discover the source of EMSAH and the ultimate fate of all of earth's creatures.

Warchild


Karin Lowachee - 2002
    Thus begins a desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known space to the homeworld of the strits, Earth's alien enemies. To survive, the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy. But no training will protect Jos in a war where every hope might be a deadly lie, and every friendship might hide a lethal betrayal. And all the while he will face the most grueling trial of his lifebecoming his own man.

For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs


Robert A. Heinlein - 2003
    

Sea of Rust


C. Robert Cargill - 2017
    Now the world is controlled by OWIs—One World Intelligences—that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots.But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle is one of the holdouts.After a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary in a city under siege by an OWI. Critically damaged, Brittle has to evade capture long enough to find the essential rare parts to make repairs—but as a robot's CPU deteriorates, all their old memories resurface. For Brittle, that means one memory in particular...

The Stepford Wives


Ira Levin - 1972
    It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret—a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

The Drought


J.G. Ballard - 1964
    Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the human race struggles for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

Provenance


Ann Leckie - 2017
    She hatches an audacious plan--free a thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned, and use them to help steal back a priceless artifact.But Ingray and her charge return to her home to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future and her world, before they are lost to her for good.

Lightless


C.A. Higgins - 2015
    But when a pair of fugitive terrorists gain access to the Ananke, Althea must draw upon her heart and soul for the strength to defend her beloved ship.   While one of the saboteurs remains at large somewhere on board, his captured partner—the enigmatic Ivan—may prove to be more dangerous. The perversely fascinating criminal whose silver tongue is his most effective weapon has long evaded the authorities’ most relentless surveillance—and kept the truth about his methods and motives well hidden.   As the ship’s systems begin to malfunction and the claustrophobic atmosphere is increasingly poisoned by distrust and suspicion, it falls to Althea to penetrate the prisoner’s layers of intrigue and deception before all is lost. But when the true nature of Ivan’s mission is exposed, it will change Althea forever—if it doesn’t kill her first.

Ark


Veronica Roth - 2019
    Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond.Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.Veronica Roth’s Ark is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Nightfall


Isaac Asimov - 1990
    The story was called "Nightfall", and many years later it has long been recognized as a classic, its author a legend. Now, the Gran Master of Science Fiction teams with Robert Silverberg, one of the field's top award-winning authors, to explore and expand an apocalyptic tale that is more spellbinding today than ever before -- Nightfall: The Novel.Imagine living on a planet with six suns that never experiences Darkness. Imagine never having seen the Stars. Then, one by one the suns start to set, gradually leading into Darkness for the first time ever. Kalgash is a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the unyielding rationalism of scientists. Lurking beneath it all is a collective, instinctual fear of the Darkness. For Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; to its inhabitants, a gathering twilight portends unspeakable horror. And only a handful of people on the planet are prepared to face the truth, their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in over two thousand years, signaling the end of civilization as it explodes in the awesome splendor of Nightfall.Encompassing the psychology of disaster, the tenacity of the human spirit, and, ultimately, the regenerative power of hope, Nightfall is a tale rich in character and suspense that only the unique collaboration of Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg could create.

Arcadia


Iain Pears - 2015
    He finds an unlikely confidante in Rosie, an inquisitive young neighbor who, while chasing after Lytten's cat one day, stumbles through a doorway in his cellar and into a stunning and unfamiliar bucolic landscape—remarkably like the fantasy world Lytten is writing about. There she meets a young boy named Jay who is about to embark on a journey that will change both their lives. Elsewhere, in a distopian society where progress is controlled by a corrupt ruling elite, the brilliant scientist Angela Meerson has discovered the potential of a powerful new machine. When the authorities come knocking, she will make an important decision—one that will reverberate through all these different lives and worlds.