Reading List for a Sci-Fi Beginner

Science fiction! It's scary! It's weird! It's...sciencey! Now, there are plenty of devoted readers out there who love to sit down with their crime novels and their lawyer stories and their thrillers, and that's all well and good. But what if you're bored with the status quo? What if you want to get away from it all? See another planet, maybe? See the future? Meet aliens?

Science fiction is the change you're looking for, but it can be daunting for new readers to get into this wide-ranging and epic genre. Where do you start? Lucky for you, we've assembled a list of a few great sci-fi masterpieces to get you going.

If you're into period pieces, you might want to start with The War of Worlds by H. G. Wells. You may have seen the Steven Spielberg movie, or even the 1950s George Pal schlock, but you haven't read the real thing. The War of the Worlds is a chilling, grim portrayal of deadly Martian invaders laying waste to Victorian England, and is one of the earliest pieces of hard science fiction that you'll find. We follow a likable bystander from the first landing of the nasty Martians to the final, bleak picture of their defeat. You might think you know what you're in for, if you've seen the movies, but trust us, there's a whole lot more to it.

Looking for something a little cheerier? Try Larry Niven's Ringworld series. Ringworld follows a 200-year-old adventurer named Louis Wu on his voyage to a strange alien artifact, the titular Ringworld. Joined by a cowardly two-headed alien, a man-eating "Kzin", and a woman bred through the ages to be the luckiest human alive, Wu discovers the mystery of the Ringworld. Niven's novel is a lot more approachable than some of the other sci-fi epics you'll find on this list, and it's a good place to start if you're looking for something that's not too heavy.

But if you're looking for heavy, look no further than Dune, by Frank Herbert. This massive volume became incredibly popular during the 1960s. Dune chronicles the fall and rebirth of a house of far-future nobles who are exiled to a desert planet populated by dangerous sandworms and fanatical warriors known as "Fremen". Dune is a hard book for sci-fi beginners to tackle, filled with technological and religious concepts that are a little bit too dense for their own good. That's not to say that Dune isn't a good read. If you allow yourself to become part of the vivid world that Herbert illustrates, you'll find it to be a thrilling, thought-provoking, and satisfying read. Plus, if you can get through Dune, you can get through anything!

Another massive but highly regarded sci-fi epic is Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. Hyperion takes a unique format, following one by one the stories of a number of pilgrims on their way to a prophesied confrontation on a distant planet. You'll find the characters easy to sympathize with, from the cranky writer Martin Silenius who suffered a stroke while on a space voyage and lost his ability to write, to Sol Weintraub, the scholar whose daughter is suddenly aging backwards, to Brawne Lamia, a hard-hitting female detective who falls in love with an android. The mystery of Hyperion is spun slowly and deliberately, leaving you begging for answers. Fortunately, there's a second book, The Fall of Hyperion, to solve some of the mysteries you'll uncover.

Finally, if you want to move a little closer to home, you'll be impressed by the novels of William Gibson. Gibson's works are credited with inventing the term "cyberspace", and many of Gibson's novels take place in Earth's near future. Neuromancer, Gibson's first novel, follows a hacker named Chase, who is hired by an artificial intelligence that wishes to free itself from its human jailers and escape into the real world. Gibson paints vivid images using almost poetic language, and his books have a beautiful and artistic edge to them, besides being delicious sci-fi. Another of Gibson's novels, Virtual Light, takes place even closer to home, in a world where the San Francisco Bay Bridge has turned into a condemned shelter for thousands of vagabonds and homeless, and also the hotbed for an international conspiracy.

Science fiction has a lot to offer, and once you're tackled the books listed here, you'll be ready to move out on your own and discover all the wonders of the science fiction universe. Bon voyage!