Books like 'Flatlander'
Readers who enjoyed Flatlander by Larry Niven also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
sc-fi mystery space action / adventure hard sci-fi space-opera solar-system law-enforcement classics cyberpunk
-
Network Effect by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 58 ratingsMurderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel... -
Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsThe fifth novel in Corey's New York Times bestselling Expanse series--now being produced for television by the SyFy Channel!A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed...Categorized as:
cyberpunk space-opera 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens apocalyptic audiobook -
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsMurderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr... -
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsIt has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue... -
-
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsNo, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall... -
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she..Categorized as:
classics space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsHumanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted...Categorized as:
law-enforcement space-opera 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens audiobook book -
The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsHumanity is struggling to hold out against a hostile takeover by an alien race that claims to be on a religious mission to bring all sentient life to its God at the End of Time. But while things may look grim in the immediate aftermath of the attack, mankind is busy playing an even longer game than the aliens may have expected... -
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThey mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities - and unforeseen risks...Categorized as:
classics cyberpunk law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure ai alternate-history -
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsA millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together...Categorized as:
classics law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult ai audiobook -
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 59 ratingsSciFi’s favorite crabby A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is.And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good... -
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsFoundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for the old forces of barbarism... -
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsOn the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all... -
Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsAt last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations had come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation had proved victorious; and now they return to Hari Seldon's long-established plan to build a new Empire on the ruins of the old. But rumors persist that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all—and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge... -
-
Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThe fourth novel in James S.A. Corey’s New York Times bestselling Expanse seriesThe gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world... -
The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants...Categorized as:
classics law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult ai audiobook -
The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsExposed as the Second Dreamer, Araminta has become the target of a galaxywide search by government agent Paula Myo and the psychopath known as the Cat, along with others equally determined to prevent-- or facilitate --the pilgrimage of the Living Dream cult into the heart of the Void... -
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 74 ratingsOn the Moon, an enigma is uncovered.So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...One of the greatest-selling science fiction novels of our time, this classic book will grip you to the very end... -
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsThis daring story of humanity’s future introduces one of the great masterworks of science fiction: the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, bold ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of people to save civilization from a relentless tide of darkness and violence—beginning with one exceptional man... -
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsFraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls... -
Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsLong after his humiliating defeat at the hands of Earthman Elijah Baley, Keldon Amadiro embarked on a plan to destroy planet Earth. But even after his death, Baley's vision continued to guide his robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, who had the wisdom of a great man behind him and an indestructable will to win...Categorized as:
classics law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult ai audiobook -
The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA millennium into the future two advances have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together...Categorized as:
classics law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult ai audiobook -
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsOn the world called Hyperion the mysterious Time Tombs are opening and seven pilgrims risk their lives to petition the entity called the Shrike - a creature that may well control the fate of all mankind... -
Line War by Neal Asher
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAsher is brilliant at conveying the vastness of space, the strangeness of alien life, and the sweep of planetary horizons.”—SFX MagazineFrom the mind of Neal Asher and his Polity universe comes Line War, which has Agent Cormac once again on the trail, investigating an attack of his AI masters... -
-
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsTom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life... -
The Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsNot every fallen angel comes from heaven...The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. Those who succumbed to it have acquired godlike powers, but now follow a far from divine gospel as they advance inexorably from world to world...Categorized as:
classics space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens apocalyptic audiobook -
Endymion by Dan Simmons, Guy Abadia
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThe multiple-award-winning SF master returns to the universe that is his greatest success--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion--to tell a story of love and memory, triumph and terror in a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors.Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest... -
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsIn 3016, the 2nd Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to faster-than-light Alderson Drive. Intelligent beings are finally found from the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud. The bottled-up ancient civilization, at least one million years old, are welcoming, kind, yet evasive, with a dark problem they have not solved in over a million years... -
Méridien by S.H. Jucha
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Méridiens are fleeing to their far colonies—and they have reason to run. Over the course of decades, they have lost hundreds of ships, billions of people, and seven Confederation colonies to an alien enemy: an advancing swarm of silver ships transported in the bowels of a gigantic, spherical vessel... -
War Factory by Neal Asher
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity... -
Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsFOUNDATIONS'S END?Centuries after the fall of the First Galactic Empire, Mankind's destiny lay in the hands of Golan Trevize, former Councilman of the First Foundation. Reluctantly he chose the mental unity of Galaxia as the only alternative to a future of unending chaos.But Mankind as massmind was not an idea Trevize was comfortable with... -
Jack the Bodiless by Julian May
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the year 2051, Earth stood on the brink of acceptance as full member of the Galactic Milieu, a confederation of worlds spread across the galaxy. Leading humanity was the powerful Remillard family, but somebody--or something--known only as "Fury" wanted them out of the way...Categorized as:
cyberpunk space-opera action-adventure aliens anthologies female-author fiction hard-sci-fi -
The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWith his infectious love of storytelling in all its forms, his rich characterisation and his unrivalled grasp of thrillingly bizarre cutting-edge science Hannu Rajaniemi has swiftly set a new benchmark for SF in the 21st century. And now with his third novel he completes the tale of his gentleman rogue, the many lives and minds of Jean de Flambeur... -
Brass Man by Neal Asher
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIan Cormac, a legendary Earth Central Security agent, the James Bond of a wealthy future, is hunting an interstellar dragon, little knowing that, far away, his competition has resurrected an horrific killing machine named "Mr. Crane" to assist in a similar hunt, ecompassing whole star systems. Mr... -
-
The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsSmuggler Jordan McKell has partner Ixil, an alien whose two "ferrets" ride his shoulders and telepathically exchange simple messages. They take a job on the odd-shaped ship Icarus. But the ragtag crew was found at taverns, the secret cargo sealed tight, the employer missing, and a saboteur is aboard... -
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsThe time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples... -
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe once-utopian Chasm City -a doomed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet- has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted -from the people to the very buildings they inhabit- only the most wretched sort of existence remains...Categorized as:
cyberpunk law-enforcement space-opera 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens audiobook -
The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime. Now an even greater danger has surfaced: a threat to the existence of the universe itself... -
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAn all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears... -
Oracle by Douglas E. Richards
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsA breathtaking near-future thriller. From the NY Times bestselling author whose books have been downloaded over a million times. An interstellar war is racing toward an unsuspecting Earth. Can one young woman stop it before it's too late? LA detective Anna Abbott can see brief, cryptic visions of the future. She just doesn't know it yet. But others do...Categorized as:
law-enforcement space-opera action-adventure aliens alpha-mc audiobook book female-mc -
The Reporter by Scott Sigler, Mur Lafferty
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe Reporter follows Yolanda Davenport, a reporter for Galaxy Sports Magazine, as she searches for the truth about Ju Tweedy's involvement with the murder of Grace McDermott - the incident that drove Ju to join the Ionath Krakens. The Reporter takes place between week three and week six of the 2684 Galactic Football League season, the season that encompasses The All-Pro...Categorized as:
law-enforcement space-opera action-adventure aliens audiobook book contemporary dystopia -
The Aleph Extraction by Dan Moren
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAboard a notorious gangster's luxurious starliner, Simon Kovalic and his crew race to steal a mysterious artifact that could shift the balance of the war...Categorized as:
cyberpunk law-enforcement space-opera action-adventure adult audiobook book dystopia -
Building Victoria by M.D. Cooper
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Intrepid is drifting slowly between the stars. After near calamity at LHS 1565, the ship is headed for Kapteyn's Star to make repairs. There, the crew will need to spend decades building a temporary industrial base. Across the void, the Noctus prepare to leave Sirius for the same destination. Their plan is to colonize the system and forge a new lives for themselves .. -
Rare Earth by Kurt Allan, Derek Shoales
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA lost mining crew, 400 million miles from Earth. A retired miner journeys to find out why. “There’s something out there…” Waldo Packwood has had a rough time of things lately. He’s lost his job, his friends, and finally his family. At 50 years old, he’s living alone in a small apartment wondering what’s happened to his life... -
-
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe modern classic of space opera that began with Children of Time continues in this extraordinary novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise... -
The Soldier by Neal Asher
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn a far corner of space, on the very borders between humanity’s Polity worlds and the kingdom of the vicious crab-like prador, is an immediate threat to all sentient life: an accretion disc, a solar system designed by the long-dead Jain race and swarming with living technology powerful enough to destroy entire civilizations... -
Renegade by Joel Shepherd
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsOne thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy... -
This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsSheltered all her life in a corporate satellite in Earth's outer orbit, Jamisia must face the truth about her origins and her role in the power struggle between the Guerans who dominate intergalactic transportation and the rest of Earth's far-flung and genetically mutated colonies who are trying to break the Guera Guild's monopoly... -
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 84 ratings"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern... -
The Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsOn a rescue mission gone wrong, Miles Vorkosigan is captured by the enemy Cetagandans and thrown into a dome-shaped prisoner of war camp that seems a literal Circle of Hell. Against impossible odds, Miles organizes thousands of angry and dispirited prisoners into military formation that may offer the only chance for escape...Categorized as:
classics law-enforcement space-opera 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.