Books like 'Antarctica'
Readers who enjoyed Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical sc-fi action / adventure 20th century hard sci-fi military, war & conflict politics survival pollution-climate-change revolution
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Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsCryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods—World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe... -
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...Categorized as:
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Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn her first trial by fire, Cordelia Naismith captained a throwaway ship of the Betan Expeditionary Force on a mission to destroy an enemy armada...Categorized as:
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Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsFor twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years...Categorized as:
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A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsAlternative Cover Edition can be found here. After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds.The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches... -
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsRobert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands...Categorized as:
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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... -
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsThe man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action.The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought... -
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsThe Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away... -
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... -
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... -
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:
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The Naked God by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsThe Confederation is starting to collapse politically and economically, allowing the 'possessed' to infiltrate more worlds. Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own... -
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The Short Victorious War by David Weber
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe proles are revolting.The families who rule the People's Republic of Haven are in trouble. The treasury's empty, the Proles are restless, and civil war is imminent.But the ruling class knows what they need to keep in power; another short, victorious war to unite the people and fill the treasury once more... -
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsAlternate Cover Edition can be found here. A Fire upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale... -
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsIn one of Robert Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe--and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most frightening enemy...Categorized as:
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Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsaka The Genetic GeneralThroughout the Fourteen Worlds of humanity, no race is as feared and respected as the Dorsai. The ultimate warriors, they are known for their deadly rages, unbreakable honor, and fierce independence. No man rules the Dorsai, but their mastery of the art of war has made them the most valuable mercenaries in the known universe...Categorized as:
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The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsIn AD 2600 the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures... -
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsTHE LUCKY ONES WENT FIRST…The gigantic comet has slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam... -
On Basilisk Station by David Weber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsHonor Harrington in trouble: Having made him look the fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens... -
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsIn this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hitmen—and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive...Categorized as:
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The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsOn the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Hugo and Nebula-winning author Robert J. Sawyer takes us back in time to revisit history…with a twist.While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a bomb based on nuclear fusion—the mechanism that powers the sun...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook book fiction -
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe red planet is red no longer, as Mars has become a perfectly inhabitable world. But while Mars flourishes, Earth is threatened by overpopulation and ecological disaster. Soon people look to Mars as a refuge, initiating a possible interplanetary conflict, as well as political strife between the Reds, who wish to preserve the planet in its desert state, and the Green "terraformers"...Categorized as:
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The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDenver detective Win Bear, on the trail of a murderer, discovers much more than a killer. He accidentally stumbles upon the probability broach, a portal to a myriad of worlds--some wildly different from, others disconcertingly similar to our own...Categorized as:
politics 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history book cyberpunk dystopia -
Eden by Stanisław Lem
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsA six-man crew crash-lands on Eden, fourth planet from another sun. The men find a strange world that grows ever stranger, and everywhere there are images of death. The crew's attempt to communicate with this civilization leads to violence and to a cruel truth-cruel precisely because it is so human. Translated by Marc E. Heine... -
Midshipman's Hope by David Feintuch
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDavid Feintuch’s acclaimed Seafort Saga begins as Nicholas Seafort sets off on an interstellar naval adventure he will never forget In the year 2194, seventeen-year-old Nicholas Seafort is assigned to the Hibernia as a lowly midshipman. Destination: the thriving colony of Hope Nation...Categorized as:
space-travel 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens book colonization coming-of-age -
Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsIn the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson began his critically acclaimed epic saga of the colonization of Mars, Now the Hugo Award winning Green Mars continues the thrilling and timeless tale of humanity's struggle to survive at its farthest frontier...Categorized as:
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American Front by Harry Turtledove
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWhen the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their longtime allies, Britain and France...Categorized as:
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Moving Mars by Greg Bear
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMoving Mars is a story of human courage and love set within the greater saga of a planetary liberation movement. Mars is a colonial world, governed by corporate interests on Earth. The citizens of Mars are hardworking, but held back by their lack of access to the best education, and the desire of the Earthly powers to keep the best new inventions for themselves...Categorized as:
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Last Human by Doug Naylor
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLister gazed out of the porthole and catalogue the series of disasters that had led him to this point in space and time: the bad decisions, the poor career choices, the unreliable friendships that had led him here - on a prison ship bound for the most inhospitable penal colony in the outer cosmos... and all he'd ever wanted was to be a soft metal guitar icon... -
Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsKip from midwest Centerville USA works the summer before college as a pharmacy soda jerk, and wins an authentic stripped-down spacesuit in a soap contest. He answers a distress radio call from Peewee, scrawny rag doll-clutching genius aged 11. With the comforting cop Mother Thing, three-eyed tripod Wormfaces kidnap them to the Moon and Pluto...Categorized as:
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Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsA legend among sci-fi readers, C. J. Cherryh's Union-Alliance novels, while separate and complete in themselves, are part of a much larger tapestry—a future history spanning 5,000 years of human civilization. A blockbuster space opera of the rebellion between Earth and its far-flung colonies, it is a classic science fiction masterwork... -
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsIn his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research & cutting-edge science in the 1st of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars:For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. For centuries, Mars has beckoned humans to conquer its hostile climate. Now, in 2026, a group of 100 colonists is about to fulfill that destiny...Categorized as:
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The Postman by David Brin
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThis is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction...Categorized as:
survival 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook book -
Eon by Greg Bear
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe 21st century was on the brink of nuclear confrontation when the 300 kilometer-long stone flashed out of nothingness and into Earth's orbit. NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad... -
The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsOthers have written SF on the theme of immortality, but in The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson made it his own. Early in human history, certain individuals were born who live on, unaging, undying, through the centuries and millenia. We follow them through over 2000 years, up to our time and beyond-to the promise of utopia, and to the challenge of the stars... -
The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIn the spellbinding Arthur C. Clarke tradition, here is an exhilarating adventure into the hearts of both the Universe and mankind...By the twenty-third century Earth has already had two encounters with massive, mysterious robotic spacecraft from beyond our solar system--the incontestable proof of an alien technology that far exceeds our own... -
Beowulf's Children by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA new generation is growing up on the island paradise of Camelot, ignorant of the Great Grendel Wars fought when their parents and grandparents first arrived from Earth. Setting out for the mainland, this group of young rebels feels ready to fight any grendels that get in their way... -
The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen malcontents from a utopian twenty-first century use their time gate to transform Hitler into an invincible conqueror, a band of freedom-fighting Americans launches the Proteus project and builds a second time gate. Reprint...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook book dystopia -
World without Stars by Poul Anderson
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA normal man would have lain down and died, but to Hugh Valland the task before him seemed simple enough... -
Revolt in 2100 by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsIt wasn't the communists who got us after all...You can read about its beginnings in Heinlein's immortal STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: At the height of America's secular decadence came Nehemiah Scudder, bearing the rod and the wrath of the Lord for those who opposed him, and the promise of earthly happiness and heavenly bliss for those who followed him..Categorized as:
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The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham, Mark Salwowski
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsShips are sinking for no apparent reason, carrying hundreds to a dark underwater grave. Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe...Categorized as:
pollution-climate-change 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens apocalyptic audiobook book -
Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRama Revealed (1993) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. It is the last of three sequels to Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama by these authors. The book picks up the story immediately after the end of The Garden of Rama. The book follows the story of Nicole Wakefield and her escape from imprisonment left at the cliffhanger of the previous book... -
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Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein
Rated: 3.68 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsWinner of four Hugo Awards and the Grand Master Nebula Award for Lifetime Achievement.Three high school students formed the Galileo Club to share their interests in science and space exploration. But they never imagined they would team up with a nuclear physicist to construct and crew a rocket bound for the moon.And they never expected to gain some powerful enemies in the process...Categorized as:
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Alternate Generals by Harry Turtledove
Rated: 3.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLeadership makes all the difference! At Gaugemela the Macedonians had Alexander and the Persians had -- Darius. Result: world conquest. But what if the Persians had had -- Erwin Rommel. Or what if George S. Patton had commanded Southern forces at Bull Run, and Lincoln had become a Confederate prisoner? The possibilities are endless... -
In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsContains Introduction EssayCover Artist: Don Dixon2019: NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy the comet, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal...2034: Then a reply is heard... -
Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsYears ago, the enormous, enigmatic alien spacecraft called Rama sailed through our solar system as mind-boggling proof that life existed -- or had existed -- elsewhere in the universe. Now, at the dawn of the twenty-third century, another ship is discovered hurtling toward us. A crew of Earth's best and brightest minds is assembled to rendezvous with the massive vessel... -
Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke
Rated: 3.68 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe time: 200 years after man's first landing on the Moon. There are permanent populations established on the Moon, Venus and Mars. Outer space inhabitants have formed a new political entity, the Federation, and between the Federation and Earth a growing rivalry has developed. EARTHLIGHT is the story of this emerging conflict...Categorized as:
space-travel 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics colonization -
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
Rated: 3.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratings(Jun 1986, Norman Spinrad, Bantam Spectra, 0-553-25289-5, $3...
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