

Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! This weekly shared “meme” has a different theme each week and is shared by many blogs. We’re aiming to come up with ten things between us each week so they won’t be in any particular order!
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. For a list of past and future Top Ten Tuesday topics and to find out more about Top Ten Tuesday, click here!
Top Ten Books I’d Give To Readers Who Have Never Read Sci-Fi
1. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham Goodreads blurb: In the community of Waknut it is believed mutants are the products of the Devil and must be stamped out. When David befriends a girl with a slight abnormality, he begins to understand the nature of fear and oppression. When he develops his own deviation, he must learn to conceal his secret. – Philippa
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Goodreads Blurb: Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…
Huxley’s ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.
– Philippa
3. 1984 by George Orwell
Goodreads blurb: While 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is more timely that ever. 1984 presents a “negative utopia”, that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world — so powerful that it’s completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions — a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.
I think the above blurb says it all. This is a classic sic-fi that has become chillingly real. – Natasha
4. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Goodreads blurb: Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller – these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
This is an anti-war novel, but has so many sic-fi elements packed into its 177 pages. Aliens and time travel make this a good, if not slightly absurd, first foray into the world of sic-fi. – Natasha
5. Wool by Hugh Howey
Goodreads blurb: In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.
His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.
This is my go-to book for a gentle introduction to sci-fi. It is so action-packed and addictive that you won’t even question the world Howey ‘submerges’ you in – Natasha
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Goodreads blurb: Written when landing on the moon was still a dream, made into one of the most influential films of our century, brilliant, compulsive, prophetic, 2001: A Space Odyssey tackles the enduring theme of man’s place in the universe.
Even though the film is a masterpiece, the novel makes certain parts a lot less baffling! – Angelya
7. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Goodreads blurb: Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
– Angelya
8. Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Goodreads blurb: Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe…and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Robinette Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Rob Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is…in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
– Philippa
9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Goodreads blurb: Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
Something a little more amusing and absurd. Sci-fi doesn’t have to take itself too seriously. – Natasha
10. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Goodreads blurb: A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger’s cinematic storytelling that makes the novel’s unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.
Although I wouldn’t say this is strictly a sci-fi book, there are obviously elements of time travel involved (duh!), so it would be a gentle introduction to the concept for the skeptics. – Natasha
Alison
Very fun list! I think Time Traveller’s Wife is perfect for people who haven’t read very much sci-fi. I have been meaning to read Wool forever.
Alison recently posted…Top Ten Books I’d Give to Adult’s Who’ve Never Read YA
April @ The Steadfast Reader
Wool is REALLY good – it’s actually a trilogy now!
April @ The Steadfast Reader recently posted…Top Ten Books I’d Recommend to Religious and Social Conservatives
Sofia
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” has been on my TBR list for ages!
My TTT
Sofia recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I’d Give To Readers Who Have Never Read Fantasy
Chrissi Reads
Cinder and The Time Traveller’s Wife are great choices! I don’t read a lot of sci-fi but I loved those books.
Chrissi Reads recently posted…Top Ten Books I’d Give To Adult Readers Who Have Never Read Young Adult
Genevieve Holpepper
Great list with some of my favourites and some I haven’t heard of before! Wool sounds great! Will have to give it a go!
Amy
Excellent combination with the classics! Slaughterhouse five is one of my favourite sci-fi’s of all time.
Amy recently posted…I’ll make a reader of you yet
April @ The Steadfast Reader
Well done madam! I want to give Brave New World and 1984 to EVERYONE! 🙂 I also really enjoyed Cinder and Wool — but I’m always the odd man out, I’ve never really cared for Douglas Adams. C’est la vie. Variety is the spice of life. 🙂
April @ The Steadfast Reader recently posted…Top Ten Books I’d Recommend to Religious and Social Conservatives
Nicole @ The Quiet Concert
Yay I love that Cinder is on this list! The Lunar Chronicles is one of my favorite series! And I promised a friend I’d read Brave New World so that is on my TBR 🙂
Nicole @ The Quiet Concert
Nicole @ The Quiet Concert recently posted…The Hallowed Ones by Laura Bickle
Anne
Fabulous list. I must give several of the books on it a try as I am a fan of the others on your list. First up: Chrysalids.
Anne recently posted…TTT: Books I’d Recommend on this topic
Shan
Great list. I completely agree with 1984, A Brave New World, and The Time Travellers Wife. This week, I recommend ten Canadian literature books.
Shan recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday