Books to Read if You Love Dune

Using original, deep-access reporting, extensive research, and insightful commentary, The Spice Must Flow brings the true popularity of Dune out into the light for the very first time. With original interviews with the beloved actors and directors behind the films — including Timothée Chalamet, Kyle Maclachlan, Denis Villeneuve, Patrick Stewart, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Newman, and many more — The Spice Must Flow also examines the far-reaching influence of Dune on art, music, politics, and, most notably, its status as the first ecological science-fiction story specifically concerned with climate change.

In Ashtown, a rough-and-tumble desert community, the Emperor rules with poisoned claws and an iron fist. He can’t show any sign of weakness, as the neighboring Wiley City has spent lifetimes beating down the people of Ashtown and would love nothing more than its downfall. There’s only one person in the desert the Emperor can fully trust — and her name is Scales. However, Scales discovers the brutal heart beneath Wiley City’s pristine façade and dredges up secrets from her own past that she would rather keep hidden. If she wants to save the world from the earth-shattering truths she uncovers, she can no longer remain silent — even if speaking up costs her everything.

A cutting-edge collection of the best short stories in contemporary Afrofuturist fiction — from Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker award-winning Black authors. Including Afrofuturist science fiction, weird and fantastic tales, horror and the paranormal, apocalyptic lyricism, time travel, superheroes, and more, here are twenty mindblowing, horror-strewn, weird, woke, nerdy, terrifying, liberating, fantastic, utopian, surreal, genre-defying and empowering short stories, all of them worth reading and rereading now and far into futurity.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a 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.

In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways; yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. A woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different — special — she names her Onyesonwu, which means “Who fears death?” in an ancient language. Even as a child, Onye manifests the beginnings of a remarkable and unique magic. As she grows, so do her abilities, and during an inadvertent visit to the spirit realm, she learns something terrifying: someone powerful is trying to kill her.

The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever in this “provocative stand-alone novel [that] deftly incorporates elements of science and philosophy into dark academia” (The Washington Post).

A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary’s mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose—and change—their gender. Exploring questions of psychology, society, and human emotion in an alien world, this book stands as a landmark achievement from the queen of science fiction.

The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers maintains the magic within His Majesty’s lands. But lately, the once proper institute has fallen into disgrace, naming an altogether unsuitable gentleman as their Sorcerer Roya, Zacharias Wythe, and allowing England’s stores of magic to bleed dry. At his wit’s end, Zacharias ventures to the border of Fairyland which sets him on a path which will alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain—and the world at large…

Robert A. Heinlein’s cult favorite book about a human raised on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith, who has just arrived on planet Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while his own “psi” powers—including telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and teleportation—make him a type of messiah figure among humans.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time, they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture… As the humans begin to unravel the planet’s mysteries, they will find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.

It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent…until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse.

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory. Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

Before the Internet was commonplace, William Gibson showed us the Matrix—a world within a world, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace. Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the Matrix, and has just been recruited for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. This cyberpunk novel upped the ante on the entire genre of science fiction.

In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. What he learns is that the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

For centuries, the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet has beckoned to humankind. Now a group of one hundred colonists begins a mission whose ultimate goal is to transform Mars into a more Earthlike planet. But despite these ambitious goals, there are some who would fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.