The Penguin Hotline Recommends: Gifts for the Sci-Fi Connoisseur

This enduring classic by Frank Herbert—a grand epic set on an unforgiving desert planet and one of the best-selling science fiction novels of all time—is now available in a brand-new, deluxe hardcover edition. It features a gorgeous new cover, pages with the edges dyed blue, a new map, endpapers with original artwork, and an updated introduction. If your giftee hasn’t read this novel, it’s a must-read. And if they have an old, dog-eared paperback, isn’t it time for a stylish refresh?

From the author of Neuromancer, this fast-paced novel takes place in a near future America and a far future London. As these two timelines intersect, a brilliant, fascinating, and twisty narrative ensues.

Whether or not you’ve caught the series based on this novel currently streaming on Netflix, it’s a thrilling read. A hard-boiled, take-no-prisoners cyberpunk adventure by Richard K. Morgan, set in a world where the mega-rich live forever through artificially preserved consciousness.

This is an absolutely brilliant first contact novel by Mary Doria Russell. This gorgeous, contemplative book follows a Jesuit priest as he leads the first human encounter with extraterrestrial life. It’s out of this world—literally.

In this incredible technothriller self-driving cars are almost universal, and when eight of them are hacked with passengers locked inside, a high-speed, high-stakes plot ensues. Unmissable!

If you loved the movie Alien, this book is for you. In this taut, claustrophobic thriller, a separatist group decides that taking over an abandoned, self-sustaining spaceship is the key to a future away from the government of earth. But when they get on board, their escape pod explodes, and they discover there is a very good reason the ship was abandoned when they wake up a terrifying threat that has been lurking there. The book takes place of the course of less than 24 hours, speaks wisely to the perils of a supposed utopia, and presents two deftly nuanced protagonists. A great, layered read!

A new omnibus edition collects the innovative, contemplative, and deeply engaging Binti trilogy. These novels follow a girl who is the first in her family to gain entry to a selective intergalactic university, and the ways in which politics, people and power intersect in a gorgeously rendered far future. The first novel in the trilogy was the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and the omnibus includes a brand new Binti story.

This novel is set in a future so close you can taste it. America’s economy is completed dominated by one sprawling tech company, Cloud, and its thousands of employees are deeply beholden to their monolithic employer—they have to live “on-campus” and be paid in Cloud currency instead of US dollars. The protagonists at the center of this gripping, dystopian thriller soon realize that Cloud wants to watch everyone, but it also has many secrets it needs to hide. Fun fact—the movie rights have been optioned by Ron Howard.

This compulsively readable military science fiction novel is set on a devastated Earth, with a plot perfect for a blockbuster sci-fi action movie—think John Scalzi meets Pacific Rim. The story revolves around a recruit with a lot of secrets, who cheats the system to join the military and gets assigned to a squad of misfits. It has appealing characters, wry one-liners, and a lot of heart.

Ace has produced a gorgeous 50^th anniversary edition of this absolutely groundbreaking novel by the late Ursula K. Le Guin. The novel revolves around a lone human ambassador who is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. This new edition features a foreword by David Mitchell and an afterword by Charlie Jane Anders.

This cinematic, fast-paced, horror-tinged science fiction thriller is incredibly tense and involving. It stars a woman who is sent to salvage a research vessel that has gone dark, with all crew aboard thought dead. But when she gets there, the crew are very much alive—if not entirely human. Now she’s trapped on board, alone with a crew infected by a mysterious parasitic alien.

In this fast-paced, pivotal prequel to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker from a Hugo and Nebula Award-winner, the heroes of the Resistance—Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, Rey, and Finn—must fight back from the edge of oblivion.

In this captivating, lyrical  science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.