First Contact: Award-Winning Science Fiction Books for Beginners

Why it’s here: Longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Klara is an Artificial Friend, a robot companion waiting in a shop window to be chosen, watching the people who pass by with endless curiosity. Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story entirely through her eyes, and uses it to ask a simple question: what does it mean to love someone?

Perfect for: Readers who like quiet, moving novels - and anyone curious about life alongside AI.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and shortlisted for the National Book Award. Fifteen years after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of the world, a small troupe of actors and musicians travels between the scattered settlements around the Great Lakes, performing Shakespeare for the survivors. Emily St. John Mandel moves back and forth in time to tell a story about art, memory and what makes life worth living.

Perfect for: Readers who like books that jump between characters and decades.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In the Republic of Gilead, women are no longer allowed to read, and Offred is a Handmaid, valued only for her ability to bear children for the Commander and his wife. Margaret Atwood's classic is the book that proves science fiction can be literature - and it is as unsettling as ever.

Perfect for: Readers who want a modern classic about power, freedom and women's bodies.

Why it’s here: Shortlisted for the Hugo Award. Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship, millions of miles from Earth, with no memory of who he is or why he's there - only that the fate of humanity depends on him. From the author of The Martian, a race against the clock packed with real science, problem-solving and humour.

Perfect for: Readers who loved The Martian, or anyone who enjoys a good puzzle and a likeable hero.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. In 1952, a meteorite destroys much of the US east coast, and the climate disaster that follows means humanity must reach space far sooner than planned. Elma York, a former wartime pilot and mathematician, joins the space programme as a 'calculator' - and starts asking why the women can't fly too. Alternate history that reads like a space-race drama.

Perfect for: Readers who like historical fiction and stories about women breaking barriers.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Nebula Award. Area X has been cut off from the world for decades, and every expedition sent in has ended badly. Now the twelfth goes in: four women - a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor and a psychologist - sent to map the terrain and avoid being contaminated by it. Jeff VanderMeer's short, eerie novel is part science fiction, part horror and part nature writing.

Perfect for: Readers who like slow-building suspense and don't need every question answered.

Why it’s here: Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Rosemary joins the crew of the Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that builds tunnels through space, looking for a quiet place to leave her past behind. What she finds is a crew of different species and personalities - and a job that takes them on a long trip across a galaxy at war. Becky Chambers's novel is all about the people, and it's a joy to spend time with them.

Perfect for: Readers who love character-driven stories and found family more than space battles.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Hugo Award. Ensign Andrew Dahl is thrilled with his posting to the starship Intrepid - until he notices that every away mission ends in a deadly encounter, the senior officers always survive, and at least one junior crew member never comes back. John Scalzi's comedy is a love letter to Star Trek that makes fun of science fiction while you're reading it.

Perfect for: Anyone who grew up watching Star Trek - you don't need to have read any science fiction.

Why it’s here: Shortlisted for the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. A government ministry is bringing people from the past into the present, and a civil servant is assigned to live with one of them: Commander Graham Gore, a Victorian polar explorer who is a little disoriented by washing machines, Spotify and the collapse of the British Empire. Kaliane Bradley's debut is a romance, a spy thriller and a workplace comedy in one.

Perfect for: Readers who like romantic comedies and a time-travel story with a lot of heart.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Hugo Award and the very first Nebula Award. On the desert planet Arrakis, the only thing of value is the spice melange, which extends life and expands the mind - and young Paul Atreides is heir to the noble family tasked with ruling it. Frank Herbert's epic of politics, religion and ecology is the most influential science fiction novel ever written, and still a gripping adventure.

Perfect for: Readers who saw the films and want the full story, or anyone ready for a big epic.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human envoy is sent to Winter, an icebound planet whose people have no fixed gender, to persuade them to join an alliance of worlds - and must first learn to understand a culture utterly unlike his own. Ursula K. Le Guin's novel about psychology, society and human emotion changed what science fiction could be about.

Perfect for: Readers who like thoughtful novels about culture, identity and what makes us human.

Why it’s here: Winner of the Hugo, Nebula and BSFA Awards. A vast, perfectly cylindrical object fifty kilometres long enters the Solar System - humanity's first visitor from the stars, and a technological marvel that must be investigated. Arthur C. Clarke's short classic is pure wonder: the thrill of exploring something truly alien.

Perfect for: Readers who want a short classic full of mystery and the joy of exploration.