So, you're a sci-fi fan, but have you read the books that shaped the genre?

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Valentine Michael Smith, a human born and raised on Mars, arrives on Earth stunning Western culture...and judging us as a human who has never been exposed to any of our societies.


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Niven's hugely influential 1970 novel of an outer space expedition to a mysterious object – a vast artificial world in the shape of a ring – that goes horribly wrong.


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Clarke questions the survival of mankind in this science-fiction tale about Overlords from outer space who dominate the world.


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While on a mission to the planet Gethen — a world whose inhabitants can change their gender — earthling Genly Ai is sent by leaders of the nation of Orgoreyn to a concentration camp. The exiled prime minister of the nation of Karhide tries to rescue him.


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****'s trippy novel tells of sophisticated off-world androids who turn against their creators, slip back to a post-apocalyptic Earth, and must be hunted down by bounty hunter Rick Deckard. The book inspired — albeit very loosely — the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner.

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A band of psychologists, under the leadership of psychohistorian Hari Seldon, plant a colony to encourage art, science, and technology in the declining Galactic Empire and to preserve the accumulated knowledge of humankind.


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Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.


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Young Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, bred to be a genius, is drafted to Battle School where he trains to lead the century-long fight against the alien Buggers. (Way, WAY, better than that thing that passed as a movie.)


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Seven pilgrims undertake a voyage to the world of Hyperion — dominated by a fearsome and mysterious creature called the Shrike — where they hope to learn the secret that will save humanity.


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n the first, hilarious volume of Adams' Hitchhiker's series, reluctant galactic traveler Arthur Dent gets swept up in some literally Earth-shattering events involving aliens, sperm whales, a depressed robot, mice who are more than they seem, and some really, really bad poetry. (Also way, WAY, better than the movie.)


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Gibson's groundbreaking debut novel follows Case, a burned-out computer whiz, who is asked to steal a security code that is locked in the most heavily guarded databank in the solar system. A seminal work in the genre that would come to be known as cyberpunk.