“What are Ben Bova’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Bova’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by Ben Bova and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of Ben Bova

105 ) The Green Trap

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 91
• Amazon: 86
• LibraryThing: 88

Microbiologist Michael Cochrane has been murdered. His brother Paul wants to find out who did it…and why. Accompanied by a beautiful industrial spy, Elena Sandoval, Paul follows the trail from California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along the way, a lot of people seem to be interested in getting in …

105 ) Power Play

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 95
• Amazon: 84
• LibraryThing: 86

Award-winning author Ben Bova turns out another science fiction hit full of intrigue, scandal, and excitement. Ross is an assistant professor of astronomy at a western university. His wife recently died in an auto accident, leaving Jake alone and bitterly unhappy. Leverett Cardwell has been a father…

104 ) In Quest of Quasars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 79

…

102 ) Transhuman

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 94
• Amazon: 84
• LibraryThing: 81

A scientific thriller by six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova Luke Abramson, a brilliant cellular biologist who is battling lung cancer, has one joy in life: his 10-year-old granddaughter, Angela. When Angela is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and given less than six months to live, Luke wan…

102 ) Moonwar

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 72
• LibraryThing: 91

The sequel to “Moonrise”. Douglas Stavenger and his dedicated team of scientists are determined to defend their life’s work, but technology-hating factions on Earth want to close the flourishing space colony, Moonbase. Can a combination of military defence and political wisdom save the colony?…

101 ) The Dueling Machine

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 91

Here are the deadliest warriors in the universe – awesome gladiators caught in the ultimate one-on-one battles of all eternity. These explosive tales of future combat are collected here for the first time – featuring today’s acclaimed masters of science fiction….

100 ) Death Dream

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 87
• Amazon: 77
• LibraryThing: 85

Damon Santorini, a brilliant virtual reality programmer, works for an amusement park in Florida. But the owner uses the virtual reality programmes to enslave Santorini’s wife and twelve year old daughter – with horrifying results. l…

99 ) Test of Fire

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 80
• LibraryThing: 70

The World is blasted by a Solar flare, whats left is nuked by enemy missiles, only a small amount survive the disaster, and on the moon, watching on is a small (few hundred) group of Scientists, engineers, and workers. What is one to do, sit back and live on the Moon, or try to reconnect with Mother…

98 ) The Next Logical Step

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 91

The Next Logical Step “I don’t really see where this problem has anything to do with me,” the CIA man said. “And, frankly, there are a lot of more important things I could be doing.” Ford, the physicist, glanced at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression on his face, the look that m…

97 ) Farside

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 90
• Amazon: 72
• LibraryThing: 78

Six-time Hugo-Award winner Ben Bova presents Farside. Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder. Telescopes on Earth have detected an…

96 ) Mars, Inc.

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 85
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 87

Bova, a six-time Hugo Award winner and past president of theNational Space Society, returns to his most popular and best-selling subject: the quest for Mars! How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benightedgovernment program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions,that’s for sure….

95 ) Venus

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 43

The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as though they were tin cans. The sky is perpetually covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture …

94 ) Through Eyes of Wonder

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 45
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

…

93 ) Analog Science Fact Reader

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 91

…

92 ) Immortality

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 79
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 79

The first immortals are already living among us. You might be one of them. At first glance, that arresting statement sounds as if it might come from a science fiction story. But it is an astonishing, exciting fact–as explained clearly and cogently by Dr. Ben Bova. In his distinguished career, Dr. B…

91 ) The Hittite

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 82
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 70

This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy. There he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles. Lukka is the man who built th…

90 ) Able One

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 88
• Amazon: 83
• LibraryThing: 47

When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space the resulting shockwave destroys the world’s satellites, throwing global communication into chaos. The United States military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, show that two more missiles are sitting o…

89 ) When the Sky Burned

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 92
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 90

…

88 ) Triumph

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 84
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 58

Ingram In a gripping alternative history, Winston Churchill hatches a daring plot to assassinate Josef Stalin as World War II comes to a close and the Allies battle over the future of the globe….

87 ) Brothers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 73
• Amazon: 77
• LibraryThing: 58

When genetic research yields the hope of immortality, two brothers, both doctors, find themselves on opposite sides of the controversy, and they must bridge the gap that divides them on an issue that could mean nothing less than life or death for millions….

86 ) Power Failure

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 82
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 91

Award-winning writer Ben Bova returns with Power Failure, another tense political thriller starring Jake Ross, science advisor to Senator Frank Tomlinson, as they continue their complex power maneuvers in this near future science fiction novel. Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to try to make a diffe…

85 ) Power Surge

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 88
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 50

Six-time Hugo winner Ben Bova brings us Power Surge, a gripping political thriller on the cutting-edge of science and technology Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington, D.C., to make a difference. As the science advisor to a newly-elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that…

84 ) The Alien Within

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 59
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 53

When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into s…

83 ) New Earth

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 79
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 57

Award-winning author Ben Bova brings us New Earth, his latest tale of science fiction in his Grand Tour series. The entire world is thrilled by the discovery of a new Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows that the planet has oceans of liquid water and a breathable oxygen-rich atmosphere. Eager to …

82 ) Saturn

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 72
• LibraryThing: 74

Second in size only to Jupiter, bigger than a thousand Earths but light enough to float in water, home of crushing gravity and delicate, seemingly impossible rings, it dazzles and attracts us: SATURN Earth groans under the thumb of fundamentalist political regimes. Crisis after crisis has given auth…

78 ) Planets, Life and LGM

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

…

78 ) The Amazing Laser

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

…

78 ) Star Peace: Assured Survival

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

Star Peace (originally published in 1986) is a novel by Ben Bova, the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction. At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied….

78 ) Death Wave

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 78
• Amazon: 51
• LibraryThing: 63

Six-time Hugo Award-winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind’s expansion beyond the solar system. In Ben Bova’s previous novel, New Earth, Jordan Kell led the first human mission beyond the solar system, where they discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. But one alien AI survi…

76 ) Powersat

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 63
• Amazon: 63
• LibraryThing: 63

America needs energy, and Dan Randolph is determined to provide it. He dreams of an array of geosynchronous powersats, satellites which would gather solar energy and beam it to generators on Earth. Now, rivals want to buy Dan out and take control of his dreams. And, an international organization of …

76 ) The Winds of Altair

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 37

Jeff Holman is determined to terraform Altair VI into a home for the people of dying Earth. But he discovers that Altair VI hides a terrible secret, and he is faced with a soul-wrenching decision–for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die. Including a race as intelligent a…

75 ) The Immortality Factor

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 69
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 52

Provocative, gripping, startling: bestselling author Ben Bova delivers a knockout read with his trademark blend of cutting edge science and unrelenting suspense… Some see stem-cell research as mankind’s greatest scientific breakthrough. Others see a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the p…

74 ) Tales of the Grand Tour

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 65
• Amazon: 72
• LibraryThing: 50

BEN BOVA’s short fiction, as collected in Tales of the Grand Tour, further explores the subject matter of novels like Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, The Precipice and The Rock Rats. It focuses on the wars and rivalries, the outsize individuals, public crusaders and private passions that will d…

72 ) The Fourth State of Matter

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

…

72 ) Cyberbooks

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 76

Computer genius Carl Lewis has invented the “Cyberbook”, an electronic device that instantly and inexpensively brings the written word to the masses. But not everyone warms to Carl’s ideas. Add corporate spies, authors threatening to strike, and a wave of mysterious murders, and you have Ben Bova at…

70 ) Viewpoint

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 92
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 5

…

70 ) Are We Alone in the Cosmos?

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 1

THE WORLD’S LEADING SCIENTISTS CONFRONT THE ULTIMATE QUESTION: ARE WE ALONE IN THE COSMOS? Featuring Essays by: Philip Morrison, Arthur C Clarke, Donald Goldsmith, Frank Drake, Bruce Campbell, and Ben Bova. Never before has so much time and concetrated effort been spent by so many scientists and wri…

69 ) As on a Darkling Plain

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 75
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 83

The discovery of huge alien machines operating on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is just the beginning of a nightmare for Dr Sidney Lee. He is convinced that, without the intervention of his crew, these machines will destroy mankind….

63 ) The New Astronomies

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

…

63 ) Man Changes the Weather

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

Discusses the harmful and beneficial ways, intentional and unintentional, in which man has changed weather and climate throughout history, including a discussion of the effect of air pollution….

63 ) The Seeds of Tomorrow

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

Explains how science and technology can be used to solve the world’s most pressing problems such as overpopulation and dwindling natural resources and energy….

63 ) Assured Survival

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

First edition bound in blue cloth and boards. A fine copy in a VG+ dust jacket. The dust jacket has small rubs to the outer corners and spine tips. Small bump at the head of the dust jacket’s spine. Price sticker residue and some scratches at the lower left corner of the rear panel….

63 ) The Living Universe

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 91

Can life exist outside the planet Earth? The first question one should ask is: How is it possible for life to exist within Earth’s brutal confines? On our own world, creatures exist — and thrive — in environments first thought to be completely alien and inhospitable. From the rare air of the upper…

63 ) Exiled from Earth

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 67
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 84

A powerful world government has scientists transported from an overpopulated earth to a satellite on the eve of their discovery of a method to modify the human embryo….

61 ) Millennium

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 55
• Amazon: 67
• LibraryThing: 55

The second book of “The Kinsman Saga”, which also includes “Kinsman” and “Colony”. The story of a man driven to create the future, and forced to save two worlds from the death throes of the millennium….

61 ) The Multiple Man

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 81
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 40

From acclaimed, Hugo award-winning, science fiction author, Ben Bova. The dynamic new President of the United States, James J. Halliday, seems determined to single-handedly turn an embittered nation around from economic, political, and social ruin. No one could be prouder than his devoted press secr…

60 ) Voyagers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 65
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 77

Ex-astronaut turned physicist Keith Stoner knows the signals picked up at his space station are not random. The message is heading straight for Earth, and Stoner will do anything to be the first man to confront the enigma, even if he loses his only love….

58 ) To Fear the Light

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 54
• Amazon: 51
• LibraryThing: 70

Two hundred years ago, astrophysicist Adela de Montgarde conceived the plan to forestall the death of the Earth’s sun. Now Adela emerges from cold sleep to oversee the final stages of her great work. She awakens to an Empire transformed–her son Eric is Emperor, faster-than-light travel has finally …

58 ) Flight of Exiles

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 69
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 18

E. P. Dutton, 1972. Hardcover with dustjacket, first edition. Second in the “Exiles” series, which also includes “Exiled from Earth” (1971) and “End of Exile” (1975). The three novels were later collected as “The Exiles Trilogy.” COLLECTOR’S NOTE: This title is commonly found as an ex-library book; …

57 ) Orion and King Arthur

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 76
• Amazon: 51
• LibraryThing: 45

Orion has fought across time and space at the whims of his Creators, godlike beings from the future who toy with human history like spoiled children playing with dolls. Orion has been both assassin and hero, all the while striving to be reunited with Anya, the ageless goddess who is his one true lov…

56 ) The Story of Light

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 63
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 89

rolific SF and nonfiction writer (Venus, etc.) and former editor of Omni and Analog, Bova once rhapsodized about The Beauty of Light (an ALA Best Science Book of 1988). He now offers this secondary source-based introduction to light’s influence on aspects of human experience, “from our religions to …

55 ) City of Darkness

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 67
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 81

Ben Bova, a master of futuristic novels, presents a dystopian Manhattan, where a dome covers the city’s decay and decadence and is only “open” two months a year to the outside world of programmed, ordered society. Teenaged Ron Morgan rebels against his orchestrated life and finds himself stranded in…

54 ) Mercury

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 44
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 32

A tale of revenge and technological endeavor set on our solar system’s most desolate stage T he closest planet to the sun, Mercury is a rocky, barren, heatscorched world. The planet’s surface faces the sun for nearly sixty earth days at a time, and the only places that stay cool are the ice caches a…

52 ) Apes and Angels

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 73
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 33

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind’s expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the last installment in the Star Quest Trilogy. Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desp…

52 ) Out of the Sun

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 58

Out of the Sun is a novel by Ben Bova, one of the field’s leading writers of “hard science fiction.” At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied….

51 ) The Starcrossed

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 86
• Amazon: 7
• LibraryThing: 68

It was the perfect 21st century program, with the perfect cast of characters: he, the virile, fearless sky-hero – she, an exquisite, otherworldly maid. On camera, they would brave the infinite dangers of the cosmos. While off-screen, the colossal TV ratings war exploded. Could a three-dimensional sp…

49 ) Privateers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 62
• Amazon: 51
• LibraryThing: 43

…

49 ) The Trikon Deception

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 71
• Amazon: 16
• LibraryThing: 69

The Trikon Deception opens up the next frontier in technothriller excitement with a page-turning novel of intrigue and assassination in high orbit – co-written by the former commander of Skylab. 1998: Trikon is a vast steel island in the vacuum of space, the first industrial research laboratory to b…

48 ) The Precipice

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 38
• Amazon: 72
• LibraryThing: 45

Once, Dan Radolph was one of the richest men on Earth, but now that the planet is spiralling into environmental disaster, he must look to the wealth of the stars to save the economy. Martin Humphries is also aware of the potential of space-based industry, but he does not care if Earth perishes….

47 ) The Rock Rats

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 40
• Amazon: 77
• LibraryThing: 37

Brimming with memorable characters and human conflict, rugged high-tech prospectors and boardroom betrayals, The Rock Rats continues the tale of our near-future struggle over the incalculable wealth of the Asteroid Belt. Before it ends, many will die — and many will achieve more than they ever drea…

46 ) Rescue Mode

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 55
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 53

Gritty and scientifically accurate science fiction adventure from New York Times best-selling author Ben Bova and NASA space scientist Les Johnson. The first human mission to Mars meets with near-disaster when a meteoroid strikes the spacecraft, almost destroying it. The ship is too far from Earth t…

44 ) Titan

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 38
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 49

Hugo Award-winning editor, author, scientist, and journalist, Ben Bova is a modern master of near-future science fiction and a passionate advocate of manned space exploration. For more than a decade, Bova has been chronicling humanity’s struggles to colonize our solar system in a series of interconn…

44 ) Peacekeepers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 58
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 67

Ingram In a chillingly realistic scenario of the future, the Peacekeepers, the U.N. peacekeeping force that operates all strategic defense satellites in orbit around Earth, combat terrorism and tactical nuclear bombs in Central America and the Middle East….

42 ) The Beauty of Light

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 91

…

42 ) Colony

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 55
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 42

…

41 ) Sam Gunn Forever

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 80
• LibraryThing: 11

Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money and women–though not necessarily in that order. He’s a hero without peer…or scruples; a man with the ego and stature of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P.T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a newly pubescent teenage boy. He’s Sam Gunn, the finest astr…

39 ) Faint Echoes, Distant Stars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 45
• Amazon: 80
• LibraryThing: 10

In this fascinating and cutting-edge work, Dr. Ben Bova explores one of the most thrilling and elemental questions humanity has ever posed: Are we alone? From Copernicus to the advent of SETI and beyond, Bova takes his readers on a tour of the scientific and political battles fought in the pursuit o…

39 ) Escape!

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 96
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 5

Danny wasn’t a bad kid at heart, but the government put Danny in prison for a long list of crimes, with no end to his sentence. He had to get back to his girl. He had to get back to Laurie. Watched over at all times by a Big Brother-like sentient computer, there was no way out of the escape-proof pr…

38 ) Science: Who Needs It?

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 33

…

37 ) Closeup: New Worlds

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 88
• LibraryThing: 33

A near fine copy in a very good dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. ; 222 pages; Description: xv, 222 p. , [1] leaf of plates : ill. ; 29 cm. Includes index. Astounding modern views of the Solar System by science-fiction writers who a…

36 ) Kinsman

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 53
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 75

To Chet Kinsman, space held the promise of peace and beauty that Earth denied him – yet it was Kinsman who stained the purity of space with murder. His atonement shaped his life and the destiny of his planet – and drew him inexorably to use, and finally betray, those closest to him….

35 ) Space Travel

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 20
• Amazon: 87
• LibraryThing: 21

Do you really understand what space is like? Do you know what kind of rockets and engineering are needed to travel through it? And what about travel at the speed of light — is that really possible? Find out the answers, along with a number of other fascinating facts, and explore the potential for c…

34 ) Empire Builders

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 47
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 56

Dan Randolph, privateer, has become Dan Randolph, empire builder. His staff has found evidence that the greenhouse effect has been gathering speed and that, soon, Earth will be on the edge of the greenhouse “cliff.” Millions will die unless humankind changes its ways immediately. On the run from the…

33 ) Welcome to Moonbase

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 51
• LibraryThing: 58

Publisher’s Weekly With the premise that man returns to the moon in 1999 and establishes a permanent base there by 2020, science fiction author and editor Bova here fashions an intriguing ”manual” for pioneers arriving at the lunar community. With 50 detailed illustrations by NASA artist Rawlings,…

31 ) Orion in the Dying Time

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 41
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 65

…

31 ) To Save the Sun

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 52
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 21

A young woman approaches the Emperor of the Hundred Worlds with a plan to save Earth–through astrophysics and engineering–before the Sun explodes and wipes out the last genetically unaltered humans in the universe….

30 ) Star Watchmen

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 61
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 33

Emil Vorgens is a Junior Star Watch Officer who is torn between his desire to seek a peaceful resolution and obey his superior’s instructions to use force when he is sent to the planet of Shinar to deal with rebellious activities….

29 ) Star Brothers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 35
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 73

Keith Stoner lay frozen in an alien spacecraft for fifteen long years. During that time he came to be something more than just an astronaut, just a man. Stoner became partly alien himself, merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lived inside his body. The alien whose to…

28 ) The Aftermath

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 34
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 47

In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. With his wife and two children he plies the Asteroid Belt, hauling whatever cargo can be found. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on t…

27 ) Mars Life

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 37
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 40

Jamie Waterman has discovered proof of intelligent life on Mars, extinguished some sixty-five million years before. But now the Mars program is itself under threat of extinction, as the new conservative government cuts off funding….

26 ) The Weathermakers

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 71
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 21

In an age of cross-country rockets and undersea mining, weather is the last frontier of man, the one resource which remains untamed. An elemental power which can roar through the land with hurricane force, leaving death and destruction in its wake….

25 ) Leviathans of Jupiter

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 33
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 31

In Ben Bova’s novel JUPITER, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter’s hostile planetwide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant’s team faced certain death as the…

24 ) Jupiter

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 25
• Amazon: 56
• LibraryThing: 26

Grant Archer merely wanted to work quietly as an astronomer on the far side of the moon. But a coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st century America sends him to a research station in orbit around Jupiter to spy on the scientists who work there. What they don’t know is that Grant’s loyalty…

23 ) The Return

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 49
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 28

In the 1980s, an alien starship visited Earth. While investigating what appeared to be a sarcophagus bearing the preserved body of its builder, astronaut Keith Stoner was trapped and cryogenically frozen. After his body was eventually returned to Earth and revived, Stoner discovered that he had acqu…

22 ) The High Road

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 58

Argues that humanity’s survival depends on the colonization of space, estimates the costs of such a venture, and looks at our current space program and its public support…

21 ) Moonrise

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 27
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 28

Former astronaut Paul Stavenger is driven by his vision of colonizing space. His dream becomes a reality with the creation of a viable, flourishing, nearly self-sufficient community at Moonbase. But Paul has made an implacable enemy; one who will carry his vendetta to the frontiers of space….

20 ) Survival

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 60
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 12

When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier “death waves” – gamma-ray burs…

19 ) Return to Mars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 45
• LibraryThing: 17

Published in 1992, MARS was the story of the thrilling first manned journey to the mysterious planet which has fascinated astronomers since the dawn of time. Arthur C. Clarke called it ‘a splendid book’; it was a bestseller throughout the world. Now, in RETURN TO MARS, a carefully picked internation…

18 ) Notes to a Science Fiction Writer

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 18
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 65

The editor of a science-fiction magazine offers advice to prospective authors on the theoretical and practical aspects of character, background, conflict, and plot development in short stories…

17 ) Orion

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 41
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 18

Ingram The exciting beginning of Bova’s popular “Orion” saga, this is the story of John O’Ryan, a man who awakens one day to discover that he is the leader of a race of beings so far beyond humanity that they are almost gods. And, like a god he is locked in an endless struggle with an enemy whose po…

16 ) Orion and the Conqueror

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 43
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 30

John O’Ryan is Orion–more than human, less than a god, cast away on the seas of time to do battle among the Creators for the future of mankind. Now the eternal warrior finds himself separated from his great love, Anya, and marooned in Macedonia under the reign of Philip–fighting alongside the youn…

15 ) Mars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 27
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 21

Twenty-five astronauts of the international Mars mission set down on the harsh and unforgiving planet and soon face deadly meteor showers, subzero temperatures, and a mysterious virus….

14 ) Aliens and Alien Societies

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 26

Is there other life out there? What do these beings look like, and how do they live? What language do they speak, and what technology do they have? Learn how to create fascinating but plausible aliens with Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer’s Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms. Science …

13 ) Vengeance of Orion

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 39

Orion finds himself thrust back to the ancient world of Greece and must prevent the Greek army from destroying the citadel of Troy. If he fails, he will lose the only woman he has ever loved. But if he succeeds, the history of the world will be changed forever. The stunning sequel to Orion….

12 ) The Silent War

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 29
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 20

Martin Humphries has exiled his rival Lars Fuchs to the depths of space and taken his wife for his own. For Humphries, nothing short of total domination will ever be enough. But another power is building its strength in secret, waiting for its chance to seize the Humphries empire….

11 ) Orion Among the Stars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 35
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 21

More than human and less that a god, John O’Ryan is Orion, made by the Creators who rule outside of time. His purpose is to do their bidding. Now, Orion has becomee a key piece in a cosmic game between two of the Creators–Anya, the goddess he loves, and Aten, the god who toys with his destiny….

10 ) End of Exile

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 47
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 16

Born and brought up on a space ship that is slowly deteriorating, Linc discovers its secrets and the way to get the remaining occupants to their ultimate destination….

9 ) First Contact

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 5

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8 ) World Building

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 12

Another in Ben Bova’s series on Science Fiction Writing, here geologist and SF scribe Stephen Gillett helps you construct star systems and planets from the atoms up. While it may take you a little more than the proverbial seven days (well, six with rest), when you’re done, your knowledge of gravity,…

7 ) Sam Gunn, Unlimited

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 15

Bova ( Mars ) takes us on a trip to a part of the universe where the men are real men and the women are willing. Bova’s latest is a kind of pastiche of stories about Sam Gunn: former NASA employee, astronaut, entrepreneur and interstellar rascal. When not hitting the sack in zero gravity with an evi…

5 ) The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 23
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 14

Bestselling novelist and former editor of Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction and Omni Ben Bova teaches science fiction writers not only how to create and run a universe, but also how to write by the rules that will get a book published….

5 ) Interactions

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 16
• LibraryThing: 2

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4 ) The Star Conquerors

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 18
• Amazon: 23
• LibraryThing: 4

The author performed extensive stellar mapmaking and astronomical studies while writing the book. This research sets the stage for an interstellar war for control of the Milky Way galaxy….

3 ) THX 1138

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 3

Visit the future where love is the ultimate crime. Meet the nameless man who dares to pit himself against the state. Star Wars director-author George Lucas’s original story of man’s war for humanity in the 25th century….

2 ) Vision of the Future

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 9
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 5

From a reviewer: McCall”s mural of the conquest of the moon covers a wall ofthe Air & Space Museum in Washington. Double folded dust jacket. There are McCall murals at the Dryden Flight Research Center & Edwards Air Force Base in California and at the Johnson Space Center outside Houston. He created…

1 ) Starflight and Other Improbabilities

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 5

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