With its eerily familiar settings and relatable protagonists, sci-fi keeps us questioning the nature of our political and technological reality
There’s no other genre that commands our curiosity and fuels our sense of wonder quite like science fiction. But what is it about the sci-fi genre that we find so compelling? Is it the heady mix of far-flung destinations and sleek starships? Is it the variety of alien worlds and the exotic creatures who inhabit them?
Or do people come back to sci-fi’s most popular audiobooks because of their eerie ability to turn the focus of the story back on ourselves?
People love science fiction because it shines a light on the nature of humanity with protagonists that share our concerns and live in settings that feel just close enough to our realities. These characters often make us wonder how we got here, what comes next and what society will look like in the near and distant future.
With big budget versions of several science fiction classics coming to the big screen this year, science fiction is on everyone’s mind. While you wait for the next big blockbuster, we’ve put together this list of sci-fi titles to pique your curiosity and get you listening to some of the genre’s best.
Show Me a Hero
The greatest sci-fi writers have known for years that human stories capture human imaginations. Science fiction isn’t always about star fleet captains and cosmonauts — some of the genre’s best titles offer us protagonists who are just enough like us that their struggles seem both familiar and unreal at the same time.
Released 34 years after , Margaret Atwood’s sequel continues the story of the tyrannical patriarchy of Gilead and the Resistance operatives who oppose it.
Just as female audiences in 1985 connected with Offred’s struggles to reclaim an identity that was being stripped away from her, the 2019 sequel follows the lives of several women still living under the shadow of the oppressive regime.
Readers will instantly connect with Daisy, a teenager living within the Canadian resistance, who discovers her true identity and is swept up in a political struggle much larger than anything she could have imagined — putting her own life on the line to ensure the freedom of dozens of other women.
As with its predecessor, Margaret Atwood has managed to capture lightning in a bottle with a sequel the author claims to have thought up only after it had become obvious that “we were going towards the world of The Handmaid’s Tale rather than away from it.”
If you’re curious to see what has transpired in Atwood’s dystopia since you last checked in, be sure to give this incredible story a listen.
And if you’re looking for other riveting, thought-provoking , stick with Audible — your source for the most diverse selection of sci-fi stories.
