Fiction - Big Science Read

Below you'll find our recommended fiction Big Science Reads - if your favourite is amongst them, simply click the cover to place your vote for it or, if you know of a gem that we've missed, click the Vote button above and let us know!

Brian Aldiss (ed): Celebration: Commemorating 50 years of the British Science Fiction Association; (NewCon Press, 2008); An anthology of all-original stories from a galaxy of the biggest names in British science fiction.

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake; (Virago, 2004); What if... we used animals to grow organs for human transplant? What if... a mad scientist tried to wipe the slate clean and return the world back to its Garden of Eden status? Atwood neatly and enjoyably ties these and other 'what ifs' together...

JG Ballard: The Drowned World; (Harper Perennial, 2006); This torrid, powerful novel describes a world gradually drowned as global warming melts the ice-caps and primordial jungles and swamps have returned to tropical London, recreating the ancient ecology of the Triassic age.

Iain M Banks: Matter; (Orbit, 2008); A crime occurs within a war. For one man it means a desperate fight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. This mixture of space opera with a hard technological edge is set to become another sci-fi classic.

Jim Crace: The Pesthouse; (Picador, 2008); Crace describes an uncertain and often cruel future, punctuated by two of his most vibrant characters to date - the indomitable 'Red' Margaret and lumbering, bashful Franklin Lopez.

Greg Egan: Luminous; (Gollancz, 2008); Greg Egan delivers shocking body-blows to received ideas in thought, told with terrible truths and paradoxes. Luminous indeed.

Sarah Hall: The Carhullan Army; (Faber & Faber, 2008); Related threads of environmentalism, feminism and fanaticism are the core of this engaging book; it is difficult to imagine any more relevant backdrop for the near future than is encapsulated by these skilfully woven-together themes.

Gwyneth Lewis: Zero Gravity; (Bloodaxe, 1998); This poetry sequence is part space documentary, part requiem, from watching her American astronaut cousin helping to repate the Hubble Space Telescope - full of wonderful images and a feeling that personal horizons have been enlarged.

Alan Lightman: Einstein's Dreams; (Bloomsbury, 1994); A powerful novel built around 30 'dreams' that make differing assumptions about time, and describe how the lives of ordinary people living in Switzerland in 1905 would be changed by the fracturing of time itself.

Cormac McCarthy: The Road; (Picador, 2007); A compelling, almost mesmerising read, as a father and son trek across America, a continent transformed into a post apocalyptic wasteland. A vivid study of the strength of familial bonds that endures when all else has failed.

Jed Mercurio: Ascent; (Vintage, 2008); Mercurio's handling of the human relationships within the Soviet military and scientific bureaucracy is an acknowledgement of human resilience and loyalty.

Paul Munden (ed): Feeling The Pressure; (British Council, 2008); Some of our best contemporary poets respond to the threat of climate change with new poems in a volume which contains a stimulating mix of the scientific background of, and emotional reactions to, potential global catastrophe.

Maurice Riordan & Jon Turney (eds): A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems About Science; (Faber & Faber, 2000); This vivid collection includes poems both old and new, focusing on science, its discoveries and processes.

Harry Thompson: This Thing of Darkness; (Headline, 2006); A faithful and utterly compelling account of the lives of Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin. Not just a novel of ideas, but also one of action in which the narrative is driven forward by the extraordinary events experienced by the crew of the HMS Beagle.