10 best sci-fi books with romance
In space, no one can hear you squee – which is exactly the sound you’ll make when you get into the soft, romantic underbelly of these hard sci-fi novels.
While the vastness of space makes human emotion seem so small and fleeting in compare, the best science fiction authors know that on this little blue marble hurtling through the infinite void, love is all we got. If you’re looking for novels about physics that get a lil’ physical, these are the 10 best sci-fi books with romance around
The Forever War
Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War rips a page out of those old fashioned war romance novels, and then straps that page inside a rocket ship and sends it hurtling across the galaxy. The story follows William Mandella, a soldier who serves as a cog in an interstellar war machine, the business end of which is pointed at a hostile alien species. While galavanting around the stars in pursuit of a victory that, like the expanding universe, feels further and further away each day, poor Will feels increasingly lonesome due to the sad realities of time dilation. For every year that passes for him, decades pass on Earth – which makes maintaining a relationship real hard. Nevertheless, he manages to strike up a romance with fellow soldier Marygay Potter. The pair struggle to keep the spark of their love alive in an increasingly alienating universe, no pun intended, which is made that way due to meaningless warfare and a constantly changing human society, made stranger with each century that passes in the time dilated moments that they experience.
Leviathan Wakes
You may have heard of James S. Corey’s Hugo Award winning novel Leviathan Wakes when it was adapted into the TV series The Expanse – but if you haven’t, you’re in for a hell of an interstellar ride. The novel takes place after humanity has colonized much of the solar system (thankfully without Elon Musk’s involvement) and is now grappling with the fallout of creating such a far-flung society. War is a’brewin’ between the Earth and Martian governments and the humans who live beyond the asteroid belt. Things become even more complicated when scientists discover a strange molecule that was designed by seemingly hostile aliens, probing our solar system to potentially make a colony of their own. Where’s the love? The romantic anchor of the series is the relationship between spaceship captain Jim Holden and his chief engineer Naomi Nagata. Like a NASA rocket, their love begins to take off in the first book of the series, and sails on throughout books to follow.
Project Hail Mary
While Project Hail Mary by Andy Wier doesn’t feature a romance in the traditional sense, its bromance between human astronaut Ryland Grace and the extraterrestrial alien Rocky in one of the most tender, touching and heartbreaking relationships on this list. After Ryland wakes up on a spaceship with no memories of how he to the godforsaken patch of the universe where he now floats, he comes into contact with another sole survivor – a five legged spider alien whose ship is in deep trouble. Despite lacking shared language or physiology, the pair come up with an ingenious way to communicate – good thing too, because they’ll need to put their heads together in order to save their respective civilizations from an interstellar infection that could render both extinct. With no one to rely on but each other, the pair soon form a deep emotional connection and risk their lives for each other daily. Despite coming from opposite corners of the universe, these two astronauts Sally ride for one another.
The Bone Season
Part fantasy and part sci-fi, Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season is the story of a dystopian world where an enigmatic ruling caste oppresses the masses, attempting to rid the world of “unnaturals” – which in this case is anybody with psychic powers. Criminal underworld operative Paige Mahoney is one such anybody, and uses her clairvoyance to perform jobs for those who live outside the law. After she’s arrested by the powers that be, she’s taken a hidden city and forced to serve the hands that pull the strings of society – which in this case are a group of extra dimensional aliens. And so begins an enemies to lovers romance between Paige and her chief captor Arcturus Mesarthim – an angelic alien being who is part of a secret rebellion against his own kind.
This Is How You Lose The Time War
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an epistolary enemies to lovers romance between two agents fighting in a war between parallel realities. They jump between multiple timelines in order to score temporal victories for their respective factions, and begin to leave letters for each other in their travels. The letters start as taunts, then evolve into hate-flirting, then regular flirting, then meaningful conversation, then sapphic poetry burning with the heat of a thousand suns. While the pair do their best to hide their love from their commanding officers, it’s only a matter of time before they’re found out. It was worth it.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is about a spaceship tasked with creating wormholes to tunnel across an infinitely expanding universe, but the despite the novel’s lightyears’ wide scope, it spends most of its time focused on the emotional inches between the craft’s crew. As the diverse crew of star pilgrims galavant across the void, the novel delves into the intimate reasons why they choose to live the lonely lives they lead. As the story progresses, their relationships to one another deepen, causing a chain reaction of love to run through their ranks. Multiple romantic subplots combine into a tenderly messy molecule, featuring atomically strong bonds of love between humans, aliens, and even a few synthetic intelligences as well. Who says AI can’t love?
Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth is a gothic lesbian space opera – if that didn’t sell you, you might as well stop reading now. Taking place in a Dune-esque star system where planet ruling Houses compete for the Emperor’s favor, the indentured warrior Gideon dreams of an escape from her life of servitude. An escape of sorts comes when she’s forced to accompany Harrowhark (the scion of the Ninth House) to a mysterious manor house where the pair must take part in a lethal trial between the Houses. Each of the Nine Houses practices a school of necromancy, and each dream of sending their best and brightest to serve in the Emperor’s personal guard – Harrow and Gideon are joining the completion. It’s a dark, deadly and deeply romantic enemies to lovers plot – a story of survival in death haunted space.
The Hyperion Cantos
One of the most celebrated sci-fi epics ever told, Dan Simmons’ The Hyperion Cantos is a space opera take on The Canterbury Tales. Seven pilgrims from all walks of interstellar life have been chosen to take a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs of the planet Hyperion, which are said to be able to guarded by a horrifying inter dimensional monster capable of unspeakable power. Each pilgrim has their own reasons for making the journey, which range from artistic selfishness to paternal obligation. One of the pilgrims, a hard nosed private investigator, is making the trek because she’s fallen in love with an alien AI that has reincarnated with the mind of English poet John Keats, and is on the journey project their unborn child. It’s a beautifully bonkers romance plot – the only one of its kind.
Contact
Written by the brilliant physicist and thinker Carl Sagan, Contact is the story of Ellie Arroway – a scientist who has just discovered a message from an alien civilization. The message in question? Adolf Hitler’s 1936 Olympic Speech, rendered out in a series of prime numbers. No, the aliens aren’t space Nazis, they’re simply transmitting the first ever TV signal to escape the Earth’s ionosphere in an attempt to reach its source. As Ellie and her team scramble to decode the alien’s further transmissions, she’s tasked to work with a religious scholar named Palmer Joss, who is attempting to make theological sense of extraterrestrial life. While the religiously skeptical Ellie is initially unimpressed, the pair embark on an intellectual enemies to lovers romance as they begin to find common ground in their seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints. While their romance isn’t the central spoke around which the narrative revolves, the Ellie and Palmer whip around in circles together like astronauts in training on a centrifuge – pushed together by the equal but opposite force of their faith vs. psychics ideas.
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