Books for Sci-Fi Fans: Recommendations Week

Happy holidays from Citali!

Though we've mainly focused on fantasy and fandoms here on The Fangirl Archives, I, for one, consider myself a fan of sci-fi too! So begins my first Recommendations Week post, a list of five great books for sci-fi fans! Some are classics in the genre, some aren't, and they're in no particular order. I know I'm stealing Willow's specialty of booklists a bit, so I'll keep to my own specialty of offering small tidbits of summary or blurb.

1. The Neptune Project by Polly Holyoke. I don't think I'd ever heard the name of this book before I plucked it off the library shelf, but I think it should definitely be better known! Nere, the main character, has always felt like an outcast with bad vision and breathing. But then her mother tells her she's part of a group of teens who have been genetically engineered... to be able to survive underwater, to escape.
2. Foundation by Isaac Asimov. This is probably one of the best-known cornerstones of the sci-fi world, but it is definitely a good book! It follows a man and his followers, Hari Seldon and the Foundationers, as they use math, science, and maybe a bit of realpolitik to bring their galaxy out of the falling age of the Galactic Empire and into a newer and brighter dawn.
3. Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund. While also not well-known, this takes place after a eugenics war in which the nobility genetically engineered their children and the poor weren't able to. However, after this "genengineering" led to Reduction, a disease, the formerly poor took revenge on the Reduced nobility and set off a chain of events leading to this sci-fi retelling of Baroness Orczy's classic The Scarlet Pimpernel. 
4. Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I've sung this book's praises forever and can't recommend it enough -- come on, it's Citali, you knew this would be on the list. Cinderella retelling meets crazy queen from the moon, New Beijing, cyborg, bioelectricity-manipulating Lunars, and a sweet, real romance.
5. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. When all on Earth came out to watch the beautiful astronomical event of an asteroid impacting with the moon, they didn't know it would lead to dystopian disaster. Nudged closer to the Earth, the moon throws off weather, sunlight, communications, and agriculture, sending the formerly tame, suburban life of Miranda into a struggle to survive through resourcefulness, isolation, and closeness with her family.

Happy holidays as you rocket off to the future!

~Citali