10 of the Best Historical Science Fiction Books

After a meteorite destroys much of the eastern United States in 1952, humanity’s efforts to reach space reach a fever pitch. Earth won’t remain survivable for long, and colonizing space seems like the only option. Elma York is a part of that mission, joining the International Aerospace Coalition as a calculator to help put a man on the moon. But why does it have to be a man? Elma is just as qualified as anyone — more than most, actually, as a former WASP pilot and mathematician. Can she defy misogynistic societal conventions to become the first lady astronaut? And will she be able to bring others up with her?

The Industrial Revolution is interrupted by the Computer Age when Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine a hundred years early. Steam-driven cybernetic engines are now the backbone of society. When three people — a paleontologist, a spy, and the daughter of a Luddite troublemaker — come across a box of punched Engine cards that someone is willing to kill for, their lives are thrust into the middle of a race to control society’s rapidly-changing technology.

Phoenix Extravagant blends together science fiction, fantasy, and history to create an incredible world inspired by Korean history. When the occupying government blackmails a young painter into joining their war efforts, Jebi is forced to help bring a mechanical dragon back under control. But as Jebi grows closer to Arazi, the defense ministry’s dragon, and a master duelist, they begin to realize that failing to take a side is little different than joining the wrong one.

In an alternate version of 1946, the daughter of a filmmaker begins traveling to planets across the solar system in search of content for her documentaries. But a film featuring the diving colony of a watery Venus will be her last. Though her crew will make it home and her story will be preserved by Venus’s last survivor, Severin will never return from this expedition. Enmeshed in a world of silent films and old-school science fiction, Radiance is a story that feels utterly out of time.

In a reimagined version of events, British socialists and African Americans band together to purchase a swath of Belgian Congo land from King Leopold II. The area, renamed Everfair, is set aside as a utopian safe haven for the native people of the Congo and African Americans fleeing slavery. The inhabitants of Everfair stive to keep this place safe, but even with endless determination and steam technology to at their disposal, keeping this land free and safe from outside hands is a constant struggle. Even so, the possibilities for what is to come for the people of Everfair are endless.

The intentionally uncanny cover might make you cringe, but it’s also a gateway into what’s going on in this novel. In an alternate version of 1980s England where Alan Turing lives long enough to make a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, a man in love with his mysterious upstairs neighbor, Miranda, spends his inheritance on one of the first synthetic humans ever to be created. Along with Miranda, Charlie designs Adam’s personality. Soon, the three find themselves in a strange love triangle, confronted by what it means to love and be human in a fast-changing world.

Three generations of women face the ripple effects of the Chernobyl disaster when, on the night of the meltdown, Anna Berkova is ripped through time to discover her estranged daughter, Molly, dying from a gunshot and begging her to stop the disaster, save Molly’s daughter, Raisa, and change the course of their family’s troubled history. Decades later, Molly, adopted and in America, draws a comic that will one day change the course of her daughter’s life. When an old woman shows up claiming to be her biological grandmother, Raisa must solve the equations her mother left for her in the comic book to find the answer to time travel, possibly preventing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

Inspired by The Island of Dr. Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s retelling follows the daughter of an esteemed — and eccentric — scientist who’s been creating strange animal-human hybrids in the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. But first a stranger and then a band of violent men upend Carlota Moreau’s once peaceful life forever. Now, it’s up to her to handle her father’s science experiments — even if that means turning against him.

The second Mary Robinette Kowal novel on this list, The Spare Man is a retro-futuristic pulp mystery set on a spaceliner. Tesla Crane is enjoying her honeymoon when her spouse is arrested by incompetent security guards on suspected murder. Tesla had been enjoying traveling in anonymity, but if it takes revealing herself to get back to their rudely interrupted honeymooning activities, then Tesla will just have to rip off the Band-Aid and solve this murder herself before they reach Mars.

In P. Djèlí Clark Dead Djinn universe, history, sci-fi, and the supernatural come together to create an alternate turn-of-the-century Cairo like you’ve never seen — or imagined — it before. With tram cars and automata traversing the city alongside suffragettes and supernatural creatures, it’s up to the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities to keep Cairo running smooth. But when a tram car starts malfunctioning due to what appears to be a run-of-the-mill possession, that job gets a whole lot harder for two agents who soon find themselves in over their heads.