Beyond the Known Universe: Discovering Hidden Gems in Science Fiction Fantasy Literature

Not every sci-fi fantasy book is sprinkled in fame. But just because something isn’t popular, it doesn’t always mean it’s not worth reading. Case in point: the following science fiction fantasy literature, guaranteed to blow your mind.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)

What we now know as the 1985 novel Ender’s Game actually started out as a short story of the same title, once published in the Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine, August 1977 issue. It’s a story everybody can love, involving a young boy on his journey to become a hero and leader in the space navy. The premise is pretty simple, if not overused already: bad things happen in the dystopian future when aliens decide to invade Earth and almost completely send humanity to extinction.

The aliens in question are insect-like and known as Buggers. Despite its unmistakably plain sci-fi trappings, the story reads more like coming-of-age fantasy than pure space force fiction. The book has several sequels, but you can enjoy it as a stand-alone read.

Little, Big; or, The Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley (1981)

John Drinkwater is an architect living in turn-of-the-century America. To attract clients and offer samples for them, he builds a rather complex house designed to incorporate many architectural styles connected to each other. Since there are no clear boundaries between those styles, potential clients often get disoriented when they visit the building.

Drinkwater himself suspects that inside this world, there is another world, which also contains yet another world – and within that, another world, and another, to infinity. But the strange thing is that any world might be impossibly bigger than the one that contains it. The house, which he names Edgewood, proves to be a door to an entirely different realm.

Canopus in Argos: Archives by Doris Lessing (1979 – 1983)

According to Doris Lessing herself, the novels that are part of the Canopus in Argos: Archives are her finest works. The series, which contains a sequence of five books, focuses on a handful of different societies and highlights their stages of developments over a long period. Advanced species play their roles by providing guidance for the relatively underdeveloped societies toward accelerated evolution.

The novels touch on a great deal of subjects, such as politics, personal relationships, gender issues, sexualities, and interstellar alignments, unknown higher powers, even global warming. As a whole, the series offers a profound exploration into both dystopia and utopia, which somehow still feel relevant to the world we know today.

The Wave Theory of Angels by Alison MacLeod (2005)

You’ll come along on a journey from medieval Beauvais to the space-age research facility in modern-day Chicago. Some critics say that The Wave Theory of Angels doesn’t actually fit the bland categorization of science fiction fantasy. While it does explore a realm where dreams (fantasy) meet reality (science), the story simply surpasses such a simple genre-labeling practice. There are two main characters named Christina. One is the daughter of a stone carver in Beauvais; the other is the daughter of a scientist in Chicago.

The first Christina falls unconscious in 1284 and then wakes up around the same moment when St. Pierre cathedral collapses. The second (modern-day) Christina, whose father is quantum physicist Giles Carver, also falls into a coma, and the moment she regains consciousness seems to foreshadow the collapse of the Twin Towers. Although the characters make no explicit attempt to suggest that the circumstances are nothing but uncanny coincidences, Giles hypothesizes with his theory of waves that there might be a relationship. His theory suggests that the world comprises a pair of 10 dimensions that can communicate via gravity.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1967)

Sometime in an unspecified future, the gods of the Hindu pantheon once again exercise their true powers to enforce a system of caste and forbid independent thoughts of any shape or form. It all sounds like an old story from a long-gone world, but Lord of Light actually sets the story on a planet colonized by remnants of human civilization on Earth from a spaceship called the Star of India. These remnants are actually humans (or used to be humans) who have mastered scientific knowledge so great to where they’ve effectively become gods. They’re immortal and in possession of immense power thanks to technology.

On the newly found planet, those so-called gods beam their children to the surface and basically ask them to start a brand-new civilization from scratch. The protagonist of Lord of Light is Mahasamatman, who is part of the original crew on the spaceship. He dislikes how his peers are abusing their powers and enslaving children, and is now determined to plant the seed of liberation into everybody’s mind.

We think, with the constant influx of science fiction fantasy novels in recent years, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people will miss a book or two here and there among hundreds of options on the shelves. Thankfully, with the fiction genre, it’s never really too late to pick up an outstanding novel. It’s also a good thing that there are plenty of excellent stories, despite their relatively obscure titles and the lesser-known authors behind them.

Do you think science fiction and fantasy can indeed enhance or counter each other? In what ways has magic (or fantasy) affected the development of science fiction literature? We’d love to hear from you.

Other Things You Might Want to Know

Is science fantasy the same thing as science fiction fantasy?

When you’re mixing the two genres in one story, even if there’s only one tiny element of either genre, it’s basically a job done. That said, it is best to put them on equal grounds, as in giving them the same importance in driving the story forward. And to answer the question, the technical term doesn’t actually matter that much, but yes, we’d like to think of them as the same thing.

What is the first sci-fi novel?

The earliest known work of fiction that includes elements of aliens, space travel, and even interplanetary conflicts is A True Story (also known as True History) by Lucian of Samosata, published in the second century. It’s largely regarded as the first sci-fi story.