The Best Science Fiction of the 1980s

Perhaps the most well known science fiction book of the decade, Ender’s Game surpassed the previous expectations of the genre.

In an unspecified year in Earth’s future, the government is breeding and training children to fight against an alien enemy. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is drafted and begins military preparation. Ender faces normal childhood struggles of loneliness and isolation, as well as increasing pressure and fear of the alien enemy that is closing in. 

Nine years after a failed mission to Jupiter, a crew sets out on a journey to investigate why the previous mission failed and what happened to astronaut David Bowman in this “worthy successor” Clarke’s bestselling 2001: A Space Odyssey (Carl Sagan). They find the mysterious monolith orbiting the planet that caused the past failure and discover a complex alien conspiracy. The being that was once David Bowman starts his own mission, moving toward Planet Earth. 

This Hugo and Nebula Award-winning adventure follows the ship Streaker through an intergalactic world on the brink of war. 

In the future, intelligent races can uplift other species to sentience and sapience. Streaker is an earthship inhabited by humans and dolphins and chimpanzees that have been uplifted. When the crewmates stumble upon a secret that informs the history of the galaxy and the human race, they find themselves hunted through space for their knowledge. On the run with a damaged ship, the crew of Streaker must work together to survive. 

Valentine remembers nothing about himself or his past, besides his own names. He journeys aimlessly with a group of acrobats and jugglers through the planet of Majipoor. 

But then Valentine begins to have strange dreams: dreams of a castle and a life before as a ruler. Valentine’s journey takes on new meaning as he is determined to claim his true destiny as a king and to find out who took his memories and his power away from him. 

When scientist Vergil Ulam is fired from his job because his research has gone too far, he decides to preserve his creation the only possible way. Vergil has created smart cells he believes and before he leaves his lab he injects them into his bloodstream. At first, the cells have a positive effect on Vergil’s body, but soon they develop sentience and realize that their host is only a tiny percentage of the human race. With this alien invasion from the inside, humanity will never be the same again. 

“Ahead of its time” is an understatement when it comes to William Gibson’s Neuromancer. This important cyberpunk book predicted the expansion of the internet, hacking, and artificial intelligence. An inspiration for the film The Matrix and many other sci-fi works, Neuromancer went beyond the previous boundaries of science fiction to predict a future of humanity intertwined with technology. The book centers around Case, a data thief working in the matrix who is caught and then recruited to work with a new and powerful artificial intelligence. 

In a departure from the technology focus of other books of this decade, The Handmaid’s Tale imagines a future that draws inspiration from the distant past. The main character, Offred, is a handmaid, meaning she exists for the sole purpose of procreation. Women are no longer allowed to read and handmaids have been stripped of the jobs, money, families, and rights of their pasts. This chilling warning story has never stopped being relevant and has continued to shock and resonate with readers. 

The only fictional novel published by renowned scientist and professor Carl Sagan, Contact tells the story of human contact with an advanced civilization in space. Set in a year far in the future from the ‘80s (1999), a team travels out into the galaxy to see who or what could be out there. What they find is an extraterrestrial life form that has made technological advances far beyond those of humans. A saga in space by an expert astronomer, this book became wildly popular and went on to be adapted into the 1997 film of the same name starring Jodie Foster.