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Books Science Fiction

5 Fantastic Recent Books about Humans Colonizing Other Planets

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Published on July 19, 2019

Artist rendition of Lunar Colony exterior. (Credit: NASA; art by Rick Guidice)
Artist rendition of Lunar Colony exterior.
Artist rendition of Lunar Colony exterior. (Credit: NASA; art by Rick Guidice)

Humanity has accomplished a great many things since we started mastering technologies like writing and agriculture. But we still remain confined to this one tiny planet, without even a permanent presence on our own moon, and the dream of interplanetary colonization remains just that. So it’s a good thing we have a lot of great books in which humans go to live on other worlds.

When I was working on my new novel, The City in the Middle of the Night, I was inspired by a bunch of great books featuring humans colonizing other planets. Here are five recent colonization books that are especially fantastic.

 

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

A missionary named Peter goes to an alien planet where humans have just begun to colonize, leaving behind an Earth that is going through huge, potentially civilization-ending problems. And what Peter finds on the planet Oasis is most unexpected: the indigenous life forms are already converted to Christianity, and in fact are obsessed with the Bible. But it’s not clear if their understanding of religion is the same as ours. Faber does a great job depicting the weirdness of living on another planet, and the homesickness of someone who’s just come from Earth. This book was made into a TV pilot that was available on Amazon.com, but never became a series.

Buy the Book

The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things


 

Planetfall by Emma Newman

This book blew my mind when I read it back in 2015. Newman follows a group of colonists who are living on another planet at the base of a mysterious living structure called God’s City. She creates a wonderfully vivid portrayal of living on another planet, and all of the politics and complications that ensue. Newman’s colonists use an advanced 3D printer to create everything they need, and her protagonist Ren is in charge of operating it. But Ren has a hoarding problem, and her issues run much deeper than we first suspect—leading to an amazing psychological thriller.

Buy the Book

Planetfall

Planetfall


 

The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mohanraj’s novel-in-stories follows a group of people living on Pyroxina Major, a “university planet” settled by South Asians, as a war is breaking out between “pure” humans on the one side and modified humans and aliens on the other. In a series of vignettes focused on sexual encounters, Mohanraj shows how people’s complex relationships and pasts are affected by this conflict. We’re also immersed in the day-to-day strangeness of living on another world, facing questions about diversity and inclusion that are even more fractious than ones faced on Earth.

Buy the Book

The Stars Change

The Stars Change


 

Windswept by Adam Rakunas

Like Planetfall, this is the first book of a series, but it can easily be read on its own. And like a lot of the other books on this list, Windswept is all about complicated politics on an extrasolar colony world. Padma Mehta is a labor organizer who needs to recruit enough people to join her Union in order to buy her own freedom, but she keeps running into snags. And then she discovers a conspiracy that could threaten the livelihood of everyone on her planet. Rakunas includes tons of great touches that illuminate the complex, noir-ish politics of his world, which is entirely devoted to growing sugarcane for industrial uses…and for rum.

Buy the Book

Windswept

Windswept


 

The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey

Even before it became a beloved TV show, this series set in a future where humans are living all over the solar system had become iconic for its portrayal of the complex webs of exploitation and prejudice that govern the lives of “Inners” and “Belters.” Corey (a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) comes up with a vision of human colonization that’s both plausibly uncomfortable and politically volatile—the way real-life settlement of our solar system, and beyond, would almost certainly be.

Buy the Book

Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes


 

Originally published in February 2019.

Charlie Jane Anders’ latest novel is The City in the Middle of the Night. She’s also the author of All the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Crawford and Locus awards, and Choir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award. Plus a novella called Rock Manning Goes For Broke and a short story collection called Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Boston Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wired magazine, Slate, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed,ZYZZYVA, Catamaran Literary Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and tons of anthologies. Her story “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo Award, and her story “Don’t Press Charges And I Won’t Sue” won a Theodore Sturgeon Award. Charlie Jane also organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series, and co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct with Annalee Newitz.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Charlie Jane Anders

Author

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young-adult trilogy Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. She’s also the author of Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She co-created Escapade, a trans superhero, for Marvel Comics, and featured her in New Mutants Vol. 4 and the miniseries New Mutants: Lethal Legion. She reviews science fiction and fantasy books for The Washington Post. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Learn More About Charlie Jane
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