Looking for epic space battles? Space politics? Space aliens? Whatever space-themed narrative trope you so desperately crave, The Expanse has you covered. A grim and gritty space opera, the series distinguishes itself from other titles with its focus on plausible science, realistic relationships, and inter-planetary conflicts that feel as grounded in reality as modern day geopolitics. If you’re finished all six seasons of the T.V. series and are yearning for more, allow me to fill the expansive hole in your heart with these sci-fi books. Suit up and strap in, these are the 10 best sci-fi books for fans of The Expanse.
Leviathan Wakes
If you’re aching for more Expanse, then it’s time to blast off into the source! In case you didn’t know, the T.V. series was adapted from a book series of the same name by James S. Corey. Beginning with Leviathan Wakes, The Expanse book series gives a deeper dive into the space age drama you know and love. The first book covers Jim Holden and crew’s discovery of alien technology on the derelict wreck of Scopuli, which ends up igniting a full-scale inter-Solar System war between Mars and The Belt. Like reading A Song of Ice and Fire versus watching the Game of Thrones HBO series, Leviathan Wakes gives readers a ride to the same narrative destination but shows them slightly different sights along the way. If you’re looking to experience The Expanse‘s story exactly how its creator wished it to be told, reading the original series is an absolute must.
The Forever War
A grim portrait of far-future warfare, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War is features all of the gritty space conflict of The Expanse but extends it to an interstellar scale. The novel follows Private William Mandella, a conscript in a sprawling war against an alien species. Due to the vast distances over which the conflict takes place, William is rendered utterly alone by the cumulative effects of time dilation. As William is shuttled across lightyears and onto alien battles over the centuries, the universe looks less and less familiar each time he wakes from stasis. A lonely cog in an inconceivably large war machine, William begins to suffer the full psychological weight of the conflict as it grinds endlessly and pointlessly on. The Forever War is The Expanse fed on a steady diet of Nietzsche-style existentialism. Stuck staring into the abyss of endless space war without a found family to hold you down? That abyss is gonna stare back into you pretty quick.
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet
If your favorite part of The Expanse is the relationships between its central astronaut crew, then Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small , Angry Planet is sure to be your cup of freeze dried orange juice. The novel takes place aboard the Wayfarer, a ship tasked with ripping wormholes in the fabric of spacetime to facilitate intergalactic travel – but the mission doesn’t matter. What matters is why each member of multi-species crew signed up for the job in the first place, and how they relate to one another. Take all of The Expanse‘s Solar System politics and alien tech mysteries and throw it out the airlock – what do you have left? A story about a rag-tag crew with a closer bond than the one between sodium and chlorine. Small Angry Planet isthe story of how an interstellar group of co-workers became a space age found family.
A Memory Called Empire
It’s politics… IN SPACE. If you’re a fan of The Expanse for its sweeping political drama, Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire deserves the next-up slot on your reading list. The plot centers around Mahit Dzmare, an ambassador for a tiny mining station tasked with making nice with the sprawling Teixcalaanli Empire. After inheriting the gig from her predecessor who mysteriously died on the job, Mahit is sent off to the heart of the empire to figure out where the previous ambassador went so fatally wrong. Mahit has to aim for straight A’s in her crash course of Teixcalaanli political science – all the while fending off assassination attempts for extra credit. Luckily, she finds a tutor in the form of Teixcalaanli state official Three Seagrass, and their relationship slowly turns from professional to intimate as the novel goes on. Interplanetary government relations with a little relationship drama thrown in? What else does an Expanse fan need?
Nona The Ninth
Tamsyn Muir’s Nona The Ninth is a bit of a curveball, but I’m pitching it because the author knocked it out of the park. The third book in the Locked Tomb series, the novel revolves around the titular Nona – a childlike nineteen year old living in a war-torn city. Caught in the crossfire between a necromantic space empire and a planetary insurgency movement, Nona and does her best to live a normal teenager’s life. She works as a teacher’s aide, she hangs out with her friends, she’s secretly trained in the art of necromancy, she shrugs off bodily trauma that would be fatal to the average human. Seriously, she’s just a regular kid. While I can’t go into more details without massive spoilers for the first two novels in the series, Nona is the story of Expanse-scale interplanetary war and politics as seen through a child’s eyes – a child also happens to unknowingly be one of the war’s key components.
Children of Time
If The Expanse is about humanity stumbling across the wreckage of a long-over alien house party, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is us knocking on the door while the extraterrestrial festivities are in full swing. In the distant future, the humanity’s last surviving members land on a planet terraformed generations before – only to find that another civilization has moved in. Due to a terraforming snafu, primates on this planet died out long ago, and spiders evolved to become the dominant intelligent species. Faced with a civilization of intelligent arachnids on their turf, the human colonists are torn between co-habitation and extermination as the method to deal with the problem. It’s the political drama of The Expanse centered around two separate species – and this time humanity is shaping up to be the evil alien invaders.
Ninefox Gambit
You thought the corrupt planetary governments and the evil corporations of The Expanse were bad? Just wait ’til you get a load of the movers and shakers of Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit. The novel takes place within the domain of the Hexarchate – a sixfold oligarchy that rules the stars with an iron fist. Despite this totalitarian empire’s best efforts, a few rebel groups have managed to slip through the fingers of that fist, taking over a former Hexarchate stronghold in the process. Disgraced starship captain Kel Cheris is tasked by her superiors to take back the base through unconventional means – by downloading the digitized consciousness of a dead tactical genius into her brain. Shuos Jedao was once the Hexarchate’s finest military strategist, before he went insane and annihilated his own army, that is. Expanse style space battles? Check. Interplanetary politics? Check. Found family vibes? If you consider a working relationship with an undead voice in your head to be a certain type of found family, then check.
Consider Phlebas
The first of Ian M. Banks’ sprawling Culture series, Consider Phlebas is an Expanse fan must-read. The series takes its name from the society at the center of the narrative – a loose collective of humanoid and artificial intelligences that enjoy post-scarcity, egalitarian bliss. Despite their paradise-like existence, The Culture isn’t without its problems – the most glaring of which is their intergalactic war with another civilization called the Idirans. Hired by the Iridians to capture a Culture AI, the shapeshifting mercenary Horza is caught in the crossfire between two interstellar superpowers. Horza is essentially Chaotic Neutral Jim Holden, a convenient pawn in a chess match between two extraordinarily powerful players – who ends up making a few moves himself.
Ancestral Night
Wish that The Expanse would cut out the space politics and focus on the alien mystery? Ancestral Night is the story you need. The plot centers around Haimey Dz, a young engineer who uncovers the wreckage of an alien civilization while working a routine salvage gig. After uncovering forgotten alien tech with the potential to change intelligent life’s understanding of the universe, Haimey and her crew find themselves on the run from… well, everyone. The authorities of her intergalactic civilization, rebel insurgency cells, and the odd space pirate crew here and there. A sweeping space opera that will bring you to the edge of a supermassive black hole and back, Ancestral Night eclipses The Expanse‘s scale by orders of magnitude while maintaining an intimate heart.
Revelation Space
If The Expanse is the story of humanity’s expansion across the Solar System, Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space is a warning for us to stay inside the Kuiper Belt where it’s safe. Branching off into three narrative threads, the plot follows a scientist excavating a long dead alien civilization, an assassin hired to kill him, and a starship captain seeking him to help cure a deadly nanovirus. As the threads weave back together into one interstellar tapestry, the trio learn that the cause of the ancient alien extinction could soon return. If you thought the protomolecule from The Expanse was a thing of cosmic horror, the lost technologies that destroyed the Amarantin will prove that you hardly know the meaning of the term.
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