Does Thanksgiving with the extended family make you feel like an extraterrestrial landing at the dinner table? You’re not alone. While you can’t choose your family, you can find a new one the pages of a book. And when that family is composed of actual aliens, the dinner conversation is certain to be more interesting than anything your weird Uncle Paul has to say. Despite its reputation for intellectual chilliness, the science fiction genre is brimming with emotional stories of connection to warm your cryogenically frozen heart. Here are the 10 best sci-fi books with found family, for when you need to get away from Uncle Paul for a while.
Gaunt’s Ghosts
HEAR ME OUT. Despite being set in the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts is 40,000 percent a found family story. Who are Gaunt’s Ghosts? Officially known as The Tanith First and Only, they’re a displaced military regiment from the planet Tanith – which was annihilated by space demons. Refugees from a dead world, Gaunt’s Ghosts haunt The Galaxy – hunting down the forces of Chaos that destroyed their home. While “emotional” isn’t the first word many would use to describe Warhammer 40k, the Ghosts’ story is one of deep bonds forged in the twin fires of combat and grief. A rag-tag team of loyal soldiers who rely on each other for support and survival, it’s literally Band of Brothers in space. This found family was founded in blood and demon guts, but found all the same.
Check out the current price for Gaunt’s Ghosts on Amazon here.
Light From Uncommon Stars
Light From Uncommon Stars is a story of a trio of women mixed up by fantasy and science fiction forces, who end up settling into found family in the end. Shizuka Satomi is a violin teacher who made a deal with a demon – she must deliver the souls of seven violin prodigies to Hell or lose her own. Six down, Shizuka thinks she’s found soul number seven when trans runaway violinist Katrina shows up in her life. Meanwhile, Shizuka strikes up a flirtatious friendship with donut shop owner Lan Tran, who is actually an extraterrestrial refugee in disguise. Though Shizuka doesn’t know it yet, she’ll soon find an intergalactic family with Lan Tran and her alien children, so long as she can figure a way out of her demonic deal. Easier said than done.
Check out the current price for Light From Uncommon Stars on Amazon here.
Project Hail Mary
If Andy Wier’s Project Hail Mary falls under the “found family” sub-genre, then it also falls under the found family sub-sub-genre of “found bromance”. After awakening on a ruined spaceship with the corpses of his former crew for company, amnesiac astronaut Ryland has no idea what he’s doing in this desolate corner of the universe. After coming into contact with a similarly stranded extraterrestrial, Ryland begins to put the pieces back together. Ryland’s relationship with the five-legged alien spiderthing he calls “Rocky” is a first for humanity – the first ever human/alien sciencist collab. As the pair work together to thwart the advance of an alien parasite, the brotherly bond they form becomes the first ever human/alien found family as well. Should alien invaders ever attempt to eliminate us, all we need to do is show them this book. They’ll be so overwhelmed with love that they’re bound to treat us like long lost star-siblings, like Rocky and Ryland.
Check out the current price for Project Hail Mary on Amazon here.
Saga
While Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga technically stars a family related by blood, the core trio encounters an extended found family in their jaunts around the galaxy. Lovers from opposite sides of an interplanetary war, Alana and Marko defect from their respective regimes in order to find safe haven for their newborn baby. Along the way they meet all manner of allies, including ghost baby sitters, romance novel writing cyclopses, and an overalls wearing seal that sports an assault rifle. One of the most creatively far reaching sci-fi stories ever written, Saga further distinguishes itself with the scope of its emotional depth. When your enemies include two separate planetary militaries, a gaggle of space assassins, and an empire of robots with TV’s for heads, found family is the only thing you can count on.
Check out the current price for Saga on Amazon here.
The Vanished Birds
Set in a universe controlled by corporate influence The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez centers around a starship captain who has traded her life for the job. Due to the effects of time dilation, captain Nia Imani is rendered utterly alone, as continuous light speed travel has reduced her loved ones’ bones to dust back home. After being tasked by her employer caring for a mysterious child found in the wreckage of a spaceship, Nia is given the chance to reform family bonds long after her own kin have passed away. Raised by corporation looking to exploit his supernatural ability to teleport, the child Ahro finds solace in his relationship with the lonely Nia – who sees him as the little brother, or perhaps even the son she never had.
Check out the current price for The Vanished Birds on Amazon here.
Nona The Ninth
The third installment in Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series, I can’t even begin to summarize this plot without giving you massive spoilers for the first two novels – so I can only describe this book by vibes only. Nona The Ninth is the story of a cozy family plagued by Truman Show levels of unease. They aren’t watched by a captive audience, but by a Big Brother sort of alien intelligence. Something has appeared in the skies above their planet, an unexplained orb of light that is causing riots, suicides, and proclamations of The End. Set in a universe ruled by an undead space emperor where necromancy is a common practice, Nona The Ninth is a sci-fi thriller seen through the eyes of a child. Despite being nineteen years old, the mysterious Nona acts like an elementary schooler with her found family guardians. How is this un-precocious teen’s struggle to fit in related to a brewing intergalactic rebellion? You’ll have to read to find out.
Check out the current price for Nona The Ninth on Amazon here.
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is the pinnacle of sci-fi found family, a forever stable of the sub-genre. The plot orbits a spaceship crew on a vessel tasked with excavating wormholes throughout the stars to facilitate lightspeed travel – but the mission doesn’t matter. What matters is who is on the mission and why they signed up for it in the first place. How did this rag-tag crew of human and alien misfits end up on the same hunk of metal? What do they hope to find in the lightyears separating them between their home worlds? While every crew members’ answer is different, they all share an unintended one by novel’s end: they hope to find family. With slowburn romance levels of alacrity, this crew goes from cohabitating strangers to lifelong companions – like college roommates, but in space.
Check out the current price for The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet on Amazon here.
The Disasters
The Disasters by M.K. England is the literary version of The Guardians of The Galaxy, a sci-fi adventure romp about a plucky crew whose Chaotic Neutral moral compasses point them all toward a found family. Pilot Nax Hall was kicked out of Ellis Station Academy at the end of his first day, but moments before he could board a transport ship home, the spaceflight academy was attacked by a terrorist sect. After escaping with three other failure-to-launch classmates, Nax and friends find themselves framed for the crime. On the run from the law, Nax meets Asra – a girl with her own vendetta against the terrorists. How will they ever clear their names? Two words: space heist. This is the sci-fi Ocean’s Eleven meets The Breakfast Club combo you didn’t know you needed.
Check out the current price for The Disasters on Amazon here.
Stars Uncharted
Another Guardians of The Galaxy homage like The Disasters, S.K. Dunstall’s Stars Uncharted is the story of a rag-tag spaceship crew on the hunt to win big. Captain Hammond Roystan has crossed lightyears looking for his big break, and after finding a derelict spaceship with a record of unexplored worlds ripe for the picking, he believes he’s found it. Joined by a technologically enhanced engineer and a body modification artist on the run from some unsavory clientele, Hammond sets a course for *title drop* stars uncharted at the outer rim of the Galaxy’s edge. In a journey to the Wild West of outer space, this gang will need Oregon Trail levels of grit, determination, and luck – and build a found family bond tighter than the frontier traveling Mormon clans of old.
Check out the current price for Stars Uncharted on Amazon here.
Leviathan Wakes
The first of The Expanse series, Jim Holden’s Leviathan Wakes takes place in a semi-conquered Solar System. Humanity has made it out to the Asteroid Belt, but is now too busy fighting against itself to get much further. Earth and Mars are competing planetary superpowers, while smaller Belt settlements fight fiercely for their own shred of independence. Executive Officer Jim Holden runs an ice mining ship working for one of these small Belt settlements, but when he responds to a distress signal that leads him to a heavily guarded Martian secret, he accidentally Franz Ferdinands the Solar System into all out war. Accompanied by his loyal crew, Holden has hold for dear life in an interplanetary power struggle between warring governments, clandestine rebels, and shady mega-corporations. As the series goes on, his crew goes from co-workers to family bonded thicker than blood. Granted, this found family gets a little incestuous, but when you’re crammed into a hunk of metal hurtling through an infinite void, you gotta take it where you can get it.
Check out the current price for Leviathan Wakes on Amazon here.
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