Looking to get rough and tumble in a vacuum? Fixing to throw hands in zero g? Wanna come to blows in high orbit? Then put up your astronaut-gloved dukes, because we’re gonna throw down in the void. Written by brolic authors who have been doing the math on how interstellar combat will go down, these sci-fi books will pop you right in your freeze dried orange juice drinking kisser. These are the 10 best sci-fi books with space battles, for a belligerent reader like you.
The Dark Forest
The second of Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, The Dark Forest takes its name from a theory that presents the universe as a dark and violent place. The Dark Forest theory asks: why haven’t we heard from aliens yet? The answer: because like lighting a bonfire in a dark forest, any attempt at contacting the outside universe will get you devoured by a bigger and badder civilization. And that’s exactly what happens in this book. There are epic space battles, sure, but “space massacres” might be a more apt way to describe them – absolutely massive scale interplanetary conflicts fueled by hard sci-fi physics and speculative weapons of war. In the sequel Death’s End, the conflict gets even more devastating, with weapons big enough to wipe out entire sections of the universe. You thought nukes were bad? Just wait until you learn what a “dual vector foil” is.
Ninefox Gambit
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee is set in a universe controlled by a six-fold autocracy known as the Hexarchate. While the sextuplet of oligarchies rule the stars with an iron fist, a few heretical rebels have managed to slip through their fingers. The rebels have taken control of a key Hexarchate base, and the disgraced Captain Kel Cheris is ordered by her superiors to retake the outpost and redeem herself in the process. How? By downloading the mind of a dead military genius into her brain: While alive, general Shuos Jedao was perhaps the greatest tactician the Hexarchate had – until he went insane and massacred his own army. Now that he’s been digitally resurrected, maybe he’ll do better the second time around? Kel Cheris is soon to find out. If you’re looking for cerebral space battles that unfold like chess matches on a lightyears long game board – this is the novel for you.
Harrow The Ninth
If you’re looking for traditional spaceship vs. spaceship battles in Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow The Ninth, you’ve come to the wrong place. If you’re looking for a novel where a group of undead mages face off against the resurrected ghost of an annihilated planet – welcome. The second book in the Locked Tomb series, Harrow picks up where “goth lesbian necromancer space opera” Gideon The Ninth left off. Necromancer Harrowhark is serving alongside an undead space emperor in his effort to wipe out the ghosts of dead planets – the battle isn’t going well. While the novel starts as a cerebral thriller, it soon explodes into a sci-fi horror climax featuring a woman with a big sword going up against a ship full of Lovecraftian horrors. And THEN there’s a confrontation with a planetary god in the void between dimensions – regular military sci-fi could never.
Ring
A climactic book in Stephen Baxter’s The Xeelee Sequence, Ring pits an interstellar human empire against a species of star devouring extraterrestrials we barely understand. While fending off the laws of physics-breaking attacks from the dark matter-based “photino birds,” humanity is also waging a war against the Xeelee – a group of eldritch beings that are attempting to transcend the universe itself. It’s less Star Wars style dog fights and more mind-boggling math maneuvers from across lightyears – but it gets the space battle job done. If you’re looking for hard won victories, you’ve come to the wrong place. The entire thesis of Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Sequence is that humanity is a hard-thinking, hard-fighting, but ultimately irrelevant player in a 10 dimensional chess match that defies our comprehension. Like they say in poker games, if you don’t know who the sucker is at the table, odds are it’s probably you. At this cosmic table, the sucker is humankind.
The Honor Harrington Series
If you’re looking for no-nonsense, no-frills, straight-up space battles – The Honor Harrington series by David Weber exactly what you need. Beginning with On Basilisk Station, the series revolves around Honor Harrington – commander of Her Majesty’s light cruiser Fearless. Stationed in the desolate Basilisk system, Honor was put there by jealous superiors hoping that she’d quietly fade into irrelevance. To their disappointment, she gains interstellar renown after discovering that a neighboring star system called Haven is scheming to take control of Basilisk. Not on Honor’s watch! While the novel is peppered with skirmishes, the real meat and potatoes comes at the climate when the People’s Republic of Haven launches a full scale invasion, resulting in the epic “Battle For Basilisk.” It’s standard issue naval-style space warfare, complete with long-range missile barrages, energy weapon exchanges, and painstaking maneuvers in 3D space. Liam Neeson’s Battleship could never.
A Desolation Called Peace
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire – the story of an ambassador from an independent mining station tasked with making nice with the interstellar Teixcalaanli Empire. After Ambassador Mahit Dzmare’s hard won negotiations are complete, the brief period of peace is shattered by an alien invasion. As aggressive as they are inscrutable, these extraterrestrials appear to have no desire for diplomacy, and no sense of mercy. While the Teixcalaanli Empire scrambles to establish a line of communication with the bizarre species, they pepper their attempts at conversation with multiple space battles along the way. As it turns out, not all of the Teixcalaanli government is onboard with finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict. After all, a common enemy is good for solidifying an empire. Ambassador Mahit and her Teixcalaanli lover are fighting a war in two fronts – external and internal.
The Forever War
A classic of military sci-fi, Joe Halderman’s The Forever War is the story of Private William Mandella – a tiny cog in humanity’s interstellar war machine. A soldier in a never-ending war against an inscrutable alien enemy, William is forced to endure the soul-crushing slog of decades long combat. Due to the effects of time dilation in long-range military maneuvers, William is rendered one of humanity’s oldest living soldiers – his family, friends, and old comrades are long dead. While the series features plenty of space battles, it’s also an examination of the psychological cost of war. Despite a generations long conflict that claims the lives of millions, the war amounts to nothing in the end – as war always does.
We Are Legion, We Are Bob
Dennis E. Taylor’s We Are Legion, We Are Bob is the story of Bob Johansson – a brilliant software engineer who was killed while crossing the street. Rather than awakening in an isekai anime world like any other nerd taken before their time, Bob finds his consciousness digitally reconstructed within a space probe hundreds of years in the future. Tasked with finding habitable worlds for humanity, Bob creates digital copies of himself to help. Unlucky for the Bobs, some of Earth’s most belligerent nations are competing to finding livable planets first – and are willing to use every dirty trick in the book to stymie them. Bob and his other selves fight space battles against all sorts of foes, including rival factions of Bobs bent on Bob Prime’s downfall. Cerebral and silly, this hard sci-fi has some humorous soft spots.
Ancillary Justice
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is a space opera set in the Radch Empire – a star-spanning force that uses spaceship controlling AIs to establish interstellar dominance. When not piloting entire fleets, these AI sometimes deploy foot soldiers called “ancillaries” that they remotely control. After an AI named Breq wakes up trapped within a single ancillary in the wreckage of a spaceship fleet, the confused computer program goes scanning for answers. While most of the novel takes place on a smaller scale, Breq often flashes back to her glorious combat days – where she controlled hundreds of ships and thousands of ancillaries in massive fleet vs. fleet battles. And in the book’s final act, she’ll be back in the spaceship driver’s seat again.
The Gothic War Series
Set in the sprawling grim-darkness of the Warhammer 40k universe, The Gothic War series by Gordon Rennie is as space battle-y as it gets. Beginning with Execution Hour, the series chronicles a vast military campaign waged against the star-spanning Imperium of Man by an army of space demons. While the full scope of Warhammer 40k‘s lore could fill the Library of Congress, I’ll give you the gist: humanity has been united into a spacefaring empire under the Emperor of Mankind – aided by his trusted progeny Warmaster Horus. Jealous of the Emperor and corrupted by the forces of Chaos, Horus rebels against the Imperium – bringing its golden age to a bloody end. The Gothic War claimed the lives of countless billions of people, and is responsible for turning the Warhammer 40k universe into the total hellhole fans know and love. This series has more than just space battles, it’s space war on a galactic scale. You’re welcome.
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