Artificial intelligence book series in reading order

by Martha Wells

by Mark Walden

Orson Scott Card

114 books• 29 series

Orson Scott Card, born August 24, 1951, is an American writer known chiefly for science fiction. Card is the only person, as of 2024, to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in consecutive years, for Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). Card coproduced the 2013 film of Ender's Game. The Tales of Alvin Maker won the Locus Fantasy Award. The catalogue counts 114 books from A Planet Called Treason / Treason (1978) to Ender's Tribe (2026), with Homecoming Saga, Mither Mages, Worthing and Women of Genesis among the other series.

Neal Asher

44 books• 10 series

Neal Asher, born in 1961, is an English science fiction writer living near Chelmsford. Asher's fiction works in space opera and military science fiction: artificial intelligence, human-alien encounters, space warfare and dystopias run through it. The Polity universe holds most of the catalogue, with Agent Cormac, Spatterjay, Rise of the Jain and Far Future Polity set inside it, and the Owner Trilogy standing apart. Forty-four books span 1994 to 2026, from Africa Zero to Dark Agent.

Martha Wells

38 books• 8 series

Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction, born September 1, 1964. The Murderbot Diaries, a science fiction series, has brought Wells five Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards, and the fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura are also well known. Wells traces an interest in building detailed, realistic societies to an academic background in anthropology. Output spans novels, young adult fiction, media tie-ins, short stories and essays, with translations in 30 languages. The catalogue lists 38 books from The Element of Fire (1993) to Platform Decay (2026).

Dennis Taylor writes science fiction about artificial intelligence and the colonisation of space. Four books are catalogued: We Are Legion (2017), For We Are Many (2017), All These Worlds (2017) and Heaven's River (2020). Space flight, space warfare, planets and the extinction of the human race are the recorded subjects. Nothing has followed 2020.

Mark Alpert writes science fiction and suspense thrillers, and the catalogue lists 11 books from 2008 to 2022. David Swift is the named series, alongside a group of standalone novels. Final Theory (2008) is the first book, followed by The Omega Theory (2011), Extinction (2013), The Furies (2014) and The Six (2015). The Orion Plan (2016), The Siege (2016), The Silence (2017), The Coming Storm (2019) and Saint Joan of New York (2020) come later, and The Doomsday Show (2022) is the newest. Subject headings include artificial intelligence, robots, unified field theories, physics teachers and historians of science.

S.M. Stirling

96 books• 25 series

Born in France on September 30, 1953, Stephen Michael Stirling writes science fiction and fantasy as S.M. Stirling and holds Canadian and American nationality. Stirling is the author of the Draka alternate history novels, the Nantucket books combining time travel with alternate history, and the Emberverse. The catalogue starts with Snow Brother (1985), then The Sharpest Edge (1986), Marching Through Georgia (1988) and Under the Yoke (1989). Series include Raj Whitehall, Fifth Millennium, Island in the Sea of Time, Dies the Fire, Lords of Creation, Shadowspawn and T2. Subjects include time travel, the regression of civilization, imaginary wars and space warfare.

Poul Anderson

160 books• 18 series

Poul Anderson (25 November 1926 to 31 July 2001) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy who also wrote historical novels. Anderson won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times. The catalogue lists 160 titles, from Duel on Syrtis (1951) to Swordsmen from the Stars (2020), with series including Flandry, the Polesotechnic League, the Psychotechnic League, Time Patrol, Hoka, Maurai, King of Ys and Harvest of Stars. Subjects on file include space opera, time travel, space warfare and epic fantasy.

Fred Saberhagen

75 books• 10 series

Fred Saberhagen (Fred Thomas Saberhagen, May 18, 1930 to June 29, 2007) was an American science fiction and fantasy author, most famous for the Berserker stories and novels. Saberhagen also wrote vampire novels with Dracula as protagonist, and a post-apocalyptic sequence that opens with Empire of the East and continues through the Swords and Lost Swords books. The site lists 75 books from The Golden People (1964) onward, including Berserker (1967) and The Dracula Tape (1975). Subjects include robots, artificial intelligence and space warfare.

Stephen King

223 books• 25 series

Horror fiction is the field most closely tied to Stephen King, an American author born on September 21, 1947, and nicknamed the "King of Horror". King's work also reaches into suspense, crime, science fiction, fantasy and mystery, and includes roughly 200 short stories, most later gathered in collections. Carrie (1974) was the debut that set King in horror; Different Seasons (1982), four novellas in one volume, marked the first major step outside it. The catalogue lists 223 books from 1971 to 2026, starting with The Blue Air Compressor, a short story, and reaching Other Worlds Than These (2026). Series on file include Holly Gibney, the Bill Hodges Trilogy, Green Mile, Shining and Talisman.

Terry Pratchett

148 books• 18 series

Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 to 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist and satirist. Discworld, a run of 41 comic fantasy novels published from 1983 to 2015, is the work most associated with Pratchett, together with Good Omens (1990), written with Neil Gaiman. The Carpet People (1971) was the first Pratchett novel, and The Colour of Magic (1983) opened Discworld. The Shepherd's Crown, the last Discworld novel, came out in August 2015, five months after Pratchett's death. The catalogue also lists the Long Earth, Bromeliad Trilogy and Johnny Maxwell series, with The Discworld Bestiary dated 2026.

Ted Bell, born Theodore Augustus Bell III (July 3, 1946 – January 20, 2023), was an American suspense novelist. Bell's New York Times bestselling spy thrillers feature Lord Alexander Hawke and include Hawke (2003), Assassin (2004), Pirate (2005), Spy (2006), Warlord (2010) and Phantom (2012). Nick of Time (2000) is the first catalogued book and Warmonger (2026) the newest; Nick McIver Adventures Through Time is a second series, and time travel appears in the subjects. Before writing novels, Bell served as president and chief creative officer of the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago and later as vice chairman and worldwide creative director of Young & Rubicam.

David Weber

90 books• 23 series

David Mark Weber, born October 24, 1952, is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy. The Honor Harrington books are his best-known work, and his first novel, written with Steve White, sold to Baen Books in 1989; Baen has remained his principal publisher. Weber's catalogue holds 90 titles from Insurrection (1990) to Challenges (2025), spanning the Honorverse, Safehold, War God, Dahak and Gordian Division series. Space warfare, women soldiers and imaginary wars and battles run through the recorded subjects.

Jay Kristoff

26 books• 8 series

Jay Kristoff, born 11 November 1973, is an Australian author of fantasy and science fiction for adult and young adult readers who lives in Melbourne. Stormdancer (2012) is the first catalogued book, followed by Kinslayer (2013), Endsinger (2014), Illuminae (2015), Gemina (2016), Nevernight (2016) and Godsgrave (2017); Allwinter (2025) is the newest of 26 books. Series include Lotus War, Illuminae Files, Nevernight Chronicle, Empire of the Vampire, Lifelike and Aurora Cycle. Japan, shoguns, griffins and space flight appear among the subjects.

Charles Stross

74 books• 13 series

Charles Stross is a British science fiction and fantasy writer, born 18 October 1964, who specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. The Laundry Files, featuring Bob Howard, mixes intelligence work with demonology. Other series are Merchant Princes, Singularity Sky, Halting State, Empire Games and Freyaverse. The catalogue lists 74 entries from Deathwing (1980) to Apostle (2026), including A Colder War (2000), Antibodies (2000) and Lobsters (2001).

Bruce Coville

132 books• 20 series

Bruce Coville has 132 books catalogued from The Foolish Giant (1978) to Aliens, Underwear, and Monsters (2022). Sarah's Unicorn (1979), Operation Sherlock (1986) and The Ghost in the Third Row (1987) are among the early titles. Series include My Teacher Is an Alien, Magic Shop, Unicorn Chronicles, I Was a 6th Grade Alien, Space Brat, Moongobble and Me, Nina Tanleven and A.I. Gang. Extraterrestrials, unicorns, monsters and humour fill the subjects. Coville, born May 16, 1950, writes young adult fiction and first published in 1977.

Gregory Benford

48 books• 7 series

Gregory Benford, born January 30, 1941, is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist, professor emeritus in physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, and a contributing editor of Reason magazine. The Galactic Center sequence, which Benford opened with In the Ocean of Night (1977), sets sentient organic life against sentient electromechanical life across a galaxy at war. Benford wrote The Scarred Man in 1969, the first story about a computer virus, published in 1970. The catalogue holds 48 books from 1969 to 2021, including Timescape (1980) and Shadows of Eternity (2021), with Jupiter Project and Martian Race among the other groupings.

Robert J. Sawyer

36 books• 6 series

Canadian and American science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer was born in Ottawa on April 29, 1960. Sawyer has published 25 novels, and short fiction by Sawyer has appeared in Analog, Amazing Stories, On Spec and Nature. Awards include the Nebula for Best Novel in 1995, the Hugo for Best Novel in 2003, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2006 and the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2017, plus more Aurora Awards than any other writer. The catalogue has 36 books from Golden Fleece (1990) to Sawyer on Science Fiction (2026), including the Quintaglio Ascension, Neanderthal Parallax and WWW series.

Ken MacLeod

31 books• 8 series

Ken MacLeod, born in 1954, is a Scottish science fiction writer whose novels The Sky Road and The Night Sessions each won the BSFA Award, with further nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Campbell Memorial awards. A techno-utopianist, MacLeod works libertarian socialist themes through his fiction and has taken the Prometheus Award three times. He was a Guest of Honour at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow in 2024 and sits on the advisory board of the Edinburgh Science Festival. Twenty-six books span 1995 to 2024, including the Fall Revolution, Engines of Light and Corporation Wars sequences.

Daniel H. Wilson

18 books• 4 series

Daniel H. Wilson, born March 6, 1978, is a novelist and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Wilson writes techno-thrillers such as Robopocalypse, The Andromeda Evolution and How to Survive a Robot Uprising, and several of the books have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Wilson worked earlier as a robotics engineer and as a television host. The catalogue holds 18 books from How to Survive a Robot Uprising (2005) to Hole in the Sky (2025), with series Robo, Earth 2: World's End and Clockwork Dynasty. Subjects include robots, artificial intelligence, science fiction, superheroes and parody.

Rudy Rucker

53 books• 4 series

Rudy Rucker, born March 22, 1946, is an American mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction author, and a founder of the cyberpunk movement. Software and Wetware, the first two Ware novels, each won a Philip K. Dick Award, and Rucker edited the webzine Flurb until 2014. Rucker writes both fiction and non-fiction, and the 53 catalogued books run from White Light (1980) to Sqinks (2025), taking in Infinity and the Mind (1981) and The Fourth Dimension (1984). Ware, Hollow Earth and Postsingular are the series.

Linda Nagata

26 books• 5 series

Nanotechnology and the merging of computers with the human mind are recurring subjects for Linda Nagata, a Hawaii-based American writer of science fiction and fantasy born in San Diego in 1960. Nagata's novella Goddesses became the first work published online to win a Nebula Award. The catalogue lists 26 books from 1995 to 2024, including The Bohr Maker (1995) and the Nanotech Succession, Inverted Frontier and Wild Trilogy series.

Born in 1972, Mark Walden worked as a senior producer developing PlayStation games for Sony before turning to writing full-time. Walden is credited as sole author on 12 books published between 2006 and 2022, and H.I.V.E. is the one series the catalogue records under this name. Titles include H.I.V.E. (2006), The Overlord Protocol (2007), Escape Velocity (2008), Dreadnought (2009), Zero Hour (2010), Deadlock (2013) and Retribution (2014). Recorded subjects include science fiction, schools, good and evil and artificial intelligence. Bloodline (2022) is the newest catalogued title.