Space flight book series in reading order

by Allen M. Steele

by Victor Appleton

by Victor Appleton

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.

Arthur C. Clarke

74 books• 10 series

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (16 December 1917 to 19 March 2008) was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer and television host. Clarke promoted space travel in books and magazine essays, received UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for popularising science in 1961, and was called the Prophet of the Space Age. The Space Odyssey and Rama series appear in the catalogue with A Time Odyssey and Blue Planet, and Against the Fall of Night (1948), Prelude to Space (1950) and The Sands of Mars (1951) are among the early titles.

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.

Victor Appleton is the name on the Tom Swift books, and the catalogue lists 161 titles under the Victor Appleton name from 1910 to 2023. Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle, Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat, Tom Swift and His Airship and Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat all date from 1910, the start of the peak decade. The series credited to Appleton are Tom Swift I, Tom Swift Jr., Tom Swift III, Tom Swift IV, Tom Swift Invention, Tom Swift: Inventors' Academy and Tom Swift, Young Inventor, plus Don Sturdy and Moving Picture Boys. Subjects include inventors, robots, space flight, science fiction and children's adventure. Tom Swift and His Flying RaceYacht (2023) is the newest listed title.

Space colonies, interplanetary voyages and space flight appear in the subject records for Allen M. Steele, a science fiction author tagged for both hard science fiction and space opera. The catalogue counts 45 books from Orbital Decay (1989) to Lemuria 7 (2026). Clarke County, Space (1990), Lunar Descent (1991), Labyrinth of Night (1992) and Rude Astronauts (1993) are early titles. Coyote is a listed series, and Coyote and Near-Space short fiction are grouped separately.

Isaac Asimov

553 books• 31 series

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer who also taught biochemistry at Boston University. Hard science fiction is the core of Asimov's reputation, and the Foundation series about a fallen space empire is the most famous work; Asimov ranked with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the "Big Three" of the genre. The output also covers mysteries, fantasy and popular science, with non-fiction lines such as How Did We Find Out and the Library of the Universe. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books. This catalogue opens with the story Marooned Off Vesta (1939) and names Asimov on 400 of the listed books.

Katherine Applegate

228 books• 20 series

Katherine Applegate, born October 9, 1956, and sometimes published as K. A. Applegate, is an American author of children's and young adult fiction. Animorphs, Remnants and Everworld are the series most tied to Applegate, and The One and Only Ivan (2012) won the 2013 Newbery Medal. Applegate received the Publishers Weekly Best New Children's Book Series Award in 1997. The catalogue lists 228 books, from Welcome to Junior High! (1990) to The Littlest Elephant (2026), including Girl Talk, Making Out and Roscoe Riley Rules.

Stephen Hawking

6 books

Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist who directed research at Cambridge's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology and held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics there from 1979 to 2009. Born in Oxford to a family of physicians, Hawking entered University College, Oxford at seventeen and took a first-class degree in physics. The six books catalogued here are the George stories for readers in grades 3 to 5, from George's Secret Key to the Universe (2007) to George and the Ship of Time (2018), covering cosmology, space flight and astronauts.

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.

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.

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.

Naval aviation and espionage define Stephen Coonts's thrillers. Jake Grafton leads the series that opens with Flight of the Intruder (1986), Tommy Carmellini heads a later one, and the Saucer books and Deep Black sit alongside. Terrorism, conspiracies, undercover operations and the Vietnam War are recurring subjects. Thirty-eight books run to Dragon's Jaw in 2019, and nothing new has appeared since.

Ben Bova

138 books• 17 series

Ben Bova, born Benjamin William Bova on November 8, 1932, was an American writer and editor whose career lasted 60 years; Bova died on November 29, 2020. As editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Bova won the Hugo Award six times, later served as editorial director of Omni, and was president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. The catalogue holds 138 books of science fiction and science fact, from The Star Conquerors (1959) to Pluto (2025). Non-fiction such as The Milky Way Galaxy (1961) sits beside series including Grand Tour, Orion, Kinsman, Sam Gunn, Jake Ross and the Star Quest Trilogy. Subjects name space opera, lunar bases, space stations and space colonies.

Alastair Reynolds

46 books• 7 series

Alastair Preston Reynolds, born 13 March 1966, is a Welsh science fiction author who specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Forty-nine books sit in the catalogue, from A Spy in Europa (1997) to Halcyon Years (2026). Revelation Space (2000), Chasm City (2001), Redemption Ark (2002) and Absolution Gap (2003) come early in the run. Revelation Space, Revenger, Poseidon's Children, Medusa Chronicles and the Inspector Dreyfus books are the series credited to Reynolds. Subjects on record include life on other planets, space colonies, space warfare, time travel and human-alien encounters.

Stephen Baxter

78 books• 19 series

Time travel, alternative history, space exploration and prehistoric peoples run through the 78 catalogued books of Stephen Baxter, an English hard science fiction author born in 1957 who holds degrees in mathematics and engineering. Raft (1991), Timelike Infinity (1992), Anti-Ice (1993), Flux (1993), Ring (1994), The Time Ships (1995), Voyage (1996) and Titan (1997) are among the early titles, and Hearthspace (2025) is the newest. Series include the Xeelee Sequence, Manifold, Destiny's Children, Time's Tapestry, Northland, NASA Trilogy, Mammoth, Flood and World Engines.

Max Brallier

48 books• 12 series

The Last Kids on Earth, a New York Times bestselling series that Netflix turned into a TV series, is the work American children's author Max Brallier is best known for. Brallier, born September 8, 1983, has written more than 30 books. The catalogue lists 48 entries, reaching Across the Doodleverse (2026). Series include Mister Shivers, Galactic Hot Dogs and Last Comics on Earth, alongside graphic novel editions of The Last Kids on Earth. Monsters, survival, friendship, humour, food trucks and interplanetary voyages appear among the subject tags.

Greg Egan is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, born in 1961 and known above all for hard science fiction. Egan has won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award and the Locus Award. Forty-four titles are catalogued from An Unusual Angle (1983) to Morphotrophic (2024), among them Quarantine (1992), Permutation City (1994), Distress (1995) and Diaspora (1997), with the Subjective Cosmology Cycle and Orthogonal as the two series. Short stories make up a large share of the catalogue.

E.E. “Doc” Smith

30 books• 6 series

E.E. 'Doc' Smith was the writing name of Edward Elmer Smith (1890-1965), an American food engineer who specialised in doughnut and pastry mixes and wrote science fiction. The Lensman and Skylark books are the work Smith is known for, and Smith is sometimes called the father of space opera. The catalogue lists 30 titles dated between 1928 and 1985, from The Skylark of Space (1928) through Spacehounds of IPC (1931), Children of the Lens (1947), Triplanetary (1948) and Gray Lensman (1951). Family d'Alembert, Lord Tedric and Subspace are recorded as further sequences. Subjects include space opera, spaceships, space flight and space warfare.

Cixin Liu is a Chinese science fiction writer, published in English under that form of his name and a winner of the Hugo Award. Two titles are catalogued: Death's End (2017) and The Redemption of Time (2021). Human-alien encounters, imaginary wars, space flight and survival are the recorded subjects, and nothing later than 2021 is catalogued.