Ahoy, cephalopods! I’m Seven Rasmussen, an astrobiologist, science-fiction enjoyer, and author of Cloudy With a Chance of Starships: How the Drake Equation Reveals the Odds of Life in the Cosmos. Flex your mantle cavities over here, because I’m going to tell you about my favorite books and the science in them, from the astrophysics of Gideon the Ninth to the evolutionary biology of Children of Time. Please bear in mind that my choices (in no particular order, mind you), while they are technically opinion, they are absolutely correct, written in stone, and enforceable by federal law.
To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers (2019)
I’ve loved a number of titles from Becky Chambers, but what stands out to me about To Be Taught If Fortunate—besides how it made me weep uncontrollably on an economy flight to Seattle—is the notion of somaforming—adapting the body to the environment rather than the reverse. Chambers’ explorers wake up from cold sleep on new planets with changed bodies: resistant to extreme radiation, or muscular enough to endure excess gravity. The CRISPR-based physiology-altering tech is futuristic for sure, but not impossible, especially given the long time for cellular regeneration between planets.
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
This is the first in Jemisin’s legendary triple-Hugo Award trilogy. It tells the intertwined stories of three “orogenes”—people who, for better or for worse, can manipulate geokinetic energy. On a volatile distant-future Earth where the novel is set, the climate is dominated by volcanic and seismic activity. Hence the hated, oppressed orogenes. Even though I have a hard time imagining what could cause such a fragile geosphere, Jemisin’s usage of seismology as both a central plot device and philosophical theme blew me away as both a scientist and a reader.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (2019)
Lesbian necromancers in space! advertises the cover. This is, somehow, underselling the charming lunacy of the entire thing. We are medieval peasants, and Muir is here to feed us Doritos. There’s a lot going on here, as you can imagine, but I particularly enjoyed the book’s setting: a resurrected solar system with an undead sun and nine dynastic “houses,” spread across the eight planets and Pluto. Despite the absurd premise of the series, the setting keeps admirably close to science. Many of these seats of power are physically located in orbital space stations; Earth’s First House is on the surface, Pluto’s Ninth House plunges deep into the dwarf planet’s core. If you squint really hard, and don’t think too much about the necromancy, it’s basically an astrophysics textbook with a healthy side of lesbianism.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989)
Simmons’ world-building here is absolutely monumental. This cyberpunk space-opera re-telling of the Canterbury Tales focuses on the intersecting stories of seven pilgrims who seek the Shrike: a godlike half-machine creation of knives and razors. God, what a sentence. For their galactic travels, Simmons has graciously conceptualized several far-out spaceships whose merit hard sci-fi fans will be happy to debate. The sub-lightspeed Hawking Drive causes “time debt” (accurate! feasible!). The near-instantaneous Gideon Drive kills and then resurrects its passengers (delightfully morbid! religious trauma undertones! tragically unrealistic). Forcefields surround massive, inhabited, free-floating trees (fanciful but I think we should throw a trillion dollars at treeship research anyway). The seamless blend of hard sci-fi and space fantasy makes Hyperion my favorite book of all time.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (2014)
A literal fever dream of a book. A lush, bizarre, story that writhes a non-Euclidian path through the classic “what if there was a fucked-up place?” narrative. Vandermeer shines a light on the surreal discomfort of the inexplicable and turns up the dial until it’s obliteratingly bright. Annihilation is also the rare work that succeeds as both a book and a movie. Both versions use uncanny biology to great effect, whether it’s cryptic messages written in human brain cells or wildlife that mitoses before our eyes. Recreating either of these concepts in the lab would probably result in U.N. sanctions, so perhaps they’re best left in mad scientist territory.
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019)
Laser-precision deployment of the enemies-to-lovers trope! Prose that consumes like a burning bush! This satisfyingly woven queer stand-alone narrative tells the tale of two agents of warring empires who fall in love as they sabotage one another. As far as time travel stories go, this one is one of my favorites for its airtight adherence to the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics—the notion that every outcome of every event splits into its own universe. 10/10, should be required reading for students of quantum physics.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)
I’m a big fan of the “scientists play god, ruin everything” conceit, and Children of Time really satisfies that itch for me. A nanovirus released onto a new planet misses its target and accelerates the evolution of a species of spider instead. Elsewhere in the galaxy, humans live in a generation ship, inflicting predictable forms of space barbarism on one another. The spider society—including spider architecture, spider language, spider fiction archetypes, and more—is a master class in not just world-building but culture-building that I’m still thinking about over a decade later. But the science is iffy. I find it hard to imagine a single virus adaptable enough to guide an entire species to technological prowess. This doesn’t detract from the story, though. Bonus: Children of Time is the first of a series of four, so there’s plenty more xenobiology to consume if you really get pulled into Children of Time’s orbit. 
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