# The 27 Best Science Fiction Novels Published by Tor

> Hugo-winning space operas share shelf space with quieter debuts and a few genre-bending oddities, all launched in the US under the same mountain-peak logo.

*By YPB Team · Published November 2, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-27-best-science-fiction-novels-published-by-tor*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Ender's Game** — score 1000/1000
   Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel about child prodigy Andrew Wiggin training at Battle School, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
2. **Ender's Shadow** — score 728/1000
   A 1999 parallel novel by Card that retells the Battle School story through the eyes of Bean.
3. **Lock In** — score 648/1000
   John Scalzi's 2014 near-future thriller about an FBI agent with Haden's syndrome who works through a robotic body.
4. **Boneshaker** — score 595/1000
   Cherie Priest's 2009 steampunk novel set in an alternate Seattle walled off after a drilling machine releases a toxic gas.
5. **Redshirts** — score 595/1000
   Scalzi's 2012 comic novel about junior crew members who notice that low-ranking officers keep dying on away missions; it won the 2013 Hugo.
6. **Hominids** — score 595/1000
   Robert J. Sawyer's 2002 novel about a Neanderthal physicist who crosses into our world from a parallel Earth, winner of the 2003 Hugo.
7. **The Kaiju Preservation Society** — score 534/1000
   A 2022 Scalzi adventure in which a laid-off delivery driver joins a team caring for giant monsters on a parallel Earth.
8. **The Three-Body Problem** — score 463/1000
   Liu Cixin's novel about first contact with the Trisolarans, published in Ken Liu's English translation by Tor in 2014 and winner of the 2015 Hugo.
9. **The Dark Forest** — score 463/1000
   The second book of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, translated by Joel Martinsen and issued by Tor in 2015.
10. **Blindsight** — score 463/1000
   Peter Watts's 2006 first-contact novel about a crew of altered humans and a vampire investigating an alien presence beyond Neptune.
11. **Speaker for the Dead** — score 463/1000
   Card's 1986 sequel to Ender's Game, set three thousand years later on the planet Lusitania, which also won the Hugo and Nebula.
12. **Rainbows End** — score 463/1000
   Vinge's 2006 near-future novel about a poet recovering from Alzheimer's in a world of wearable computing, winner of the 2007 Hugo.
13. **Spin** — score 463/1000
   Robert Charles Wilson's 2005 novel in which Earth is wrapped in a membrane that slows its time relative to the universe; it won the 2006 Hugo.
14. **Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom** — score 463/1000
   Doctorow's 2003 debut novel set in a post-scarcity future where reputation, called Whuffie, replaces money.
15. **Old Man's War** — score 379/1000
   John Scalzi's 2005 debut novel, in which 75-year-olds enlist in the Colonial Defense Forces and get new bodies.
16. **A Desolation Called Peace** — score 379/1000
   Arkady Martine's 2021 sequel to A Memory Called Empire, about first contact with an alien fleet, which won the 2022 Hugo.
17. **A Fire Upon the Deep** — score 379/1000
   Vernor Vinge's 1992 space opera built around the Zones of Thought, co-winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
18. **Autonomous** — score 379/1000
   Annalee Newitz's 2017 novel about a drug pirate and the military robot hunting her, which won the Lambda Literary Award.
19. **The Calculating Stars** — score 379/1000
   Mary Robinette Kowal's 2018 alternate-history novel about a woman pilot pushing into a space program sped up by a 1952 meteorite strike.
20. **A Memory Called Empire** — score 278/1000
   Arkady Martine's 2019 debut about an ambassador sent to the Teixcalaanli Empire, winner of the 2020 Hugo for Best Novel.
21. **The Collapsing Empire** — score 278/1000
   The 2017 opener of Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy, about an empire held together by a faster-than-light current called the Flow.
22. **Too Like the Lightning** — score 278/1000
   Ada Palmer's 2016 debut, the first book of the Terra Ignota series, set in a 25th-century world without nations.
23. **Semiosis** — score 278/1000
   Sue Burke's 2018 debut about human colonists negotiating with intelligent plant life on the planet Pax.
24. **A Deepness in the Sky** — score 0/1000
   Vinge's 1999 prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, in which Qeng Ho traders and the tyrannical Emergents clash at the star On/Off; it won the 2000 Hugo.
25. **Death's End** — score 0/1000
   The 2016 English edition of the trilogy's closing volume, translated by Ken Liu, which follows engineer Cheng Xin across centuries.
26. **Little Brother** — score 0/1000
   Cory Doctorow's 2008 young-adult novel about a San Francisco teenager fighting surveillance after a terrorist attack.
27. **Network Effect** — score 0/1000
   Martha Wells's 2020 first full-length Murderbot novel, which won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards.

Tags: books, sci-fi, space, fiction