So close! These books were all nominated but failed to win the Hugo.
Since the Hugo has been handed out since the fifties, this list just focuses on books published in 2000 or later.
Review: The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld
The Risen Empire has some interesting ideas about the far future. Humanity has split into several factions, one of the largest is the Risen Empire, ruled by a single, immortal emperor for sixteen hundred years. This emperor has the sole power to bestow immortality on any of his subjects. When the emperor’s home planet is attacked and his sister held hostage, military and political gears start turning.
Review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Dark Matter is one of those books that I stayed up way too late reading. The science is perhaps a little iffy, and dark matter itself plays very little part in the book, but the book grabs you by the eyeballs early on and doesn’t let go.
Review: The Humans by Matt Haig
The Humans is an excellent dark comedy that sticks an alien, who hates humans, in a human mathematician’s body, and gives it several assassinations to carry out. Advanced math is unexpectedly involved.
Review: The Genius Plague by David Walton
You don’t often see tense, page-turner science fiction with fungus as a starring role, but The Genius Plague by David Walton pulls it off.
21 Best Science Fiction Books of 2019
Female science fiction authors crushed it in 2019, penning nearly half the books on this list. There are also a ton of female main characters.
Review: The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey
The Grand Dark’s main draw is its steampunk-inspired world-building, which is excellent. Most of the action takes place in the city of Lower Proszawa, which has just won the Great War. The population celebrates with drugs and nonstop parties as fascism strangles the populace. There are semi-intelligent automata and genetically engineered pets and power plants that spew massive clouds of coal dust.
19 Best Generation Ship Books
Take a bunch of humans, put them in a large but limited space and keep them there for generations. Watch the chaos ensue.
Of course, you can also take the perspective that our entire planet is a generation ship.
Review: The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack Campbell
I’ve never been a big military SF fan, but The Lost Fleet: Dauntless does a solid job of changing my mind.
A soldier is woken up after one hundred years of drifting in space in survival hibernation and discovers that he’s been made a hero and a legend for his famous last stand. Not only is the war he fought in still raging, but he’s thrown into the command of a fleet of ships, deep in enemy territory and vastly outnumbered.
Review: Bad Hair Day by Jim Benton
This fun, goofy chapter book is the latest (after a ten-year hiatus) in the Franny K. Stein: Mad Scientist series. Franny decides to learn about the strangest, craziest thing she knows of: her mother. This results in several adventures involving powerful, shape-shifting, and self-aware hair.