Books like Semiosis by Sue Burke

In the 29th century, humanity’s vast Hegemony spans dozens of worlds connected by farcaster portals, while the enigmatic Shrike guards the Time Tombs on the lone planet Hyperion. A diverse pilgrimage of chosen individuals must each recount why they were summoned to witness the tombs’ reverse time cycle.

Rosemary Harper finds refuge and adventure aboard the aging ship Wayfarer, where a diverse crew of aliens and humans navigate friendship, mystery, and a pivotal interplanetary mission.

Red Mars chronicles the early days of humanity’s colonization and political upheaval on Mars, blending environmental engineering, terraforming and nation‑building in a hard‑science vision.

Human survivors flee a dying Earth to a terraformed planet, only to find it inhabited by dangerous lifeforms and two emerging civilizations vying for survival.

In a future where corporations weaponize genetic engineering, Paolo Bacigalupi’s *The Windup Girl* explores the ethical and societal consequences of bioterrorism and gene hacking.

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic, physicist Shevek leaves his home planet of anarchists to seek truth, challenge entrenched structures, and bridge the divide between his egalitarian society and the wider civilized universe.

A science fiction sequel to Blue Remembered Earth, On The Steel Breeze follows humanity’s expansion into new worlds, tackling interstellar voyages, alien encounters, and the quest for a utopian future.

In the world of Pern, young Kindan is thrust from a struggling coal mine into a perilous destiny of watching and hatching a new dragon‑like creature while navigating grief, friendship, and hidden dangers.

Joe Haldeman’s Marsbound follows young Carmen Dula as she and her family relocate to Mars, discovering that life on the red planet mirrors Earth’s struggles and future settlers face unforeseen challenges, including a strange encounter with a celestial being.

The Dark Between the Stars is a grand-scale space opera where humanity must overcome internal divides and reignite an alliance with the Ildiran Empire to confront a new, ominous threat that endangers the galaxy.

Sequel to On the Steel Breeze.

Laris, an orphaned beast master with a gift for animal communication, joins her curious cat‑like companion Prauo and a family of ranchers on a spaceship quest to find Prauo’s lost homeworld, confronting alien perils and testing their skills.

A new generation on the island paradise of Camelot grows up unaware of the Great Grendel Wars that shaped their parents’ and grandparents’ journey from Earth.

Although Charles Darwin's theory of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology, it did not tell the whole story. Most remarkably, ``The Origin of Species said very little about, of all things, the origins of species. Darwin and his modern successors have shown very convincingly how inherited variations are naturally selected, but they leave unanswered how variant organisms come to be in the first place. In Symbiotic Planet, renowned scientist Lynn Margulis shows that symbiosis, which simply means members of different species living in physical contact with each other, is crucial to the origins of evolutionary novelty. Ranging from bacteria, the smallest kinds of life, to the largest -- the living Earth itself -- Margulis explains the symbiotic origins of many of evolution's most important innovations. The very cells we're made of started as symbiotic unions of different kinds of bacteria. Sex -- and its inevitable corollary, death -- arose when failed attempts at cannibalism resulted in seasonally repeated mergers of some of our tiniest ancestors. Dry land became forested only after symbioses of algae and fungi evolved into plants. Since all living things are bathed by the same waters and atmosphere, all the inhabitants of Earth belong to a symbiotic union. Gaia, the finely tuned largest ecosystem of the Earth's surface, is just symbiosis as seen from space. Along the way, Margulis describes her initiation into the world of science and the early steps in the present revolution in evolutionary biology; the importance of species classification for how we think about the living world; and the way "academic apartheid" can block scientific advancement. Written with enthusiasm and authority, this is a book that could change the way you view our living Earth.

A human colony on Doona must renew a fragile treaty with the native Hrrubans after 25 years of uneasy coexistence, threatening the fragile alliance and the planet’s peace.

A resilient midwife scrambles through a post‑pandemic wasteland where childbirth is deadly, she shields herself with a male guise, and ultimately becomes a guiding force for humanity’s rebirth.

"Generations after leaving earth, a starship draws near to the planet that may serve as a new home world for those on board. But the journey has brought unexpected changes and their best laid plans may not be enough to survive. "--

M. John Harrison’s *Empty Space* follows a massive alien research device suspended in the cosmic void, exploring hidden nanotechnological realms through an interwoven adventure across future space colonies.