There's no shortage of sci-fi games on the market. Players love zipping through space, uncovering the secrets of a future Earth, and romancing aliens. The genre, of course, has literary roots and without science fiction novels the world would be a very different place. From pulpy action to meticulously-detailed futurism, sci-fi stirs the imagination and pushes us to reconsider what is possible.
That may sound like a bit of a lofty ambition. But, science fiction is also an immensely entertaining genre. Below we'll take a look at some sci-fi novels that would make for amazing video games due to their settings, characters, and the ideas they explore.
May contain spoilers for the listed novels.
7 The Windup Girl By Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)
Gamers love causing mayhem in an expansive, open-world city. Whether it's in Cyberpunk 2077 or Grand Theft Auto, give us an urban sprawl to explore, and we'll eat it right up. The Windup Girl's futuristic Bangkok would make a perfect setting for a game, and it's detailed enough that the story wouldn't necessarily need to center on the novel's protagonists.
After a global blight makes agriculture unsustainable, people's only source of food are genetically-engineered grains created by multinational for-profit corporations. Fruits and vegetables are only produced in Thailand, and their methods are a closely-guarded state secret that the corporations will stop at nothing to obtain.
6 Ancillary Justice By Ann Leckie (2013)
Ann Leckie's debut novel is the only title ever to go three-for-three at the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Not only does it change the way readers see protagonists, narrators, and language, but it also sets the stage for an amazing space-opera trilogy.
The protagonist Breq starts off as a distributed intelligence capable of being in thousands of places simultaneously, which makes for some potentially neat gameplay on its own. The rest of the novel follows Breq's journey after being reduced to a single body. Even if a video game adaptation didn't follow Breq, the Imperial Radch is an enormous galactic setting ripe for exploration through other characters.
5 The Themis Files Series By Sylvain Neuvel (2016)
When mysterious alien technology is discovered below the Earth's surface, it raises questions and controversy. It turns out to be humanity's salvation in the face of an unstoppable interplanetary foe, but power and politics are just as dangerous as aliens. While the three novels of The Themis Files (Sleeping Giants, Waking Gods, and Only Human) don't focus entirely on warfare, the parts that do would make for a fantastic video game. Mecha combat is always a blast, and Bioware-style character interactions between missions would keep the personal focus of the novels intact.
4 The Martian By Andy Weir (2011)
Technically there is already a game based on the novel-turned-film, but The Martian VR Experience is basically just a twenty-minute video with occasional player inputs. Doing right by Mark Watney would mean a full-fledged crafting and survival game on the Red Planet.
Players could either follow the main storyline, signaling Earth for rescue and preparing their escape, or ignore the plot and happily farm potatoes on Mars while searching for cool stuff to put in their habitat. Liberties might have to be taken with the novel's tight focus on science to make the game an enjoyable experience, but a Realism Mode for players who love to suffer could make for a good compromise.
3 Children Of Time By Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)
Another story that's ripe for the Mass Effect treatment is Children of Time and its sequels. The last humans leave what's left of Earth behind, but when they find a new world to settle they discover it's already inhabited... by a species that humans created.
This setup is perfect for the kinds of big choices with far-reaching consequences that make games memorable; how would you, as the player, handle this delicate situation?
2 Honor Harrington Series By David Weber (1993)
This long-running military space opera series got its first taste of digital life with the 2014 mobile game Tales Of Honor: The Secret Fleet, but Weber's intense battles between capital ships needs a full-sized strategy title. The series' war-torn galaxy of interstellar monarchies features decisive fleet engagements that would be perfect for fans of Sins Of A Solar Empire or Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.
A "Total War in Space" style grand campaign would be perfect for the setting. Honor Harrington herself could be just one among dozens of recruitable officers, and the personal relationships between officers and their standing with the government could affect their ships' abilities in a nod to the intrigue present in the novels.
1 The Murderbot Diaries Series By Martha Wells (2017)
A sentient combat machine who would rather watch soap operas than fight, Murderbot nonetheless feels a responsibility to protect the humans under their care after a grisly botched mission. The Murderbot novellas are short, snarky, and fun with a protagonist practically made for an action shooter. There's plenty of mystery as well, as Murderbot usually finds themselves at the center of some human scheme or another.
Co-op multiplayer in the style of Payday 2 or Deep Rock Galactic would be a good fit for the series bite-sized stories, but a full-sized campaign with Borderlands' gameplay and Murderbot's humor could be a homerun as well.