Books like Dawn
Lilith Iyapo wakes in a cell centuries after a nuclear war wrecked the Earth, to learn she has been kept alive by the Oankali, aliens who want to restore the planet and to trade genes with what is left of humanity.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Dawn
Ammonite
On Jeep, a planet where a virus killed all the men among the first colonists and many of the women, the descendants have lived for generations without men, and Marghe Taishan, an anthropologist, arrives to test a vaccine on herself and learn how the women have children.
Binti
Binti, the first of the Himba people to be offered a place at Oomza University, leaves home against her family's wishes and travels into space, where her ship is attacked by the Meduse, an alien people at war with the Khoush.
The Mote in God's Eye
In 3017, a thousand years after humanity spread to the stars, a probe arrives from the Mote, a star nobody has ever visited, and the Second Empire of Man sends the battlecruiser MacArthur to meet whoever sent it.
Solaris
Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, arrives at the research station hovering over the ocean planet Solaris to find one of its three scientists dead, the other two barely holding together, and people walking its corridors who should not be there.
The Sparrow
In 2019 an astronomer picks up music broadcast from a planet near Alpha Centauri, and the Jesuits quietly send a mission. Decades later the only survivor, the linguist and priest Emilio Sandoz, is brought back to Rome to explain what happened.
Ender's Game
A gifted child is recruited to a military academy in space, where he must train to fight an alien invasion that may already be lost.
The Left Hand of Darkness
An envoy from Earth visits a planet of androgynous beings and must cross a frozen wasteland with one of them to survive.
Dark Eden
On Eden, a sunless planet lit and warmed by glowing trees, the five hundred members of Family, all descended from two stranded humans, huddle in one valley waiting for rescue from Earth, until a teenager named John Redlantern decides to leave.
Embassytown
Avice Benner Cho grew up in Embassytown, a human outpost on Arieka, whose Hosts speak a language that cannot lie and can be addressed only by paired human Ambassadors. Back home after years away, she sees a new Ambassador arrive whom the Hosts respond to as never before.
Wild Seed
In 1690 Doro, a spirit thousands of years old who survives by taking other people's bodies, finds Anyanwu, a healer and shape-shifter in West Africa who has lived three hundred years, and persuades her to come to the colony he is breeding in America.
Borne
In a ruined city stalked by Mord, a giant flying bear, Rachel, a scavenger, finds a small green creature caught in Mord's fur and takes it home, against the wishes of her partner, Wick, who deals in biotech that alters memory.
Revelation Space
On Resurgam, a barely settled world, the archaeologist Dan Sylveste digs up evidence of the Amarantin, an alien race wiped out nine hundred thousand years ago, while a vast lighthugger crewed by cyborgs crosses the dark to find him.