Books like 'The Swarm'
Readers who enjoyed The Swarm by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
sc-fi space action / adventure psychological military, war & conflict space-opera aliens war military space-travel
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The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, Eisso Post
43 ratingsThis is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion — four centuries in the future...Categorized as:
aliens apocalyptic first-contact invasion space-opera war 21st-century action-adventure -
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
43 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she.. -
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
43 ratingsFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth... -
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
43 ratingsFoundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for the old forces of barbarism... -
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Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor
25 ratingsCivil war looms in the Bobiverse in this brand-new, epic-length adventure by best seller Dennis E. Taylor.More than a hundred years ago, Bender set out for the stars and was never heard from again. There has been no trace of him despite numerous searches by his clone-mates. Now Bob is determined to organize an expedition to learn Bender’s fate—whatever the cost... -
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
49 ratingsFor twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years... -
Battleship Leviathan by Craig Martelle
12 ratingsA derelict warship, ancient but still alive. A small team of humans fighting for all humanity.Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.It worked. And it didn’t... -
Earth Awakens by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
24 ratingsThe story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna... -
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
27 ratingsThe astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact invasion space-opera space-travel 21st-century action-adventure adult -
Bright Light: Star Carrier: Book Eight by Ian Douglas
8 ratingsNew York Times bestselling military science fiction author Ian Douglas brings us the eighth—and penultimate—Star Carrier novel, Bright Light, combining the best action, adventure, and hard science into this universe-spanning series There’s no more time . . . There’s always more time . . . Trevor Gray has been stripped of his command of the starship America, and is unsure what to do with his life...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact invasion military space-opera space-travel action-adventure adult -
Legacy Marines by Jonathan P. Brazee
8 ratingsEsther and Noah Lysander are the twin children of General Ryck Lysander, Commandant of the Marine Corps, leader of the Evolution, and Chairman of the Federation. When they are told that their father and mother have been assassinated, they are both devastated. Cut adrift, they each decide to enlist in the Corps—but for different reasons... -
Girl on the Moon by Jack McDonald Burnett
8 ratingsThis near-future sci-fi adventure sends humankind back to the moon, this time to make first contact with an inscrutable alien race. And when Earth’s new acquaintances become new neighbors, humanity might not be done with the moon yet — and it might not be done with Earth. Fortunately for humankind, it has Conn Garrow.They said Conn wasn’t qualified for astronaut training... -
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
14 ratingsThe war has raged for nearly a year and Earth desperately needs an edge to overcome the Sirian Empire's huge advantage in personnel and equipment. That's where James Mowry comes in. Intensively trained, his appearance surgically altered, Mowry secretly lands on one of the Empire's planets... -
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
14 ratingsThe merchant ship Mukudori encompasses the whole of eight-year-old Jos's world, until a notorious pirate destroys the ship, slaughters the adults, and enslaves the children. Thus begins a desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known space to the homeworld of the strits, Earth's alien enemies. To survive, the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy... -
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This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
16 ratingsSheltered all her life in a corporate satellite in Earth's outer orbit, Jamisia must face the truth about her origins and her role in the power struggle between the Guerans who dominate intergalactic transportation and the rest of Earth's far-flung and genetically mutated colonies who are trying to break the Guera Guild's monopoly...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact invasion military space-opera space-travel action-adventure audiobook -
Armor by John Steakley
26 ratingsThe military sci-fi classic in a striking new packageFelix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind... -
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
18 ratingsAn exceptional debut thriller and “exciting journey” into the dark heart of the Cold War and the space race from New York Times bestselling author and astronaut Chris Hadfield (Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary). 1973: a final, top-secret mission to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter million miles from home. A quarter million miles from help...Categorized as:
military space-travel action-adventure adult alternate-history amateur-sleuth audiobook book -
Starfish by Peter Watts
18 ratingsA huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness... -
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
38 ratingsLeto Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune, is dead. In the fifteen hundred years since his passing, the Empire has fallen into ruin. The great Scattering saw millions abandon the crumbling civilization and spread out beyond the reaches of known space. The planet Arrakis-now called Rakis-has reverted to its desert climate, and its great sandworms are dying... -
Battle Pod by Vaughn Heppner
12 ratingsThe brutal war of extinction enters a horrifying new round as the cyborgs arrive from the Neptune System, in this, the third book of the series. The Highborn are remorselessly crushing the obsolete Homo sapiens. Gambling with humanity’s existence, Supreme Commander James Hawthorne attempts to lure the dreaded Doom Stars into a trap. Social Unity’s combined Battlefleet is the bait... -
Down Among the Dead by K.B. Wagers
8 ratingsGunrunner empress Hail Bristol must navigate alien politics and deadly plots to prevent an interspecies war, in this second novel in the Farian War space opera trilogy.In a surprise attack that killed many of her dearest subjects, Hail Bristol, empress of Indrana, has been captured by the Shen -- the most ruthless and fearsome aliens humanity has ever encountered...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact invasion military space-opera space-travel action-adventure adult -
Hour of Judgement by Susan R. Matthews
6 ratingsBurkhayden is a subject colony, leased by the Bench to a Dolgorukij familial corporation for economic exploitation. When a Nurail woman from the service house is brutally raped and beaten, Andrej Koscuisko –- Ship’s Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok –- is called upon to render services under contract... -
The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
20 ratingsTwo hundred years ago, humans made a stunning discovery in the far reaches of the solar system: a huge statue of an alien creature, with an inscription that defied all efforts at translation. Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact military space-opera space-travel action-adventure adult archaeology -
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
46 ratingsDune Messiah continues the story of the man Muad'dib, heir to a power unimaginable, bringing to completion the centuries-old scheme to create a super-being."Brilliant...It is all that Dune was, and maybe a little bit more... -
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Chindi by Jack McDevitt
18 ratingsOn a routine survey mission studying a neutron star, an Academy starship receives a transmission in an unknown language. Before leaving the area, the starship launches a series of satellites to find the signal and perhaps discover its origins... -
Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre
6 ratingsLaenea Trevelyan, a starship pilot, has her heart replaced with a machine so she can survive faster-than-light travel. Orca, a diver, divides her time between starships and the Strait of Georgia, where her relatives include a family of killer whales and a group of other divers, human beings who can exist underwater, and who are, technically, at war with the United States... -
Star Hunt by David Gerrold
6 ratingsIn the prequel to Voyage of the Star Wolf, first officer Jonathan Korie drives his captain and the crew of their obsolete starship on a fanatical, possibly disastrous search for an enemy that may be a phantom... -
Promises by Nancy Ann Richardson
8 ratingsBefore she joined the Jedi academy, Anakin's friend Tahiri knew nothing of her real parents--or how she came to live with the treacherous Tusken Raiders. Now the day has come when Tahiri will learn everything, But first she must prove herself worthy. With Anakin at her side, she must pass a deadly test, using the Force like never before... -
Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
26 ratings2043 A.D.: The Ngumi War rages. A burned-out soldier and his scientist lover discover a secret that could put the universe back to square one. And it is not terrifying. It is tempting.. -
Sphere by Michael Crichton
41 ratingsA group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old... -
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
42 ratingsThe war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the heart of a child named Gloriously Bright.On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought... -
A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card
24 ratingsOrson Scott Card offers a Christmas gift to his millions of fans with A War of Gifts, a short novel set during Ender Wiggin's first years at the Battle School where it is forbidden to celebrate religious holidays. The children come from many nations, many religions; while they are being trained for war, religious conflict between them is not on the curriculum... -
The Cage by Megan Shepherd
18 ratingsWhen Cora Mason wakes in a desert, she doesn’t know where she is or who put her there. As she explores, she finds an impossible mix of environments—tundra next to desert, farm next to jungle, and a strangely empty town cobbled together from different cultures, all watched over by eerie black windows. And she isn’t alone... -
Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman
12 ratingsThe twentieth century lies hundreds of years in humanity’s past. But the near-immortal citizens of the future yearn for the good old days—when people’s bodies were susceptible to death through disease and old age. Now, they immerse themselves in virtual reality time machines to explore the life-to-death arc that defined existence so long ago... -
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Earthbound by Joe Haldeman
10 ratings"One of science fiction's most reliable practitioners" (San Francisco Chronicle) continues his saga of space exploration. The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth's fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power...Categorized as:
aliens apocalyptic first-contact invasion space-travel action-adventure adult alternate-history -
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
16 ratingsRogue Moon is a short sf novel by Algis Budrys, published in 1960. It was a 1961 Hugo Award nominee, losing to Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. A novella-length version of the story was included in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2, edited by Ben Bova.Before 1969, every science fiction writer wrote his or her own version of the first Moon landing...Categorized as:
aliens first-contact invasion space-travel 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook
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