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After a rocky start, my husband Shane and I launched Sci-Fi Book Pod—and spent our first 10 episodes reading stories about people who had to rebuild everything from scratch. (Well, 9 books and 1 narrator interview, but who’s counting?)
Turns out, sci-fi isn’t just about spaceships and aliens. It’s about survival. Reinvention. Figuring out who you are when everything you knew gets ripped away.
Sound familiar?
I grew up thinking the future would be like Star Trek. Poverty, disease, greed gone, humans living full robust lives.
These books predict a much different story. But here’s what surprised me: every single one is about someone who refuses to quit when the odds are impossible.
Here’s what we read:
The Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor (We Are Legion, For We Are Many, All These Worlds) – Bob dies and wakes up as an AI with one job: explore space and save humanity. Except Earth’s factions want to use his clones as weapons. It’s about losing everything—your body, your life, your identity—and building something new anyway. Shop the Bobiverse series
All Systems Red by Martha Wells – A self-aware security robot who’d rather watch soap operas than protect humans has to figure out who it is when its programming breaks. Short, funny, and surprisingly emotional. If you’ve ever felt like you were just going through the motions, this one hits different. Get All Systems Red
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – My favorite sci-fi book of all time. A lone astronaut wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there and has to save Earth from extinction using nothing but science and sheer stubborn determination. It’s a love letter to problem-solving and refusing to give up. Get Project Hail Mary
A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt – A man gets the chance to go back and relive his life with all the knowledge he earned the first time around. What would you do differently if you could start over? Get A Gift of Time
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – Humanity’s last survivors are searching for a new home, but the planet they find is already occupied by evolved spiders who built their own civilization. It’s about adaptation, legacy, and what it means to start fresh when your old world is gone. Get Children of Time
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer – In a future where nations are dead and you choose your own allegiance, one event threatens to unravel a carefully balanced peace. Dense, philosophical, and fascinating if you like political intrigue and world-building. Fun fact: my conversation with guest Michael F. Schein about this book inspired me to create Sci-Fi Book Pod. When I told Shane my idea, he asked to co-host. Get Too Like the Lightning
Dune by Frank Herbert – The classic. A young heir loses everything—his father, his home, his future—and has to survive on a hostile desert planet while political forces try to destroy him. It’s the ultimate story of reinvention under pressure. Get Dune
We also interviewed Paul Heitsch, the narrator behind many beloved sci-fi audiobooks. I’m hoping to bring more authors and narrators into the conversation as we go.
Why I’m telling you this:
If you’re a woman over 40 who’s had something knock you sideways—cancer, divorce, loss, business failure—these stories might hit differently than they would have ten years ago. You know what it’s like to rebuild. To adapt. To figure out who you are when the old version of your life doesn’t exist anymore.
These books get it.
I’ve curated every book we’ve read (and plan to read) in one place on Bookshop. It supports independent bookstores, and honestly, it’s just a collection of stories about resilience that I think you’ll love.
Browse the full Sci-Fi Book Pod collection on Bookshop
Want to hear what Shane and our guests thought about these books? Listen at scifibookpod.com.
Stay Groovy!
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