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Published Oct 20, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT
A contributor at MovieWeb, Dan Selcke is a pop culture fanatic who writes and talks about movies, TV and books, the nerdier the better. He's been working on news, reviews, editorials, interviews and podcasts for over 10 years. Dan has been published in The A.V. Club, Metro, Salon and elsewhere. He's interviewed actors and filmmakers from shows like Dune: Prophecy and The Rings of Power.
When he's run out of things to write, Dan operates a YouTube channel where he dives into more depth on all things movies, TV, and pop culture.
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When most people think of "sci-fi," their minds probably go to something like Star Wars or Star Trek, far-flung space adventures where people can travel at the speed of light and where meeting an extraterrestrial creature is just another day on the job. And while those franchises are both fantastic, few would accuse them of being realistic.
However, if you're looking for a sci-fi story that's a bit more grounded in reality, there are plenty of options out there.
The Martian by Andy Weir
Matt Damon vs the Red Planet
Credit: Ballantine Books
The Martian follows Mark Watney, a botanist who is stranded on Mars after a mission gone awry. He survives by using his scientific know-how, much of which is grounded in real life. Author Andy Weir takes care to do the math when it comes to things like food rationing, solar power, water production, and orbital trajectories. Mark grows potatoes using Martian regolith mixed with organic materials, which is in line with real-world scientific discussions. The mechanics of carbon dioxide scrubbing, oxygen generation, and water reclamation are all detailed accurately.
The details are so on-point that you forgive Weir when he does occasionally bend the truth for dramatic effect. The Martian was also turned into an uncommonly realistic sci-fi movie starring Matt Damon in the lead role. Andy Weir went on to write Project Hail Mary, another excellent sci-fi story, albeit harder to believe.
Release Date September 30, 2015
Runtime 141 minutes
Director Ridley Scott
Jessica Chastain
Melissa Lewis
Kristen Wiig
Annie Montrose
Jeff Daniels
Theodore "Teddy" Sanders
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Beyond the Mars Trilogy
Credit: Orbit
The Ministry for the Future is a book about one of the most pressing problems of our time: climate change. It imagines a fictional organization dedicated to advocating on behalf of future generations that suggests various ways to address the issue, including carbon quantitative easing, advanced geoengineering projects, and sail-driven container ships. Large portions of the book analyze the economic challenges to stopping climate change, the history behind how we got here, and the bureaucratic structure of organizations like the United Nations. Sometimes it reads more like a textbook than a sci-fi novel, which is a compliment.
The most unrealistic thing about The Ministry for the Future may be the idea that mankind would have the foresight and discipline to create a group like this in the first place, but there has to be some "fiction" in the science fiction.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Ripped from the headlines
Credit: HACHETTE INTL
Let's get into some realistic speculative fiction. Parable of the Sower is a 1993 book set in a future where climate change and economic inequality have made the Earth a much harder place to live. Society hasn't collapsed, but things aren't going well. A young girl who is burned out of her home by an angry mob travels north, gathering other survivors to her as she goes. She develops a new philosophy called Earthseed, which posits that it is humanity's destiny to adapt, survive, and eventually spread to other planets.
Parable of the Sower doesn't have laser weapons or space aliens, but deals with problems like global warming, water shortages, housing crises, and social fractures. It's set in the year 2024, so society didn't get quite as bad as Butler predicted back in the 1990s, but the book still feels prescient.
Director Melina Matsoukas
Producers Melina Matsoukas, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A better, ruined world
Credit: BLOOMSBURY
Published a decade after Parable of the Sower, Oryx and Crake is another speculative fiction novel, although it goes a little further afield than Butler's work, even if it shares similarities. In this future, a lucky few humans live behind walls erected by massive, amoral biotech companies, while the teeming masses suffer outside. One of these companies takes experiments in bioengineering, customized pharmaceuticals, and gene editing too far, eventually leading to the downfall of humanity as we know it.
All of the science is Oryx and Crake is technically plausible, or not hard to imagine becoming possible in the coming years. Atwood also includes a compelling love story.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Just passing through
Rendezvous with Rama is a renowned hard science fiction novel about a group of astronauts sent to explore a massive, cylindrical alien spacecraft passing through our solar system. The craft, named Rama, generates artificial gravity through rotation, a realistic touch that would later be incorporated into sci-fi stories like The Expanse. Arthur C. Clarke takes into account the delay in communications in space and incorporates realistic orbital mechanics.
But the most realistic thing about Rendezvous With Rama may be that, in the end, the protagonists never find out what the alien craft is doing in our solar system. It passes through, slingshots around the sun, and leaves. In many stories about extraterrestrial visitors, like 3 Body Problem, the aliens are fixed on humans for one reason or another. But in this story, whoever built this craft couldn't care less about us. And why should they? Clearly, their technology is far more advanced than ours. That's the most plausible, and sobering, thing about this classic.
Director Denis Villeneuve
Writers Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth, Arthur C. Clarke
Producers Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Lori McCreary
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The quietest, scariest twist in literature
Credit: Knopf
For a while, Never Let Me Go reads like a wistful coming-of-age story about a trio of friends growing up in a boarding school in the English countryside, where they're taught about art and poetry. Eventually, we realize something far more sinister is happening. The main characters — Kathy, Rommy, and Ruth — live in a dystopian society where human beings are cloned for the purpose of later harvesting their organs. The main trio are clones designed for this purpose, and their numbers are up.
The prose in Never Let Me Go is very understated, and completely unconcerned with sci-fi worldbuilding. It focuses more on the characters, who try to do the most with the short time they're given. It's an unconventional, heart-breaking read.
Release Date October 15, 2010
Runtime 103 minutes
Director Mark Romanek
Izzy Meikle-Small
Young Kathy
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Now an HBO miniseries
Credit: Vintage
Station Eleven begins with the rapid spread of the Georgia Flu, a deadly strain of influenza that wipes out most of humanity. We pick up 20 years later with a troupe of wandering actors and musicians who travel around the Great Lakes region. We also visit an airport that becomes a museum dedicated to the world as it was before the pandemic, and meet a dangerous prophet who rules over a settlement called St. Deborah by the Water.
Station Eleven, which was adapted as an excellent TV miniseries, isn't concerned with fanciful technology or sci-fi battles. It's about how human beings adjust to new surroundings, and the persistence of hope even in the darkest time. It's literary science fiction, and so grounded in reality that you forget that it's science fiction at all.
Release Date 2021 - 2022-00-00
Network HBO Max
Directors Hiro Murai, Helen Shaver, Jeremy Podeswa, Lucy Tcherniak
Writers Patrick Somerville, Sarah McCarron, Kim Steele, Cord Jefferson, Nick Cuse
Even more
We already mentioned The Mars Trilogy and The Expanse books in this article. Another down-to-earth sci-fi novle is Contact by Carl Sagan. If you want a sci-fi book that tries to stick to the facts, they're out there waiting for you.
