From The Handmaid’s Tale to The Hunger Games, Octavia Butler to Ursula K Le Guin there are so many powerful women rocking the pages of our favorite science fiction stories. Space travel, time travel, parallel universes, and dystopias are littered with female protagonists we just can’t get enough of. Make sure you check out this list for some of our favorite sci-fi novels featuring female MCs.
The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen
In a climate-ravaged world, the Program sends Heroes back in time to prevent environmental damage. Sloane Burrows, who has a superpower memory, secretly dreams of becoming a Hero to restore the natural world of her childhood, but her father has made her feel ashamed of her gift. Her life changes when Bastian, a man from her recurring dreams, appears in reality and urges her to join the Program, travel to sixteenth-century France, and use her memory to save the world, challenging her desire for her father’s approval.
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Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang
Cas Russell is exceptionally skilled in math, allowing her to overpower armed men and dodge bullets with ease, taking any job for the right price. She believes she’s unique, that is until she encounters someone with a more dangerous ability to manipulate minds who aims to control the world. Despite her instinct to run, Cas is entangled in the situation and must fight, all while questioning which thoughts are her own.
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Remote Control by Nnedi Okorofor
When Fatima forgot her name, Death visited, and she became known as Sankofa, a name meaningful only to her as a link to her past and family. With her deadly touch and a glance that can level villages, she roams alone with her fox, seeking the object from the sky that transformed her. As Sankofa searches for answers with Death by her side, she wonders if there is a greater purpose for her.
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The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant gets her dream salary and is assigned to a project that is investigating the feasibility of time travel. She works as a “bridge”, living with and monitoring Commander Graham Gore, an expat from Sir John Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition who is now adjusting to modern life. Over a year their initially awkward relationship deepens into love, and as the horrific true nature of the project is revealed, she must confront her choice between a lover from the past of her existence now.
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The Possibilities by Yael Goldstein-Love
Hannah has been struggling since the birth of her son Jack eight months ago, haunted by visions of how things could have gone wrong. These disturbing thoughts disrupt her days and strain her marriage, leading her husband to worry about her mental health. But when Jack suddenly disappears, Hannah discovers she has the extraordinary ability to enter different versions of her life and must use this power to bring her son back home.
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The Power by Naomi Alderman
The Power takes place in a world that initially appears familiar, featuring a wealthy Nigerian boy, a foster kid with secretive religious parents, an ambitious American politician, and a tough London girl. But their lives intersect dramatically when teenage girls across the world develop a new, immense physical power capable of causing pain and death. This power shift leads to a drastic global reset and offers readers a bold and provocative reflection on our own world.
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A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel
In 1945, Mia’s family, who have influenced human history for generations to advance space exploration, tasks her with luring scientist Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazis to join the American rocket program. But a dangerous enemy lurks, threatening her mission. Sylvain Neuvel’s genre-bending sci-fi thriller explores the dark side of progress and violence through the perspectives of the women driving progress and the men determined to stop them.
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Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel
Kirsten Raymonde vividly remembers the night Hollywood actor Arthur Leander died on stage, coinciding with the arrival of a devastating flu pandemic that ended civilization. Twenty years later, she travels with The Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians dedicated to preserving art and humanity. Their journey takes a dangerous turn in St. Deborah by the Water, where they face a violent prophet, revealing the dangerous connections between their past and present lives.
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison
In a world facing its final end, a woman must conceal her secret power while searching for her kidnapped daughter. The catastrophe began with a massive rift spewing ash that obscured the sun, the murder of a son, and the disappearance of a daughter. In the Stillness, a land accustomed to disaster, the earth’s power is a weapon and mercy is nonexistent.
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The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Rosemary Harper joins the aging Wayfarer, hoping for a bed, exploration, and distance from her past. The ship’s diverse crew, including the reptilian pilot Sissix, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks, and the noble captain Ashby, offers her a chaotic yet intriguing life. When they accept a dangerous job tunneling wormholes, Rosemary must learn to rely on her new companions, discovering love, trust, and the value of family along the way.
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Artemis by Andy Weir
Jasmine Bashara didn’t plan on being a hero, she just wanted to get rich enough to escape her tiny apartment and pay off a long-standing debt. When an opportunity for a big score arises, Jazz decides to upgrade from a small-time smuggler to a criminal mastermind, relying on her cunning, technical skills, and daring. But when Jasmine’s heist plunges her into a conspiracy for the control of Artemis, the lunar colony, she is forced to devise an extraordinary plan to survive and protect her city.
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The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Harper Curtis, a killer from the past, targets bright young women with great potential, known as the shining girls, after discovering a House in Depression-era Chicago that allows him to travel through time. The House compels Harper to enter these women’s lives and strike at the perfect moment, disappearing without a trace after each murder—until one victim, Kirby Mazrachi, survives. Determined to catch her attacker, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with reporter Dan Velasquez, uncovering an impossible truth as she gets closer to justice.
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Warcross by Marie Lu
For millions, Warcross is more than a game; it’s a way of life, attracting a global fan base over the past decade. Teenage hacker Emika Chen, struggling to make ends meet, works as a bounty hunter tracking illegal Warcross players but accidentally becomes an overnight sensation when she glitches into the international Warcross Championships. Instead of facing arrest, Emika receives an offer from the game’s creator, Hideo Tanaka, to spy on the tournament and uncover a security issue, leading her to Tokyo where she discovers a sinister plot threatening the entire Warcross empire.
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The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Multiverse travel is now possible, but Cara’s counterparts across realities have a deadly track record, dying on 372 worlds. On her dystopian Earth, however, Cara is alive and identified as a valuable anomaly, securing a comfortable life in Wiley City where she works for the Eldridge Institute alongside Dell, her enigmatic handler. When one of her few remaining doppelgängers dies suspiciously, Cara is thrust into a dangerous investigation that uncovers a profound secret linking her past and future, and revealing her pivotal role in a plot that threatens not just her world, but the entire multiverse.
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