C.J. Cherryh

Kesrith: Book 1 of the Faded Sun trilogy

C.J. Cherryh

• 1979 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1978 Nebula nominee
• Score: 12.29

 

Cyteen

C.J. Cherryh

• 1989 Hugo-Novel winner
• Score: 10.39

Cyteen is bestseller C. J. Cherryh’s masterpiece: a multilayered epic of interstellar cabals and dark human passions; genius, blackmail, and sacrifice; murder, resurrection, and the betrayal of innocence—and loyalty stronger than death… The saga of two young friends trapped in an endless nightmare of suspicion and surveillance, of cyber-programmed servants and a ruling class with century-long lives and the enigmatic woman who dominates them all.

Downbelow Station

C.J. Cherryh

• 1982 Hugo-Novel winner
• Score: 10.32

A legend among sci-fi readers, C.J. Cherryh’s Union-Alliance novels, while separate and complete in themselves, are part of a much larger tapestry-a future history spanning 5,000 years of human civilization.

Downbelow Station is the book that won Cherryh a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1982. A blockbuster space opera of the rebellion between Earth and its far-flung colonies, it is a classic science fiction masterwork.

Finity's End

C.J. Cherryh

• 1998 Prometheus finalist
• Score: 6.48

C.J. Cherryh returns to the universe of her classic Cyteen and Downbelow Station, and to the oldest, most historic of the interstellar Merchanter ships: the Neihart family’s Finity’s End. With a truce declared between the major powers, war hero Captain James Robert Neihart returns to the Alliance station of Pell to reclaim one of the Merchanters’ own.

During the Company Wars, Finity’s End had to leave a pregnant crew member on Pell and was unable to retrieve her orphaned son. But Fletcher Neihart has left Pell for the planet…

Cuckoo's Egg

C.J. Cherryh

• 1986 Hugo-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.36

They named him Thorn. They told him he was of their people, although he was so different. He was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different. Yet he was of their power class: judge-warriors, the elite, the fighters, the defenders.

Thorn knew that his difference was somehow very important—but not important enough to prevent murderous conspiracies against him, against his protector, against his castle, and perhaps against the peace of the world. But when the crunch came, when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life…

Voyager in Night

C.J. Cherryh

• 1984 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 6.34

 

The Pride of Chanur

C.J. Cherryh

• 1983 Hugo-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.33

No one at Meetpoint Station had ever seen a creature like the Outsider. Naked-hided, blunt-toothed and blunt-fingered. Tully was the sole surviving member of his company -a communicative, spacefaring species hitherto unknown -and he was a prisoner of his discoverer/captors the sadistic, treacherous kif, until his escape onto the hani ship The Pride of Chanur.

Little did he know when he threw himself upon the mercy of The Pride and her crew that he put the entire hani species in jeopardy and imperiled the peace of the Compact itself. For the…

The Faded Sun Trilogy

C.J. Cherryh

They were the mri-tall, secretive, bound by honor and the rigid dictates of their society. For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other-an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These “humans” are mass fighters, creatures of the herb, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.

Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated…