I don’t normally like alternate-history stories. I can’t explain why, but they’re just not my thing. The Lady Astronaut series (the first book of which is The Calculating Stars) overcame my grouchiness and absolutely captivated me. It’s a story in which our early space program is forced to expand at a breakneck pace, far faster than we managed in real life. Not only is it solidly based in real science, it’s firmly based on the technology available in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So it’s both a great piece of fiction and a lesson in real scientific history.

This is the first book in the brilliant Expanse series—and an irresistible gateway drug. It’s swashbuckling interplanetary adventure that features real science at every turn and relies on genuine human drama instead of MacGuffin inventions to weave a compelling story. Also, I’ve gotten drunk with the authors so how can I not like it?

I’m reaching back a little ways for this one, all the way to the year 1973. But it’s a genuine classic, an unforgettable story about a group of explorers encountering a giant alien starship. You may think a science-heavy book written during the disco era might not hold up in the modern day, but you’d be wrong. Not only does everything hold true to real science, it still makes for a hell of a mystery.

There are numerous reasons why this first-contact tale deserves the heaps of praise it’s received. But it earns a special place in my heart for doing something few science fiction novels do when dealing with interstellar travel: It firmly adheres to the speed of light as an absolute limit. It’s easy to write a story with aliens and other stars if you let them have faster-than-light travel. It’s hard to make a masterpiece without it. But Liu pulls it off in spectacular fashion.