&quot;The Long Earth&quot; - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - First in trilogy about parallel worlds; the combination of those two authors makes it both fanciful and grounded, which is a bit odd.<p>&quot;Clockwork Rocket&quot; - Greg Egan - First in the Orthagonal trilogy; An alien story where physics is different.<p>&quot;Seveneves&quot; - Neal Stephenson - Goes great with the recent hard sci-fi space movies.<p>EDIT:
&quot;What-if&quot; - Randall Munroe - Saw this on another list and need to make sure is shows up as often as possible. This is the thing to hand every kid as part of their back-to-school pack.