Books like Cat's Cradle
27 science fiction books to read after Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, the closest match first.
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1. The Running Man
by Richard Bachman/stephen King
- On the same lists
Believe it or not, Stephen King didn't only write hokey horror novels that weren't particularly scary, with completely convoluted "why the fuck did the clown turn into an alien-spider" plots....
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2. The Chrysalids
by John Wyndham
- On the same lists
A Post-Apocalyptic tale where the apocalyptic event is now seen as God's punishment. The society practices a form of fundamentalist Christianity and genetic variance and mutations are considered impure and caused by the Devil.
Another childhood favorite; I felt slightly ripped off that I didn't have any telepathic abilities, despite how hard I tried to communicate to my sister solely using our minds. The...
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Across The Universe book 1 Start here
3. Across The Universe
by Beth Revis
- On the same lists
Stand up; hold one hand to your chest and the other raised. Repeat after me: "I acknowledge it is not a crime to categorize young adult fiction as dystopian science-fiction,...
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4. Galapagos
by Kurt Vonnegut
- Same author
This is the story of a band of people shipwrecked on an island in the Galapagos after a crippling global financial crisis and a bacterium that spreads and makes women infertile—except on the shipwrecked island. The book covers the evolution of humanity over the next million years.
It was in the isolated environment of the Galapagos Islands that Charles Darwin made the observations that were crucial to the development of his ideas of natural selection, and it...
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5. The Children Of Men
by P.d. James
- On the same lists
The ultimate nightmare of the world's males came true in 1994. (In the novel anyway, though there are some suggestions that things are trending that way.) The sperm count of...
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6. Slaughterhouse-five
by Kurt Vonnegut
- Same author
Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. It sounds like a fairly conventional time travel story. But this is Kurt Vonnegut, and nothing he wrote was ever conventional. In fact, the...
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Maddaddam book 1 Start here
7. Oryx And Crake
by Margaret Atwood
- On the same lists
It's difficult to summarize what this tale is all 'about.' That's maybe the hardest and most challenging aspect of this novel. It starts after the collapse of civilization and focuses...
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8. Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
- On the same lists
Personally, I think Ayn Rand's novels always deserve a top 25 listing because of their progressive thinking and liberally sexual attitudes. Don't agree with me? Have fun with your Sunday...
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9. The Sirens Of Titan
by Kurt Vonnegut
- Same author
This is the novel in which we first encounter some of the themes and ideas that would later emerge in Slaughterhouse-Five. There are Tralfamadorians, there's the familiar resignation in the...
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10. Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
- Same author
Short on plot and big on message, this novel is comedic, satirical, and challenges conventions of form.
Short on plot and big on message, this novel is comedic, satirical, and challenges conventions of form.
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11. The Road
by Mccarthy, Cormac
- On the same lists
A father and son walk a burned-out America toward the sea, in McCarthy's bleak and beautiful end-of-the-world novel.
robably one of the most depressing books I’ve read in my life. Oh yes, it’s well written, brilliant maybe, and all that. However, this book stripped all hope away and...
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12. I Am Legend
by Matheson, Richard
- On the same lists
One of the first to make vampirism or zombies have a scientific origin with plenty of medical inquiry and rational causation provided.
This is the story that influenced the zombie genre and popularized the concept of a worldwide zombie apocalypse. Robert Neville is the last human on the earth. He is immune...
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13. A Clockwork Orange
by Burgess, Anthony
- On the same lists
Another famous Sci Fi novel made into a popular movie. A take on a future Britain in which behaviour modification is taken to an extreme in the quest for social order. Unique because the dystopia is still forming and is seen through the eyes of an adolescent protagonist.
Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles. A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central...
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14. The Iron Heel
by Jack London
- On the same lists
London succeeds in doing what many men have tried to do over the course of history, and almost every man has failed in doing: understanding how women think. Unlike most...
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15. Fahrenheit 451
by Bradbury, Ray
- On the same lists
A classic "What if?" story about book banning, happiness, and knowledge.
Everyone loves the idea of the thinking man's fireman (particularly middle aged women who read Fifty Shades of Grey), but that's not why Fahrenheit 451 made it to second on...
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16. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
by Dick, Philip K.
- On the same lists
A novel that contains images that are Retro Futuristic, but is also a story about a post-apocalyptic Earth.
Set in a post-Nuclear War society, the future is pretty bleak. People are being encouraged to leave the planet for parts unknown and are being given an incentive, their own...
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17. The Female Man
by Joanna Russ
- On the same lists
The book intertwines the lives of four women who live in parallel worlds—when they meet it is their views on gender roles that startle one another.
It is the 1970s. Joanna lives in a world much like our own, where the feminist movement is just beginning. In Jeannine's world, however, there was no Second World War...
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18. We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
- On the same lists
We was written in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and though Zamyatin was himself a Bolshevik, the novel expressed his disquiet at the structuring of society that the...
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Hainish Cycle book 4
19. The Left Hand Of Darkness (1970)
by Guin, Ursula K. Le
- On the same lists
Pacifism and a anarchy—both have merits.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin won the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel.One of the best examples of science fiction in the genre.
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20. Cloud Atlas: A Novel
by Mitchell, David
- On the same lists
Inevitably, there is a continuity between past and future. The present is not a cut-off point between one and the other, but simply a sliding scale in the process of...
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The Age Of Discovery book 2
21. The New World
by Stackpole, Micheal A.
- On the same lists
A startling look at the role of government, including eugenics.
The three grandchildren of the royal cartographer Qiro Anturasi, a mapmaker whose magic can reshape reality, must save their world from destruction. Nalenyr is besieged on all sides by those...
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22. The Time Machine
by Wells, H. G.
- On the same lists
Follow a time traveller into an alien-like future Earth to witness the consequences of humanity's social and biological choices and evolution.
A mechanical contraption that lets you travel back in time. Classic steampunk from a classic author.
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The Book Of The New Sun book 1 Start here
23. 1981: The Shadow Of The Torturer
by Wolfe, Gene
- On the same lists
The sun has dimmed, the Earth is cooler and has been transformed in wondrous ways.
'The Shadow of the Torturer' is the first book in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun tetralogy. Narrated by Severian, a member of the Guild of Torturers, the...
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Takeshi Kovacs book 1 Start here
24. Altered Carbon
by Morgan, Richard K.
- On the same lists
Humans can transfer their conciousness into new bodies. This sets up a detective style story about a murder.
After dying in a particularly gruesome death, ex UN-envoy Takeshi Kovacs wakes up to find himself "re-sleeved" into a fresh body with a job offer: find who killed Laurens Bancroft...
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25. A Canticle For Leibowitz
by Jr., Walter M. Miller
- On the same lists
After a nuclear war monks preserve civilization.
A Canticle for Leibowitz follows the rejuvenation of "civilization" after a devastating nuclear holocaust. It has three distinctive chapters, each one disconnected by centuries, focusing on life at a desert...
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The Sprawl book 1 Start here
26. Neuromancer (1985)
by Gibson, William
- On the same lists
Gibson is the father of Cyberpunk and this novel in particular is significant. In this novel the term cyberspace is coined.
Case was the best hacker in the Sprawl until his employers damaged his nervous system, and now he can no longer reach cyberspace. He drifts through the criminal underworld of...
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27. 1984
by George Orwell
- On the same lists
A classic novel that is definitively a dystopia.
The words have become so commonplace we hardly realise we are using them: Big Brother is watching you, the Ministry of Truth, Room 101, Newspeak, thoughtcrime. George Orwell gave us...
Matches come from series and authors, from the lists the books share, and from the books readers open together. They are rebuilt every night. Back to Cat's Cradle.
The shortlist
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