Books like Cloud Atlas: A Novel
30 science fiction books to read after Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by Mitchell, David, the closest match first.
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1. Air: Or, Have Not Have
by Geoff Ryman
- On the same lists
An award winning novel concerned with information technology and its potential for change.
The internet changed our lives in ways that, even now, we probably don't fully appreciate. But what is the effect of the internet? To what extent are we different from...
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2. 2015: The Bone Clocks
by Mitchell, David
- Same author
The story starts in 1984, introducing us to a 15-year-old girl from England named Holly. The book shares the significant moments in Holly's life as she intersects with various characters,...
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3. Life After Life: A Novel
by Kate Atkinson
- On the same lists
Search the sf award shortlists for 2013 and you will look in vain for this novel. It wasn't even submitted for any of the juried awards. Yet it is arguably...
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4. Ghostwritten
by Mitchell, David
- Same author
A complex book where its characters are caught up in the relationship of cause and effect.
A complex book where its characters are caught up in the relationship of cause and effect.
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5. 2312 (2013)
by Robinson, Kim Stanley
- On the same lists
Society has spread across the solar system. The society is nonbinary and gender and sexuality are thought of fluidly. In this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, present, and future.
In the 24th century, humanity has spread through the solar system to hollowed-out asteroids, Mercury's moving city and the terraformed worlds. When Alex, the grandmother who raised her, dies, Swan...
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6. Light
by M. John Harrison
- On the same lists
M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device (1974) was a new wave space opera that was acknowledged as a major influence by writers as varied as Iain M. Banks and China...
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7. The Islanders
by Priest, Christopher
- On the same lists
In the late-70s, Christopher Priest wrote a series of stories about the Dream Archipelago, a string of islands that represent neutral territory for the warring nations of the northern continent....
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8. The Quiet War Series
by Paul Mcauley
- On the same lists
The British Boom has been all about reinventing older forms of science fiction, making them fit for the new century, and no-one has done that better than Paul McAuley. The...
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9. Jack Glass The Story Of A Murderer
by Adam Roberts
- On the same lists
Ever since his first novel, Salt (2000), Adam Roberts has established himself as one of the most prolific, challenging, and popular novelists writing in science fiction today. His work often...
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10. Passage
by Willis, Connie
- On the same lists
Immortality, cryogenics, uploading the mind to an AI, extended lifespans, time and again science fiction revolves around the issue of how to avoid death. In this novel, which won the...
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11. Song Of Stone
by Iain Banks
- On the same lists
One of the abiding themes of science fiction in the early twenty-first century is a careful delineation of everyday life in the near future, a future in which the steady...
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12. The Execution Channel
by Ken Macleod
- On the same lists
Ken MacLeod is perhaps the most politically astute novelist working in Britain today. He brings a highly critical left-wing sensibility to his work, while at the same time being very...
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13. Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
- On the same lists
Is there anything new to be done with a post-apocalypse scenario? Well, read Station Eleven and find out.In a performance of King Lear, one snowy night in Toronto, the leading...
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14. 2010: The City & The City
by Miéville, China
- On the same lists
Imagine two cities that share the exact same geographic space, but do not interact with one another under any circumstances. Unless the government authorities grant permission, that is. If citizens...
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15. Blindsight
by Peter Watts
- On the same lists
A group of freaks (who are also astronauts) are sent on a one way mission to investigate a mysterious object that appears at the edge of human space. Atmospheric and creepy.
This novel has been hailed as one of the best hard sf stories written this century. It's an awesome novel, packed with invention and new ideas and challenges to the...
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16. 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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17. 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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18. 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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19. Zoo City
by Lauren Beukes
- On the same lists
One of the most exciting things about science fiction in the new century is that the traditional white, male, Anglo-American voice is being displaced. Wonderful new work is starting to...
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20. Lanark
by Alasdair Gray
- On the same lists
Back in the 1950s, a young Alasdair Gray entered a short story in a competition. It came second. That story was part of what would become, nearly 30 years later,...
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21. Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
by Russell Hoban
- On the same lists
Hoban first made his name with books for children, such as the wonderful The Mouse and His Child. When he turned to writing novels for adults, although they seemed to...
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22. The Windup Girl (2010)
by Bacigalupi, Paolo
- On the same lists
In a future Bangkok, walled in against rising seas and kept alive by a ruthless seed bank, the world's calories are controlled by a few giant corporations. Anderson Lake poses...
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Revelation Space book 1 Start here
23. Revelation Space
by Alastair Reynolds
- On the same lists
A complex novel that postulates many different lifeforms who struggle against ancient, machine-like intelligences seeking to destroy all new organic life.
Throughout its history, one of the strongest and most interesting aspects of science fiction has been its use in satire. And this is just about the most stunning of contemporary...
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24. The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
- On the same lists
An award winning, Canadian novel that explores themes of women in subjugation and agency in a futuristic theocracy.
Throughout its history, one of the strongest and most interesting aspects of science fiction has been its use in satire. And this is just about the most stunning of contemporary...
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25. The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Chabon, Michael
- On the same lists
What if the State of Israel was destroyed? They would live in Alaska.
In this book, Chabon created a world where Israel had never been founded after World War II. Instead the state of displaced Jews is located in Sitka, Alaska. Chabon used...
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26. 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...
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27. Swastika Night
by Katharine Burdekin
- On the same lists
If there is one overused cliché in science fiction, it is the alternate history novel in which Hitler won the Second World War. But this is a novel about the...
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28. Life
by Gwyneth Jones
- On the same lists
We like to say that science is integral to science fiction, yet it is surprising how rarely the practice of science appears in sf novels. One of the rare and...
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29. Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
- On the same lists
A classic Sci Fi novel where an unexpected pandemic turns into an extinction level event.
Earth Abides is something of a rarity among the work of George R. Stewart. He wrote mostly biographies and studies of American history, and when he did write fiction, as...
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30. Accelerando
- On the same lists
Ever since the computer became a fixture in the ordinary life of every one of us, it has been one of the most potent images in the idea of posthumanity....
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 Cloud Atlas: A Novel.
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