Books like Galapagos
25 science fiction books to read after Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut, the closest match first.
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1. Natural History
by Justina Robson
- On the same lists
In the far future, humanity has split into the Unevolved and the Augmented. The latter have been forged by biotechnology into forms that allow them to live anywhere, including acting...
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Brainship book 1 Start here
2. The Ship Who Sang
by Mccaffrey, Anne
- On the same lists
Like both Blood Music and Man Plus, The Ship Who Sang deals with the transformation of one person’s body in a way that comes close to horror. But this novel,...
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3. Evolution
by Stephen Baxter
- On the same lists
This novel chronicles human evolution by telling a story where each character represents a different evolutionary stage.
If Last and First Men is the most spectacular, panoramic view of the future of life in our Solar System, Evolution runs it a close second. It begins 65 million...
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4. Man Plus (1977)
by Pohl, Frederik
- On the same lists
With nuclear war looming, the United States decides that the only way for humanity to survive is on Mars, and that people must be rebuilt for the planet's thin air....
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5. Xenogenesis
by Butler, Octavia E.
- On the same lists
When the Earth is destroyed, the only hope for human life is in the form of the alien Oankali, who have rescued a precious few survivors. But will humans cope...
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6. Triton
by Delany, Samuel R.
- On the same lists
Also published as Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, the novel was conceived as a response to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ambiguous Utopia, The Dispossessed. But at the core of...
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7. Fools
by Pat Cadigan
- On the same lists
Cyberpunk, despite its interest in body modifications and computer interfaces, was never really concerned with the posthuman. But occasionally a cyberpunk work would start probing towards the posthuman, raising issues...
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8. Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
- Same author
Cat's Cradle is written in a style that makes me feel like Vonnegut's sitting back with a joint, having a laugh, in on the joke that is life. It reminds...
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9. Diaspora
by Greg Egan
- On the same lists
This philosophical novel deals with the question of reproduction in a posthuman world.
The best way to start is by diving in at the deep end, and when it comes to posthumanity you won’t find deeper. Uploaded personalities, clones, advanced technologies, extraordinary developments...
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10. 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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Six Million Dollar Man book 1 Start here
11. Cyborg
by Martin Caidin
- On the same lists
Frederik Pohl’s Man Plus is, to say the least, ambiguous about the benefits of cyborgisation. But that is not how most people see it. The most popular examples of the...
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12. The Xipehuz And The Death Of The Earth
- On the same lists
The Belgian writer, who used the pseudonym J.-H. Rosny aîné, was possibly the leading continental rival to H.G. Wells, producing a string of vivid and inventive short novels. This one,...
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Who Fears Death book 2
13. The Book Of Phoenix
by Okorafor, Nnedi
- On the same lists
As we have seen in books like Man Plus, one way to achieve posthumanity is to remake ourselves in a new form. But experimenting upon ourselves in that way comes...
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14. 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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15. 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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16. Schismatrix Plus
by Bruce Sterling
- On the same lists
This series is a pioneering example of this sub-genre.
Almost as important as Greg Egan’s work in describing posthumanity is Bruce Sterling’s sequence of Mechanist and Shaper stories in which posthumanity is divided between those who use mechanical means...
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17. The Hampdenshire Wonder
by J D Beresford
- On the same lists
This was the first novel to fully explore the consequences of the birth of homo superior. Victor Stott is born weak and awkward, with an enlarged head, and at first,...
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18. Falling Free (1989)
by Bujold, Lois Mcmaster
- On the same lists
A long running and award winning series that mixes politics, romance, medical ethics, personal identity, and hierarchies.
The quaddies are a generation of people engineered by the corporation GalacTech to work in zero gravity, with four arms and no legs, and they are treated as company property....
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19. More Than Human
by Theodore Sturgeon
- On the same lists
There was a period when science fiction tended to refer to the next stage in human evolution as homo superior, and one of the ways of achieving this state was...
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20. 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....
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Nanotech book 1 Start here
21. Queen City Jazz
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
- On the same lists
Of course, we like to imagine that we won’t change; but nothing is going to stop the environment around us changing, and that is inevitably going to have an effect...
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22. The Rediscovery Of Man
by Cordwainer Smith
- On the same lists
Practically all of Cordwainer Smithâs fiction belongs within a future history that starts just a few years from now and extends for tens of thousands of years into the future....
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23. 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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24. R.u.r.
by Karel Capek
- On the same lists
Czech is hardly a widely spoken language, and in the years immediately after the First World War Czechoslovakia had barely gained its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had largely...
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25. Blood Music
by Bear, Greg
- On the same lists
A biotechnologist hides his biological computer creation in his body, but then they multiply and evolve. One of the first Sci Fi stories to treat DNA as a computational system that can be modified.
If Xenogenesis explores the emergence of posthumanity through exogamy, Blood Music explores it through infection. A renegade biotechnologist faces having his research shut down, so he injects himself with the...
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 Galapagos.
The shortlist
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