Books like Lanark
30 science fiction books to read after Lanark, by Alasdair Gray, the closest match first.
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1. 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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2. The Aleutian Trilogy
by Gwyneth Jones
- On the same lists
Gwyneth Jones's first novel for adults, Divine Endurance, set in a richly imagined South East Asia, marked the arrival of a novelist intent on using science fiction to explore the...
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3. The Affirmation
by Priest, Christopher
- On the same lists
In contemporary Britain, a young man called Peter Sinclair loses his job and his girlfriend, and retreats to a remote cottage where he sets out to write his life story....
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The Sparrow book 1 Start here
4. The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell
- On the same lists
Few debut novels since Neuromancer have had the impact that Mary Doria Russell achieved with The Sparrow. After this novel and its sequel, Children of God, she turned to writing...
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5. The Time Ships
by Stephen Baxter
- On the same lists
1995 was the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and in celebration Stephen Baxter produced one of the best novels in his long and...
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Fall Revolution book 1 Start here
6. The Star Fraction
by Ken Macleod
- On the same lists
Ken MacLeod was a lifelong friend of Iain Banks, and their interest in science fiction was parallel, though MacLeod's interest in Trotskyist politics gave his work a harder political edge...
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7. The Child Garden
by Geoff Ryman
- On the same lists
Imagine a London that has become semi-tropical, where people photosynthesise, where cancer has been cured but the human lifespan has been cut in half. Imagine a place where viruses are...
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8. Timescape (1981)
by Benford, Gregory
- On the same lists
A novel about ecological issues and scientific experiments that address current events at the time of writing.
In 1998 an ecological catastrophe is poisoning the oceans and the atmosphere. A group of scientists in Cambridge try to send a message back in time using tachyons, particles that...
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9. 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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Culture book 3
10. Use Of Weapons
by Iain M. Banks
- On the same lists
Features a Utopian society (culture) that's post scarcity, controlled by benevolent A. I.'s who act for the good of the society. When Culture encounters less enlightened societies, the fun begins.
Iain Banks burst onto the literary scene with his controversial first novel, The Wasp Factory, the violent story of a girl who had been brought up as an emasculated boy....
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11. 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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12. Lord Of The Flies
by Golding, William
- On the same lists
A plane carrying schoolboys crashes on an uninhabited Pacific island with no adults left alive. Ralph, who is elected leader after blowing a conch to gather the others, tries to...
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13. The Bridge
by Iain Banks
- On the same lists
A mysterious structure, a symbolic dream, a journey of self-discovery, a love story--this novel has lots to offer.
Iain Banks had written a string of science fiction before he finally burst into print with his brilliant and controversial novel, The Wasp Factory. That and the two novels that...
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14. Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
- On the same lists
When it was first published, Gravity's Rainbow was shortlisted for the Nebula Award, losing out to Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. In their introduction to The Secret History of...
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15. The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel Of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery
by Amitav Ghosh
- On the same lists
In 1898, the British scientist Ronald Ross, working in Calcutta, made a major discovery about the transmission of malaria for which he would eventually be awarded the Nobel Prize. But...
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16. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Novel
by Karen Joy Fowler
- On the same lists
Karen Joy Fowler isn't really a mainstream writer: she began writing science fiction, practically all of her short fiction is sf or fantasy, and she jointly founded the James Tiptree...
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17. A Maggot
by John Fowles
- On the same lists
Fowles is known as a postmodern writer, though some of the postmodern techniques he uses could equally be considered fantastic: the god game in The Magus for instance, or the...
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18. C
by Tom Mccarthy
- On the same lists
Even when the British new wave was introducing literary experiment into science fiction, the genre has been suspicious of the avantgarde. There is a sense that no nonsense storytelling does...
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19. Strange Bodies: A Novel
by Marcel Theroux
- On the same lists
Perhaps it is the fact that he is the son of Paul Theroux that tends to get Marcel Theroux tagged as a mainstream novelist. In fact his work has often...
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20. Viper Wine: A Novel
by Hermione Eyre
- On the same lists
This first novel seems like a fairly conventional historical fiction telling the true story of the death of the Stuart beauty Venetia Stanley in 1633. In her thirties she began...
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21. Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls
by Matt Ruff
- On the same lists
Matt Ruff isn't exactly a mainstream writer, his previous novels, Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric were both overtly works of the fantastic, but Set This House...
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22. Resistance
by Owen Sheers
- On the same lists
Sheers is a Welsh poet who chose an unlikely topic for his first novel, because it is basically another version of the Germans winning World War Two, an old and...
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23. Golden Days
by Carolyn See
- On the same lists
There was a rather grisly trend in the early 1980s for television plays such as The Day After and Threads to portray the horrific aftereffects of nuclear war in the...
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24. Snow Crash
by Stephenson, Neal
- On the same lists
Considered by some as a parody of Cyberpunk. This novel popularized and cemented its use of the term avatar to describe online virtual bodies
Meet Hiro Protagonist: hacker, samurai swinging swordsman and pizza delivery boy. When his best friend dies of a brain fry and his ex girlfriend asks for his help, Hiro switches...
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25. Downbelow Station
by Cherryh, C. J.
- On the same lists
A space opera about a rebellion between Earth and its colonies.
Downbelow Station is well known among science fiction readers. It's part of a sprawling set of novels - though each reads as a standalone, it's worth reading a few should...
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Mars Trilogy book 1 Start here
26. Red Mars (1994)
by Robinson, Kim Stanley
- On the same lists
A mission is launched to terraform Mars in this scientific epic.
In 2026, a hundred colonists set off on the first long voyage to Mars. Among them are John Boone, the first man to walk on the planet, and his rival...
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27. 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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Sleepless book 1 Start here
28. Beggars In Spain
by Nancy Kress
- On the same lists
How much more could you do if you didn't have to sleep? That's the simple question that starts this superb trilogy.In this near future world, a philosophy that is becoming...
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29. Synners
by Pat Cadigan
- On the same lists
Synners are jacked-in outlaws, hooked on the astonishing worlds of virtual space as an escape from the grim, depressing industrial reality around them. But, hot-wired in to cyberspace, they have...
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Oxford Time Travel book 1 Start here
30. Doomsday Book (1993)
by Willis, Connie
- On the same lists
In 2054, Oxford historians send students back in time to study the past. Kivrin Engle, a young historian, is sent to the English countryside in 1320. But a technician falls...
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 Lanark.
The shortlist
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