Books like The Body Snatchers
30 science fiction books to read after The Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney, the closest match first.
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Witch World book 1 Start here
1. Witch World
by Lackey, Andre Norton And Mercedes
- On the same lists
Simon Tregarth is a man on the run from various shadowy ruffians, people he associated with because he was wrongly convicted of working the black market while in the military....
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2. The Robot Stories
by Asimov, Isaac
- On the same lists
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings,...
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3. The Cold Equations
by Tom Godwin
- On the same lists
These were the great years of the sf short story; magazines like Astounding, F&SF, Galaxy and If were in their pomp and most of the brilliant novels of the period...
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4. Who?
by Algis Budrys
- On the same lists
At the height of Cold War paranoia, Algis Budrys wrote a novel that perfectly captured the doubts and distrusts of the time. There is an explosion at an allied research...
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After Such Knowledge book 1 Start here
5. A Case Of Conscience
by James Blish
- On the same lists
A Jesuit investigates an alien race. The aliens have no religion, but have an innate sense of morality.
From Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star" to Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, there was something of a trend in the 1950s for bringing Catholicism into a science fiction...
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6. The Sirens Of Titan
by Kurt Vonnegut
- On the same lists
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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7. Childhood S End
by Clarke, Arthur C.
- On the same lists
An alien race invades Earth, but they are benevolent and a golden age begins on Earth.
You're going to hate me for this. Really. See, Clarke is one of the three giants of science fiction, old-school science fiction. He was writing this novel in 1953 at...
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8. The Best Of
by Moore, C. L.
- On the same lists
We often tend to slip into the notion that before the advent of writers like Ursula Le Guin and Joanna Russ, science fiction was an exclusively masculine domain. But that...
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Mesklin book 1 Start here
9. Mission Of Gravity
by Hal Clement
- On the same lists
This story is a discovery of the oceans on planet Mesklin--a planet with an iron core, a rapid rotation, and a sentient species that resemble yard-long centipedes.
Hard science fiction in its purest form didn't have villains; the implacable laws of the universe were enemy enough for anyone. After all, who needs enemies when you're faced with...
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10. 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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11. 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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The Space Merchants book 1 Start here
12. The Space Merchants
by Pohl, Frederik
- On the same lists
In his pioneering study of science fiction, New Maps of Hell, Kingsley Amis argued that The Space Merchants was possibly the best science fiction novel ever written. In the fifty-odd...
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13. The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester
- On the same lists
A mechanic is the sole survivor on a ship that is just a wreck.
He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead. Gully Foyle is a shipwrecked sailor abandoned out in space, and when ships pass him by without stopping...
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14. To The Moon
by Heinlein, Robert A.
- On the same lists
An award winning novel about a colony that rebels against the Lunar Authority that controls it.
Science fiction-roman.
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15. 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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16. The Man In The High Castle
by Dick, Philip K.
- On the same lists
A novel where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan win WWII.
Philip K. Dick was one of the most idiosyncratic and successful writers in science fiction. Okay, he's probably better known these days for all the films that have been based...
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Dune Chronicles book 1 Start here
17. Dune
by Herbert, Frank
- On the same lists
The whole series over time shows the colonization and taming of the wild planet Dune over thousands of years.
A blend of sci-fi and fantasy, Frank Herbert's Dune created a foundation for many of the themes in modern genre fiction. Its exploration of ecology, pacifism, and mysticism pairs with...
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18. The Skylark Series
by E. E. Smith
- On the same lists
The great innovation in American science fiction during the 1920s was the invention of the space opera, and that was largely down to E.E. "Doc" Smith. Sometime around 1916 he...
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The Herland book 1 Start here
19. Herland
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- On the same lists
Towards the end of the 19th century a big movement for women's suffrage started up on both sides of the Atlantic. Accompanying the political campaign, there were many stories that...
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20. A Voyage To Arcturus
by David Lindsay
- On the same lists
Science fiction has produced some pretty weird novels in its time, but there aren't many that can match A Voyage to Arcturus. It has had a major influence on writers...
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21. Metropolis
by Thea Von Harbou
- On the same lists
This is the novelisation of the film that Thea von Harbou wrote with her husband, Fritz Lang. It was the first feature-length science fiction film, the most expensive film made...
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22. Deluge
by S. Fowler Wright
- On the same lists
The idea of a drowned England had been a commonplace in British scientific romances since at least After London by Richard Jeffries, but it received its finest expression in Fowler...
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23. The Color Out Of Space
by Lovecraft, H. P.
- On the same lists
Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the science fiction and weird fiction that appeared in American genre magazines was often hard to tell apart. Weird fiction writers often used science fiction...
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When Worlds Collide book 1 Start here
24. When Worlds Collide
by Philip Wylie
- On the same lists
Not many science fiction writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but Kipling was the first member of this exclusive club. His finest science fiction is a pair of...
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25. With The Night Mail
by Rudyard Kipling
- On the same lists
Not many science fiction writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but Kipling was the first member of this exclusive club. His finest science fiction is a pair of...
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26. It Can’t Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis
- On the same lists
And here we have another Nobel Prize winning author of science fiction, though in this case Lewis flirted with genre in only one novel. But that novel is a classic....
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27. The Purple Cloud
by M. P. Shiel
- On the same lists
A so called last-man novel. A single man has survived and most of the novel are his meditations on humanity and the universe.
M.P. Shiel was a prolific author of excitable stories for the popular magazines of the day: he was, among other things, the person who gave us The Yellow Peril. But...
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28. 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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Triffids book 1 Start here
29. The Day Of The Triffids
by John Wyndham
- On the same lists
The world changes when a meteor shower leaves most of the world's population blind. The event is augmented by the flesh-eating and mobile plants.
In Billion Year Spree, his epic history of science fiction, Brian Aldiss coined the term "cosy catastrophe" for the sorts of novels that John Wyndham wrote. Well, they are certainly...
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30. 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,...
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 The Body Snatchers.
The shortlist
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