Books like The Yiddish Policemen's Union
30 science fiction books to read after The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Chabon, Michael, the closest match first.
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1. Dying Inside
by Silverberg, Robert
- On the same lists
Despite his credentials championing hard, rational science fiction, John W. Campbell was a fervent believer in psi powers. Perhaps because of that, whenever telepathy appeared in science fiction, as in...
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Spin book 1 Start here
2. Spin
by Robert Charles Wilson
- On the same lists
The stars go out—replaced by an alien-made barrier that slows the passage of time on Earth and the danger the sun poses comes ever closer.
One night, when he is 12 years old, Tyler Dupree and two friends witness all the stars in the sky suddenly disappearing. It turns out that a membrane has been...
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Old Man's War book 1 Start here
3. Old Man's War
by John Scalzi
- On the same lists
Geriatrics are transferred into healthier bodies and enhanced soldier bodies.
John Scalzi is one of the shining lights of today’s science fiction landscape. His first novel, Old Man’s War, was an incredible introduction, bringing Scalzi to international attention, as well...
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5. 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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Firefall book 1 Start here
6. 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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7. 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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8. 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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9. 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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10. Contact
by Sagan, Carl
- On the same lists
Scientists discover a message from an intelligent source and must travel deep into space to meet it.
In the year 1999 a multinational team of astronauts sets out to discover the secrets of the universe.
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11. To Your Scattered Bodies Go
by Farmer, Philip Jose
- On the same lists
This series can also be considered Science Fiction. Humanity is resurrected (from across all of history) on the banks of a constructed world.
There are some problematic things about this series, but it's an interesting concept and the action scenes are some of the most fun to come out of the 70s. The...
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12. 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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13. Inverted World
by Priest, Christopher
- On the same lists
He had reached the age of 650 miles. With its very first words, Inverted World tells us we are in a very different world. In fact, this is one of...
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14. Modern Classics The Death Of Grass
by John Christopher
- On the same lists
Also known as No Blade of Grass, this was one of John Christopher's classic cosy catastrophes, although there is very little that is cosy in this post-apocalyptic tale.In Asia, a...
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15. 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
16. 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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17. The Atrocity Exhibition
by J. G. Ballard
- On the same lists
Whenever you put a list of books together, you'll always get disagreements. But this could well be the most controversial choice of all, because J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition has...
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18. Lord Of Light
by Zelazny, Roger
- On the same lists
Clones and transfer technology make the doctrine of reincarnation a literal truth.
Zelazny may be famous in the fantasy world for his Amber series, but his best work may just be his stand alone novel, Lord of Light. It's a work that's...
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19. Flowers For Algernon (1967)
by Keyes, Daniel
- On the same lists
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes won the 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novel along with Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. This is the only time since the start of...
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20. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
by Verne, Jules
- On the same lists
The classic example.
When Hugo Gernsback wanted to define "scientifiction" in the very first issue of Amazing, he called it the "Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells type of story". It puts...
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21. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
by James Tiptree Jr.
- On the same lists
In the late 1960s stories suddenly started to appear from a writer no-one had heard of before, and no-one had met. But the stories were just too good, too quirky,...
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22. We Were Liars
by E. Lockhart
- On the same lists
In the early 1920s, the manuscript of Zamiatin's novel, We, was smuggled out of Soviet Russia to be published in the West. One of the people who reviewed that novel...
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Storyteller book 2
23. Cry Of The Wind
by Sue Harrison
- On the same lists
We all know what happens when aliens invade: there's a big fight and then the aliens are driven off, or humanity is reduced to servitude. Well, no. We've got enough...
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24. Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide To David Brin's Uplift Universe
by Brin, David
- On the same lists
When the black monolith appears in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey, or the demons in Childhood's End, that is Uplift. But what if humanity has reached into space...
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25. 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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26. Dhalgren
by Delany, Samuel R.
- On the same lists
NOTE: THIS IS #26 on the TOP 100 LIST. The first 1-25 entries are found on THE TOP 25 BEST SCIENCE FICTION LIST. Dhalgren is one of the peculiarities of...
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27. Pavane
by Keith Roberts
- On the same lists
Pavane is a sequence of linked stories set in the 1960s in a world in which the Spanish Armada had succeeded, Catholicism had defeated Protestantism, and the Church ruled Britain...
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28. World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War
by Max Brooks
- On the same lists
The zombie war told as interviews with the survivors, Max Brooks's chilling oral history.
The Zombie Apocalypse has become one of the most pervasive themes in sf and horror over the last few years, so much so that it has escaped genre and become...
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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. 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...
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 Yiddish Policemen's Union.
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