Books like Zoo City
30 science fiction books to read after Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes, the closest match first.
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1. 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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2. 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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Light book 1 Start here
3. 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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4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. 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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8. 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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9. 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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Imperial Radch book 1 Start here
10. Ancillary Justice (2014)
by Leckie, Ann
- On the same lists
Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie (Book 1 in the Imperial Radch trilogy) won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
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11. Bridge
by Lauren Beukes
- Same author
After her mother's death, Bridge finds a cocoon-like pod called a dreamworm among her belongings, and realises her mother may have been telling the truth about it. Its threads let...
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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. 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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14. Among Others (2012)
by Walton, Jo
- On the same lists
An award-winning and break-out novel, that is about good versus evil magic, about books, about self-discovery, about imagination. It is an example of an unfolding and nonlinear plot.
Morwenna Phelps grew up in the Welsh valleys talking to fairies among the ruins of old factories. After a disaster involving her mother, a witch, she is left with a...
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15. The Aleutian Trilogy
by Sue Harrison
- On the same lists
Right from her debut as an adult novelist with Divine Endurance (she has an equally long and successful career as a children's writer), Gwyneth Jones has been a writer to...
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16. The Story Until Now
by Kit Reed
- On the same lists
Science fiction is filled with writers who have a devoted coterie of admirers, yet who seem to have missed out on the awards and honours that normally come with such...
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17. Queen Of The States
by Josephine Saxton
- On the same lists
Josephine Saxton was one of the stars of the British new wave during the 1960s, writing a string of intriguing off-beat short stories and complex, challenging novels. But she has...
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18. Maul
by Tricia Sullivan
- On the same lists
What is the most characteristic thing in our contemporary urban lives. It is not the computer or the mobile phone or any of the other digital devices that surround us,...
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19. 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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20. 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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21. 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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22. 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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23. The Blazing World
by Margaret Cavendish
- On the same lists
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, sometimes known as Mad Madge, was an amazing figure, a friend of major thinkers like Descartes and Hobbes, she was an early exponent of atomism,...
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Firefall book 1 Start here
24. 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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25. 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
26. 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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Sleepless book 1 Start here
27. 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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28. A Darkling Sea -
by James L. Cambias
- On the same lists
When a bunch of Hugo and Nebula award winners queue up to praise a first novel from a brand new writer, and when they compare it to Hal Clement and...
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29. 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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30. 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....
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 Zoo City.
The shortlist
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