Series

Books like Desolation Road: 9 series to read next

Desolation Road is science fiction, about terraforming, set in mars and far future. The 9 series below are ranked by how much of that they share — each card says which parts.

Desolation Road is 3 books, 1988–2001.

“Desolation Road, Ian McDonald's first novel, imagines a far-future, terraformed Mars where a town grows up around a desert oasis and takes on a life of its own, mixing magical-realist incident with hard-SF colonization detail.”
from the catalogue description

The Desolation Road page →Narrow this list →

Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente)
The Martian Chronicles
Sirius Five
Company
Dune
The End of Time
Flatland

Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)Series

seriesKim Stanley Robinson36 books1982

Hard science fiction.

“Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.”
from the catalogue description
Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0

Start with Red Mars →

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyUniverse

universe18 books1979

Humor, funny in tone, set in space.

“The Earth is scheduled for demolition to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and honestly, nobody filed the paperwork properly.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente)Series

seriesCatherynne M. Valente2 books2018

Funny in tone, about aliens, set in space.

“When aliens finally notice humanity, the fate of Earth ends up resting on a fading rock band drafted to represent the whole species on stage.”
from the catalogue description

Start with Space Opera →

The Martian ChroniclesSeries

seriesRay Bradbury30 books1946

Reflective in tone, set in near future.

Start with The Million Year Picnic →

Sirius FiveSeries

seriesPhilip K. Dick2 books1969

About aliens, set in other star systems.

“Dick's earlier young-adult manuscript Nick and the Glimmung, unpublished until 1988, shares the Glimmung character and other elements with it, suggesting he reworked the same creature across two very different books.”
from the catalogue description

Start with Galactic Pot-Healer →

CompanyUniverse

universe60 books1997

Set in our world.

“Dr. Zeus Incorporated has solved two problems its shareholders long thought insoluble: time travel, and death.”
from the catalogue description

Reading order →

DuneUniverse

universe78 books1963

About political intrigue, set in other star systems.

“The desert planet, where empire runs on a single substance: the spice melange, which folds space, prolongs life, and unlocks prescience, and which exists nowhere else in the known universe.”
from the catalogue description

Start with Dune →

The End of TimeSeries

seriesMichael Moorcock, Caitlín R. Kiernan & Steve Aylett14 books1972

About immortality.

“Aylett's novel follows a 21st-century revolutionary militant who arrives among them, in events later mostly forgotten by the time Moorcock's own An Alien Heat begins.”
from the catalogue description

Start with Giants in the Earth →

FlatlandSeries

seriesEdwin A. Abbott & Ian Stewart2 books1884

Set in otherworld.

“Ian Stewart's 2001 Flatterland follows a descendant of that narrator on a tour of stranger geometries, from curved and multidimensional space to relativity, as a knowing homage to Abbott's original.”
from the catalogue description

Start with Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions →

Why these

No sales rank, no star ratings, no readers also bought.

Shared terms are not a promise that a book feels the same. Two series can be far-future political intrigue and read nothing alike — what the ranking can say is what they are about, and each card says which parts it shares.

Questions readers ask

What should I read after Desolation Road?: Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) — the closest match to Desolation Road on what it is about, not on what sells.
Where do I start with Desolation Road?: Desolation Road. It is the entry the catalogue recommends for Desolation Road.
How big is Desolation Road?: Desolation Road is 3 books, 1988–2001.

Books like Desolation Road: 9 series to read next

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Why these

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